By Colleen Tinker
“I never wanted this job,” I said to Richard one day as I was filing statements and keeping track of my mother’s dwindling assets as she approached her death. In fact, as I walked through the cemetery internment and her memorial service last October, I felt daunted as I contemplated the next part of my job as her successor trustee: I had to settle her estate within the next few months.
“I know,” Richard replied, “but this is your job; you are fulfilling your mom’s wishes.”
He was right. In fact, since shortly after my mom’s heart surgery ten years ago when she had resigned from her living trust and designated me the “successor trustee”, I had been responsible for managing her assets for her care. This job had never been something I sought; it had only fallen on me because my mother changed her own involvement and asked that I help her.
Last will and testament
According to Wikipedia, “A will or testament is a legal document by which a person, the testator, expresses their wishes as to how their property is to be distributed at death, and names one or more persons, the executor, to manage the estate until its final distribution…A will may also create a testamentary trust that is effective only after the death of the testator.”
My parents’ living trust provided for their care and left instructions for their heirs that would be fulfilled when they both had died—if any assets were left. Even more, it contained requirements for me, the successor trustee, to perform in order to honor its terms.
Now that my mother has died, when I complete the last obligations dictated by the trust, it will no longer be my legal dictator.
Death is required
Covenants, wills, and testaments are binding agreements between parties. Their terms and provisions are “law” for the parties involved. If one of the parties dies, however, the other party is released from the terms of that law.
As the executor of my mother’s trust, I am the one required to follow its instructions, but her death has set in motion the conditions for its fulfillment. That fulfillment will render her trust obsolete, and it will no longer have any authority over me.
Paul also addresses the issue of a law’s obsolescence when a person governed by the law dies. In Romans 7:1–6 he says,
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
In this passage Paul compares the law of marriage to the Mosaic law. Those who were under the law but who placed their trust in Jesus (believing Jews), he explains, have died to the law through the body of Christ. In other words, Jesus’ death broke those Jewish believers’ obligation to the law. As Jews, they remained under the terms of the Mosaic law until one of the parties to that covenant died.
When Jesus died, however, the terms of the law changed, and those who by faith trusted Him were released by His death from the terms of the law. Their release from the law freed them to be legally bound to Jesus, the risen Christ. Like a woman released from the law of marriage by the death of her husband, thus freeing her to be married to another, those who had been bound to the law were released by Jesus’ death so they could belong to Him instead.
Paul continues his explanation: as long as unbelievers were “living in the flesh,” or were still spiritually dead in sin, the law to which they were bound worked in them so that they bore “fruit for death”. In other words, that law increased and intensified their sinning. The law held sinners captive to their own sin.
Jesus, however, who never sinned, died to pay the price of sin. By dying a sinless death, thus fulfilling the law’s requirement of death for sin, He released those who trusted Him from the obligations and the curse of the law. The law’s terms had been fulfilled in Jesus. Now, those who trust Him are spiritually alive with Him who was raised from the dead.
They died to sin and the law through the death of Jesus, and they have received eternal life through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Now, released from the law, believers serve God in a completely new way. They serve by way of the Spirit, not by way of the written code—the code which Jesus’ death rendered obsolete!
Fulfilled covenants
Death is required to release a person from the obligations of a covenant. Those who enter a legal agreement are obligated to remain loyal to the terms of that agreement as long as they live or suffer the penalty of the law for breech of contract.
The Mosaic covenant was a conditional, two-way agreement between God and Israel. The Israelites were obligated to obey the law in order to receive God’s blessings, and God obligated Himself to bless Israel if they obeyed. Concurrently, however, Israel also agree to receive curses from God if they broke their covenant with Him.
The Mosaic covenant was inaugurated at Sinai with the nation of Israel 430 years after God promised Abraham that He would give him seed, land and blessing, and it was to last until the promised Seed would come (Gal. 3:17–19).
When Jesus came, the terms of the old covenant began to be fulfilled. As the Perfect Israel, Jesus kept the law and honored the Father perfectly—an accomplishment the Israelites as a nation had been unable to do. As the promised Messiah, Jesus revealed through His fulfillments of prophecies and the law that He was the One who would bring Israel their promised rest.
In fact, during His life on earth, Jesus fulfilled—instead of merely keeping—the ritual laws demanding cleansing ceremonies after touching lepers or dead people. Jesus touched both, but instead of being defiled by them, He healed them and brought them life. He broke the Sabbath by healing on that day, but instead of being guilty for trampling God’s rest, He brought spiritual rest and life to those He healed.
Then Jesus died at the hands of the Romans after being rejected by His own people, Israel. He died as a criminal on a Roman cross, but He was an innocent man. In His death, Jesus fulfilled every sacrifice mandated by the Mosaic Law including the ultimate one: the Atonement sacrifice. He shed innocent human blood for human sin and released His people from ever having to offer an animal sacrifice again.
On the third day, Jesus shattered the grave, breaking forever the universal curse of death for human sin. Jesus had fulfilled all the terms of the law, and every part of it was rendered obsolete from that time on!
Now, those who believe in Him and trust His finished work of atonement are freed from the law’s curse of death. We are made alive in Jesus and belong to Him, and we are born again of the Spirit, adopted by God, and made joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:12–17).
Just as the fulfillment of the old covenant required the death of the One who established it with Israel, so my mother’s death was necessary for the fulfillment her will and trust. Also, similarly to the Israelite’s participation in the law, my participation in managing my mother’s trust was not at my initiation. My involvement was set in motion by my mother, just as God brought Israel into the Mosaic covenant. Until she died, I was bound by law to manage her estate for her care, just as Israel was bound by law to carry out the terms of the old covenant until God the Son died.
Now that she has died, my mother’s trust is becoming obsolete and is about to disappear, just like the old covenant (Heb. 8:13). I will no longer be bound by law to a legal document that dictates my obligations. Instead, I will be released from it because it has served its purpose and its requirements have been fulfilled.
Now I understand in a new way what it means that the law has no claim on me. I am in Christ, and His death has released me from the law. The old covenant is obsolete; its terms have been completely fulfilled in Jesus. Now all who trust Him are ushered into a new covenant, a new provision, as heirs of the Father in the Lord Jesus.
The law is obsolete, and we are the eternal recipients of all God’s promises in Jesus! †
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Well said! Thanks for the excellent summary. One thing you did not mention — perhaps because it isn’t the focus of this article — spiritual adultery. Paul is quite clear that while the old ‘husband’ – the Law — is still alive, joining to another is adultery. Trying to combine Law and grace is spiritual adultery!