There are times when we may feel imprisoned by our fleshly response to thorns along our journey. The law blesses us with a knowledge of what sin looks like but has no power to change our response to the “needs” in our life. Who has the key to set us free from this viscious cycle? God has provided us the key through the body of Christ. After trusting the death, burial and resurrection of our Savior (as payment for our sin debt), we also died to the “rules” of the law and are free to “respond with thanks” to our new found identity *. Jesus restores our relationship with the Father (as God originally intended)*. This powerful realization that we were loved even while in our sin gives us courage to repent, responding to His kindness. As a result of walking in step with His Holy Spirit, we are never again separated or isolated from God. He longs for communication with us in prayer. When our children reveal something from their lives that they are not proud of, we feel honored that they trusted us and our heart is to restore. Our heavenly Father also longs to hear our authentic need. Our gratitude is the mature response as our hearts are transformed for His glory.*- Teresa

* from Becoming What God Intended by Dr. David Eckman

Romans 7:1-13 English Standard Version

7 Or do you not know, brothers[a]—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.[b] 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.[c]

The Law and Sin

7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Footnotes:

a Romans 7:1 Or brothers and sisters; also verse 4

b Romans 7:2 Greek law concerning the husband

c Romans 7:6 Greek of the letter