EXPOSITORY THOUGHTS ON ROMANS CHAPTER 7

(Quotes from Scripture are taken from the NEV)

  1Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? 2For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 3So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

Now this is not intended for doctrinal teaching on Christian marriage.  Paul is using what he and to those who are familiar with the Jewish law.  He is using the principle of marriage to give a useful example of what he is teaching about the Christian believer's obligation to the Law.

He teaches that the Law has authority over a person only as long as he is alive.  Once he is dead, the Law loses its authority.  The Law is not for dead people lying in the graveyard, it is for people who are still living.   He gives the example of a married woman being bound to her husband as long as he is alive.  Marriage is "unto death."  After death, there is no more marriage.  The wife of a dead husband is then free to remarry anyone she chooses.  She is not bound to the dead husband.  But if she decides to marry another man while her husband is still alive, she violates the law of marriage and is seen by the law as an adulteress.

Now it must be made clear that Paul is not even thinking of divorce and remarriage here.  Many strict and legalistic Christians have used this Scripture to try and prove that a person who is divorced and remarried commits adultery.   If Paul were to be questioned about that, he would tell us that he is not teaching on that;  he is teaching about the believer's obligation to the Law of Moses, and what he is saying about marriage is just an example, and not to build a legalistic doctrine on it.    All he is teaching is when a married woman is bound by the law of marriage and when she is free from it.

 4So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. 5For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. 6But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Now Paul declares to his readers that they have died to the Law through the offering of Jesus' body on the cross.  This means that we do not belong to the Law any longer;  we belong to Jesus, who was raised from the dead.  There is a purpose to what has happened.  We are to bear fruit for God.  It is therefore implied that if we remain under the Law, we will not bear fruit for God.   Those who are controlled by the sinful nature cannot bear fruit for God, because what they do would not be accepted by Him.  He would reject their works as He rejected the offering of Cain way back in Genesis.

He says that it was the Law that aroused the sinful passions in our bodies, so that the fruit we bore was for death.  This is how he links the Law with death.  It is not that the Law is bad in itself.  He says in another place in this book that the Law is good.  It was instituted by God Himself.  The Ten Commandments were written on the tablets of stone with His own hand.  They were the only examples of God's own handwriting.

But it is the effect that the Law had on us when we were still in our sins.  We didn't know that we were in sin until we came into contact with the Law.  Once we were confronted with the requirements of the Law, we became aware of our own sinfulness, and because we then knew that what we were doing was sinful, we became accountable before God for it.    There is only one pathway for a person, in his sins, under the Law, and that pathway leads to death.

But when a person dies, he is released from the requirement of the Law.   The Law is only effective while a person is alive.   The death that the believer dies happens before his physical death.   It is a "death" of identification with Christ's death on the cross.   When a person accepts Christ as Saviour and Lord, he identifies with the sacrifice of Christ's body on the cross.  As soon as that identification is made, God sees the person as "dying with Christ".  It is that death that releases him from the requirement of the Law.

Now, we do not serve the requirements of the Law, because the Law is no longer our master.  But we still render service, we do not become independent, nor do we start serving ourselves and our own interests.   We still cannot just do as we please.  We have a new master.   

We have a new way of serving as guided by the Holy Spirit.  We leave the written code of the Law.   Now this is important for those who are trying to exact the New Testament scriptures as new laws for Christians.  The New Testament was never meant as a law book.   If it was, then Paul would be talking nonsense when he talks about serving God in the way of the Spirit and not according to the written code, because believers would still be expected to serve God according to the way of the written New Testament scriptures.

We have a movement among Christians who see the New Testament as scriptures that have to be obeyed to the letter.  Many of them use the King James Version as their standard, and force believers under their leadership to adopt the literal text as strict rules for them to follow.  This is right against what Paul is saying in Romans.  Christians are not to serve God according to a written code, even if it is the printed New Testament.   If Paul designed his letters as laws for Christians to follow, then he would be "two-faced" when he says that we do not follow a written code, then expecting believers to follow his written principles to the letter.

So how do we view the New Testament then?    We are to see it as a guide to the way the Spirit would lead us to live a holy life.   It is for each individual believer to study and to assimilate into his or her own life and experience according to the way the Holy Spirit leads.    It is not for believers, even those in leadership to say to others, "This is what the New Testament says, no do it without any argument or questioning."   For leaders to do that to their followers is to force them to follow a written code;  something which Paul is not recommending here.

