WALKING IN THE SPIRIT: PART ONE

As Christians, we ought to live in such a way that pleases God, appeals to the lost, and encourages the brethren. But because we are so spiritually paranoid about being in bondage to the Law, filled with its dos and don'ts, we hesitate, and sometimes refuse to accept the fact that Law is a definition of what God would have His children to do! Somehow, the Church has focused so strongly on Paul's epistle to the Galatians, with his stinging attack on those who sought to make the Church simply another tribe of Israel, that we have forgotten the purpose of the Law. Yes, Paul wrote in Galatians 3:1-3:

"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"

But Paul also wrote in Galatians 3:23-26:

"But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster [to bring us] unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

The Law was given to teach us the impossibility of being saved by "working our way to heaven." In other words, a person who lives without breaking a single law, is a person God calls righteous, and therefore, worthy of going to heaven. Since no one, apart from the Son of God, was able to live such a life, the Law actually showed man his desperate need for a Savior. By trusting in Jesus, we are considered by God to be righteous (2 Cor. 5:21). Righteousness is a gift.

Man does not have to keep the Law in order to become saved. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:8-9). But once a person has become a born again believer, he wants to live his life in a way that shows his gratitude to the God Who loved him enough to pay such a dear price for his soul. The Law, while not able to save man, does show him what pleases God. The Ten Commandments are not evil, but on the contrary, they are a picture of how man is to relate to his God, and to his neighbor.

To be continued, Lord permitting.