two kinds of skeleton

I remember doing a report on spiders a long time ago in junior high school.  One of the things that fascinated me most was the "external skeleton" that spiders have.  It seemed so strange that spiders would wear their bones on the outside!  As I walked this morning and considered the ways that we build structure in our lives it occurred that some of us wear our spiritual bones on the inside and some wear them on the outside.  It can be appealing to have the structure of our spiritual walk on the outside...rules, laws, interpretations all provided by external authority.  This reduces our need to figure out what to do...we just need to do what we need to do.  The people of Israel tried to live with an external skeleton of the Law in Old Testament days but were unable to faithfully obey and precisely follow the structure.  Then the Lord came in the form of Jesus and provided a way for us to have the structure within, in the form of His indwelling presence.  Now, as we walk through our days we no longer rely on outside authority to govern our lives.  We rely on the resident presence of the Holy Spirit to comfort, interpret, and correct.  For we have taken the most trustworthy structure of all time within.  One problem with the external skeleton of the spider or crab or grasshopper is that the growth of the animal is limited by the skeleton and it must be shed to allow continued growth.  Our internal skeleton of God's Spirit permits us to continually grow in a spiritual sense, with no need to shed our structure.

Romans 8:¹¹ The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.