Jesus operating system

Paul wrote Romans chapters 7 and 8 to open up to us the mystery and the paradox of faith. We are aware of two things happening at once – our weakness and his strength. God always present and God always active – but not seen. This requires a life of faith. This is the life to which we are now accountable – to fulfill the destiny of the person we were created to be. Hebrews 11:6.

Romans 7:10 And the wise rules that were ordained to lead to a life of fulfillment in fact led to a life of misery.   

11 For my flawed and defective nature trapped me into reacting to the imposition of those rules and caused the rules to destroy me.       

12 But the reality is that the rules are right and appropriate and the regulations are fair and just.        

13 Does that mean that something that is good and right was designed to confuse and destroy me? No way! The point is this; My flawed nature, in order to be seen as defective as it really is, has had to be shown up in such a contradiction as this; that the good Commandments that were supposed to make me good actually made me look bad and feel bad.

17 Moreover it is not really the essential me that is doing those things but the flaw of a defective humanity that has its home in me.18 For now I fully realize that within that dwelling place of my imperfect humanity there is nothing of any lasting virtue at all. My true self intends to act with the purest of motive and intention, but when it comes to living it out, the capacity just isn’t there.

Romans 8:1. So there is a ‘not guilty for being a flawed human’ verdict understood by every human being who knows what Jesus Christ has done for humanity and who takes this on as the way to live life.

2. Because the Spirit principle of sharing life together with Jesus in his divine existence sets us free from being trapped in the cycle of sin and its deathly consequences.

3. The law could not achieve this result because it was limited to what our flawed humanity could achieve. But God sent his own son who took on this limited capacity of flawed humanity and who lived perfectly within its weakness, breaking for all time the hold that this death-lock had always held upon mankind.

4. So that the right living that the law commanded could now flow freely from us who live a shared life together with Jesus in his divinity instead of a life isolated and limited by its own flawed condition.

We are a flawed human being operating a new and miraculous operating system.

We were once a flawed human being operating a flawed operating system. 

The old operating system demanded performance – if you wanted to please God.

It was all about regulations and it made you look stupid and feel inadequate and ashamed about falling short. The heart might want to please God but the system was weighted against you because error messages would come up all the time and stop your spiritual progress. Guilt and shame outweighed freedom and peace and joy. 

We can be acutely aware of our flawed self. BUT faith says ‘learn to live with your flawed self, but at the same time live with the new operating system of the joined self.

So now we sit at this new keyboard and key in our yielded but limited and often weary life and God graces it with his love and wisdom.

The password is JESUS. It can’t be hacked into by the devil. He uses the other old operating system – he’s a master of it.

This allows for the peace to reside in us and it allows for the love to flow through us and it cares not for the uncertainty. You cannot be certain of the future circumstances but you can be certain of your present faith in the goodness of God to order those circumstances.