2. The second result of the New Birth is found in Rom. 8:2-4, where we
read: +"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me
free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in
the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."+ In the 7th chapter
of Romans, we have a picture of the man who is awakened by the law of
God which he approves after the inward man, which he sees "is holy and
just and good," which he tries to keep in his own strength, but utterly
fails to keep, until at last he comes to an end of himself and is
filled with despair of ever being able to keep the law of God outside
of him, because of the law of sin and death inside him, which law of
sin and death says, "the good which you would do you cannot do, and the
evil which you hate and would not do, you must keep on doing." When a
man is thus brought to a consciousness of his own utter helplessness
and turns to God and accepts Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus
Christ gives to him who dwells in him, sets him free from this law
of sin and death so that by the power of the indwelling Spirit he is
enabled to obey the law of God and to get the victory over the evil
things that he would not do and to do the things which he would do.
Whereas in a man merely awakened by the law of God, "the law of sin and
death" gets a perpetual victory, in a regenerate man, the "law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" gets the perpetual victory. Doubtless
many of you here to-day are still struggling to keep the law of God and
utterly failing in your attempt to do so. What you need is to be born
again, and thus have the Holy Spirit come to dwell in you, and then to
walk by the Spirit, and by the power of this indwelling Spirit to get
victory every day and hour over the law of sin and death that wars in
your members against the law of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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