“For
what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh1,
God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin
offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous
requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:3-4
The law2 spoken of here is the Mosaic Law, also known
as the Law of Moses. They were designed
to reveal sin, but did nothing to remove it.
The sacrificial system that God had put in place in the Old Testament
was to cover over an individual’s sin and had to be performed by a religious
leader.
What the blood of
goats and bulls couldn’t do Christ willingly did by offering Himself up as a living
sacrifice once for all time (Hebrews 9:28; 1 Peter 3:18). His blood washes away the sin of man and God
remembers them against him no more. Does
God have a bad memory? No, He chooses not to hold it against us ever
again. Christ’s death was necessary to
meet the requirements for righteousness that God had established. Now when we receive this precious gift of
redemption we are seen as righteous in the Father’s eyes. We could never do this on our own, just like
the saints of the OT couldn’t. We are marked
for eternal damnation until we accept the forgiveness that is freely
offered.
This gracious gift is not to be taken for granted. With the Holy Spirit now within us, we are to
learn to live in the Spirit rather than the flesh. Fulfilling fleshly desires isn’t what God
intended for us. To live in the Spirit
is to obey God’s word as spoken by His Son Jesus. Obey the Lord and in so doing, fulfill your calling
as a child of God. Until next time, walk
with the King and be a blessing!
1
In
contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the
sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the
Spirit. [Holy Bible, New International
Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.]
2 These
are the laws (beginning with The Ten Commandments) that God gave to the
Israelites through Moses that include many rules of religious observance given
in the first five books of the Old Testament (in Judaism these books are
called the Torah).
[www.thefreedictionary/wikipedia.com]
