The Law of Christ

What if I were to tell you that God demands absolutely nothing of you, that He requires absolutely nothing of you? And what if I were to tell you that that’s actually a Biblical thought? Some might say, “Well, He says, ‘Thou shall not lie. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall love the Lord your God.’ Sounds pretty demanding to me. Sounds like He requires quite a bit of us to me.”

I’m going to read a couple of scripture verses from Romans to hopefully bring some clarity to this topic. The first one is Romans 3:20, and the second scripture verse is Romans 7:5. But I’m going to sandwich those scriptures together because they go so hand-in-hand with each other. Here we go…

“Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin […] For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.”

By the law comes the knowledge of sin, but when we’re in the flesh, we’re just aroused by the law. We’re not able to adhere to it. We’re not able to do anything in regards to keeping the law. God didn’t put the law in place to show us how to become good, moral people. He didn’t put the law into place to show us how to become little, religious human beings. He put the law into place to show us how weak we are—how in need of a Savior we are. That’s why He put the law into place. Most of our weaknesses come down to not recognizing the truth of what God is saying to us in the scriptures. We think that somehow we’re supposed to uphold His commands. We’re supposed to do His will, but in light of the Gospel, we know that God makes no demands of us in the flesh. Instead, He gives us His Son Jesus Christ, and He fulfills all. He doesn’t say to us in our old nature—our old identity, our carnal, sinful nature—“Thou shall not lust. Thou shall not lie.” Instead, He gives us His Son who does not lie, who will not lust, who’s perfect in all of His ways. He places Him in us, and He causes us to begin to walk in the Spirit instead of in the flesh, as we’re slowly shaped more and more into His image—as we walk out His will through Jesus Christ. As long as we continue believing—that’s our duty, to believe—that we are absolutely nothing without Christ, that we can’t lift a finger for God in our own strength, it is then that we’ll see that God will establish all of our ways as we just simply keep trusting Him—setting our faith in Him and through Him. Just like Moses wasn’t able to hold up the rod of God against the fight of the Amalekites, – guaranteeing success in that battle for Israel – he needed the help of Aaron and Hur, so we, also, cannot uphold the commands of God, nor the standard of Christ. He’s holding us up.