Oh, look at this amazing passage! The law, though it was perfect and holy, was not able to make you and me perfect and holy, because, in our flesh, we are weak and unable to keep it.
And so, God did something about our problem. God sent His Son to be our sin offering, that is, our sacrifice of atonement. He removed every sin from us and put them all on His Son, who died to make amends for our wrongdoing.
And the result? All believers receive the Spirit and can begin to live according to the Spirit, not the flesh! This new life in the Spirit results in “the law being fully met in us.” Hallelujah! What a Savior!
As we live according to the Spirit, He leads us away from a lifestyle of gratifying our flesh and leads us instead to a cross. As we keep our eyes on Jesus’ love for us, His sacrificial death and resurrection, we are enabled to walk by the Spirit, and when we do, we don’t gratify the lusts of our flesh. Walking by the Spirit is marvelous because He leads us out of overeating and laziness and every other sin that hinders us.
See, friend, if it were not for the work of the Spirit setting us free from the law of sin and death, we would be forgiven but trapped. We would be loved by the Son but still stuck in sin.
So, God didn't just give us His Son He also gave us His Spirit who takes us by the hand and leads us away from self-gratification and leads us to the foot of the cross. There we are in awe of the price paid for us, and there we receive our own cross as a blessed gift of God. At the cross, we learn how to fight off the cravings of our flesh; and as He brings us out of bondage to overeating, emotional eating, laziness, etc., our emotions begin to stabilize.
Every time we choose to crucify our cravings over gratifying our flesh, we take up our cross and fellowship with Christ in His sufferings.
So, the Holy Spirit's role is to apply the message of "no condemnation," and in so doing, He set us free from a lifestyle of gratifying the cravings of our flesh.
As we close, let's look further at what the Spirit of God does in the believer's life:
“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.” Romans 8:14-16 (NIV)
Question 5. What does the Spirit of God do for us?