Romans 6:15-7:25
Notes
Transcript
Review Chapter 6
Review Chapter 6
Romans 6:1-14 Paul gives the theology behind the fact that is summed up in the statement: “Christ died for us, we died with Christ”.
That Jesus died to atone for our sins. That His death saved our lives, but at the same time, as He died on the cross, in a sense, we died with Him. That when we died, we died to sin and when he rose, we rose to a new life to righteousness in God.
That being saved by Jesus, we are to:
Consider that we are dead to sin but alive to God in Christ
That we are not to let sin reign over us that we obey what it wants and go on presenting ourselves to those sins making us weapons of evil
But that we are to present ourselves to God as His and to be weapons of righteousness
Romans 6:14 “14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”
In Romans 6:15-7:25 Paul will show is the 2 ditches on either side and the middle road we are to stay on
Antinomianism
Antinomianism
15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. 16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? 17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. 19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. 20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. 21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. 22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul is here talking about antinomianism, from an ancient Greek word that is literally anti=against and nomos=law. Dictionary.com defines antinomian as “a person who maintains that Christians, by virtue of divine grace, are freed not only from biblical law and church-prescribed behavioral norms, but also from all moral law.” In other words, an antinomian sees himself as under no obligation to follow any type of moral code. He is completely free.
What Paul is responding to is the idea that since we are under grace, then there is no sin that’s not forgiven so it doesn’t matter what we do or how we think. Modern “easy believism” is less extreme, but says that if I go forward and pray a prayer, it doesn’t matter if my life shows a committed life of Christian discipleship as proof of salvation. That because someone goes to church or went as a kid or for that matter was baptised when they were a youth at Bible School, they can live like someone that hates God, thinking and acting the same, and it doesn’t matter because Jesus “came into their heart”.
Paul answers the question immediately with “mē genoito” or “God forbid” or literally “may it never be”. This is the strongest rejection of the thought Paul could have used at the time. He then goes on to explain more the idea in the first part of the chapter that we were once dead in sin made slaves with sin as our master but now made alive with a new master the Lord Christ Jesus and slaves of Christ.
That the fruit of that life of sin is wicked deeds to be ashamed of and death! Sin is suicide that can be either gradual or sudden.
But as servants to God, our fruit is righteous acts and thoughts, given to God as offerings. Submitting totally to Jesus as Lord leads to eternal life at the end but good fruit now as well.
Legalism
Legalism
1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? 2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. 4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. 6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
Legalism is a term Christians use to describe a doctrinal position emphasizing a system of rules and regulations for achieving both salvation and spiritual growth. Legalists believe in and demand a strict literal adherence to rules and regulations. Doctrinally, it is a position essentially opposed to grace.
Absolutely Paul would be speaking to an audience with Jewish experience of the Rabbis had buried the original Law of God, the 10 law words or commandments under piles and piles of hair-splitting regulations and oral traditions that touched almost every minute of life of the Jew in Israel. This is the burden that would have over time began to feel like a crushing weight that no person would have ever been free from.
Here Paul uses the example of a death in a marriage saying that death sets one free from the law. The woman is free from adultery if the husband dies. The second way to be free from the law is if we die! The woman would not be an adulterer if she was dead. And we have died, with Christ! Paul uses the marriage language to be bound. As he said earlier, and keep saying it to yourself, “Christ died FOR us, we died WITH Christ!”. With that death and His and our resurrection, we are now bound to Christ and not the law.
Being bound to Christ we produce good fruit. Good fruit of “attitudes, aspirations, words and works”! And every one of these to the glory of God!
I have always thought and been taught “the spirit of the law and not the letter” was about what the rule meant to achieve and not necessarily precisely what the law said. Only following precisely the words of the rule left loopholes those of us that wanted to, could wiggle through. “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell the whole truth”. We know the Bible teaches that if it isn’t the whole truth it’s the same as a lie!
But here Paul is referring to the fact that true believers are new creatures more concerned with pleasing the Holy Spirit than following the letter of the law!. Later he will point out the Spirit is actually the ONLY way we can hope to even come close to acting like we are supposed to as blood bought children of God.
Those born in newness of the Spirit are set free from the yoke of the Law.
I do want to also point out this is a very real danger for us today too! There are some that feel so strongly about a non-essential on their conscience they require everybody else to follow. Some even so enslaved to tradition, they try to kick others out of the kingdom who don’t walk exactly the way they do, or dress the way they do, or listen to music they do!
Also, for example, some use tobacco and alcohol as the models of being saved and spiritual. There are dangerous sins in them, but just because a person don’t smoke or drink, doesn’t make them saved or spiritual. Only Christ saves us! Our life comes out of that fact. We try to live and think and act because we are saved, not to be saved!
A Defense of the Law
A Defense of the Law
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. 8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. 9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. 12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. 13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
To this point Paul has been very negative toward the Law, even just now in 1-6 celebrating our being set free from the Law. It starts to sound like the Law bars our marriage to Christ, arouses to sin, causes death, and impedes life in the Spirit. So the sooner we get free from it the better!
