01 November 2022
Yeah, what he said -- one and two.
Quick reminder: For you and I as Gentile followers of Christ, the applicable Law is the Code of Noah. Furthermore, the terms "covenant" and "law" in the Bible are interchangeable. Thus, the Law of Noah is the same as the Covenant of Noah; the Law of Christ is the same as the Covenant of Christ. What Law did Christ give us? Love one another as Christ loves us. He also said the whole Covenant of Moses rests on the two commandments: love God as your feudal Master, and love your covenant brother/sister as yourself. That's equivalent to what Jesus told the lawyer who queried Him. In the Bible, "neighbor" does not mean someone living in geographical proximity, but in the moral proximity of being under the same covenant. Israel referred to Gentiles as "strangers", regardless if they lived next door.
Strictly speaking, based on the definitions of terms: Your flesh cannot receive grace. It can receive mercy, but grace touches only your eternal soul. Your eternal soul will leave your flesh here when you die. Your fleshly body is not eternal.
So, when reading Romans 6:14, most people make the very mistake Paul tries to get people to avoid in the rest of that chapter. Your flesh will always be under God's Law. Your spirit cannot experience Law, only grace. The Law cannot save your soul; grace cannot change your fleshly nature. The Law can redeem your fleshly existence and bring mercy, but the flesh remains fallen. Grace empowers your heart to humble the flesh and bring it into submission.
And Law comes from grace, but grace does not come from Law. When God gave the Covenants, that was an act of grace and mercy. The Law was a manifestation of grace and mercy. Thus, if you have grace, you also have Law. The Law does nothing on its own, except to condemn your fallen fleshly nature. That's all it does. It creates the recognition that you need mercy, and moves you to seek peace with God. You can gain a conditional peace of mercy by striving to obey the Law from your heart -- it's the driving and striving, not the performance. It will put you in the place to receive the blessings of the Law, but only grace can raise to life your dead spirit.
How in the world could you imagine that with grace you escape the Law? Grace vindicates the Law. The whole point of Romans 6 is that you stop trying to act like grace solves everything, when your flesh remains in need of Law. You cannot separate grace and Law. To be in the flesh is under the Law; under grace means in the Spirit. The whole point of grace is to empower you to live by the Law. That's your testimony to the fallen world. You become the Law in the same way that Christ is the Living Law of God. The Law walks and lives in your spirit. How are you going to ignore the code of the Law?
The Law is the frame of reference for understanding your convictions. It's how your brain gets a picture of what obedience looks like. Thus, your convictions cannot transgress the Law, but they should help you understand better what the Law is trying to accomplish. You are not bound by the letter of the code, but the spirit behind the code. The code is a narrow and conditional expression of what God demands of us. You are obliged by the Law to stand before God and seek a clear conscience using the Law as a reference. The Law is alive; it is not concrete and static. Israel under Moses was required to know in their hearts what the Law of Moses meant in situations not covered under the code, or when two parts of the code appear to conflict. The Law always had priorities.
This is the continuity between Old and New Covenants ("testament" also means "covenant"). So when you read those words in Romans 6:14, you should realize that they mean you are supposed to operate in the spirit, not in the flesh.
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