Let me review briefly what I said in our last visit, based on Romans 7. Paul encourages us to be committed, joined to or married to the resurrected Christ, not to Jesus Christ’s earthy journey or example. 

 

If you try to identify with and be attached to Jesus Christ’s earthly life you will find yourself under condemnation and guilt because you will never be able to live up to His example. His life can’t save us from our sinful nature and the passions aroused by the law. Trying to live up to His example ultimately leads to discouragement, despair and death (verse 5). 

 

Paul reminds us in verse 4, “So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead.” Why? “In order that we might bear fruit to God.” 

 

Committing yourself to the one who died for your sins and rose again; you are free to live in a new way, the way of the Spirit. It’s as though before you believed in Jesus Christ you were married to Him under the law. When He died you were released from that marriage bond. Now you are free to be married to another, “to him who was raised from the dead.” 

 

In this marriage the Holy Spirit plays a significant role. He introduces you to a whole new life with new potential and power. The only fruit you could bear under the law was death. Now, in this new relationship, you are enabled to bear fruit to God. You are able to serve in the new way of the Spirit. It is then that you can say, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).