Chapter 7 continues where we left off at Chapter 6, so before we get there we need to back up a little. In Romans Paul is dealing with some tremendous themes. Jews and Gentiles. Works and Grace. Sin and Forgiveness. Law and Freedom. In Chapters 6 and 7 he is speaking about how we apply the gospel to our lives. He has previously told us who needs the gospel (all of us), what it is (it’s the message of salvation) and how we get it (by grace through faith). He is now explaining how the gospel works.
In Chapter 6 he introduced the idea of ‘dying to sin’. About how the ‘Wages of sin’ are death but that God gives us eternal life freely through Jesus Christ. About how in order to live the life God requires for us the life of the Risen Christ has to overshadow our own lives.
That we cannot save ourselves. Only grace can save us. That the only way to be free from a life dominated by rules and regulations is to die to that life, a life governed by legalism… by the law… and put on the freedom of Christ, a freedom that through His death forgives our sin and through His Risen life empowers us to live.
We will continue to follow Paul’s argument. In the first few verses of chapter 7 he is making the point that when a person dies they are no longer answerable to the law. He uses the illustration of marriage. How a person who was married was free from that marriage if their spouse passed away.
NRS Romans 7:1 Do you not know, brothers and sisters1 -- for I am speaking to those who know the law -- that the law is binding on a person only during that person's lifetime? 2 Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 3 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.
In Chapter 6 Paul had been talking about allegiances. Of how a person was bound by the terms of contract that they made with another. If they presented themselves and conducted themselves according to their self seeking nature, then it would lead eventually to trouble. But if they placed their allegiance to God then it led to them experiencing God’s Kingdom.
Now he talks about a different kind of contract… the legal contract of a marriage. In marriage a person promises and signs off on living faithfully with another person. As long as both the partners are alive, if one of them goes and lives with somebody else (as if they were their spouse) then the law had been broken and they were guilty of adultery. But if one of the partners has died then the law no longer applied. The living partner was free to form another relationship and enter into another marriage or covenant.
This idea of contracts that are broken through death and place us in a position where we can enter a new contract lies behind our next verses 4-6.
4 In the same way, my friends, you 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.
Eugene Petersen transliterates verse 4 “So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to "marry" a resurrection life and bear "offspring" of faith for God.”
In Paul’s theology the two great events of Jesus life are His death and His resurrection. These two events form the backbone of his argument about dieing to sin and living for Christ.
When Jesus died upon the Cross He defeated sin… not His sin, not just our sin, not just sin as individual acts but He defeated the whole system of sin. As a defeated entity sin’s relationship to the law was also destroyed. “When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb”. Or as we have it in our text (verse 4) ‘through the body of Christ’ we have “died to the law’.
Going back to that marriage illustration, the reason we have died to our allegiance, (our covenant, to our marriage) … to the law… is so that we can be free to be married to something else, so that we are “free to "marry" a resurrection life and bear "offspring of faith for God.”
Through Christ’s death, sin (and the consequences of sin), are dealt a death blow. Through Christ’s resurrection, His risen life applied to and overshadowing our lives, places us in a position where our lives can start to bear good fruit for God’s Kingdom. “You 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. “
Another way of looking at it would be to say that because God raised Jesus from death God can bring good things out of our (otherwise) dead lives! That is the thought that is now developed in verses 5 and 6.
5 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. 6 But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
One of the major problems that humans face when given a set of rules is sticking to them. I know that for some of us that school days may be a long while off but am I the only one who remembers that they would go to great lengths to bend rules and push the boundaries?
That if an assignment had to be two pages long and on the teachers desk by 10:00 a.m. then my paper would be just about two pages and be there only as the clock was sounding! Am I the only one who interpreted not running in the corridors as permitting hopping, striding and power walking?
It all takes us back to the serpent’s temptations in the Garden of Eden when the sly snake comes and hisses at Eve…. “Has God really said you shouldn’t eat of the fruit of that tree?” “Hmm. Well I guess there has to be a bit of leeway. I mean I know what was said but what was really meant?”
What we call pushing the boundaries often becomes stepping over the line… one of the definitions of the Greek word for sin. For human nature, rules intended to be boundaries, arouse the worst in us and make us want to push the limits. “I know the speed limit is 30 but I’m sure I won’t get a ticket if I’m going 35 will I?”