7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." 8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

The Law is not sin.  It was designed by God for a particular purpose.   The Law is our tutor until we came to Christ.  Once we accepted Jesus as Saviour and Lord, the Law is fulfilled and set aside.   The guidance of the Holy Spirit takes over from the guidance of the Law.    The purpose of the Law was to show us our sinfulness and the extent of it.  Paul uses the example of coveting.  What might have been seen as natural and appropriate behaviour is revealed as sinful because the Law says, "Do not covet."   Adam and Eve did not know that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was prohibited to them until God told them not to touch it or eat the fruit of it.  Once they had received the rule, they knew it was wrong to eat the fruit of the tree.

The desire to sin does not come from the Law.  All the Law does is to show us that we have the sinful desires.   This is how Paul can say that it was sin that produced in him every kind of covetous desire.   This may have been his own experience;  but we can say from our own experience that sin produced in us all kinds of desires that made up our particular sins.  It doesn't matter what desires they are because they all come from the same source - sin.   Sin can be defined as everything and anything that would lead us away from the Lordship of Christ.

Without the Law, sin is dead.  Something that is dead has no effect on us.  We are not obligated to it.   Paul points back to a time in his own life when he was alive, and by implication sinless when the Law did not have an influence on him.    He is reflecting the experience of Abraham who was never subject to the Law.  It can be argued then, that Abraham was sinless and alive to God, because there was no Law in existence that could have declared him guilty.   He was of course subject to physical death because he was infected with Adam's sin in his physical body.   Also, he was spiritually dead because that part of him would have been non functional because of the effects of the Fall.  At the Fall, everyone's spirit died.   Therefore, Abraham's experience of God would have come through God revealing Himself to him through his senses.  For example, his knowledge of what God was going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah was through the visit of angels.

But as soon as Paul read the Law of Moses, and realised that he was sinful, something in him died.  What actually died was his sense of innocence.  Then he become accountable to God because he now knew the difference between good and evil through what the Law showed him.   Then he realised that he was spiritually dead, and had the experience of sin springing to life in the members of his body.

So, what was supposed to bring life. actually brought death because no one was able to keep the Law in its entirety.  Jesus demonstrated how hard it was to keep the Law perfectly in his teaching about men looking on women with lust in their heart.  These men may not have committed the physical act of adultery, but because they looked on women with lust, they had already committed adultery in their hearts.  Therefore they were breaking the Law in their hearts even though they had not done the physical acts.

There is a way to use the Law to bring life and the acceptance of God.  A person has to keep the whole Law all his life without one single fault.   Break just one small component of the Law disqualifies a person from life in God.  He does not discriminate from one sin and another.   The sin or murder brings spiritual death, and in the same way the sin of looking at another person's new motor vehicle with a desire to have it will bring spiritual death in the same way.  There are no "small" or "big" sins with God.  Sin is sin, and it brings spiritual death.   This is the futility of church leaders kicking someone out of the ministry because he ran away with his secretary, or not admitting another person to the ministry of their church because they are divorced and remarried.   If they do that to those people, in order to be consistent and non-hypocritical, they would have to give the same restrictions to men and women who lust after the opposite sex in their hearts, or those who got sinfully angry at others because of real or imagined offences.

Of course, if a church organisation has a code of conduct for their ministers and a minister violates it, then there is a natural process of discipline that is followed.  Paul would not disagree with that.   What would be contested however, is a person who has done something serious in the past, possibly before they became a Christian, or as a younger believer before entering the ministry.  It would be hypocritical for a leadership to say that these people could not minister in their churches because of past wrongs repented.   Also, if a minister commits adultery, or murders someone, then they should step down from ministry and be disciplined, but after the sin is dealt with and the person repents, and in the case of murder, pays their debt to society, that person should be considered again as a suitable candidate for ministry.  If the leadership will not do that, then the leader who has never sinned in his life should be the first to vote against the candidate being admitted to ministry in the church.

11For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

So, a person trying to keep the Law, believing that it would lead to life and the acceptance of God, is deceived by sin which is activated by that very Law, and then uses the Law to put the believer to death spiritually.   The Law is holy because it is of God;  and the commandment of God is holy, that is, without corruption; righteous, that is, totally acceptable to God; and good, that is, having a beneficial effect on all those who respect it and know how to use it rightly.   Therefore it was not the Law, which is good, that produced spiritual death in Paul (and by implication, us).    The purpose of the Law was to help us recognise sin for what it is, and what effects it has on our spiritual life.

14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So this is something that we now have come to know: that the Law is spiritual, designed by God, and totally acceptable to Him.   In comparison, we are unspiritual, sold as slaves to sin.  Paul is saying this to describe the comparison between the holiness of the Law and the bondage that his physical body is to sin.   He sees that there is a principle within him which he recognises as his sinful nature.  We all have this sinful nature in us.   This puzzles us, because we find it so difficult to understand that even though we have given our hearts and lives to the Jesus to be our Saviour and Lord, we don't do things we really want to do;  and we find ourselves doing things that we hate, because we have seen and experienced the blessings and the glory of God in Christ.   It is as if we are impelled to do things that are against our spiritual will.

