“For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The Old Testament seems complicated. More specifically, the Old Testament Law of Moses seems complicated. There are just so many rules to keep (613 to be exact). How is someone supposed to get (and stay) right with God when it seems like you are always going to be breaking some law or another. It feels like the whole thing was just set up to condemn us. Well, as Paul has already talked about, that isn’t the case, but it became the case because of sin. Thankfully, God fixed that through Jesus. Let’s look here with Paul at how.

God gave the Law to the people of Israel so they had an identity. He gave it to them so they knew where some of the boundary lines were in their relationship with Him. We’ve talked about this before, but the point bears repeating. What God invited Israel into was a covenant relationship. More specifically, it was a type of covenantal relationship the people understood because they were fairly commonly made in that day called a Suzerain covenant. This was a covenant between a greater party and a lesser party. The greater party agrees to extend a certain set of benefits and protections to the lesser, and the lesser party agrees to be faithful and loyal to the leadership of the greater.

Whatever the precise nature of the covenant, though, it was a covenant relationship. That meant it had boundaries. Because all relationships have boundaries. That’s the nature of a relationship. As long as you remain within the boundaries, you are within the relationship. When you violate those, you’re not. The Law God gave through Moses helped the people see and understand where the boundaries of the covenant relationship they were freely entering into with Him were.

More than just giving them the shape of the boundaries of their relationship with Him, though, part of the purpose of the Law was to help the people live within those boundaries. It was to help them live within the scope of God’s righteousness. If they remained within those boundaries – and like all good boundaries, there was a consequence for transgressing them – then they would remain within a right relationship with God.

The trouble here was that the Law couldn’t accomplish its objective. This is not because the Law wasn’t strong enough or wasn’t righteous in its inception and form. It’s because sin was that big of a problem. Our wills were so corrupted by it that even when we had every reason not to violate the boundaries of our relationship with God, we did it anyway. Over and over and over again. Because we wanted what we wanted more than we wanted whatever it was He was offering…even when what we wanted was actively causing us harm and what He was offering was a way to avoid all of that harm entirely. Thus the Law could not accomplish what it was designed to accomplish because it was weakened by the flesh. Our flesh.

So then, what did God do? He did it for us. He accomplished it on our behalf. Paul says that God “condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering.” Well, what does that mean? The short version is that God defeated sin by playing the game by its own rules and winning. God sent His Son, Jesus, to enter this world and live like us. Jesus was fully the second member of the Godhead, but He was also fully human. That’s the bit about “the likeness of sinful flesh.”

He was merely in the likeness of sinful flesh not because He wasn’t fully human, but because the special, miraculous nature of His birth meant He did not have a sinful nature like the rest of us do. Sin was a not a foregone conclusion for Him like it is for us. He could still have sinned, but because He didn’t have that initial brokenness in Him, He was able to say no. He was so able, though, because He did not rely on His own strength, but on the strength His heavenly Father provided – strength that was always available to all of us, but which we rejected in the beginning and have continued to reject ever since. Jesus didn’t, and so He did what we couldn’t do.

Then, after living a perfect and perfectly human life, He made Himself a sin offering on our behalf. He laid down His life in exchange for ours. He allowed all of our sin to be transferred to Him, and then died to bring that sin to the grave with Him. This was imagery and an act the people understood perfectly well. The idea of a sin offering, of an atonement sacrifice, is one with which the people were intimately familiar. That a human would voluntarily make Himself a sin offering, though, went way beyond what they ever imagined anyone would do, let alone do it for them.

The fact that Jesus did it for them – for us – is something Paul makes explicit in the next verse. Jesus made Himself this sin offering on our behalf “in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

The “law’s requirement” was that it be kept perfectly. If the people had kept the law, if they had remained within its spacious boundaries, they would have remained in a right relationship with God. We failed to do that. A lot. Jesus didn’t. He kept the law’s requirement. But He didn’t do it for His own sake. He did it for us. He did it, again, so that this requirement “would be fulfilled in us.”

But all of this work on His part, while intended for everybody, only actually applies to those who are willing to accept it. It is only for those “who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Walking according to the Spirit is something we do by faith. We place our faith in Jesus and what He did for us, we are filled by His Spirit when we do that, and with His Spirit in us, we are able to walk the path of righteousness He walked. We are able to successfully lean not on our own strength to remain on the path of righteousness, but on His; His that is now in us through His Spirit.

So, when we place our faith in Jesus and live according to the guidance and direction of His Spirit in us, then the work He did to fulfill the law’s requirement by becoming a sin offering on our behalf applies to us, and we can live in and with the righteousness of God in the relationship He designed us for in the beginning. That’s good news. That’s the Gospel. If you haven’t received it, I hope that you will.

One last note today: This will be the last post until next week at this time. I’ll be enjoying some time away with the family. Have a great Memorial Day weekend!