Twin Towers-Flesh vs. Spirit
Released from the Law: Romans 7:1-6
Borrowing T. E. Lawrence’s term “pillars of wisdom,” I would like to suggest that Romans 7 gives us four pillars of wisdom regarding our relationship to the Law which, if understood, will aid our liberation from sin. Every Christian can experience greater freedom if he or she will make these pillars part of his or her life
First Pillar: Our marriage to the Law has been broken by our death and resurrection in Christ. The Law has no more power over us.
Second Pillar: The Law is good, for it reveals to us the righteous demands of God. It reveals the utter pervasiveness of sin. To the believer this is grace.
Third Pillar: When a believer tries to live a life that is pleasing to God in his own strength, he will fail every time.
Fourth Pillar: That very failure makes him ready for God’s grace
So the first pillar of wisdom regarding our relationship with the Law is that our marriage to it has been dissolved by our identification with the death of Christ. As a result we are married to him and the Law has no claims on us.
Paul describes our new freedom in verses 5, 6:
For 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. But 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.
The second pillar of wisdom is our understanding of how the Law and sin interact in our experience. Here Paul becomes very personal. The marriage analogy was a hypothetical illustration, but now the apostle turns autobiographical
Sin Takes Advantage
Paul begins this autobiographical section by answering an anticipated objection in verse 7:
What 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 it was to covet if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”
The Living Bible expresses verse 7 this way:
Well then, am I suggesting that these laws of God are evil? Of course not! No, the law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known the sin in my heart—the evil desires that are hidden there—if the law had not said, “You must not have evil desires in your heart.”
But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died
Before we came under the teaching of the gospel, some of us were blissfully unaware of the depth of our sin. Then we began to see something of God’s righteous requirements, and our sinfulness became painfully apparent. Now we have become Christians, and life is a continuing revelation of the radical nature of our sin.
Indwelling Sin:
And here we have the third pillar of wisdom defined: A believer who tries to please God in his or her own strength will always come to disheartening, aching frustration—always!
This section of Romans 7 has known centuries of controversy: who is their subject? There are basically three views. The first is that this passage describes a non-Christian Pharisee under the Law (this was the view of the Greek Fathers). The second view is that it describes a normal Christian (the view of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin). The third position is that it describes a carnal Christian. I believe the second view is correct, mainly because Paul continues to write in the first-person singular but in the present tense. It seems most natural to understand this section as Paul talking about what he was then experiencing.
I desire to enjoy Thee inwardly, but I cannot take Thee. I desire to cleave to heavenly things, but fleshly things and unmortified passions depress me. I will in my mind to be above all things, but in spite of myself I am constrained to be beneath, so I, unhappy man, fight with myself and am made grievous to myself while the spirit seeketh what is beneath. O what I suffer within while as I think on heavenly things in my mind; the company of fleshly things cometh against me when I pray