Legalism and Love Are Opposites

Let's look now at the result of deliverance from the law.

First of all, freedom from condemnation. Romans 8:1,

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”

For what the law could not do, verse three,

“God did sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.”

If you analyze Romans, I tell people, it's like when the days we used to drink percolated coffee. We don't do that very much now. But there are two kinds, percolated and instant.

And if you want to get Romans 8, you can't get instant Romans 8. It has to be percolated. You have to go through the preceding seven chapters. That's the percolator. And it's only at the end of that you get ‘therefore’, when you've been through those chapters. Now, the preceding chapters deal with the total sinfulness of all humanity, with the failure of religion to change man's sinful nature, with the examples of Abraham and David, with a comparison between Adam and Christ. Chapter six is God's remedy for the old man, which I have told you is execution. That's right. God's solution for the old man is execution. He doesn't patch him up. He doesn't reform him. He doesn't send him to church. He executes him. The good news is the execution took place when Jesus died on the cross. Now, I always used to think, “Well, why come to the law after all that?” But the whole of Romans chapter 7 deals with our relationship with the law.

But I have learned by my own experience and by dealing with other people, and from scripture, the ultimate hurdle you have to get over, the last stage of the percolator, is finding out how you relate to the law. And most Christians have never gone there. And without that, you cannot live in Romans chapter 8, because the essential condition is no condemnation. The moment you come under condemnation, you are out of the spirit-controlled life of Romans chapter 8. So, devil's number one objective is to bring you under condemnation.

And the purpose of God's word, especially in Romans, is to deliver you from condemnation. If you go on to the end of the eighth chapter, you find again that glorious statement,

“Who is he that will bring a charge against God's elect? It's God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It's Jesus Christ who died, who rather is risen again from the dead.”

The essential thrust of that chapter is no condemnation. But until we have understood our relationship to the law, we will always be subject to condemnation. And let me say there'll always be a lot of religious people around just ready to bring you under condemnation.

Secondly, deliverance from the law brings freedom to love. I think legalism and love essentially are opposites. And if you're in a legalistic system, it is very hard to love. We have to be delivered from legalism to love. We could look in a number of scriptures. Let's look in Romans 13 for a moment. Romans 13:8-10,

“Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

Notice that, is not going to fulfill the law, has.

“For for the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

That's very simple. Problem is, for theologians, it's too simple.

Turn for a moment to Galatians chapter 5 and verse 6. Galatians 5:6,

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.”

In the last resort, the only thing that matters is faith working through love. And if we ever get off that, we're sidetracked. We can get sidetracked into all sorts of clever theological theories and interpretations of prophecy and all sorts of things. But we ever get away from faith working through love, we've got off center. We've missed the real purpose of the gospel message.

And then in Galatians 5:14,

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word.”

How many of you can guess the word? That's right.

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

But that is not possible when we're bound by the law, because we're bound to our carnal nature, and the carnal nature produces anything but good fruit. You see?