Today’s 333 Devotional: “Out With The Old and In With The New”

This was the Apostle Paul’s take when he wrote, “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” (Romans 7:5-6)

The “oldness of the letter” refers to the law. It is what every human being is under who is without Christ, who are “in the flesh,” unsaved, and who suffer the guilt and punishment the law demands, because there is no one who is righteous, and no one who can perfectly keep God’s law, because it is still alive working its purpose, which is to bring to us the knowledge of sin and our guilt before a holy and righteous God (Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:24).

The law is the old way and it is no longer is the way for humanity to approach and appease God. The way now is through a “newness of spirit,” which is the Holy Spirit who brings new life and bears His fruit within the believer, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Therefore, the believer in Jesus Christ no longer is under the legal requirements of the law, the “oldness of the letter,” but is now under the “newness of spirit,” and the forgiveness and grace it brings.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

And so, every believer is under the New Covenant through Jesus’s death upon the cross to finish what the Old Covenant never could, the forgiveness of sin. Therefore, we are to put off the old, and enter into the new.