Tag: jurisdiction

I said yesterday that Paul is not consistent in using of his metaphor of marriage in this passage.

We saw how he used the metaphor to show that death causes the law to lose its power over a person. Specifically, in his illustration, the husband’s death caused the law to lose its power over his wife.

Paul then says we died and so the law lost its power over us. But instead of tying us to the husband that died, he ties us to the wife who continued living.

Why would he do that?

Let’s put it this way. When the husband died who did the law’s loss of authority affect? The husband? No. It affected the wife who was still living.

Prior to her husband’s death, she was under the jurisdiction of the law of marriage, and she was bound by that law to her husband.

But when her husband died, she was no longer under the jurisdiction of the law of marriage. She became a non-entity to the law because it no longer applied to her.

In short, when her husband died, she died too…but in a different way. She died to the law’s power over her, and was free to marry another person.

How does this apply to us?

Before we came to Christ, we were under the jurisdiction of God’s law. What did that law say? It said, “You must do everything God has commanded or you will die.”

But there was a problem. None of us could keep the commandments perfectly, and so all of us were condemned to die.

So God sent his Son into the world, and Christ did what none of us could do. He kept the law perfectly. He did everything the law required.

Then having kept the law perfectly, he paid the price for all our violations of the law. He paid it in full by dying on the cross and taking the punishment we deserved.

Now God accepts us not because we keep the law, but because we put our faith in Christ and his work on the cross. That’s the jurisdiction of grace in which we stand.

But because we stand in the jurisdiction of grace, we no longer stand under the jurisdiction of law. We are a non-entity to the law. In effect, we died to it.

So we no longer live our lives focused on trying to keep its commandments. Rather, now we are married to Christ, led by his Spirit day by day.

The result of this joining to Christ? We give birth to the fruits of righteousness leading to eternal life, something we could not do under the law.

The question is, do we understand all this?

So many Christians, though they live under the jurisdiction of grace, live as though they live under the jurisdiction of law.

They still think they have to keep the law perfectly in order to be accepted by God. They live in fear of God, because they still feel liable to punishment if they break his laws.

But we are no longer under the law’s jurisdiction. We are now married One who loves us and accepts us right here, right now.

So let’s not live our lives in fear. Let us not worry about whether we measure up to God’s standards.

Rather, let us focus on enjoying the love that is already ours in Jesus, and let’s live our lives in response to that love.

That’s a life under grace.

How about you?

Are you living under the jurisdiction of grace?

Or are you still living as if you are under the jurisdiction of law?