THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE – Part 2
Romans 8:2 (NKJV) For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
1 Corinthians 15:56 (NKJV) The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
One law makes us free from another law. The law of sin and death keeps me bound so that “I cannot do what I want.” It leaves me feeling hopeless.
Galatians 5:16-18 (NKJV)
16I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Being led by the Spirit is the answer according to Paul’s teaching to the Galatians. He wanted them to know this was possible. He saw that they were struggling as a result of being deceived by teachers of the law. He asked them:
Galatians 3:1-6 (NKJV)
1O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? 4Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— 6just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”
Today we are dealing with a similar situation. Believers are suffering things they should not, because they are being instructed to rely upon doing the right works of the law so they can be counted worthy to receive healing or miracles. All sickness and physical destruction in our bodies is the result of sin leading to death. Yes, sin leads to death. This is the reality of the Old Covenant which basically tells us that if we sin, we die.
Death is the absence of life. Sin leads to separation from the source of life, God, and without life, we die. Sickness and disease are part of the process of the law of sin leading to death. Disease is a death process. Through disease we are brought closer and closer to death.
The good news is as Paul told the Romans. They had been made free from that process. Anything that defeats sin, defeats death and thereby defeats disease. Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, defeated death to restore life back to us. In defeating death, He neutralized the process of death. Sickness and disease have no power over Jesus and the Spirit of Life within Him. Therefore, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from disease just as it has made me free from the law of sin and death.
The death of Jesus, while free of sin, defeats the law of sin; it negates and disempowers the strength of sin. That is what Romans 8:3 means when Paul says that God “condemned sin in the flesh.” It literally means to nullify or cancel that power.
Romans 8:3 (NKJV) For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh.
The law gave sin its strength and power to make us sick and kill us. The devil takes advantage of this fact and tempts man to sin so he can steal our health, our hope and kill and destroy us.
When I die someday I don’t have to die of disease or destruction. If I die in any way other than falling asleep in Jesus, let it be something like the way Stephen the Martyr died. It will not be cancer because cancer is not from God; ever. Ever! Ever!!!
God does not bring us to death through our sin. The law of sin and death does that. If I live under that old law, then when I sin, I die. But if I live according to the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, I live. I live!
God does not take things from us. He has given us full liberty. God works through the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Yet we blame God for so much that the devil does. God does not rob us. The devil comes to steal and to kill and destroy (John 10:10). You see, the devil is one who works in the law of sin and death.
But Jesus came to defeat sin, death and the grave and give us abundant life. He defeated these things for us so that we can have His victory and His life simply by confessing faith in His finished work. This releases us from the law of sin and death, disease, poverty, depression and every hopeless condition; into the kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love.
This is God’s will for the whole world.
You cannot defeat disease by defeating your sin! You could not be saved to Heaven on your own. You needed the victory of Christ over your sin to save you. This is the same. He has defeated the power of sin and death and death’s processes called disease.
We get trapped by the enemy’s accusations whenever we fail to do what is right according to what we believe will set us free. You must confess that Jesus is Lord over your failures to perform correctly under any and every law.
Yes, the strength of sin is the law. But the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you free from the law of sin and death!
YOU ARE FREE!
If you fear sin and death and confess sin and death it remains your master.
Romans 6:16 (NKJV) Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?
Confess Christ and His righteousness and you will be saved (Greek word “sozo”).
Romans 10:6, 9 (NKJV)
6But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, . . .
9that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Again the word “saved” is the Greek word “sozo”.
Romans 5:10 (NKJV) For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
We are “saved” by His life. Again the Greek word “sozo”. This word “sozo” has more than one meaning. It means to be saved from sin, but also to be healed of disease, delivered from demons and made completely whole in spirit, soul and body.
WOW!
His life saves (heals) us!
Jesus came to set us free from the power of sin; and He did. Now sin has no power to keep us bound and no power to prevent Jesus from setting us free. I am free from the power of sin and death by the power of a greater law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
The fact that the law of the Spirit of life is a greater law is wonderful. But, as I said in Part 1 of this teaching, the real power to enter into the reality of this greater law is in the fact that you are included in the body of Christ by the Spirit of God when you accepted Jesus into your heart (1 Corinthians 12:13). You are dead to the Old Covenant law of sin and death because you have a new history (Romans 7:4-6). When Jesus died on the cross to defeat sin and death, you were in Him. His victory, as He rose from the dead, is now your victory. This is truly great news!
When we are free from the law of sin and death and have the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus within us, we can go about, as Jesus did, doing good and healing all who are oppressed of the devil. And God will be with us to empower us.
Acts 10:38 (NKJV) “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”
The people we minister to can be completely ignorant of what Jesus has accomplished for them and yet be set free into a life where they grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus. Consider the man at the pool of Bethesda in John chap. 5.
Jesus healed this man without telling him who He was. He just healed him. He did not even check whether or not the man had faith. He healed him and left.
Later Jesus met him and told him not to sin anymore. God does not tell us to do something we cannot do. In our flesh we may not be able to stop sinning. Yet, in Christ, we can, because He came to cancel sin’s power (Romans 8:3) to control our flesh; for those who trust in Him (Romans 5:17-21). By the righteousness of Christ, His grace empowers me to walk in the Spirit.
Romans 8:1 (NKJV) There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Romans 7:4-6 (NKJV)
4Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another— to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. 5For 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. 6But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
Romans 8:2 (NKJV) For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
Because we are dead to the law by the body of Christ, we are now free and able to be led by the Spirit of life to joyfully live for Christ
God is not only good, He is great!
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