Therefore if, in our hearts, we don't want to do what we don't really want to do, then we agree with the goodness of the Law.  We approve of the Law because in our hearts we want to follow it, even though we find that we are unable to.   Therefore the real "I" is not our physical body, therefore the real "I" is not doing what our sinful body is making us do, so that we can truthfully say when we break the Law we are not actually doing it, but it is the sinful nature inside of us doing those things.

This is the conflict that is within us while we are living in this sinful body:  we have the Holy Spirit living in us and He is guiding us in the paths of righteousness;  and we have our sinful nature inside of us tending us toward sinful acts.  To a person who does not have a clear view of what Paul is teaching in the book of Romans, there would be a conflict about whether it is him doing the sinful needs or not.   Paul is clearly implying that it is not the real "I" that is doing the sinful acts, but the sinful nature within him.   When a person accepts Jesus as Lord and Saviour, the real "I" then is born again of the Holy Spirit and becomes a new creature in Christ.

It is the real "I" that has the desire to do good, but there is not always the power to direct the body to carry these desires out.   We find that in many cases, we do things that are inconsistent with the holy desire that has been built into us from the Holy Spirit.  We do evil when we would rather do good.  It is this realisation that shows that we are genuine believers and that we are not dominated by sin.   We are resisting the sin which is the occupying force in our sinful bodies.   Just as an occupying power governs a country, there is a guerilla resistance coming against it all the time.  The difference between a sinner who is unacceptable to God and a true believer is that in the true believer there is the guerilla resistance.   This does not exist in the unregenerate sinner.

Although a person may come close to sinless perfection in the eyes of those around him, he will never come to that point in the eyes of God, for reasons already discussed earlier in this chapter.   A person can appear perfect outwardly, but God looks deeper and can see the hidden desires and leanings toward sin in everyone's heart.  If a person was able to achieve sinless perfection in every area of his heart, mind and body, then he would not need Jesus to be his Saviour and Substitute.

Some have used this passage as an excuse for continuing to practise his favourite sins without any attempt to turn away from them.   Paul is quite clear that we do not willingly continue in sin just because we are free from the Law, and he certainly would not approve of using the conflict between sin and holiness that every believer would have, as a reason for willingly continuing a sinful life.  Although sin still occupies our physical body and senses, we have a fifth column resistance engaged in fighting against it for the rest of our lives until at least we are free of our sinful body and its associated conflicts.

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The summary of the condition of every believer is this:   There are two laws at work within a believer's being.  There is the law of Christ written on his heart and this gives him the desire to do the good things that would being honour and glory to God;  but there is another law of evil inside of him as well.   In the believer's innermost being he delights in the Law of God.  This is the evidence that his spirit is alive to God.   But he recognises that there is this other law in the members of his body, battling against the law of his mind, or his innermost being.  This makes him feel like a prisoner in his own body.   The brain is a part of the sinful body.  Many of the sinful impulse reside there.

He concludes that in his present state, he is a wretched man.   The conflict within him of good and evil brings him unhappiness and misery at times.  This is the big difference between a believer and a non believer.  The non believer does not sense any conflict.  He sins without any problems.   In fact, he will defend his sinful ways as something that is natural to human beings.   The world glorifies sin and makes it attractive to non believers;  but for the Christian it brings heartache and sometimes despair.   Paul is merely reflecting the state of every true believer close to despair over the impulses of his sinful body hindering the true expression of his love and devotion to the God who sent Jesus to die for him.

He looks for a rescuer;  someone to deliver him from the bondage of his sinful body.  He is like the Ancient Mariner who accidentally killed an albatross.  In punishment, he was made to have the dead albatross hanging around his neck.   The image that Paul was seeing was that in Roman law one of the penalties for killing someone was to be shackled to the corpse of the murdered person.  Just imagine what it would be like for a person to have the rotting, stinking corpse handcuffed to him.  All he would want to do would be to escape the horror and the stench of it.   This is how we feel about our sinful body at times.

We have a deliverer:  God Himself.   He has set us free from the spiritual consequences of having a sinful body through the substitution of Jesus on the cross.   He took our sin upon Himself and died the spiritual death that was our punishment, so that we could be set free from our sin and made acceptable to the Father.   We accept that deliverance by faith.

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

So, in the light of his experience, and the knowledge that in Christ, he is justified by faith and is acceptable to the Father, he sees his physical state while still living in this world realistically.   He sees the two laws in operation within him.   But this is not the end of things.  There is more to come.

[End of Chapter 7]