“God has done what the law weakened by the flesh, could not do” -Romans 8:3
How do people change? How do you and I really change? We all need to. If God is who He says He is -and He is – and if we are who He says we are -and we are – then we need to change. But how? There are two approaches to change law and grace.
The 10 Commandments, and all His commandments in the Bible are God’s Law. Romans 7:12 us, “The Law indeed is holy, and the commandments holy, and righteous and good.” What if for just one day everyone on earth obeyed the 10 Commandments? It would go down in history as a great day. The problem is not the Law but what the Apostle Paul calls “the flesh,” I think Paul wants us to notice that even the Law of God is weakened in its practical sense. It tells us right and wrong, but it doesn’t change us. It only condemns us. If logic and rules cannot actively help us overcome our natural weaknesses and passions, the reason only serves to make us aware of our foolishness, rather than helping us improve. This comes from Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man.”
Law is not only the commandments of God in the Bible. If only the Law is within us, it becomes an accusing voice inside of us. We accuse ourselves and others. If we learned God’s law as a Religious law, we might have heard “Do this and you’ll be superior” such as wear this. Follow the rules and God will like you. Conform to us, and we will accept you.” Neither the Law of God nor the law of man can change our hearts.
So what is the mechanism for change? The grade of God changes us. The grace of God does not say, “I love you just the way you are.” It says, “I love you for the way Jesus is. I love you enough not to leave you the way you are. I will imprint Jesus on your heart.” Grace succeeds, because it works with two unstoppable powers -the power of acceptance, and the power of the Holy Spirit. This is God at work. Grace is God giving Himself to us wholeheartedly and calling us to trust Him. Grace works because it’s how we change. When we face what we are and hand ourselves over to the grace of God because He knows what we are and still handles us with compassion.
I don’t think our problem is God’s Law, our problem is flesh. The Law is powerless to do what it is meant to do because it is weakened by our sinful nature. Our flesh keeps us stuck because we don’t think it’s sinful. So we need to watch out for our sinful nature. We won’t understand ourselves until we notice the real enemy within. We never know how much we need God, until we notice this.
It’s pretty easy to think we’re the “good guys” Who are working on a few problems and end up as shallow believers, that only rearrange the surface things in our lives. With Law and grace, we can go deeper into a relationship with God.
How can we obey the Law of God if the power inside of us decides that we’re going to want other things? It’s like trying to jump out of a joke that has no bottom.
Paul calls “the flesh” our moral, and emotional subculture under everything else about us. It’s the mediocracy we settle for -the defeated selves that we are, socially acceptable with. Our flesh is our natural moral condition. It’s both virtues and virtues, our capacity for evil and good. It’s something we need to work on every day to reach our potential.
With God’s help, we can abondon our flesh and take new steps according to the Holy Spirit we can change in ways that surprise us.
From Pity to Praise 