Where “High Ideals” Fall Down
There is as much difference, then, between being under law and under grace, as there is between a dead man and a live man. If a high ideal could have given life, the word tells us, if God could have provided a law which could make a dead man alive, Grace would not have been needed, for righteousness would have been by the law. The free gift of the New Covenant is a new LIFE. That is what the promise of the Spirit provides. Does this give a vivid light upon Romans 8:2, “The law of the Spirit... made me free from the law of sin and of death?” And the power of the law of the Spirit is the resurrection life of Christ Jesus. So the complete verse reads, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.”
The passage in Romans eight goes on to show how Jesus did for us the thing we could not do, and that as a result of what he did, and is doing through the Spirit, “the requirement of the law is fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” If we are appropriating the promise of the Spirit, our inheritance through faith, we are having fulfilled in us the law of God at this present moment. That is what the Word of God says. That is what happens when we are under Grace and not under the law. Obedience to the law is guaranteed while we are under Grace,—walking in the Spirit. Disobedience to the law can come only when the Christian is living under law,—walking after the flesh.
But, some one asks, is not a Christian always under Grace? He is, in his position, and the Victorious Life is simply walking by faith in that position won by Christ. “We believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if, while we sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also were found sinners, is Christ a minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build up again those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor” (Gal. 2:16, 18).