August 3-August 9

The Old Law vs. The New Spirit
Lona Mae James
Kennett, Missouri

In this passage, Paul uses the marriage relationship as an example. He says that the law has authority over a person as long as he or she lives. The law recognizes marriage as a contract. Under the law a married person is not free to marry another person until his or her spouse dies. Obviously, once a person dies they are free from the laws that have governed them. The correlation is that Paul’s listeners could not live under two religious laws or they would be committing spiritual adultery. A further analogy is that as we become Christians we are dead to our old, sinful nature. We belong to Christ. Free of our old sinful nature, we are able to serve in the new way of the Spirit. When the old law ended with Christ’s death on the cross, everyone who was under the old law became dead to it.

In verses 7-25 of Romans 7, Paul is using the first person pronoun for himself, but also as a representative of mankind. The pronoun `I’ is used forty-six times here. It is obvious that Paul wanted us to see ourselves in this picture. When you read this passage, read it as if you wrote it. Can you relate? “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; not the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

When Paul was a sinner he was trying to live a righteous life, but without Christ it was impossible. It is the same for us. You can hear the joy in Paul’s voice (our voice), “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

In Chapter 8 Paul tells us we are led by the Spirit. We are God’s children. As God’s children we are his heirs. Paul assures us that the trials we suffer on earth will not compare to His Glory awaiting to be revealed to us in Heaven. This will be our inheritance.

Take note of verse 22 of Chapter 11. God is kind, but He is also stern. We have choices to make everyday that will determine how God will treat us. All of us have been the beneficiaries of God’s grace and mercy and that is the same grace and mercy he expects us to show others.

[Lona Mae James (and her Yorkie Lucy) live in Kennett, Missouri, where she was born in 1910. Lona Mae was married for 74 years to her husband Jesse who passed from this earth in 2004 one day shy of his 97th birthday. She is the proud mother of 4, grandmother of 14, great grandmother of 24, and great-great grandmother of 2. She received the Harding University Christian Service Award at the 2006 lectureship. Lona Mae continues to teach the Word and serve others in benevolence efforts. She is a member of the Slicer Street Church of Christ.]