LAW,
EFFECT OF

A HONEY-DO list can be a frustrating thing. A list of four things may be left for a husband to complete. He may get a plan together to complete those four things in time to settle in for a game. It never fails, right when he finishes his list and settles in to watch his game, he will get a phone call and the list grows. Many times, that list won’t seem to have an end.

That’s the problem with law. There is no way to “check off the list.” There is no possible way to complete the requirements of the law. There is nothing wrong with God’s standard, but there’s everything wrong with our capacity to satisfy it. Our flesh is contaminated by sin and will always react to God’s standard.545

[Law of Sin and Death; Sin, Stain of; Sin, Victory over]

Rom. 7:14–25; Heb. 10:1

A FOOTBALL team met for a morning pregame talk with their coach. The coach told the guys that, although the coverage of their upcoming game would be all over the news, he didn’t want them watching any of it. His words to his team were, “Under no circumstances should you look at ESPN to hear what everybody has to say about this big game.”

Now, when the team came back that afternoon, the coach said, “I really don’t have to tell you anything about the big game because I know that all of you have already heard about it on ESPN.” He gave them a law, knowing that all that law would do was incite them to break it.546

[Law of Sin and Death]

Rom. 7:7

THE STORY is told of a bear that lived in a 12 × 12 foot cage. It lived there for some twelve years and so it got to know that cage extremely intimately. The bear was so proficient at moving around his small world that it could close its eyes, walk to the end of the cage, and before it hit the end of the cage, it would stop, turn around, and go to the other end. Before it hit the other end, it would spin around and do it over and over again, never ever bumping into the cage. As it got larger, the bear’s handlers decided to enlarge its world, and built the animal a 36 × 36 foot cage to give it a lot more room to experience life inside of this cage. The problem was that when they put the bear, which had lived in the 12 × 12 foot cage, into the 36 × 36 foot cage, it would still only walk twelve feet and then turn around and go the other way. The bear’s problem was that even though it moved to a new cage, it brought the old cage with it. The problem with the bear was that it was still hostage to the limitations of its old life. Even though it had been promoted to a whole new environment, it had not shed the habits that had been learned in the old place.

This is like the effect of the law on the lives of Christians. Many of us have been used to living under law so long and under the limitations and restrictions of a performance-based approach to Christian living, that we don’t know how to handle the new freedom called grace. We keep living, limited by law, even though we’ve been set free to a lot more room under grace.547

[Christian Living, New Life; Grace, Law and; Law of the Spirit; New Life in Christ]

Rom. 7:24–25; Eph. 5:8–10; Titus 3:3–7