8: following in what is fully accomplished.

Let’s pick up where we left off in Romans 8. I am convinced that if we paused to consider what Jesus has done for us, we would live differently. He has already accomplished all that He calls us to be and do. The Christian life is not about you and what you must do. It is about God and what He has done.

… He did this so that the requirement of the law would be fully accomplished for us who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.
—Romans 8:4

Jesus lived a perfect life for us and died a death for us so that everything He told us to do would be considered done. Because of Jesus’ life, God looks at us and says the law is fully accomplished. We can follow the Spirit without the pressure to perform because Jesus has performed perfectly for us. Instead, we are empowered by God’s Spirit to live.

Remember today that you follow the Spirit, and so you have fully met every requirement that God demands.

Of course, many will try to abuse this freedom and inwardly reason “Since Jesus did everything, I don’t have to do anything.” But we who think thus deny the Gospel by our lives, and show the Spirit does not live in us. Jesus told us the SPirit would come and make all that is His become ours; so, to not walk in the pattern of living as Jesus is to reject Him as Lord and Savior. But, to welcome His fully accomplished work for us is to rest and revel in His greatness, goodness, grace, and to rejoice in His glory be shown through our lives. This happens through God’s continual presence, His Spirit in us.

“The Christian is like a man who has the right tune in his head but cannot remember all the words. So when Paul says that love fulfills the law (Romans 13:8; Galatians 5:15), that is not to [declare] that Christians are perfect, but that they live … according to the Spirit.
—James R. Edwards

—Quoted in the Sojourn project, forty: romans eight (to meditate on and memorize Romans 8 over the course of 40 days).