Eugene Petersen puts it: “For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious.”
That’s not to say that the law was a bad thing. On the contrary the law was a good thing, but God’s people were very bad at sticking to it. The law was great. It was a road map. It was plain instructions. It showed what God required. The problem was that the way the people lived didn’t match up to the way God said they should live. So rather than setting people free, the law had a habit of illuminating just how badly they were doing! Look at verses 7 -13.
7 What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived 10 and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. 13 Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
In his commentary William Barclay titles this section “THE EXCEEDING SINFULNESS OF SIN”. He suggests that in this passage Paul is laying bear his soul as he deals with the torturous paradox of the law. Paul had grown up loving the law… knew by heart Psalms that declared “Thy Law O Lord is perfect!” And he wants to uphold the law calling it in verse 12 ‘holy and just and good’. He acknowledges that the law code started out as an excellent piece of work.
Yet the fact remained that it was through the law that sin came to be defined. Barclay sees a remote analogy in games such as tennis. If the game had no rules a player could bounce the ball as many times as they liked and hit it wherever they liked and never be accused of a fault. But once the rules were laid down it became clear how many bounces a ball could have and where the ball could be hit. So the capacity for fault became well defined. You can protest as John Mcenroe used to do; “The Ball was in!” but the umpires judgment remained final!
Worse still having defined ‘sin’ the law also produced a strange fascination for it! Verse 8 “But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness”. St Augustine has a famous passage in his ‘Confessions’ where he tells of the fascination of the forbidden. He writes;
“There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears – not to feast upon ourselves but to throw to the pigs, though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in that theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law, in order that I, a prisoner under rules, might have a maimed counterfeit of freedom by doing what was forbidden, with a dim similitude of innocence?.... The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing.”
The divine law comes from God. But there is a different law at work in us. The law of human nature. And that’s the human dilemma! That is why this business of being a disciple can sometimes seem so darn confusing and difficult and frustrating. And if ever you feel like you are having a bad day and can’t work it all out, and can’t do right for doing wrong…then take courage. Paul knows exactly how we feel. Just listen to verses 14-24.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.1 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Here is Paul striking at the heart of the dilemma of every disciple who seeks to wholeheartedly follow Jesus Christ. With the best of intentions and the sincerest of motives there remains a part of us that just doesn’t want to play along… the part Paul defines as ‘the flesh’.
It all goes back to his argument in the very first chapter that, (to use my own analogy) just as through California there runs a fault line capable of causing earthquakes and disasters so in the geography of our souls there lies a ‘fault line’ capable of disrupting our best intentions at the drop of a hat, a fault line we call ‘sin’.
He goes as far as describing our situation as an inner war, a battle that is taking place; v22-23 “For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind “.
In and of ourselves we are stuck. We can’t win. No matter how hard we try we can’t beat this one. And it’s a bad place to be because the wages of sin are death and sin brings upon us the downward pull of experiencing God’s wrath. It’s a wretched situation to be in. That is exactly how Paul describes it!
Read verse 24.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Who can rescue us from this situation? The Good News is this. There is a solution. It is not a solution that lies within our selves. It cannot be because we cannot help ourselves. We have to be rescued by something or some body outside of us. Our salvation can not be through our own works, our own obedience, our own diligence, our own striving, or our own effort.
Our salvation can come in only one way. Through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as being pivotal events that can transform the everyday lives that we live. Jesus Christ is Paul’s solution to the human condition. In verse 25 Paul rejoices that God, in Christ, is able to do what we could never do.
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.
‘The Message’ Bible clarifies verses 24-25;
“I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. “
In chapters 6 through 8 Paul is writing of how the gospel works. He has told us that we all need the gospel, what it is, and how in faith we should receive Christ as our Savior. But how does it all work? It’s a process that relies on God every step of the way. It is something that can only happen in our lives because God has acted in Christ for our salvation.
But there is one missing piece to the picture that Paul does not fully introduce till our next chapter. It is a piece is of vital importance. In Chapter Eight we will be introduced and instructed regarding the work of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
But that will have to wait till next time.