Christ Life In Us, Romans 6:14 Not Under Law, But Under Grace

Lord, we come to your word this morning and we're so thankful for it. We're thankful for the fact that you've given it to us. You've revealed the truth to us. And Lord, we know that we need you to open our eyes to understand so that we might see clearly. I pray that you would do that this morning for each one of us here. Everyone gathered together and everyone online and everyone who listens to this down the road, that you would open our eyes to behold wonderful things from your word. In Jesus' name, amen.

So we come this morning to a wonderful verse. One little verse, it's really brief, but it's very powerful. Romans 6 verse 14, for sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. There's going to be some really powerful applications of this verse. And we want this to be very practical. As we've said, this passed through Romans 6, 7, and 8 here. We want this to be very practical and applicable. And I think that this morning we're going to see a lot of practical application.

And in order to do that, we have to understand this verse in the context in which it comes. So how is verse 14 connected with the preceding verses? It's important to realize that this verse is closely connected with what came before. The verse uses the word for, or the Greek word gar, two times, and it's an explanatory word.

We can think of this like Paul's answer to an unspoken question. So we get to the end of verse 13, and we ask the question, the unspoken question, well, why is that, Paul? And then verse 14 answers that question. So we need to know what Paul has been talking about, what's Paul been explaining. And in verses 1 through 10, Paul explained the fact that we've been united to Christ in his crucifixion death and his resurrection life. And then in verse 11, he exhorts us to count on it, to reckon it to be true, to consider it true. And then verses 12 and 13 told us that by reckoning on these facts, sin is effectually cut off from reigning us, and the Lord is free to make use of us as instruments or weapons of his righteousness. And now we ask this question, well, why, Paul?

Why do we reckon ourselves dead to sin but alive to God? And verse 14 answers, because sin shall not be master over you. Or we could translate that sin will not be master over you. So that's the reason that we reckon ourselves dead to sin. We reckon ourselves dead to sin because as believers we are. The sin nature is no longer our master.

It was before we were saved. Adam's race has been totally enslaved to sin ever since Genesis 3, and we were all part of that. Totally enslaved. But the moment that we put our faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit baptized us into Christ Jesus. He identified us with God the Son. so that we were crucified to everything of the old man Adam, and we were recreated in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. So we're no longer a part of Adam's race. We're part of a whole new creation. And because of that, we're no longer enslaved to sin.

We've got a new master. The word there, master, in the NASB, is the root word kurios, which is Lord. And it's actually the same word that Paul uses at the end of chapter six, right in verse 23, where he talks about Jesus, Christ Jesus, our Lord. And the same root word there is used here to talk about sin being a master.

So sin is no longer master or Lord of us, Jesus has taken that place. Jesus has taken his rightful place as our Lord. So the reason that we can reckon ourselves dead to sin's power is because of the fact that we are dead to it. Sin is no longer our Lord, our master. Sin no longer has dominion over us.

So that's the first gar in the verse. That's the first four. Paul gives out as the reason that we can reckon is the fact that we are no longer slaves to sin. But then there's another, right? He's got these two statements. He compounds it. So he goes a step further.

He not only tells us that sin no longer has dominion over us, but he tells us why. This is really, really important. So why will sin not have dominion over us any longer? And the answer is that for you are not under law but under grace. We are no longer slaves to sin because we're not under law and because we're under grace. Or we could turn that around, and it might make it a little easier to think of it this way. If we weren't under grace, then we would still be slaves to sin. Why? Because we'd still be under law. And this really ties in with what Bob was teaching this morning in Galatians. So that's the way these things are logically connected to the preceding verses.

Our reckoning in verse 11 and the presenting of our mortal bodies as instruments or weapons of righteousness rather than unrighteousness rests on these truths here in verse 14. So we reckon ourselves dead to sin because sin is not our master anymore, and sin is not our master because we are under grace and not law. That's what Paul has set forth as truth statements. There's no imperative commands in here. This is just indicative fact. This is truth, right?