Here Paul will start to show the balance of Liberty in the Law he will go on later in the letter to explain.
Question 1: Is the Law Sin? We see his answer again immediately with “mē genoito” or “God forbid” or literally “may it never be”!
Paul explains the law helped him to know he was lost. That without the law, he never sinned (so he thought) because he never cared his deeds were evil.
He also says what we all have known, that like he said in vs. 5, when we hear what we’re told not to do…that’s exactly what we want to do. Original sin in action. Wet paint sign, “don’t touch that to kids” and “don’t look over there”! Concupiscence is lust for or coveting. We all tend to want or want to do those things we can or should not!
The Law condemns us (9-11).
(12) But the Law is holy, just, and good!
(13) Question 2: Did the Law become death to me? “mē genoito” It’s not the Law that puts us to death, its sin!
The Weakness of the Law
The Weakness of the Law
14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
There are a lot of details here that lead to even more questions. Is Paul saying he is a carnal Christian, sold under sin?
Who is the “I”? Is this “I” a lost person? A saved person, young in the faith? Is this Paul as a “carnal” Christian? Old Testament “believers” wanted to keep the Law they loved but they didn’t have the Spirit. So they found it impossible to and kept failing and falling. What I do know is I see all of the above in my experience of life.
Paul writes like a man that understands that struggle. Having the desire to do what’s right and the constant reminder of our failures and sin! Sound familiar? A lost person doesn’t care if they please God. A saved person is heartbroken every time he fails God.
We as Christians are caught in the tension between the ‘already’ of the kingdom’s inauguration and the ‘not yet’ of its consummation.
My job as a dad is to disciple my kids so they act less like me than I have in my life and raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord so they want to act more like Jesus than I ever did! I have said (half kidding) my job is to beat the “me” out of my kids. Christ came and died and saved us (justification)! Unfortunately because we are Adam’s children before we are children of God, sin is in us and even as new creations, it takes time, and the work of the Spirit for God to “beat the Adam out of us”.
As we read this feel the tension and the anguish! Especially starting in verse 21:
One might paraphrase it: ‘When in me there is a desire to do good, then by me evil is close at hand.’ Thus the evil and the good are both present simultaneously, for they are both part of a fallen yet regenerate personality.
(22-23) Two Laws: God’s law and the law of sin. I know in my mind what the Bible says and I want to please the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit! And yet, in my body is the desire to do what feels good and pleases me and that is a constant battle I have to take to the Cross every day!
(24-25) Two cries: “O wretched man that I am” a cry of longing to be what we were created for and “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” by His death I have hope for victory over sin today and eternal life with Him when I’m finally home!
Conclusion
Conclusion
6:16 Being saved out of the life I lived, I have tendency and struggle more with wanting to sin.
7:1 Being saved out of the church growing up hearing right and wrong and staying away from the fleshly sins, you will have tendency to struggle with trying to keep the law so strictly that you:
only see the evil in your flesh and others lives
cast a (judgemental?) look at people like me when we mess up and try decide we’re not Christians and deserve to be kicked out of the kingdom.
We are in the middle of the section of Romans that Paul is teaching us about sanctification. Sanctification is a process over time: Progressive Sanctification
As a Christian, until we get to heaven, we will never be sinless! But we can and should hope to sin less!
More than that, if you are a believer on the path to righteousness through the process of progressive sanctification, you will wage war against sin and it against you the rest of your life until you get to heaven!
But that assumes the fact that if you are saved you WANT to sin less.
Don’t we all want to sin less? Remember in Romans 2:15 “15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)” where Paul is saying that even lost people have enough knowledge of the moral law of God written on their hearts just because they have been created in His image that when they sin, they are conflicted.
We all, every human being, wants a life with less pain and more ease, and since Romans 6:23 says “23 For the wages of sin is death;" (and that’s not just dying and going to hell, that’s broken promises, and broken families, and broken homes, and broken lives) then it follows that less sin is less pain and suffering.
Sanctification after justification leads us to want to BE more like Christ and not just act better!. We want to seek His holiness not just try to follow His rules.
The pursuit of sanctification is not:
Chapter 6: antinomianism: license to sin
Chapter 7: legalism:
These are opposites of each other. Christian sanctification says neither: the law doesn’t matter how I live nor is it a kind of idolatry of the law that makes obedience to the law simply all that's involved in being a Christian.
In Chapter 8 Paul will say it’s liberty. It’s between the 2 that says we are liberated in Christ. Liberty is the middle between license to sin and legalism.
“In the old order we were married to the law and controlled by the flesh, and we bore fruit for death, whereas as members of the new order we are married to the risen Christ and liberated from the law, and we bear fruit for God. We need then to keep a watch on ourselves and others, lest we should ever slip back from the new order into the old, from a person to a system, from freedom to slavery, from the indwelling Spirit to an external code, from Christ to the law. God’s purpose is not that we should be Old Testament Christians, regenerate indeed, but living in slavery to the law and in bondage to indwelling sin. It is rather that we should be New Testament Christians who, having died and risen with Christ, are living in the freedom of the indwelling Spirit.” -Stott