{"id":21112,"date":"2023-08-02T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/urc\/urc-daily-devotion-2-august-2023"},"modified":"2023-08-02T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T05:00:00","slug":"urc-daily-devotion-2-august-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/urc-daily-devotion-2-august-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"URC Daily Devotion 2 August 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you not know, brothers and sisters \u2014 for I am speaking to those who know the law\u2014that the law is binding on a person only during that person\u2019s lifetime?  Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband.  Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.  While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work for our members to bear fruit for death.  But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reflection<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

All this talk about being free could easily be taken to mean that folk could do as they pleased.  Instead, Paul taught that a new situation meant a new reality.  Just as, after a bereavement, a spouse is free to marry again (women, of course, could not then divorce their husbands) so the death of Christ has set us free from the law which Paul felt kept people captive.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Christians are very good at bandying Paul\u2019s words around and assuming our Jewish sisters and brothers are oppressed by ancient laws.  Of course, we\u2019re surprised to find Jewish people don\u2019t feel slaves to the Law any more than we feel slaves of the Highway Code.  I don\u2019t feel imprisoned because, in Scotland, it is illegal to drink and drive.  I don\u2019t feel oppressed because I have to wear a seat belt.  Paul, however, experienced the Jewish Law as something that Christ had set him free from; his experience of it seems at variance with contemporary Jewish experience and to the many Old Testament writers who saw light, love, and liberation in the Law.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what might we be set free from when we convert to Christianity and trust in Jesus?  (That\u2019s assuming, of course, we want to be free.)  Jesus offers us freedom from <\/span> <\/p>\n