You see, the Law of Moses had a relationship claim on every member of the human race. If the law has a rightful claim on you, God cannot have a rightful claim on you. If Christ has a rightful claim on you, the law has no rightful claim on you whatsoever.
To be joined to Christ and joined to the law at the same time would not only be bigamy, it would be adultery according to the apostle Paul. If you want to be joined to Christ, Paul gives the solution: there must be a death! As long as the law has jurisdiction over you in your mind, you are not free to be married to Christ, in your mind.
There are many people today who are doing that very thing. On the one hand, they claim to be joined to Jesus Christ, but on the other hand, who do they believe to be their husband? They continue to operate with God as though they were joined to the law, rather than joined to Christ, while claiming to belong to Christ on one hand and claiming to be operating under the dictates of the law on the other hand.
To what husband does a person belong is the question? That is what Paul is illustrating for us here at the outset of Romans chapter 7, one has to be dead in order to be married to the other. You cannot be legally bound, legally married to both at the same time, it is totally impossible! Grace and Law are polar opposites and God absolutely refuses to share those who are joined to his son with the law, with the law husband.
If you have been maintaining your relationship with the law in connection with your righteousness before God, in your mind, God would have you come out of that realm of thinking. You are either under the jurisdiction of the law, which requires performance for righteousness or you are under the jurisdiction of Jesus Christ and your identity in him is your righteousness, but you can not have it both ways.
Grace within a dispensation was one thing; a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. How many have heard that the apostle Paul dispensed a message that the 12 apostles had not dispensed, and that message was different, and that message was geared to the Gentiles?
If you lump these programs altogether, you are going to be taking from one program and trying to make it apply to another, when Paul clearly tells us that God is working differently today. Reconciliation, God changed the status of the human race when his son, Jesus Christ paid the ransom price necessary to redeem the human race from the market place of sin.
Justification and Sanctification are only for believers and believers alone, Satan’s desire is to corrupt people’s minds, not their activities. Satan is trying to corrupt people’s minds as to what Christ accomplished and the source of their righteousness.
A person must UNDERSTAND what it is they are being asked to believe, in order to be joined to Jesus Christ. The fact is that Jesus Christ took sinful people’s place, taking the penalty of their sins upon himself, so that those believing this truth could be joined to Jesus Christ. This is what makes Paul’s good news, a glorious gospel that goes far beyond the expected and moves into the realm of the unfathomable. Satan would rather people have their minds “religiously set” on believing something different.
The earthly union of husbands and wives today are to be a reflection of the new oneness identification that all believers have with our Savior himself, Jesus Christ. Clearing the slate of the human race, as Christ became sin on behalf of the human race, was an accomplishment of unmeasurable proportions.
Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son. We are made to be the righteousness that belongs to God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. God married us to his perfect son, what belongs to Christ then belongs to the believers who are joined to Christ.
Marriage the way God planned it to be in the beginning, two become “one flesh” from God’s perspective. As Christ’s legal marriage partner, your name is now entered right along side Christ’s name on his account. By joining us to his son, God sees Christ’s account as being our account also.
Christ’s righteousness as God has your name attached to it, his account become you account at the point of your belief. Therefore, his righteousness became your righteousness. That is a phenomenal blessing that belongs to every believer during this age of grace. God is now able to view every believer as though we are as perfectly righteous as Christ himself.
The righteous of Christ has our name on it, because we are married to the perfectly righteous Christ, and it was God, through his energizing power from on high that consummated that union the very instant we first believed that Christ, to have resolved God’s justice for our sins. We are now joined to him, what belongs to him now belongs to us.
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