For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:2-4
This passage shows me that the Spirit doesn’t just comfort me—He liberates me. I’ve been set free from the law of sin and death, and now I walk in the power of the Spirit, not the pressure of performance.
Paul says the law of the Spirit of life has set me free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. That’s not just a shift in theology; it’s a shift in power. The old law could diagnose my condition, but it couldn’t heal me. It was weakened by the flesh, not because the law was flawed, but because I was. I couldn’t keep it. I couldn’t fulfill it. So, God did what I couldn’t. He sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and in that flesh, He condemned sin. Not me—>sin.
That’s huge. Jesus didn’t just take my punishment; He took sin’s power and crushed it. And He did it so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in me—not by me, but in me. That’s the Spirit’s work. I don’t walk according to the flesh anymore. I walk according to the Spirit. That doesn’t mean I’m perfect, it means I’m empowered. The Spirit enables me to live out what the law demanded but couldn’t produce.
APPLICATION
Today, I don’t live under the weight of trying to be good enough. I live under the freedom of the Spirit. That means I don’t just try harder, I trust deeper. I lean into the Spirit’s power, not my own. And when I stumble, I don’t spiral into shame, I remember that sin has already been condemned. I’m not condemned. I’m free. And that freedom shows up in how I walk, in how I love, how I repent, how I obey. Not perfectly, but progressively. Because the Spirit is alive in me, and He’s leading me toward life.