Shammah Temple Fellowship: Sermon of April 21, 2024
By Gad Ndayihimbaze
Theme: Why does our righteousness not come from the law?
Reference scriptures: Romans 7:1-25
Believers sometimes lead difficult lives when some choices are dilemmas. The flesh that pulls towards a way and the spirit on another different way. The law powers and the spiritual powers exercising in one person’s life.
Talking about the law, however, is not just the 10 mostly known as the Mosaic law. They were more than 600, divided in three big categories. Paul is telling us that our salvation, our righteousness cannot come from the law, with an allegory of a relationship between a husband and his wife.
Reasons why our righteousness does not come from the law:
- Jesus liberated us from the bondage of the law
Talking about the law, however, is not just the 10 mostly known as the Mosaic law. They were more than 600, divided in three big categories. Paul is telling us that our salvation, our righteousness cannot come from the law, with an allegory of a relationship between a husband and his wife.
Why do we still have laws that we use to keep us in check while we were liberated from them?
- We didn’t receive the right message of the gospel. In some way, we were taught things that are different from Jesus’ salvation and good news story (Galatians 5:4,7&8).
- When we do not see the importance of the life in Jesus way above anything else we can imagine or see in this world. What was important before has become worthless now, for the new life we have gotten in Jesus (Philippians 3:5-8).
- The law only reveals our sinfulness
The work of the law is to show us how far we are from God, not with the intention to change and get closer to Him, but simply to indicate how we can never meet God and His salvation.
However, the law is not the one we should curse, it is holy because it came from God and the same God has chosen a better way for us to reach Him – Jesus Christ. The law is like a mirror, it shows us what we look like. It can show us how dirty we are, but it cannot remove the dirt from us. That’s why we need a way forward to get the dirt away – we need Christ. The law nurtured us in its time and handed us to the Lord (Galatians 3:23).
We need to choose better, which man do we stay with and which one do we get rid of? Believing in Jesus is what justifies us, it makes us righteous because of the blood of Christ.
In short, as Believers, we are called to understand the place of the law – not to reject it as dirt because God can’t give dirty things, but also not to keep it our reference as before. Jesus now took over; His salvation is enough for us to be righteous because He is the one who justifies us.
