With the same human life

So now anyone who is in Christ Jesus is not judged guilty. That is because in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit that brings life made you free. It made you free from the law that brings sin and death. The law was without power because it was made weak by our sinful selves. But God did what the law could not do: He sent his own Son to earth with the same human life that everyone else uses for sin. God sent him to be an offering to pay for sin. So God used a human life to destroy sin. He did this so that we could be right just as the law said we must be. Now we don’t live following our sinful selves. We live following the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)

God used a human life to destroy sin - but that human life was the Son of God, come to earth with the specific mission of taking our sins to the cross. Does it ever surprise you that God used 'human life' to destroy sin? Jesus experienced what we experience from day to day, growing hungry, weary, sweating from hard work. He didn't just pop onto the scene in all his divinity and take on sin! He lived with us, as us, yet he remained without sin. This gives me hope - hope that it is possible to live on this earth and not give into all the temptation that is surrounding us each day.

God did what the law could not do - it judged us guilty, but in Christ, he judged us free from sin. There is more to this being 'free' from sin that we might not realize. We must live following the Spirit of God, not our sinful lusts and selfish pride. That said, we might not realize that it is even possible to say no to sin - since temptation is all around us, pulling us every which way. Sin isn't some ethereal force we can blame for our disobedience. It is the response of our sinful, selfish nature (human form) to that temptation. Obedience is just the opposite - it is our holy response to resist the even the desire to give into that temptation/

As you might have already discovered, having a 'set of rules' by which we live doesn't make us free of sin. Our pride still exists - even if we remove mirrors, we will still find some way to make a comparison of ourselves with others. Our lusts still exist - even if we say we want to live pure and upright lives, it is hard to avoid all the pulls of our flesh in our own power. We will still want that chocolate bar an hour from now! We need God's help to avoid giving in - our own willpower is never enough. Rules guide us, but they don't make us holy. Only God does that! We need Jesus to overcome whatever pulls at us the most - it is his 'righteousness' that makes it possible to resist sin's pull, not ours! Just sayin!