May I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world's interest in me has also died. (Galatians 6:14 NLT)
You can have Christian law just
as much as you can have Mosaic law; you can be in bondage in Christianity just
as much as men were in Judaism. Christianity can be made into an imposed system
just as much as Mosaic law was, and there are many Christians today who live
under the fear of the "Thou shalt" and the "Thou shalt not" of a legalistic
conception of the Christian life. You can take the Bible as God's standard for
your life and try to fulfill it and yet still be burdened with a sense of
constant failure. It is God's standard, and it is a very exhaustive one which
leaves no part of the practical life untouched, but those who make the effort to
try to live up to it only end in disillusion. No, it is not just a matter of a
Book but of a Person, the Person who did live up to that standard, absolutely
fulfilling every least demand with the most perfect success, so satisfying God
to the full. By His death He has delivered us from the bondage of legal demands.
This same Person now lives in us by His Holy Spirit, seeking to work out that
perfect will of God not on the basis of some binding instructions from without
but as a living force within. We have the law written in our hearts. To be in
Christ is a matter of Life and not of legalism.
Christ, and Christ crucified, is the power of God to bring deliverance from sin,
from the flesh, from the law and from the world. "God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been
crucified to me and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14). Paul was not glorying that
he could enjoy so much of the world and yet have a clear conscience, but was
enthusiastic about having been delivered from the world. For believers the only
possible way of staying in this world is to know that they no longer belong to
it.