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.
Change is hard for a lot of people. People like things to stay the same. Change means adjustments. Change means learning new things. Think about what it must have been like for the Jews who had been used to serving God by obeying the Law. Now all of a sudden Jesus pops on the scene and says “there is a new sheriff in town” and its it’s not the Law – it’s the Spirit. And you’re going to have to learn how to listen to the Spirit. And you’re going to have to get used to this new way of serving God. The old way is now defunct. The new way of the Spirit is going to mean adjustments but once you learn this new way it will produce incredible fruit. You won’t like it at first because it means change, but you will love it once you get used to it.
As I apply this “principle of change” to my life and to our church I can kind of feel what the Jews must have felt. But I also know that even though change is hard, often times change is good. I don’t ever want to get so stuck-in-the-mud that I am not open to change – especially change that will be bodaciously fruitful.
Are you ready for change? Are you ready to change? I hope so, because change is a’coming.
Next Week’s Passage: Romans 7:7-25
Memory Verses: Romans 8:1-14