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Welcome to our daily drive time devotions through the book of Romans, Romans
chapter 7 this week. Yesterday we began to look together at what it means to be
free from the law and I'd like to go into that a little bit more deeply today.
There's a major problem in our lives as believers when it comes to our Christian
growth when we haven't learned how to handle the law.

That's true for many of us. We still somewhere in our spirit want regulations
and instructions to follow so that we can be freed from all of our problems but
when you take a good hard look at the book of Romans it says that's not the way
to be freed from our problems, freed from our sin. What we need first is to be
freed from the law and our relationships to the law in one word as believers is
the word freedom.

The Bible says in Galatians chapter 5 verse 1 it is for freedom that Christ set
us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke
of slavery. The yoke of slavery that Paul is talking about in Galatians 5 is the
law.

So we are free from the law but what particularly what exactly does that mean?
Freedom doesn't mean freedom to do whatever you want. Freedom from the law
doesn't mean freedom to break the law.

We've all already seen in our lives and what Paul says in the book of Romans
that that just leads to a different kind of slavery. So what does it mean? I'd
like to take a moment today to do something a little different.

Take a look throughout the New Testament at what the Bible has to say about our
relationship to the law. Now you remember the law is the ceremonial law and the
sacrificial law, the civil law, the moral law that God gives throughout the Old
Testament and there are five pictures in the New Testament of our relationship
to the law. Let's just run through them real quickly and in each of those take a
look together at what it means to experience God's freedom.

In the first picture the Bible pictures the law as a guardian in Galatians
chapter 4 verses 1 to 5. A guardian like a guardian to a child as it's growing
up and the law was a guardian for an immature people of God in the Old
Testament. The truth of the matter is small children need rules.

I don't think many of us would leave a bunch of kindergartners in a room alone
and say, you know, just do whatever feels best to you. I trust you to do
everything according to your own good judgment. And the point here is that the
law is for spiritually immature people to lead us to a point of maturity but we
need to be led to that point of maturity.

The law is a guardian but you outgrow a guardian and in order to experience the
freedom from the law in this particular instance we need to realize we have the
freedom now to grow in grace, not in the law. If I'm going to continue to grow
there comes a point where I have to begin to take responsibility for my life and
if I'm going to grow spiritually I grow in grace. People who put themselves back
under the law as Christians are revealing their spiritual immaturity.

The more mature a relationship the less the need for rules. We talked a little
bit about that yesterday, it's just true. The more mature relationship is the
less the need for rules.

When Shondell and I, my wife and I were first married, we had a lot of rules in
our relationship. Here's what you do here and here's what you do here and here's
how you fold this and here's how you handle the cleaning of this and here's who
does this this day and this day. Well, the longer we've been married the less
rules we have because the deeper relationship we have.

We just more automatically know what the other person wants. We've worked out a
lot of those things and so the need for rules is not there. It's true of the Old
Testament and New Testament.

Old Testament you got a lot of rules. New Testament, Jesus says here's the rule
I want you to focus on, love God with all your heart, mind and soul and strength
and love your neighbor as yourself. Do that and you've covered it.

So we have the freedom to grow in grace and realize that the law may have been a
guardian to the people of God in the Old Testament but now it's through grace
that we grow. There's a second picture of the law in the New Testament,
Colossians chapter 2 verse 14, pictures of the law as a debt. It's an obligation
to be paid.

We are in debt to the law because we've all broken the law and because of that
sometimes it can feel like a weight on us and if you feel that you have to bear
that weight you haven't experienced the freedom from the law that God wants. The
good news is the weight has been lifted. Freedom from the law comes when we
realize the debt has been paid.

Jesus paid that debt on the cross. He paid that debt because of his love for us
and that's how we experience freedom from this debt. There's a third picture of
the law in the New Testament in Galatians chapter 2 verses 16 and 17 and then
also over in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 1.

The law is pictured as what I would call a shadow, a shadow of things to come.
In the law you see what God's going to do in Jesus Christ. You see what God
promises for our life in many of the moral laws particularly in the Old
Testament but also some of the sacrificial laws.

You see a shadow of what God's going to do in Jesus Christ, through Jesus
Christ. So what do you do when you no longer have the shadow but you have the
light? Well you walk in the light.

Freedom from the law comes when you walk in the light. Jesus Christ is the light
of the world. He's come into the world.

We don't need the shadow anymore. When we walk in the light the shadow fades
away. When you have the reality who needs a shadow?

And the reality of the Christian life is found in a person, not in a list of
rules. It's in a relationship, not in regulations. And an overemphasis on rules
is like moving back into the shadows.

