“Ye Are Not Under The Law”
Romans 6:14
The subject of Romans chapter six is the believer’s life and conduct in this world. Here we are taught how to live for the glory of God in the life of sanctification. How does the Spirit of God inspire godliness, devotion, and righteous behavior? Does he direct us to Sinai? Does he threaten us with legal terror? Perish the thought!
When God the Holy Spirit teaches us how to live in this world for the glory of God, he begins by asserting, “Ye are not under the law, but under grace.” Not only does he assert this fact plainly, he hammers it home to our hearts repeatedly, all the way through this epistle and all the rest of the New Testament. Our great God wants us to know that we are free men and women in Christ. We who were once prisoners under the curse of the law, justly condemned by it, are now free from the law in Christ. We sing, with joyful hearts, “Free from the law, oh, happy condition!”
We have no covenant with the law. We live under a covenant of grace. We have no commitment to the law. Our commitment is to Christ, who obeyed the law for us. We do nothing by constraint of the law. “The love of Christ constraineth us.” We fear no curse from the law. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.”
Men may accuse us
of being antinomians. They may accuse us of promoting licentiousness. They may
censor us and warn others to avoid contact with us, as though our liberty in
Christ were some kind of spiritual leprosy. But we will not again be entangled
with the yoke of bondage. We will not attempt to reach the throne of God by
climbing
We refuse to keep a legal sabbath day, because God forbids it (Col. 2:16). Our Sabbath is Christ. We keep the sabbath of faith. Trusting our all-sufficient Substitute, relying upon his finished work, we cease from our own works and rest in him.
We do not tithe, like niggardly slaves, fearing that if we fail to do so the Lord might kill us or one of our children. Why? Because our God tells us plainly that such legal motives in this gospel age are totally unacceptable to him (2 Cor. 9:7). God’s people give generously, with cheerful hearts, acknowledging that all we are and have belongs to him who loved us and gave himself for us.
As for those who seek God’s favor by their obedience to the law, let them be warned -- “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” Show me a man who trusts his own righteousness, his own obedience, his own devotion, his own feelings, or anything else of his own, and I will show you a man who is entirely lost, a man to whom the blood of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, and the grace of Christ is worthless.
Don Fortner