But if we're thinking about grace the way that it's typically thought of, then this doesn't make sense to us. It actually seems backwards. Because the typical understanding of law and grace is that law restrains sin and that grace sort of gives a license to sin. So how can Paul say that being under grace actually frees us from sin's power? So there's this conflict between the way that the Bible talks about grace and the way that grace is typically understood. So we're gonna deal with that a little bit, but there's another important question that we have to answer first here.

What is meant by law in verse 14? And this is really important to deal with up front, because what happens is that people come to this verse and they don't like the sounds of it. Why, if we teach that Christians are not under law, then they're liable to live wild, sinful lives. That's the thought, right? So, Paul can't be saying that there's no law for Christians, can he? And so, people want to limit what law means in this verse.

And the easiest way to do this is to say that this must refer to the Mosaic Law, or maybe a portion of the Mosaic Law. So they interpret this as meaning that we're not under certain Old Testament laws, but we're still under law. And then they'll point out, usually, the imperative commands of the New Testament as the law that we're under. But there's a couple of problems with that interpretation. The first that I'd point out is the grammar.

There's no definite article in front of the word law. Now, a few translations insert the definite article so that it says the law, but it's not there in the Greek. And the definite article acts like a pointer finger saying this specific law. But when you have the absence of the definite article in Greek, what we have in view is the character of something, the character of law. And if Paul was referring to the Mosaic Law, we'd expect to see the definite article. That would be typical.

So the grammar doesn't really support that. The second problem with trying to limit law here is just Paul's logic in what he's saying. Paul is making law and grace totally exclusive of one another here. If we are only free from certain laws and not others, then Paul can't say what he says. To say that this only refers to particular laws or Old Testament laws and not law in general would be to say that we are both under law and under grace, right? If we only say that we're not under some law but we're still under other, then logically we're under law and grace, but that's not what Paul is saying. It's a misunderstanding of grace to think that you can somehow be under law and under grace at the same time because they're mutually exclusive. There's no room to blend the two. Paul says, for sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. He's drawn a hard line between the two.

We could say it like this. We are not under law at all. We are under grace exclusively. So I take law here as the whole principle of law. Paul is saying that as Christians, we are not under law at all. We operate entirely under grace. Now, when you begin to talk that way, you scare a lot of Christians. What they hear is that you are free to sin all you want and it doesn't matter at all.

But what that shows, really, is a misunderstanding of grace. So, let's come back to that question of being under grace. Does living under grace promote sinful living? This verse is so plain. It's very clear that we operate under pure grace and not law, but the way that a lot of preachers and theologians teach, you'd think that this verse wasn't in their Bibles.

You tell someone that we're not under law, you could point them to this verse, and yet somehow they don't see it. The biggest reason that they don't see it is this fear that grace promotes sin. But that's not true. Paul makes it very clear right here in Romans 6 that that's not true, right? All the way back in verse 1. And he does it again here in verse 15. What does verse 15 say? What then, shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?

May it never be. So grace does not promote sinful living. That's a totally incorrect and misguided interpretation of grace. Just look at what Paul says in verse 14. He says that the very reason that sin shall not master over us is because we are under grace and not under law. So Paul is actually saying that grace is the basis for the Christian life. Grace is the only basis for a godly life. And we're gonna come back to this and answer just how it is that grace does this.

But for now, what we want to see is that the Bible makes it very clear that grace does not promote sin. So the radical difference between the way that Paul speaks of grace and the way that modern theologians think of grace should show us that they're way off track in the way that they understand grace. Paul says that the Christian life depends 100% on grace, but most of the church treats grace like it's a hindrance to the Christian life. Oh, it's a lovely thing to sing about, and it's nice to think about God's grace when we mess up, but we don't want too much grace because that might encourage sin. And so grace is downplayed or dismissed, and the emphasis is placed on how to keep up the Christian life. And what's happened is that the church has come up with all sorts of ways to motivate believers to live the Christian life.

