Romans 7 Sunday School
Sunday School
He dies in Christ; and by his dying in Christ his connexion with the Law is dissolved
To this new husband all believers are subject.‡ They feel his authority as the authority at once of rightful claim and of tender affection. They delight in obeying him who loves them.—On him, too, they now depend.
When the connexion with the Law is dissolved, it is dissolved for ever; when the connexion with Christ is formed, it is formed for ever.
It is important to remember, that this new connexion is in perfect consistency with all the rights and claims of the first husband. These claims were altogether just and honourable, and had a right to be fully implemented
This analogy becomes a proof-text to support the spirit of Antinomianism, the idea that the Christian is no longer related to the law of God in any way.
That is not what the apostle is saying. It is not the law that dies, but me!
Whenever we talk about law, we make a distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The letter of the law is the precise written requirement. The spirit of the law has to do with the deeper intent, or motive, behind the law.
We are called to obey the law, not out of a state of spiritual death, but as those who have been made alive by the Holy Spirit. Our whole response to the law, our whole attitude to the law is the attitude of those who have been empowered from within by the Holy Spirit.
So it is through the law that sin is made known. It is not that there would have been nothing evil without a law, but we would never have known what sin was.
That is, nothing is so attractive to us as the forbidden.
We want to be able to possess what we are not allowed to possess, and to do what we are not allowed to do. Deep within each of us there exists a rebellious spirit.
Does he mean that as a child he was born without original sin and there was a period in his life, before he understood the law, that was sinless? No. He is speaking comparatively here. There was a time—from his birth until he was a cognisant, knowledgeable creature—when he did not know actual sin.
My own sinful disposition took the law of God and instead of using it as an instrument for life and righteousness, I distorted it. My sin deceived me and through the commandment put me to death (verse 11)
What was the means that my sin used to kill me? The commandment. It is like a sword. There is nothing evil about a sword. If I pick up a sword and kill somebody, it is not the sword that goes on trial, it is not the sword that is put in prison. So what he is saying is that sin deceives and kills, and the tool it uses is the commandment.
Did 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 (verse 13). There is an irony here. The more I see the commandment, the more I sin; the more I sin, the more I reveal how holy and righteous the commandment is, and how wicked and deceitful I am.
Here is one of those examples, because Paul in this particular passage is contrasting sarx with pneuma, flesh and spirit.
Paul is articulating here something that is very commonplace. We are creatures with mixed desires.
What he is saying is that the real I, the new I, the person that I am in Jesus Christ, is not doing that.
It seems that whenever we desire to do good, we experience the closest proximity to evil. Sometimes it is in our most dedicated moments, in our most precious hours of devotion to Christ, that the most wicked thoughts will creep into our minds.
No unregenerate person delights in the law of God in the innermost self. This statement can only be made by a regenerate person, so I am convinced that Paul is speaking of his present condition. Notice that he qualifies ‘self’ here by distinguishing between the innermost self and the other self, his old fallen nature
Paul is not saying that the soul is righteousness whereas the body is wicked. When he makes this distinction between ‘members’ and ‘innermost’ he is talking about the core of his being versus the periphery of his being.
An unredeemed person may have a broken and contrite heart for the loss of something or for a fear of something, but not a genuine remorse for having offended God. Only the convicted sinner can cry out like that.
Who will rescue me from this body of death? (verse 24). What is this ‘body of death’? We have already noted one commentator’s explanation (comments on 6:6). He tells us that in antiquity there were rare occasions when somebody was convicted of a particularly heinous form of murder, in which one of the punishments was that the corpse of the victim should be chained to the killer. Part of the killer’s sentence was to walk around in this gruesome condition of having to carry on his back the decaying, putrefying corpse of the person that he had killed. You can imagine how that would drive a man insane, not only to be faced with his victim, but chained to his victim while the body was rotting.
Whether or not that is what Paul had in mind, certainly the analogy is an apt description of what it is to be a Christian. From the day that we are born again, we have to carry around this putrefying, dead, old nature with us, that gets in our way and makes us sick and brings us to all kinds of wicked circumstances. The question is, Is there anybody out there who can deliver us from this state of wretchedness? Notice that the chapter doesn’t end there, but immediately after this exclamation of remorse the apostle breaks forth in doxology, in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving. He answers his own question, ‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?’ Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
His conclusion to this section is: 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 (verse 25). Now that is scary. In spite of the fact that a real change has taken place in our lives, that we have been born again to a lively hope, that the Holy Spirit is within us, changing us, we still sin. What are the consequences of that? According to the law of God, if we sin, we die. We must face the wrath of God. So Paul brings us back to the basis of our justification and what it effects.
Romans 8 begins with one of the most triumphant and glorious verses in all of sacred Scripture: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.