Romans Introduction Part 4Law and the Saint

Law and the Saint

No cry has gone up more in Christendom than that of “Legalist!” – especially, it seems, in the present age. Unless, perhaps, it be that of “Antinomian!” For there are two errors that all Christians must guard against, namely:

• That of still trying to justify ourselves to God by keeping rules, leading to dead works.

• That of using Christian liberty to justify a lifestyle of license, leading to spiritual anarchy.

Neither is right, yet there is a tendency to fall off into one error or the other. The way is indeed narrow, as our Lord Himself described it. It does no good simply to throw names at our Christian brothers and to dismiss them as legalists or as libertines. Such behaviour speaks a lot about what we are, but it does not come to grips with what God says. Paul spends considerable time in Chapter 6 referring to the (Mosaic) law and makes this statement:

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! {Romans 6: 14-15}

And later in the same chapter:

…having been set free from sin, (we) have become slaves of righteousness. {Romans 6: 18}

We shall try to get at the root of what God is speaking to us through Paul so that we understand what freedom is and what it is not – how Paul can regard himself as…

“…not under the law, yet not being without law toward God, but under the law of Christ,” as he does in {1Corinthians 9: 20-21}.

So we will encounter many great doctrines of the faith in Romans, as you would expect, and we will be challenged to deepen our relationship with God through coming to grips with them. And, if we come honestly looking for God to teach us, we shall find that He changes us in the very process. We will press in as we are commanded to do, but it will be God Who will change us from glory to glory, as He always planned to do from eternity.