If you are going to cite Romans 6:14, make sure you keep it in the context of the whole chapter, at least. Paul talks about how grace does not set us free to break God’s Law. Rather, grace is a much higher standard.
Jesus told Nicodemas that flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit — that’s the Two Realms doctrine. Your flesh is not the real you; it’s just the baggage you carry around in this mortal existence. For now we see “in a mirror darkly” — the flesh seeks to blind us to what the God says to our spirits. When we ditch these mortal bodies, then we shall see “face to face”.
Your flesh is under Law. If you live in the flesh, then you are under the Law. If you are living in the Spirit, then you are under the far more demanding boundaries of grace. Thus, the code of Biblical Law is not really good enough, but it will get in the right place. It serves at a minimum to make you conscious of fleshly fallen nature, so that you will sense the need to seek His favor. The Biblical Law stands as God’s gift to mankind.
Christ walking in the flesh was still the Law personified, an improvement on the original gift of revelation. Following Him is better than keeping the written Law, because He is a higher Law in Himself. At the same time, He demonstrates that the written code of law was always far more demanding than most flesh could grasp in the first place.
You see, if you really want to understand the codes of Moses and Noah, you must understand them from the heart. You come under a legal obligation to submit your heart to God. Not the western heart of sentiment, but the ANE heart of moral commitment as a feudal servant of God. Western minds cannot comprehend this, because the western mind is hostile to the claim that there is anything above the intellect. So to be western is to be hopeless outside the even the Law, never mind grace.
The Law is the gateway to grace. It was so when “the Law” was Moses for Israel and Noah for Gentiles, and it’s still true now that “the Law” is Christ. You are obliged to fall on your face before Jesus as your feudal Master before you receive the touch of grace in your heart. That fancy phrase “saved by faith” means feudal submission to Christ — “faith” as a word means commitment, submission, trust, obedience.
The entire human race is obliged to the Law of Christ before they can claim the blessings of spiritual birth. In practice, there’s an awful lot of church folks who appear to be caught between spiritual death and birth. I refer to that as “spiritually stillborn” — they were brought into the Spirit Realm, but have never moved or acted spiritually alive. That’s what Paul is talking about in Romans 6: Don’t cling to the fleshly existence when you are supposed to be born into the Spirit Realm. If you think the Law was tough in the flesh, grace is even tougher in the spirit.
“Western minds cannot comprehend this, because the western mind is hostile to the claim that there is anything above the intellect.”
It’s hard communicating this to people without the trappings of a cult, or at least what the popular definition of a cult is. The idea of following a person absolutely, as opposed to an external ideal or a form of social cohesion–politics, family, your friend group, yeah…even religion–is anathema. I’m not really lamenting it, because it’s what I expect as a response.