As I write, people across Egypt and the Middle East are celebrating freedom. How will turn out in the end? I am more than a little skeptical about what mankind defines freedom and justice because Christ announced that we will only know true freedom when we know the Truth.
| Paul uses the Biblical picture of marriage to describe how we are now free to live for Christ. In order to reconcile us to God, Christ came and released us from the death associated with the Law – like a woman who is released from her marriage once her husband has died.
Ephesians 2:14-16 gives us more detail: 14 For he (Christ) himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. So Romans 7: 4-5 Paul tells us we are not serving the “old written code”, but we have “new life of the Spirit.” Now we are reconciled to God. Now we belong to the One who is raised from the dead. How should we respond? Instead of producing rotten fruit that’s dead and useless, we are called to bear fruit for God. Consider what Paul wrote in Galatians 5: 18-24 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. |
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