LOVE BELONGS TO GRACE

LOVE BELONGS TO GRACE

Rom.8:4,5 – so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who are in accord with the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are in accord with the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

Not only are we saved by grace through faith, we actually begin to walk in a new righteousness by the work of the Holy Spirit. Before grace invaded our lives there was no way we could live any way that resembled a righteous life. Some of us may have wanted to but our own sinfulness kept getting in the way. Not only is our past cleansed by grace but we are empowered by Christ through grace to live a different way than we lived before. Think about the importance of that, the Lord sets up His code or His law for us to live by, we can’t so He dies for us to wash away our sinfulness. He then fills us with His Spirit and begins to walk the righteous life that He demanded in us. He commands and then He fulfills. Here is how Augustine describes this.

“But since this worldly wisdom has been destroyed and removed in the Lord made man, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled when a man walks not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Whence it is most rightly said: “I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. For love is the fulfilling of the law.” Love belongs to those who walk according to the Spirit. For love belongs to the grace of the Holy Spirit. When there was no love of righteousness but only fear, the law was not fulfilled.”

So this explains to us why the Spirit filled life is so essential. Without Christ living in us and through us we fall miserably short again and again. With Christ on the inside we walk in step with Him. Like Paul said, “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the deeds of the flesh”. Paul also said we can put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit. So where does love come in? Actually God’s love is a person, the Holy Spirit. Walking in the Spirit is walking in God’s love.