English Standard Version (ESV)
7 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
**************
Rachel and I spent a long weekend in Fresno, and while there we took a short trip to Yosemite. We spent a day there hiking, and it was magnificent and beautiful and grand. We felt so small there amidst the vast scale of nature's wonder. While I have tried countless times, Yosemite simply can't be summed up in a photograph. Looking at a picture isn't the same as going there in person.
In the same way, being in Christ isn't just about reading a book and trying to be a better person. It's not about small efforts we make to try and make ourselves presentable to Christ. Being in Christ is about a whole-life transformation that involves our dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ. It's not a small achievement that can be picked up and set down anytime. It's a massive life shift, and when we discover true life in Christ, we are never the same, forever wrapped in the loving embrace of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment