Sometimes quote from learned and helpful commentaries
AA Milne: Winnie the Pooh, drifts up into the sky holding onto some ballons, leads to a discussion about the law of gravity and the conclusion that Winnie the Pooh has broken the law of gravity and is nothing but a common criminal!
The joke rests on the child like confusion of the two meanings of law:
A set of rules we ought to keep
An unbreakable / inviolable governing principle
God has ordered His universe in such a way that the universe runs according to a set of laws, unbreakable governing principles: the law of gravity, laws of thermodynamics, law of increasing entropy, the law of conservation of mass and energy and laws of electromagnetism.
Gods universe is to a large extend ordered and predictable.
Albert Einstein:
Our lives too on an individual level are ordered according to a set of inviolable laws:
“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” (Heb 9:27)
It is this sense of law that we find the word used in verse 2: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.”
As we go through our Bible we see this law operative and in action.
Gods Spirit is by His very nature and essence a “Life Giving Spirit”
Come into contact with the Spirit of God for the first time in Genesis 1: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” With knowledge of the “law of the Spirit of Life” we could anticipate what is about to happen! Here over the murky lifeless depths of a formless world, the Spirit of God moves with explosive results! In 6 glorious days of creatorial power there are changes which; promote life, permit life and finally produce life!
In Genesis chp 6, the Spirit of God strives with man (6:3) ultimately to mans downfall and condemnation and destruction! Judgment is pronounced by a righteous God and yet His Spirit operates by “the law of the Spirit of Life.” Could we anticipate what will happen? God not only pronounces judgement but procures a means of salvation to the preservation of life (6:17-20). Even as the storm clouds gather and the first drops fall, the canvas is set for the first rays of a rainbow through the rain!
'I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.'
Believers 428
As God superintends the history of Jacobs sons and the life of Joseph, the shadow of death is cast over that life of Joseph on more than one occasion: Gen 37:18,20 – His brothers conspiracy and schemes to murder, 37:24 – the depth and darkness of the pit, 37:28 – Slavery, 39:7 – the envy and evil intent of Potiphars wife, 39:20 – prison, any one of these events ought to have been enough to finish off Joseph, and yet as Joseph comes to sum up the dealings of God over his life: “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”(Gen 50:20)
Exodus sees God pouring out His judgement on Egypt in 10 catastrophic plaques and yet even under the shadow of the angel of death a path is being cleared to bring out a people for Himself untouched by the power of death (Ex 11:7; 12:23,30-31)
Moses the man of God, prophet, giver of the law. He falls with his temper and strikes the rock twice and he will die on Mount Nebo. Yet his vision will extend to the “city of palm trees” and therein lies a tale, so often linkes with an entrance to eternal rest! Will we leave Moses dead on Nebo? Matt 17:3! “The law of the Spirit of life!”
Job: commences with 7 sons and 3 daughters, 7 000 sheep, 3 000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 she asses (Job1:3) and all is lost. What of the “law of the Spirit of life” here? Job finishes with 14 000 sheep, 6 000 camels, 1 000 yoke of oxen, 1 000 she asses and restored sons and daughters (Job 42:12,13)!
The son of the Shunammite women (2 Kings 4): the boy dies, but you can't go to the man of God her husband will tell her! Why not? It's against the rules “it is neither new moon nor Sabbath” (2 Kings 4:23) – but there is a greater and infinitely more glorious law and purpose, it is the “law of the Spirit of life” and raised he will be!
There is of course no where more glorious that the “law of the Spirit of life” is to be seen than operative in the person of Christ! Psalm 16:10-11; Rom 1:4.
You could say there is a fatal flaw in your argument, what about:
the old world that perished (Gen 6)
Egypts sons that died (Ex 12)
This “Law of the Spirit of life” is only operative “in Christ Jesus”
There is no life out with Him!
In Rom 8:1-4 His Spirit is operative in me!
His Spirit will always draw me, guide me away from that which promotes death namely sin and towards that which brings me to life, that is “righteousness” (8:3-4).
When Christ came in a body (8:3) He established and completed:
A work “for sin” (8:3) – Salvation, ie propitiation and expiation, some translate the phrase here as “sin offering”
A work for sanctification “condemned sin in the flesh.”
Christ brought an end to the inevitability of being 'only human'!
That apparent law that because I am human I must sin.
Here is one who is truly human and did not sin!
He broke the mold!
What does that have to do with me?
If I am saved, I have His Spirit in me, the Spirit of one who cannot sin and who does not sin and who operates according to “the Law of the Spirit of life.”
This “the Law of the Spirit of life,” which triumphs finally in the conclusion to Gods plan for this universe:
“there shall be no more death” (Rev 21:4)
“river of water of life” (Rev 22:1)
“the tree of life” (Rev 22:2,14)
“book of life” (Rev 21:27, 22:19)
The evidence of the operation of “the Law of the Spirit of life” in my life is the manifestation of “righteousness” (8:4).
We can discern down through the pages of scripture an extraordinary, supernatural standard of righteousness:
“Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord GOD.” (Eze 14:14)
“Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.” (Eze 14:20)
These standards of righteousness were extraordinary if not infrequent!
After 1000's of years of human history Ezekiel comes up with only 3 righteous men!
But how do we explain them?
Men do not naturally tend to extraordinary righteousness?
How do we explain:
Daniel – who choses the lions den rather that miss his time of prayer?
Noah – unique and swimming against the moral tide of a whole world?
Job – who refuses to “curse God and die” but holds onto the God who seems to have let him down?
Is it:
madness
mistake
motive?
Surely not madness nor mistake?
There is too much consistent for it to be purely aberrant or mad!
There is a consistent:
Theology – one God, the sinfulness of man, the righteousness of God, God as Creator, God as redeemer.
Soterology - “I know that my redeemer liveth...” (Job)
Eschatology – Daniels prophesies of future events harmonises with Revelation and other scriptures.
The law of Moses agrees with the values and standards of Daniel and Job and Noah.
The prophecies of Daniel are in harmony with the prophesy of Revelation.
The Messianic predictions of Daniel and Job are consistent with NT revelation in Christ.
This consistency precludes mere madness or mistake as the reason.
We appear to have in scripture a transcendent, coherent and consistent moral standard of righteousness according to which some men have always lived their life, but the question is why?
Illust: Salmon, swim the wrong way: against the tide, against the current and up the water fall! Why? Are they mad? Is it a mistake? Driven by an inbuilt instinct, to the smell, the taste and place of their birth, they are drawn by inward compulsion to that place they know as home! There is a reason for this drive!
https://graceinchrist.org/romans
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