Reading 10: On the law
We all know the feeling Paul describes in verses 15-24, that despite our best intentions, we end up doing the wrong things, even hurting the people we love. At the extreme is addiction, but all of us have hurtful habits and sinful ways of relating to others. These behaviors can feel impossible to change. And then there are times when in trying to help out, we only make a situation worse, because the larger circumstances are so messed up or our efforts were misunderstood. All this can be demoralizing and depressing, and sometime it makes people not even want to try.
But there is good news in this chapter, bound up with Paul’s marriage analogy. First, it’s good to know that our inner desire agrees with God’s holy, just, and good “law.” Our yearning for an end to this world’s corruption, and our own part in it, isn’t misguided. The problem came when this “spiritual” law was wedded to a weak spouse—us! But now we’ve gone through death and resurrection, and we’ve been betrothed to a new spouse—God. This is freedom and newness (Romans 8). In other passages, we learn that God always intended to write the law on human hearts rather than in written books imposed from outside. I think this means that God is in the business of transforming human beings from within, rather than imposing rules and then judging people on whether they adhere to the rules or not. That’s good news, because we don’t have to worry and sweat over producing some good thing. It will be organic, birthed in us and expressed through us in the world. In other words: God-with-us.
It isn’t about struggling to do some impossible feat, grinding out teeth about our bad habits. It’s about embracing the new life within us, letting it come to term and be birthed out in the world. That’s freedom, joy, and peace!
Luther taught that Christians are simultaneously “saints and sinners.” Where do you see the “law of sin and death” still at work, and where do you see God’s new life in your life?
Think of a time when something good happened because you listened to the Spirit’s guidance. Was it a struggle to do that, and if so why?
Lord, thank you for the new life you birth in us daily. Open our eyes to see it, open our hearts to embrace it, and give us courage and grace to bring it to birth in the world. Through Jesus Christ, our life, Amen.
–Dr. Jonathan Schwiebert teaches religious studies at Lenoir-Rhyne University. A father of two young boys, he also plays guitar in his local church and writes about early Christianity and maintains a blog on the Bible: Bible Smart.
