So New Testament commands have their function, just as the Old Testament commands had their function as a tutor to lead us to Christ. But the commands are not the meat. They are the milk. The Holy Spirit's role is to bring us to a complete knowing of who Christ is in us and how Christ lives as us. When that has been done, He will fulfill the commands through us (Romans 8:4). But it will be His living, not our striving.
Knowing Christ in us - knowing that the gospel is 100 percent grace, that God does it all - frees us from the various labors that bogged us down for so many years. We thought these labors were our part, but we were wrong.
We can quit trying to be good. Our attempt just brings us despair, anyway, because we find out we can't do it. We are free from the facade of pretending that we can pull it off.
We can stop being religious. Jesus wasn't religious. He experienced life from the Father. The religionists wanted to kill Him, and did. We have as much religion today as they did back then. If we don't have a complete understanding of the grace of God, we will revert back to religion for our answer. We will use religious activity to say something about us, to make us acceptable to God, ourselves, and others. But when we see that Christ is formed in us, we're no longer religious. If God places us in a certain religious system (and He has with me), fine. But that doesn't mean we have to be religious. God has freed us from that.
We can stop trying to crucify ourselves. The old us is already dead. In the unseen and eternal realm, that's a done deal. But Christians have been trying to crucify themselves for the last 2000 years. As I always say, if you could crucify yourself, you'd crucify the wrong thing. We have something we want to get rid of for God's glory - a personality trait or some other displeasing thing. And He is shouting, "No, no, no, no! What you've got is for My glory. That's what presses you into Me. You want to get rid of it so you'll look good for Me. I will crucify in you what's displeasing to Me, and I will magnify in you your weakness so I can be strong through it."
If God does it all, do we have any role to play? Absolutely. As I said earlier, our part is to be willing. Paul wrote, "work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13). God is at work in us to choose and to perform His good pleasure. Our part is not to do it. Our part is to be willing. Our willingness is expressed as faith or trust. "I am willing for You to be living Your life through me this day, and I am trusting You to do it." Life for the believer operates by faith, not by self-effort.
Sometimes people hear the full message of God's grace and respond, "But doesn't God call us to be obedient?" Yes, there is an obedience God calls us to. Paul called it the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5). You obey by believing. You became a believer through the obedience of faith. You believed that Christ died for your sins. You having died with Christ works the same way as Christ having died for you. In both cases, you have to put faith in an unseen and eternal truth before you begin to see it operate in your life.
The work of faith is not to try to do the dying. The work of faith is to recall that the old you did die and to live out of that fact. We remember and count on the revelation fact. If it's not a revelation fact, then you are striving to get hold of something you think you don't have. There's no guilt in that, because what else can you do than strive for something if you don't know you have it? But the truth is we already have it. In the unseen and eternal, the old us is already dead. The faith life on our part occurs when the circumstances arrive that say, "The old you isn't dead," and we reply, "Yes, he is." But we aren't trying to accomplish it, because how can we accomplish something that's already accomplished?
Paul had another word for this process in Romans. He called it reckoning. Reckon is a banking word. It means you can count on money in the bank when you go shopping. You can write checks because there's money in the bank. Reckoning doesn't put money in the bank. But counting on the fact that there is money in the bank will free you to write checks. After explaining that we have died and been raised with Christ, Paul said, "Even so consider [reckon] yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11).
You are dead to sin. You are alive to God. Reckoning doesn't make it so. It is already so. But reckoning allows you to live out of the fact that it is so.
God says you are a brand-new creature. The old one died. You don't look dead, you don't feel dead, you don't always act dead, but are you going to agree with God or are you going to debate Him? You may debate Him, but you're going to lose the debate. It's not worth it. So in faith you agree with God: "I read that, and it sounds too good to be true, but I'm going to believe that. I'm going to set my face to that."
The truth is that when we first trusted Christ, we were made perfect (Hebrews 10:14). We were complete in Him (Colossians 2:10). But who knew it at that point? So we thrashed about below the line in all of our soul activity, trusting in appearances instead of God's truth. All we ever do is catch up with the truth. Through our trust in God's revelation, His truth becomes our experience.
If we never get to the point where we appropriate truth, we are caught in a flesh trap forever. God has designed life so that our will, which He is at work in, has a role to play. We have to choose to trust Christ in us.
God spoke to me one time about that in Denver. I was playing golf, and I was my usual incorrigible self. I was so disgusted with the quality of my play that I had resorted to using only one club. I drove with it. I hit from the rough with it. I knocked balls out of sand traps with it. I putted with it. I didn't speak to the woman I was sharing a cart with. My wife was ahead of us with another lady. I was just going through the motions, waiting to get the miserable experience over with. On the back nine, my partner looked at me and said, "Jesus sure acts like a baby in you." And I thought, That's God.
I am in charge of whether Jesus looks like a baby in me or not. We must act on what God says, because we are involved with Him in this. We must choose to trust Him. Ours is a covenant relationship, and faith is the operating principle. "I speak to you, and you respond to Me. You trust Me." We are not lost in this union relationship. We are a vital part of it. God invites us to be cooperators with Him.
Humanity was created in the beginning with the capacity to receive the Tree of Life (which is Christ) and then to be an expresser of that life. That was God's original intent. But God purposely created us with the possibility of choice, and we reap the results of our choice. We never escape that - then or now. In God's love, He lets us choose. He says, "If you want to go the way of the world, go. If that's where your love and affection is, you go. But you'll reap what you have chosen."
Does that mean all is not of grace? No. God does do it all. Only He can live the life. And only He can work in us, enabling us to be willing cooperators with Him. But He has left us a role. Our role is availability. We are available to the Lord to live His life through us. What Mary said to the angel Gabriel applies to every believer: "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). That's availability. Mary was willing. God was the one who did it.
Our availability releases God's ability. So we trust the Lord to do it through us.
"Lord, You want to love this person through me. I'm not feeling loving toward them. You do the loving through me. I make myself available for that."
"Lord, I'm feeling bitter toward this person. I choose to allow You to be forgiving through me."
"Lord, I don't feel like serving this person. But You do. You go the second mile through me."
Apart from Christ, humanity isn't going to do that. But that's the nature of the One who is in you. You can say to Him, "You do it. I am willing for You to do the willing. You take over here."
In the unseen and eternal realm of God, things that don't seem to be finished already are; things that don't seem to be complete already are; someone who doesn't yet appear to be mature or full-grown already is. Until we get revelation knowledge of that, we are going to try to accomplish these things by ourselves. Our point of reference is still going to be ourselves. We will keep trying to make it happen until we get a complete picture of the grace of God. Then we will see that it's already done. He does it. He does it all.
From THE REST OF THE GOSPEL by Dan Stone