Jehovah’s provision also makes it possible for Christians to fight against the downward trend of the natural flesh under ‘King Sin.’ “I find, then, this law in my case: that when I wish to do what is right, what is bad is present with me. I really delight in the law of God [revealed through the new covenant] according to the man I am within, but I behold in my members another law [that of the flesh subjected to ‘King Sin’] warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive to sin’s law that is in my members.” (Rom. 7:21-23) All Christians have this great struggle between “things of the flesh” and “things of the spirit.”—Rom. 8:4-8.

But in Jehovah’s goodness he has brought on the Christian scene the arrangement of undeserved kindness, so that it “might rule as king through righteousness” and wield a powerful influence upon our hearts when we diligently take advantage of God’s loving provision through Christ. (Rom. 5:21) We become “slaves [inferiors] to righteousness,” which makes it possible to put up a hard fight for clean Christian living and integrity even though the downward pull of the flesh is strong. By Jehovah’s help through Christ Jesus and by means of our strong faith, we are able to come off victorious in this struggle against our flesh. Under this new arrangement we are able to produce abundantly the fruitage of the spirit to Jehovah’s praise.—Rom. 6:17-20; Gal. 5:22-24.

Has this brief study in the Bible’s use of the word “law” helped you to a greater understanding of your position as a dedicated Christian slave of Jehovah God? We hope so.

Like the Early Christians

In the book Church, State, and Freedom the author, Leo Pfeffer, singles out Jehovah’s witnesses as being unique, that uniqueness being due to their following Christ as the early Christians did. Writes Pfeffer: “To a large extent the problem of adjusting the conflicting interests of domestic tranquillity and religious liberty has revolved around the Jehovah’s Witnesses cases. Probably no sect since the early days of the Mormon Church has been . . . as much a victim of communal hate and persecution as Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Mormon’s difficulty lay in their unconventional approach to marriage; except for that one eccentricity they were quite respectable; and once that problem was solved the Church of Latter Day Saints was accepted as an honored member of the community of faiths. Not so with the Witnesses. . . . Their aggressive missionary tactics are reminiscent of those employed by the early Christians, and the reception accorded them by the nonbelievers is likewise reminiscent of that visited on the early Christians.”

Christendom and the Bible

During his New York crusade evangelist Billy Graham, speaking for Christendom, said concerning the Bible: “The Bible is the world’s best-seller. Almost everybody has a Bible in their home. But very few of us know anything about the message of the Bible. We don’t read it. We don’t study it. We talk about it. We have it in our homes. We have it on our pulpits in the churches. But we don’t know what the Bible has to say.” Punctuating Graham’s remarks was a news item from Arcadia, Kansas, that appeared in the Fresno (California) Bee of September 26, 1957: “An Arcadia woman opened her family Bible and found the deed to her family home for which she had been searching fruitlessly since 1937. It was just where she left it.”