No Longer Bound by the Law

Texts:
Psalm 29
Isaiah 1:1-4, 16-20
Romans 8:1-8


Romans 8, for me, is Paul at his best.  From verse 1, "There is therefore now now condemnation those in Christ Jesus," to verse 39: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord," and everything in between, points to the Gospel.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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How, then, are we to reconcile verses 5-8?  These verses almost seem to negate the promises found in the other verses.   What is Paul trying to say?  What is he trying to accomplish?  Is he introducing a new law, though God has undone the law on our behalf?  It would seem that, in verse 3, God has turned Godself against the law on our behalf.  The Law, created that we might live in harmony with our neighbors, we turned on its head and started to utilize it to separate us from our neighbors.  We utilized it for our own ends, weakening the Law into a set of rules and boundaries that protected ourselves rather than inspired us to protect our neighbors.  In so doing, we bound ourselves to the flesh, obsessed with protecting ourselves and with our own well being.  We failed to see that our thriving is deeply connected to the thriving of our neighbors.


So God set Godself against the law in order to break down our divisions and to make obsolete our misinterpretation and misuse of the Law.  By making the Gift free, God has taken away any ability we would have to use the Law to separate ourselves from our neighbors.  God has undone Godself in order that we might be bound not to the Law, but to our neighbor.  It is here we see the Law was never meant to bind us, but rather to enable us to set one another free.  And as we unbind one another, we find our shackles have been released as well.