A fourth picture of the law in the New Testament is in the chapter we looked at
just this last week, Romans chapter 6 verses 15 to 23. The law there is pictured
as a slave master. So Galatians chapter 23 talks about this.

Before this faith came we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith
should be revealed. So where does freedom come from? Well we talked about it all
last week.

Freedom comes when you realize that you're slaves to the one you obey. And so
you offer your heart to God. This theme of offering our heart to God is
continued all the way through Romans chapter 6, but we're going to see it
several other times in the book of Romans.

It says I offer myself to him. It says I offer my heart to him that I experience
the freedom that I need to experience from the law. And then there is a fifth
picture of our relationship to the law in the New Testament found in the verses
that we looked at yesterday.

Law is like a marriage or a binding contract. In chapter 6 of Romans, Paul
contrasted two slaveries. And in chapter 7, he contrasts two relationships, two
marriages.

And he says, as we looked at yesterday, that as long as a woman is married, she
has a binding obligation. But once her husband has died, that obligation is no
longer there. The freedom comes when I realize not that the law is dead, but
that I died to the law.

What Paul says in Romans chapter 7, it's not the law that died, it is we who die
so that we can be set free from the law. That's why this spiritual reality of
the fact that there's a part of us that died with Christ on that cross is so
important. Galatians 2.

19 is a very important verse about that. It says, "For through the law I died to
the law so that I might live for God. " I love that verse because it reminds us
that the law led us even to the point that I died to the law.

Through the law, the guardian, I died to the law so that I might live for God.
Now being dead to the law doesn't mean you lead lawless lives. It means that the
motivation and the dynamic of our lives does not come from the law.

It comes from God's grace. So what does this mean for me now in my relationship
to the law? Does the law have any purpose in our lives after we become
believers?

Well, Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 that he came not to abolish the law, but
to fulfill it. He fulfills it by showing the meaning behind it. He fulfills it
by giving us the power to live out that meaning.

Grace produces growth, but much of what's in the law can show us the direction
in which grace is going to grow us. Think of it this way. Grace is the jet that
powers us, but the law gives us some insight into God's flight plan for our
lives.

For instance, when you read in the Ten Commandments, "Do not accuse anyone
falsely. " You can see the integrity that God wants us to have in our personal
relationships as believers. What is the law?

Ceremonial law, the civil law, the moral law of the Old Testament, ceremonial,
the law about sacrifices and offerings and days, civil law, government and
national regulations, rules concerning property and animals and rights, and the
moral law, the Ten Commandments, the ethical laws of the Old Testament. All of
that is fulfilled in Christ. Jesus Christ, through his love for us, has
fulfilled all the requirements of the law.

And so you and I can trust him for new life and new faith. I've always liked the
picture that Victor Hugo gives us of what it means to live either by grace or by
the law as our master in his famous work, Les Misérables. I don't know if
you've seen the play or the movie.

You might have even read the 1,200-page book. The main character, Jean Valjean,
builds much of his life on one act of grace that was shown him, a stranger who
didn't hold him accountable when he stole some silver from his house. Valjean
finds freedom in the end, the freedom of grace, but he has a pursuer throughout
the story, a policeman by the name of Javert, who builds his life on the law.

His entire life is ordered on exacting justice. And in the end, he is put into a
circumstance where he knows that he either must choose to break the law by
letting Valjean go free or let him go free and let the law break him in his own
heart. He is unable to escape this life of rules, and he carries out his own
punishment even though he lets Valjean go free by taking his own life.

I've always thought of that as a picture of the terrible mastery of the law. The
terrible slavery of the law is simply this, it cannot allow for grace. To grow
in Christ, we have to accept by faith the truth that we have been released from
the prison of keeping rules in order to satisfy God.

Rules can't produce growth, but grace received always brings multiplied growth.
Are you still in that prison? The prison of having to do the right thing to earn
God's love?

The prison of feeling that now that you're saved, now that you know Christ, the
rest of your Christian life is entirely up to your strength and power? The
moment you became a believer, God unlocked the prison door and swung it wide
open. So right now, maybe like you never have before, right now, walk into the
light of God's grace.

Our Father, we thank you for the law. We thank you for what it shows us, and we
thank you that it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And Lord, thank you for your
grace.

We express to you right now, we say to you right now, that we desire to live out
our lives in the freedom of your grace, empowered by your grace and love. In
Jesus' name we pray, amen. Tomorrow, we'll continue our look together through
Romans chapter 7, looking at verse 7 to verse 15.