We cannot throw off the law until we put off the nature that is condemned by the law. We cannot say that we are dead to the law until we are dead to the sin that is condemned by the law. So long as we are living in the flesh, finding our life and heart and home in the flesh, then we are still bound to the condemnation that corresponds to the flesh.

Law didn’t start with Moses. Law started with God, and it started as something good, perfect, and wonderful. Before the fall, God’s life and nature WAS the law that governed all created things. I’m not talking about written or spoken rules or commandments. I mean the very life of God—who He was, how He was, what He was, His very nature, life, and light—this was a living truth or reality that never changed, and that acted upon all of His creation, bringing it into a perfect conformity to Himself, a living state of glory.

The gospel comes in power, and that power begins with light. And it is because we do not love this light and turn at its rebukes, it is because we make excuses to follow our own will, and justify ourselves against our own secret convictions, that we know so little of its power. In this way we crush the mustard seed when it is just beginning to sprout. We are unfaithful with little, and so rarely experience more.