Union with Christ: Ro. 7:1-7

Romans 7 concerns the believer’s relationship to the law. Now, as I stand here, I am aware that there are at least five major, conservative views of the believer’s relationship to the law. I am also aware that is is likely that at least four of those views are held by people in this room! So, here is my hope. I want us to examine carefully what we see here in Romans 7, but with a specific purpose in mind. The role of the preacher, and of preaching, is to do more than simply think deep thoughts about theology; it is to help us bring our theology to bear in our lives. To that end, my hope is for us to think more about how Romans 7 encourages us towards godliness and holiness, beginning this week with verses 1-6.

Along the way, some powerful statements about the role of the law:

Romans 3:19 ESV

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

Romans 3:20 ESV

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Romans 4:15 ESV

For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

Romans 5:13 ESV

for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Romans 5:20 ESV

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

We have also seen that God’s righteousness must be revealed apart from the law:

Romans 3:21 ESV

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—

If we, like Paul, get grace right, we will be accused of being lawless. The long word for this - antinomian, or “against law.” The fear is that if we tell people that God’s grace is free, and is not based on our obedience, then people will simply disobey, because they have lost all motive for obedience.

Enter chapter 6, where Paul gives two powerful illustrations to prove that is not the case at all!

You are dead to sin, and have been raised to new life in Christ! How can we continue to live to do something we have died to?

You are a slave of righteousness. The redemption of Christ has purchased men for God, and we are to be slaves to God in a glorious, liberating, life-transforming slavery!

So, Romans 7. Paul’s desire here is to show the proper role and function of the law as it relates to the gospel.

Paul begins by giving us another illustration of what happens to us at salvation, and that illustration simply must serve to help us understand the role of the law in the Christian life. A continued response to “shall we continue to sin?”

His illlustration? Marriage. Paul’s additional response here, to help us understand that we should not continue to sin since we are under grace?

We are married to Christ, to bear fruit for God.

1. The Old Relationship is over (1-3)

Romans 7:1–3 ESV

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.

The first statement can seem a bit obvious: the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?

well, duh! No one serves court summons at funerals. Why? Because the law is no longer binding on the dead!

Now, Paul will begin to explain a bit more about what he is saying here by giving an illustration to help us understand what happened to us in Christ.

The position of the woman, who is bound by law to remain married to her husband.

In other words, so long as we live under the first Adam, in our flesh, as Paul will use in verse 5, we are bound to the law! The law is our husband, our taskmaster, and it exacts its burden on us.

The Jew by this time referred to the law as his “yoke;” it was his to carry, his responsibility to obey, but who could obey it? We saw this in Romans 3: no one!

The law didn’t save anyone, ever! And that’s ok! We shouldn’t despise the OT law, we should look at it rightly. We never despise a fish that doesn’t climb a tree.

But what was our relationship to the law like? Romans 7:5

Romans 7:5 ESV

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.

It “aroused our passions.” Our former husband created more awareness of sinfulness. We will talk a lot more about this next week. Paul spends some time on this concept next passage, so we will hold onto that until then. But Paul likens our time under the law to being “in the flesh.” We were married, as it were, to the law, and yet were unable to keep the law!

Romans 3 - the whole world stands guilty, and bears that guilt. And until something changes and that person is freed from slave master death and husband law, they will continue to bear the load of guilt and shame from their own inability to live up to their internal moral standards, much less the perfectly righteous external standard of God’s law!

But there is only one way out of this relationship: death. We are married to the law, and our vows are clear: till death do us part.

There must be a death! Romans 6:5

Romans 6:5–8 ESV

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

We are dead to sin! And since we are dead to sin, we are no longer bound to the “marriage vows” of the law! And that is precisely what Paul begins to explain next! Once this old relationship was ended, a new one was started!

2. We have a new relationship! (4-6)

Romans 7:4–6 ESV

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. 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.

We have died with Christ, so we have died to the law. What does that mean? This is why Paul’s illustration is so important. Just like, when one spouse dies, the other is freed from their marriage vows, and is free to marry another, so the death of the old us through the body of Christ means that, when we are raised to walk in newness of life, which happens as soon as we get our new hearts, we are married to our new husband, Christ!

But there is no spiritual singleness. When we are in the flesh and unconverted, we are bound to the legal obligations of the law, and unable to keep these obligations, both at the same time. When we are in Christ, we are bound to Christ, for all eternity, and are His forever! But there is no point in which we are just floating around on our own, we are always bound. Our will is bound by sin, which is aroused by the law, or our will is bound by Christ, but we are always spoken for!

Christian, Paul is saying you are married to Christ! Now, think for a minute about what marriage is, and what you are committing to, and it will blow your mind what this means for us spiritually:

We are in a relationship with Jesus that is both deeply personal and deeply binding. As the husband of His bride, Jesus has promised that He is always with us, will always keep and protect us, and that He will never leave nor forsake us! Likewise, when we are in Christ, we are bound to Him!

We are in a relationship with Jesus that leaves no part of our lives untouched. Marriage changes everything; that’s why it should never be entered into lightly! There isn’t a part of your life that marriage doesn’t change. This is true not just of our relationship with our physical spouse, but it is also, and I would say even more true of our relationship with Christ! Every part of our lives will, must be affected by this relationship, from work, to entertainment, to recreation, to life goals, to politics - every aspect of our life is affected by our relationship with Jesus!

Marriage involves commitment. The eternal God of Heaven and Earth has committed Himself to you, Christian. Jesus Christ is eternally committed to you!