So we're going to explore that a little bit because we want this to be practical. And we want to see how this looks in most of the church today. And we're all drawn into this. So we're not just pointing fingers at of those out there. But we're going to kind of take a little bit of a cross-section of what this looks like.

So what are some of the motivations for living the Christian life that take the place of grace? So when grace is replaced in Christian thinking, it's replaced with these, what I'm calling, systems of motivation. So you've got fear motivation, first of all. In the Roman Catholic Church, we've got purgatory, okay? So a fear motivation to live righteously.

And then we have the Protestant Reformation, but you know honestly the Reformers really didn't move very far away from purgatory. What did they come up with? In Calvinism, you've got the idea that well if you don't live right, you might not really be saved. Which frankly is worse than purgatory because that means eternity in hell, okay? And then on the Arminian side, they say well if you don't live right, you might lose your salvation. Which is really saying it winds up in exactly the same place as Calvinism, right? Either you weren't ever saved or you lost your salvation, but in either case you're going to hell.

So these are some of the common fear motivations that exist. But to get a little bit closer to home, even in what we sometimes call the free grace camp, where we recognize that justification can't be measured or lost on the basis of works, which gets rid of the fear of hell motive, right?

The once-saved-always-saved kind of thinking. There's a different kind of motivation that's brought in because we've still got to get Christians to live right somehow, right? And so what we typically see is what we could call the rewards-loss-of-rewards motives. And this is the idea that we want to have lots of rewards in eternity. So that becomes the motive for living the Christian life. Now we could talk about rewards and the biblical doctrine of rewards. There's something to that. but here it's being used as the motive to live the Christian life. And this motivation has sort of a positive and negative aspect, right?

Because on the one hand, you could gain lots of rewards, but on the other hand, you might have a loss of rewards, and we don't want that. And the loss of rewards has taken a number of different flavors over the years. Some have taught that believers who don't live a godly Christian life will experience weeping and gnashing of teeth in outer darkness. So not hell, but almost like a Protestant purgatory. So it can get pretty negative in that view.

And then there's another idea of motivation for the Christian life that we should talk about, and that's what we could call the gratitude motive or the love motive. And in this, we say, well, look at what Jesus has done for you. Very true. We should consider what Jesus has done for us. But then we say, so the least that you can do is to live your life for him. So it's turned around into a motive for the Christian life.

Now, honestly, we've kind of separated these out and kind of broken them down, but a lot of them kind of blend and blur together. You're gonna hear mixes and mashups of all these things in a lot of theology. And this is also just a sampling. I mean, we're very creative sinners. We come up with all sorts of ways to do these things. And so you'll come across many other systems that have been worked up. Some are trying to be more biblical, and some are totally out of left field, like the Roman Catholic idea.

But we should recognize something is that all of these ideas are, we could say, well-meaning in that they're trying to promote godly living in the church. But there's a common thread in all of them, and we need to see it. Where is the focus being placed? Have you caught it yet? Where's the focus? placed in all of these motivation systems. The focus is me, right? All of these systems are designed to motivate me to live the Christian life.

And it is more obvious in some than others, but it's there in all of them. You know, contained within every one of these systems, there's the idea that, well, if I'm ever going to have a Christian life, then I'm the one who's got to live it. And of course, Everyone who teaches these things claims the Holy Spirit's enabling power, okay? So don't think that we can tack that on to say, yeah, but it's not me, it's the Holy Spirit through me, because all of these systems claim that. It doesn't really matter how you dress that up. It's still the self-life. And we gotta think really carefully about what the Bible says about living the Christian life. Is it self that lives the Christian life?

No. What does Galatians 2.20 say? We should know this by heart. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but who lives? Christ lives in me. So there's a serious flaw embedded in all these systems. They seek to provide motivation to self.

But the Lord doesn't want you to live the Christian life. If you just said that statement to a fellow Christian, you'll get some really shocked looks, okay? which tells you that that's the way we tend to think, that God wants you to live the Christian life. If you tell some believer that God does not want you to live the Christian life, you're gonna have to explain yourself, okay? God does not want you to live the Christian life.

