Law of the Spirit

You know when you read something that speaks so deeply to your circumstance - right to the crux of everything you are inwardly fighting? It's as if finally that aching thing has finally found expression - and the first thing you think is how badly you want the closest people to you to read that very thing - you want to point at it and say, "See!? That's me! This is what I have so long wanted to explain to you!" Well...yes, it is true, I have a piece of such literature for you today. Hundreds of years ago, Luther wrote a preface to Romans - which I have had in my posession for a while now and am only now getting around to reading. Jed gave it to me after telling me how good it was...and I will say I do indeed concur. I am giving you a couple samples of things he said that struck me - and then giving you a website whereby you may read it at your own leisure online.

"...But to fulfill the law means to do its work eagerly, lovingly and freely, without the constraint of the law; it means to live well and in a manner pleasing to God, as though there were no law or punishment. It is the Holy Spirit, however, who puts such eagerness of unconstained love into the heart... But the Spirit is given only in, with, and through faith in Jesus Christ...

In chapter 6, St. Paul takes up the special work of faith, the struggle which the spirit wages against the flesh to kill off those sins and desires that remain after a person has been made just. He teaches us that faith doesn't so free us from sin that we can be idle, lazy and self-assured, as though there were no more sin in us. Sin is there, but, because of faith that struggles against it, God does not reckon sin as deserving damnation. Therefore we have in our own selves a lifetime of work cut out for us; we have to tame our body, kill its lusts, force its members to obey the spirit and not the lusts. We must do this so that we may conform to the death and resurrection of Christ and complete our Baptism, which signifies a death to sin and a new life of grace. Our aim is to be completely clean from sin and then to rise bodily with Christ and live forever...

Because our flesh has not been killed, we are still sinners, but because we believe in Christ and have the beginnings of the Spirit, God so shows us His favor and mercy, that He neither notices nor judges such sins. Rather He deals with us according to our belief in Christ until sin is killed...Neither nature nor free will nor our own powers can bring about such justice, for even as no one can give himself faith, so too he cannot remove unbelief...Therefore everything which takes place outside faith or in unbelief is a lie, hypocrisy and sin (Rom 14) no matter how smoothly is goes."

I really hope you will print out the text and really cogitate over it. I think we are really touching on something that goes deeper than we even know...into the whole issue of sin and redemption - how one is to really satisfy the demands that we sense being made upon us - and how impossible it yet feels - how insurmountable our sin and flesh - what exactly faith accomplishes in us...etc.

Tonight I am thinking how incredibly grateful I am that I have such friends as you. God has been better to us than we even know. Lord Come!

http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/romans/pref_romans.html