Marriage involves both gain and loss. When you get married, you can’t just come home and play video games all day, or go out and work in the garage on your own projects all the time without dire consequences to the relationship. Marriage is work. It involves gain, but also loss. But it is so, so worth it. Jesus: “he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” How? Denying self, taking up cross and following Him, so that we may gain! And when we do this, we find that we gain far more than we feel like was lost. But all these things are in response to Jesus, the Divine Husband, the Divine initiative taker, who purchased us, bound Himself to us, and has saved us! This work of denying self isn’t what saves me; it’s what I do in humble, thankful response to being saved!

Marriage involves permanence. As His, we gain love, closeness with the Father, access to the Father. the acceptance of the Father and a definite security that, no matter what else is lost in my life, I will never, ever lose the most important thing - my relationship to Jesus Christ! Why? Because Christ, my husband, has bound Himself to me. And my response to this is to bear fruit for God.

3. We are supposed to bear fruit for God.

Romans 7:4–6 ESV

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. 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.

Now imagine if you will that you meet a couple who is married, and after several conversations with them it becomes clear to you that the entire reason that the wife is married to the husband is because he is rich, powerful, gets her what she wants all the time and has committed to protect her. But she is cold towards him, constantly flirts with other men, occasionally is just gone for months on end with no explanation, and never really takes the time to talk to him. Would we call that a healthy marriage? of course not!

and now, we can get to the heart of what Paul is teaching us! We have been crucified with Christ, then resurrected with Christ, and then married to Christ, so that we can bear fruit for God! This is the way things are supposed to happen. It is the regular process of conversion! We are saved, we are set apart, we are married to Christ, we bear fruit. That’s how things are supposed to go!

Paul begins explaining this by reminding us of what used to happen with the old man. Before The Lord saved me in 1998, it wasn’t that I wasn’t bearing fruit; it’s that I was bearing the wrong kind of fruit for the wrong master.

I was bearing wicked, sinful fruit. What did that look like? I think Paul gives us a great description in Galatians 5:19-21

Galatians 5:19–21 ESV

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

you see what he says here? What an exclusive statement: those who practice these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. That’s pretty cut and dried. Why? Because a tree is known by its fruit, and these are the works of a dead tree bearing fruit for death.

But we have been saved, and set free! We are a different creature, with a different master, a different husband, and we should bear a different fruit! What does that look like? Well, again I think Paul gives us a good description in Galatians 5:22-24

Galatians 5:22–24 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

And so we can, and ought to bear fruit for God.

That’s the beauty of verse 6. We are freed from the law. We are released from that which held us captive. But we serve. We respond to our salvation that has placed us under a joyous obligation. We have been freed to serve. That’s the pattern of God’s liberating work throughout the whole Bible: God frees a people to Himself for the sake of serving Him and carrying out His work in His world.

So, we went from the obligation of obeying the law, to explaining why we are not obligated to obey the law, to ending with a call to obedience! Aren’t we free from the law? Yes! But it is a freedom to obey! The freedom we are given in Christ will result in us bearing fruit for God, which is ultimately obedience to God’s Word!

Think of it this way: even after being saved by grace, I still cannot build a shrine to Baal in my spare bedroom. I cannot, and ought not, covet my neighbor’s donkey or, i guess in my case his sheep, even though that would be a super efficient way to get the backyard mowed. All these things are still at work! I am still supposed to love God with all my heart, and love my neighbor as myself. So what on earth changed?

I can do these things in the new way of the Spirit! What does that mean? It means the why has changed.

It means that my motive for obedience has changed! I am motivated by love. Think about this: why does one spouse sacrifice for the other? Love! Why, at the end of their lives, would a devoted wife give years and years to caring for an invalid husband? Love. The new way of the Spirit motivates our obedience!

Because the why has changed, It also means that I am capable of doing things that I could never do before! I could never hold up under the demands of even one fraction of the law! Think about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. What is a murderer? It’s that statement that Jesus makes, right? “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And that will never happen.

But Christ’s righteousness does, and did exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees! And I do not enter the kingdom of heaven on the merits of my righteousness, I am ushered into the kingdom because of His righteousness!

To live in the new way of the Spirit produces different results! The connecting passage to this tells us so. Romans 6:23

Romans 6:23 ESV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And he responds by dealing with all that negative through a glorious, beautiful, life-giving positive: You are united to Jesus in marriage, and bound to Him forever! And the fruit of that union is that we bear fruit for God! And so, he gives us two illustrations in chapter 6 and one in chapter 7 to help us understand more of what salvation is: we have new lives, new masters, and new husbands! And with these? New affections and desires. And so we obey, but not because we feel some burden; out of love, and joy, and hope.

You are united to Jesus in marriage, and bound to Him forever! And the fruit of that union is that we bear fruit for God!

What is Romans 7:1-7 telling me to do?

What changed about your life when you became a Christian? Friend, if nothing changed, it may be because nothing changed. Jesus Christ has come so that you might have access to the Father through His work. But this access does not come through trying harder to follow the rules, or by trying to live a good life, or by being a conservative, or a Southerner, or being born in church. The only way we can be reconciled to God is through the work of His Son. The only way we can be freed from the yoke of sin, aroused by the law, is by turning from our sin, submitting our lives to the Lord Jesus, and being rescued. Today is the day of salvation, friend: trust in Jesus Christ and be saved.

Christian, a simple question for you as well: what fruit are you bearing in your life? All of us bear fruit. Is it good fruit? When was the last time you simply stood in awe of the fact that you, despicable, inconsistent, wishy-washy you, have been saved, buried with Christ, resurrected with Him and now married to Him? Bear fruit for God. But first, just consider the great work done for you and on your behalf. And that is precisely what today is for. As we observe communion today, would you just sit for a few moments and consider the incredible work accomplished for you by Christ, whose body was broken and whose blood was shed foryou?

LS instructions

Titus 3:3–7 ESV

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.