What does he wanna do? He wants to live it through you. That's his goal. And does Christ need any special motivation to live a Christ-like life, to live a righteous life? No. It's who he is. It's who he is by nature. So, This is the default tendency in the church. When we downplay grace, we have to come up with some way to motivate or stimulate godly living.

But let's define this a little bit more biblically. I've been calling this systems of motivation. What does the Bible call this? What do all of these ideas have in common? Well, like we said, they all seek to motivate self, but how do they do that? They're all what we could call if-then systems. If you do this, then X, Y, Z will happen. We could say blessings for obedience, cursings for disobedience. What is that? What is an if-then system? It's the principle of law. All these ideas are really just systems of law, even if they're kind of subtle about it, right?

And what this amounts to is a failure to believe that God's grace is sufficient to provide for the Christian life. We've got to have something more, and it's always going to come in as some sort of legal principle. And it's all well-meaning, right? I mean, like we said, we're trying to promote godly living in the church. But like we said last week, we never think of sin as sin when we commit it, right? It always seems like the right thing to do.

We don't put ourselves under a legal system trying to produce sin, right? The motive, the goal is always to try to produce righteousness, but a law principle can only stimulate the self-life. And self can only produce the works of the flesh. And so it doesn't matter what it looks like, it's still sin. You know, law can stimulate all kinds of behaviors in people. You know, behavior that looks really good to others, but it can't produce the life of the Lord Jesus. The best that the law can produce is a counterfeit Christian life.

In Philippians 3.9, Paul has a term for this. He calls this a righteousness of my own derived from law.

That's what we're typically working at. We've got ourselves under some kind of if-then legal type thinking, and we're trying to crank out a righteousness of our own. And it may look good to others, but God, who knows the heart, sees it as rubbish, as the NASB translates in that passage. If we don't come to see all of this the way that God sees it, then, frankly, we think we're doing great. We think we're doing just fine.

The Church today is almost entirely dominated by these kind of legal ideas, as we sort of illustrated. Every group of believers has crafted their own idea of what the Christian life looks like. You know, they might use the Old Testament law or portions of it, the commands of the New Testament, or they might just make up their own rules, right? And they'll always attach certain if-thens as the means of keeping believers in line.

That's the motivation. And all of this is actually very attractive to us. We all gravitate to it. It fits our natural way of thinking. We find the system that feels right to us. Pick your denomination, choose your flavor. And then we go about it and we feel good about what we're doing. We think that we're honoring God, we're doing what He wants us to do.

But God isn't honored by that, okay? Frankly, he's disgusted by it. He looks at all this self-righteousness, and he sees it as what it really is, rubbish, which is a very nice way of dressing up the Greek language, which literally means dung, which isn't even close enough to the original. I'm just not gonna say that word here. But that's the way God sees this.

So, That's where we end up every time that we reject God's grace as the basis for living the Christian life. We always fall into some form of self-righteous Christian living, trying to live the life that only Jesus can live. So, that's what this looks like. And hopefully that wasn't too much finger-pointing. Hopefully that kind of points the finger back at ourselves, because we all gravitate to that kind of thinking and that kind of living.

But let's come back to the question of grace. As I said earlier, most of the Church looks at grace as insufficient to produce a Christian life, or really more so often as a hindrance for godly living. But as we said, that's totally contrary to what Paul says here in verse 14.

He says that the Christian life rests entirely upon grace. So how can we understand grace the way that Paul did? If grace isn't a license to sin, then what is it? How does grace actually result in godly Christian life? So, how does being under grace produce the Christian life?

So first, let's clarify something about grace. This has really helped me and I hope it helps you. When I think of the word grace, I try to think of it as connected with one word. Now, it's great to have our Chet McCauley definition of grace, but even with that definition, we can miss it when it comes to the Christian life. When you think of grace, I want you to associate the word gift with it. Grace is a gift that's been freely given. Something that's been done for us or given to us. And yes, it's unmerited and it's unlimited.

