Boundaries
“So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”
Today’s Text: Romans 7:1-6 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
How is it that the law arouses sinful passions in us? The thing that is supposed to provide boundaries around our morality actually causes our hearts to venture outside of those boundaries.
Maybe it’s because the human heart desires to explore, which is not a bad thing in and of itself. Who knows? Maybe our inclination to explore is part of the image of God in us too. Maybe the very existence of those boundaries causes us to stray.
So then, should there be no boundaries at all? No laws? No rules?
Well, there was a time before any laws were laid down. And even in that time, God’s law governed the hearts of humanity. We might not understand why, but we know that the pain of loss is real. And that pain tells us that we ought not to cause pain to others. That is the boundary that becomes the foundation of God’s law at work in us.
And yet that very boundary somehow makes us want what someone else has. That very boundary somehow makes us feel that we lack something within those boundaries.
And God manifested that boundary in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why?
Maybe it’s so that in seeing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we might see the tree of life standing right beside it and realize that there is no good thing that we lack.
The problem comes when all we see is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In our hearts, its light is so bright that it completely washes away any vision of the tree of life standing right next to it.
But when we see the tree of life and its light shines so brightly in our hearts that we cannot see the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there is no boundary. There is only the tree of life and the fullness of the abundant, eternal life offered by the tree of life.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the boundary marker of the law. There is no life in the law because we cannot have a relationship with the law.
The tree of life is Christ. In Him, there is life. In Him, we bear fruit for God.
Father, Your word is good and holy and pure. But it is the Living Word who gives life. May the knowledge of Your word not cause me to desire things I already have in abundance. May the knowledge of Your word not cause me to become puffed up with emptiness and death. But let me live in the abundance of the Living Word and may the fruit of Your glory abound in my life. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
