So I guess, with my writing through Romans 5 and 6 at least, I’m going to keep going down that route and make this article all about Romans 7.
First off, in our reading the Bible a little every day, I’ve made great progress through the Old Testament… but because I’m apparently getting myself to write in response to what I’m reading now in Romans, I’ve honestly been reading Romans 7 again and again.. and I think today was the third day I went through it.
Second, I probably held back in writing about this chapter in particular because I know it’s one that’s both really complicated but also close to my heart, as we’ll probably unwrap in the latter parts of this chapter.
Let’s go.
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 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.
What I’m getting from this is that we’ve been placed under the Law, and actually brought so close to it that we’re married to it… and there’s no leaving and going for another partner lest we be called adulterers. Paul points out that as in marriage, the Law is ‘binding on’ us as long as we live in this reality. When we die (because I’m assuming the Law never dies), we are released from it. Paul makes mention of all this before he continues:
Likewise, my brothers, you also 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.
Here we see another aspect to our Salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ – When we tell people that Christ died for us, we aren’t merely saying that He gave His life to save us; No, another nuance to it is that Christ died for us.. to die. In other words, Christ died, so we also died to the Law.
And see here, He didn’t just die for us to die to the Law; He didn’t just die for us to no longer belong to the Law, but also for us to belong to Him. He died because He wanted us, and in order for Him to have us, He needed us released from the Law.
Taking it a step further: Why did He want us released from the Law? Why did He want us to belong to Him? It was ‘in order that we may bear fruit for God’.
So far, so good? Let’s keep going.
For 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. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
Here the ‘flesh’ in mentioned, and we’d like to clarify that, again, this doesn’t mean our physical body, our skin and muscles, more than it means what ‘sarx’ means – (IV) the flesh, denotes mere human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God
While we were living, therefore, in our mere human nature, and the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, we were opposed to God and prone to sin – And as far as the Law was concerned, our sinful passions were aroused and at work in us ‘to bear fruit for death’; In other words, while we were under the Law, our default nature of sin was aroused in all aspects of our being… and as the wages of sin is death (Romans 3:23), so we were destined to sin to death.
So, it seems, more than we are released from the Law, we ‘died to that which held us captive’ – That is, sarx, or flesh opposed to God and prone to sin. Putting it all together, therefore, when Christ died for us, so we died to flesh, and as such were released from the Law.
What then shall 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. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
The Law points out the true nature of the flesh by arousing its sinful passions. It’s not sinful – in fact, as I’ve learned, it’s the exact opposite – the Law is the perfect, thrice holy standard of our holy God, pointing out what is holy, and what is sin.
But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Without the Law, therefore, there would be no standard to say that covetousness (as Paul points out) was sin. Without the Law, we would not know sin – or, rather, sin has no power; But because we were in the sinful sarx and under the Law, all we did have power for was to sin.
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing 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. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
Take note of what was mentioned there: Another aspect to the nature of the Law. It’s perfect and holy, but it is also spiritual. More than merely pointing out what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, the Law points out the spiritual, and that which is of the flesh… and in our case, the Law points out that we are COMPLETELY of the flesh, and therefore points out that we are, as Paul was and points out, ‘sold under sin’.
It points out that which is holy and righteous, and it also points out what is unholy and sinful – much so, that any sin that IS pointed out is ‘sinful beyond measure’.
Again: So far, so good? Let’s keep going, because I think this is where it starts getting hairy. It feels like Paul gets pretty vulnerable here – as we all are vulnerable.
And I feel we’re going to have to go through it with a stronger zoom setting on the microscope.
For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
As mentioned earlier, the Law points out what is spiritual, and what is sinful. As we are still in this world, we are still impacted by the flesh, even if we have a clear understanding of what is spiritual. We want to do what is spiritual (‘what I want’), but we end up doing what is of the flesh (‘the very thing I hate’). Paul laments this, and I believe a huge portion, if not all of us in the body of Christ have the same sad statement: ‘I do not understand my own actions.’
Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
Let us clarify that at the end, where it says ‘it is good’, all translations I pulled up in BibleHub share that ‘it’, in this case, is the Law.
Now with that being said, we could say that the Law has another function: Besides pointing out what is spiritual and what is of the flesh, and what is holy, and what is not holy, it is also ‘good’ – meaning, it is something that we ‘want’; or, it points out what we, in spite of the flesh, really ‘want’ and ‘do not want’. So when we do what we do not want, we, indeed, are acknowledging that the Law points out what we don’t want in the first place, and therefore, that the Law is good.
Gosh, I’m going to have to double check that last one. But moving on:
So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.
Through Paul’s statements here, we could see what the Law does to us: It points out (1) what we want to do, and what we don’t want to do, (2) that sin that ‘dwells within (us)‘ causes us to do the latter, because (3) we are not spiritual, but of the flesh.
For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
We want to do good and to do what is right, but because of the flesh, we only have the power to do evil, because we are of the flesh, and sin dwells within us.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
See the hopelessness of our situation? It’s painful enough to be of the flesh, dwelling in sin, and bearing fruits unto death… But because of the perfection projected by the Law, we are presented with good and righteousness – and even if we WANT to do what is good, the Law could only point out that we only have the power to do evil (‘evil lies close at hand’)…
And Paul gives us another perspective of our hopelessness, in that deep within we WANT to do the Law, but our ‘members’ (melos / mel’-os / Of uncertain affinity; a limb or part of the body: – member) are (1) married to sin, (2) of the flesh and prone only to sin; in fact, we see here just how we are so hopelessly integrated with sin, because not only are we married to it as mentioned earlier in the chapter, but here we also read that our members, our bodies are (3) under the jurisdiction of the law of sin!
Now let’s take a detour from here and go back to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, which Dr. Andrew Farley aptly names ‘The Killer Sermon’. Doesn’t it say there that Christ Himself advised that if our hand causes us to sin, we ought to cut it out, and if our eye causes us to sin, we pluck it out? Is Paul therefore about to suggest that we should cut out our members, being under the law of sin and waging war against the Law of God?
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Stay that knife, and refrain from the amputation of your members! Let us run, as Paul did, to Christ – Let us remember what we spoke of at the earlier part of this chapter, because it is Christ who died, and so we died to the flesh, and we died to the power of sin.
Now, through Christ, we know what we want, and we have died to the power of sin, or doing what we don’t want.
But I still sin! What’s up with that?
The way I understand it here, is that before Christ that was the ONLY option we had, even if we were aware of the Law of God. Before we realized how we STILL sin, ALL we did, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in our eyes, was sin!
Here we see another aspect of the salvation we have in Christ, which we probably should be meditating on more than we should – Because the focus should no longer be on our not sinning anymore, but I believe we should take proportionate time to appreciate the other side of the coin.
For once, we were married to sin and flesh, but now we ought to realize and appreciate that we are now married “to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.”
Once, we were living in the flesh and captive to sin, whose sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.; but now we ought to realize and appreciate that we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.’
When we struggle with sin, let us realize that because of Christ, we have died to the flesh, and no longer have the desire OR the power to sin. Let us realize that because of Christ, we are now alive and WITH Him, serving in the new way of the Holy Spirit, bearing fruit for God.
It is as we’ve always been saying: Sin no longer fits us. It’s the fruit of the Holy Spirit, produced in us, that we were born again for.
That.. was crazy. What did you guys think? Let me know if I made any sense!
Until the next post, God bless us all!
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