But if we want to keep in mind the gift, because that helps our minds go in the right direction, we begin to ask, well, what is God's gift? Just what has God done for me? You know, if it's true that I live under grace, and it is, as a believer, then what exactly has God done for me? What exactly has He given to me?

And many Christians don't realize all that's been done for us by grace, right? Most have limited grace to the fact that they've been delivered from the penalty of sin, right? Declared righteous in God's sight and saved from eternity in hell. But there's much more to what God has done for us by grace. And that's what Paul's been trying to communicate since back in chapter five. If you flip back to Romans 5 verse 10, we're gonna see that the Christian life is not rescued from hell and now striving to live for God.

Romans 5.10 says, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. So there's more, there's much more to God's grace than being reconciled to him. That's wonderful, but there's more. God has given us the righteous life of his son as our own. That's what Paul is beginning to point to there in chapter five. And he kind of expands on this as he moved down in the chapter, Romans 5, 15.

But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more," he uses that four times in this chapter, "'much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.'" And what is that gift that abounded to the many? Verse 17, for if by the transgression of the one death reigns through the one much more, those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in what? Will reign in life, how?

Well, by means of, through, or dia, by means of the one Jesus Christ. Okay, so as believers, We have been given by grace, this much more grace, Jesus Christ as our life. We've been separated from the reigning power of sin, and we have a new life in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our life.

We need to understand how that's done. What work of God has made that a reality for us? And that's why he goes into Romans 6. He's explaining what he's opened up in chapter 5. All of this was accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Christian life is all about the fact that we've been identified with Christ in his death and resurrection so that we've been severed from the old man, and we've been joined to the new resurrection man, Jesus Christ. And in Romans 6 explains the fact that we can reign in life as Christians because we've been baptized into Christ. We've been identified with him permanently. So we share in his death and his resurrection life.

That's what the much more grace of God is all about. And all of that was done purely by grace, right? So if the Bible says that I live under grace as a Christian, then Sorry, if the Bible says that I live under grace as a Christian, then I can be totally assured that God has provided everything necessary for the life that He intends. And it was provided entirely through the death and resurrection of Christ. That's what it means to live under grace.

We're free to operate as those who have been judicially cut off from the power of the sin nature. And we're free to present ourselves to the Lord as new creations in Christ Jesus. And when we understand grace in this way, then the whole idea of limiting God's grace and relying on our own effort to live the Christian life becomes foolish. God's grace does not mean that I have a license to sin. God's grace means that I've been cut off from the power of sin, the source of sin, right?

And that Jesus is now free to live his life through me. And that's a big difference. So, we come to a really important question. Is this totally passive? Okay, does grace mean that I just sit here and the Christian life happens? You know, if we don't have any legal system, if we don't have any motivating system for good works, for a Christian life, well, then how does it work? So how do we grow and develop in the Christian life?

And I thought we'd break this down into four parts. We could probably do it differently, but I see these four things. And we'll just go through these one at a time. One, the Lord reveals Jesus to us through the word. Two, the Lord reveals our own failure to us. Three, the Lord shows us our participation in the cross. And four, the Lord teaches us to rest by faith in the reality of it. I've kind of broken it down into a bit of a logical sequence. And it does have to begin this way, but you'll find that over time, the Lord, we keep going back through these things. This is not a kind of a one and done progression.

Turn to Philippians 3. We made a reference to Philippians 3 earlier. We're going to look at it a little bit more closely now because I think that Paul shows us the answer here in Philippians 3, reading in verses 7 and 8. Paul says, but whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

What does that mean? He explains it more in verse 8. It becomes a little more clear. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." That's what he means by the sake of Christ. The value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish. so that I may gain Christ."

Was Paul excited about knowing the Lord Jesus? You bet he was, right? As we spend time with Jesus in the Word, he becomes more and more attractive to us. As Mike says, we just fall in love with the guy, okay? And our desire more and more is to gain Christ. We get to the point where we would give anything to be like him.

