The grace-age believer’s life is not about keeping the law or a list of rules. Rather, living the Christian life is all about our personal relationship with our living Head, Jesus Christ. We learn in this episode that when we keep our focus on our Savior and His grace, we grow and mature spiritually through faith in Him and His Word, and the ways of legalism fall away. The closer our walk and relationship with Christ, the greater we will increase in Him and be more like Him, while rejoicing in our freedom under grace.

While Romans 7 details the believer’s war with the flesh, Romans 8 reveals the peace we can have through the power of the Spirit. This episode imparts that when our minds are set on the things of the flesh and we are carnally minded, the result is a lifeless and defeated Christian experience. If we walk in the Spirit, however, we will find an abundant life of joy and fulfillment in Christ that produces victory and peace within our hearts.

As we continue on in Romans 7, the Apostle Paul shows us that sin conducts a military operation against us in life—not a skirmish or a one-time battle, but a long-term, lifelong campaign. In this episode, Paul demonstrates by his own testimony that he and every believer are in a losing conflict against sin and the sin nature. Our ultimate victory in this war, however, can never come from the energy of our own flesh, but only, as Romans 8 begins, by the power that comes from walking in the Spirit.

To some, grace is license and the cause of sin, and the law is the solution for it. But to the Apostle Paul, it was the opposite: legalism is what inflames sin, while grace alone is what overcomes it. This episode reminds us that we are to glory in our freedom in Christ, and we are to take a stand for our deliverance from the law and live and serve by grace. The purpose of that deliverance is not freedom to sin, but a freedom to do what is right and righteous.

In Romans 7, the Apostle Paul teaches us about the law and sin. He demonstrates the danger of “the sin that dwelleth” in us, and the spiritual defeat it can bring to our Christian lives. We learn in this episode that freedom’s enemy is not the law, but our old sin nature that is revealed by the law; the problem lies within us. Although the law is holy, just, and good, it cannot make us holy, just, and good. Only Christ and the grace of God can accomplish that.

There is an on-going battle between law and grace, and legalists often lash out and persecute and mock those who trust, rejoice in, stand for, and live by the grace of God. This is due to the fact that grace and law are polar opposites. In this episode, the Apostle Paul uses the example of Abraham’s son of the bondmaid, Ishmael, and his son of the freewoman, Issac, to illustrate how law and grace do not mix and cannot coexist together. One negates the other and one of them must go.

As believers, we are placed into a status of privilege in Christ. We are not children in bondage under the law and its rigid rules. By His grace, God has set us free from the law and placed us as full-grown sons without any strings attached. This episode shows the beautiful progression for every believer—we are redeemed and set free from slavery to sin, declared full-grown sons in God’s family, and finally, as sons, made heirs of God with a rich inheritance through Christ, all by the grace of God.

Many have been sold on thinking that they have to live by the law today, which attracts them to legalism and rule-keeping. But, through His promised Seed to Abraham, God has set us free from the law, and we are called to live in our personal relationship with Him by the power, freedom, and glory of His grace today. In this episode, we learn that the law gives the knowledge of sin, convicts of sin, and reveals man’s inability to save himself, which uncovers his desperate need for a Savior.

How did you receive the Holy Spirit? By doing or by believing? By the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? This episode reaffirms that the Christian life starts by grace through faith in Christ, and that we are to live in that same manner. As we live by grace, we live by the blessing of freedom from all our sins, as well as freedom from guilt, judgment, and the law. Those under the law stand condemned, not justified, and cursed, not blessed.

Galatians 2:20 makes it clear that the Christian life is not a matter of legalism, carefully checking off a list of dos and don’ts. Neither is it about human effort to bring about greater morality. Rather, it is divine life within that empowers the believer to live for God and His glory. In this episode, we are reminded that God does not want us going backward to life under the law, but forward in grace. As we do that, we discover freedom’s power over sin, while finding our sufficiency in Christ and His finished work on the cross.