8:2
“For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death”. The “set you” here may actually be “set me”. Paul is not presenting theological theory here, but a living reality, one he experienced in his own life. There are debates about whether it should be “law” or “Law”. I don’t actually think it really matters, for as I have said before, being set free from the Law does not mean that the moral requirements of the Law no longer apply. Rather it is the way of trying to please God, the principle of living by the Law goes as follows. God gives us His requirements and we are told to fulfil them, we are then left to our own devices to rey and do that. The inevitable result is failure, as explained in chapter 7. The gospel presents a new way of serving God.
8:3
The Law was powerless to improve things. Largely because it was powerless to improve us! The Law could tell us how we should live, but it could not change our fundamental nature, which is a sinful nature. The Law was “weakened by the flesh”. So was the Law a failure? No. It was never intended to be the means of salvation, for God is quite clever and knew full well that we could not live up to its demands. So why did God bother with the Law? For there is an awful lot of the Bible taken up with the Law, and many centuries spent with Israel periodically trying to live by the Law, and spending an awful lot of time disobeying the Law. I believe there were two purposes to the Law. One was to demonstrate our need for the salvation of the gospel, salvation in Christ. The other is that it acts as a restraint. It limits the effects of our sinful nature. Marriage is an example of this. Even not so good marriages benefit individuals and society.
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