It reminds me of, I'll tell a camp story. When I was camp staff in Canada, I was never the prankster, but I had one week, I had a co-staff member who decided we should play a prank. And I thought it was pretty harmless. In the middle of the night, we cut down probably a 20-foot tree, and the dining hall had a big high ceiling, kind of like this. And we dragged it inside and we tied it off to some tables standing straight upright in the dining hall. We thought this would be hilarious when everyone comes in for breakfast in the morning and there's a tree standing in the dining hall.

It seemed harmless. But it of course violated camp rules. We left our kids unattended in the cabin while we snuck out to do this. And so they were all asleep. I mean, they were fine. But the camp director, in his wisdom, brought us in. He caught us. He caught us in the middle, in the act, coming to the hall with his flashlight. And I don't know why this is stuck so strongly in my memory, but the next day, he brought me into his office and sat me down and said, Miles, Miles, Miles.

And I'll just blame it on being very tired late in the week at camp, but I broke down in tears as a 17-year-old young man. And I don't know where this thought came from, but he was talking to me about my irresponsibility. And these words came out of my mouth. They said, I just wish I could be like my dad. And I guess in that moment, my mind went to, my dad would never do that. He's too responsible. And he just kind of looked at me a little bit like he didn't know how to respond.

He said, yeah, your dad's a good guy or something like that. But that story came to mind because, I mean, I guess in some way it's kind of like the more we get to know Christ, we want to be like him. And that ties into this second point that the Lord reveals to us our own failure. Because that's the next part of this, is finding out who we are. Finding out that I can't be like him. The more that I see of myself, the more of a failure I realize that I am. I realize that I'm not like him. I'm just not.

And Paul could look at this in his own life. And it's interesting, right, because in that verse he says, look at all the things that were gained to me, all the things I thought were, you know, so good. And he's coming to see this as rubbish. Insert Greek meaning there, okay. All our best efforts and noblest attempts are filthy rags.

And we have to come to that realization before we're prepared for the Lord to reveal to us what He's done about it. You know, it's not surprising to God who you are, who I am. He's known it all along. He's been patiently waiting for you and I to realize it. We have to come to that understanding.

We have to realize that we're not like Jesus. We're not like the Beloved Son. And in some way, whether we might not be able to express it in these words, we kind of come to the realization that if I'm ever going to be like Jesus, then I've got to die. I've got to die to everything that I am, and I would have to be recreated. Like I said, we probably couldn't verbalize that the first time that comes to our minds, but we kind of realize that. And only once we've realized that are we ready to see exactly what He's done.

We have been, as a believer, if you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have been united with the beloved Son of the Father. You've become a participant in His death, the sin, and you've been recreated in Him. We've begun this brand new life in Jesus. And what a mind-blowing realization that is to discover that I'm one with Christ. And that's the earth-shaking revelation of Romans 6. We find out that God has done for us exactly what we needed. And he did it totally by grace. We didn't even realize it. We didn't ask for it. We didn't know it was possible. But he did it. And once we, sorry, yeah, here we are. Once we realize the truth of our identification with Christ, then the Lord will develop our dependency on Him to live that life in us.

It's a development process because it's our faith that's being developed, right? It's not developing in my ability. Instead, it's my faith that's being developed in His ability to do what I cannot. Keep looking in Philippians 3 there, down in verse 9. Paul says, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, derived from law, we talked about that earlier, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. And so the development that God is working out in you, the development that he's all about, is not a development of your ability to live the Christian life. It's this development of your dependency, your faith in him to live the life that you cannot and only he can.

And so, the Lord is going to take us through one situation after another. And the question is always going to be, can I trust Him? Can I trust His life? Can I trust that His life is sufficient to this? Even this? whatever it might be, and it's hard. You can't even stop and think about this too long because even as you look around a small body like ours, you realize there are some hard, hard situations and realities that have been faced and are being faced right now. And each of those is a trial designed to develop our faith in Him. Designed to cause us to come back to that question, can I trust Him for this?

Not just in this, but can I trust Him for this? Can I trust that His life in me is sufficient to this? Or will this destroy me? Will this totally crush me? And it's hard. It's hard because I don't naturally trust Him. I don't naturally trust Him about His ability to live through me.

And the temptation is to take things back into my own hands because we want to have control of the situation. You know, thank you, Lord, but I've got this, okay? I can handle this. And the Lord allows even those lapses of faith to remind us that, no, no, you don't have this.

And we're brought back around to a fresh application of the cross. And that's why I said earlier, you know, The Lord, this is not a one and done, the Lord takes us back through these things repetitively, right? He shows us more and more who the Lord is. He continues to show us our failure, our inability to live this life. No matter how many times we've been shown this, we come up with a new trial, a new hardship, and we forget who the Lord is, and we don't know. We know that he's been, you know, sufficient in the past, but is he to this? You know, this is too big. This is too hard.

And so we try to handle it on our own, and we fail, and the Lord brings us back again to that point where we realize, no, the old man is dead. I have to count on that fact, because it's the only thing that separates me from from all that I am and my total failing and inability, and joins me to his life and his ability. And so it's this ongoing process that the Lord is taking us through, and it'll continue until the day that we go home. And it doesn't get any easier, by the way. It's like any discipline or training. Our flesh will always push back against us. The flesh doesn't like being set aside in death.

But the Lord patiently and steadily brings us along. And more and more, the Christian life becomes not I, but Christ. And that increases in ever-widening circles. And, you know, there's a tremendous fulfillment and joy in that, that the Lord wants us to experience. He wants us to experience our beloved Lord more and more living His life through us, doing in us what we could never do. And there's this joy in seeing His life and His love expressed more and more fully in our own hearts. And that's what being under grace is intended to produce.

Something that I can never produce under law. Putting myself under law totally cuts me off from that wonderful experience of having the Lord live his life through me because it puts self in the driver's seat. It makes me the operative principle and I can only produce the works of the flesh. And so that's why it's so important that we're not under law in any sense of the word.

We are under grace entirely so that the Lord Jesus is the one who is free to live his life in us. That's his, I mean, that's our position. That's his natural place and role in our lives. It's not that he ever stops being that. It's a matter of the fact that we forget that that's who he is, right? We're not putting him in the driver's seat when we trust him to be. We're trusting the fact that he is. And as we grow in our dependency on Him for that, as we learn to rest by faith in the reality of that, then more and more the life of God's beloved Son, the one who more and more is becoming our beloved Savior, is manifest and put on display.

And that's really what the Christian life is all about. And that's what it means to be under grace and not under law. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this verse, so concise and compact in just such a few words. You've contained so much, and it's so easy for us, Lord, to just kind of breeze by it and not think much of what it means to be under grace.

And then to just kind of go on in our natural tendency to put ourselves under some legal idea, some system of works, thinking that somehow we'll attain to or live out this life that will please you. But Lord, we thank you for grace. We thank you that you've done for us what we can never do under any system of law, even your perfect law. revealed in the Old Testament, a perfectly righteous law, but incapable of producing in us the life of your Son. Lord, we thank you that by grace you've severed us from law as a principle and you've placed us under grace so that your Son would be glorified in us. And Lord, I just pray that that would become our desire more and more. for his life to be put on display in us, for him to be glorified, and that it would become less and less I, more and more Christ, moment by moment in each one of our lives. We thank you that you provided for that. We thank you that you will do it as we depend on you for it. And we look forward to all of the ways that you will work in our lives to increase our faith to develop our dependence on you.

And we know that it's not easy, Lord. We've seen enough of the Christian life to know that this is not an easy thing, but it's also not a hard thing. It's only hard because we resist it. And Lord, we thank you for your wisdom to take us through those things that we find so hard so that ultimately we would come to that place of rest in your son and discover that, discover the joy of being one with him, of having his life as our own life. Totally, totally righteous, totally perfect in your sight. and totally pleasing to you. And Lord, we just thank you for all that you've done by grace. In Jesus' name, amen.