As we have gone through Romans, it has not been too difficult to follow the general outline of the letter. Paul lays out his introduction in 1:1-17. He then lays out the glorious realities of the gospel in 1:18-4:25. This includes making clear the problem (1:18-3:20), the glorious reality of justification by faith in Christ (3:21-31), and the continuity of justification by faith with Abraham and the Old Testament (4:1-25). When we got to chapter 5, we noticed a shift. Having laid out the truths of the gospel, Paul now moves to lay out some of the results that flow from having been justified by faith (5:1-8:39). He made clear that one result is a sure hope of redemption because we have been made right with God (5:1-11). Another result is that we have been unified with Christ, and – as a result – we gain what comes in Christ: life, justification and righteousness (5:12-21). Last week, Paul continued this theme by pointing out that another result of being justified by faith is that we are set free from the dominion of sin (6:1-23). And our text this morning – Romans 7:1-25 – will continue that same theme by laying out yet another result of having been justified by faith.
With that context, the thing that Paul focuses on in Romans 7 is that the fact that we have died with Christ (6:1-11) means that we are not only freed from sin’s dominion but from the law as well. Paul has made allusions to this relationship between sin and the law along the way. In 3:20, he wrote, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” In 4:15, he wrote, “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.” In 5:20, he wrote, “Now the law came in to increase the trespass.” And, in our text last week, Paul wrote, “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (6:14). All of these brief texts have provided quick glimpses into a truth that Paul will elaborate on in our text this morning.
You see, for all of us as human beings, the knowledge of right and wrong essentially divides the world into two parts. On the one hand are acts of sin or disobedience to the law. On the other hand are acts of righteousness or obedience to the law. So, we either obey or disobey. Perhaps, even as we read Romans 6 last week, we were convicted of our own disobedience and left exhorting ourselves to obey better. It is this paradigm that Paul seeks to shatter in Romans 7. Rather than having sin and the law on opposite sides of the spectrum, Paul places them squarely together on one side of the spectrum as things that condemn us. And the other end of that new spectrum, rather than being empty is now occupied by faith in Jesus Christ. So our paradigm for the world is not disobedience versus obedience but works versus faith. This is the thought that drives Paul in Romans 7. He wants to make clear that one result of having been justified by faith is that we are free from the demands, requirements and condemnation of the law because of Christ’s work. He wants to make clear that we overcome sin not by obeying the law but by faith in Christ. Paul’s argument in this chapter progresses in a rather unusual way. He begins by laying out his main point: we have died to the law through Christ. He then goes on to make clear that the problem is not with the law but with sin. He then closes the chapter by laying out his own personal experience in this realm – a personal experience that actually serves as a paradigm for all people. So, with that in mind, let us look at the text.
Paul’s argument in 7:1 actually seems to pick up from 6:14-15. In those verses Paul made the clear statement that his readers were no longer under the law. This statement, while not quite so shocking to us, would have been incredibly shocking to Paul’s Jewish readers. So in order to make sure he is not misunderstood, Paul must defend this statement. He begins this defense with an illustration. He writes, “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? Thus 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” (7:1-3). Now, we do not need to get lost in the details of this illustration, because this illustration (like every illustration) breaks down if pressed too far. Paul’s point is simply that the death of this woman’s husband changes something for her. While her husband is alive, she is bound to him by law. But when he dies, she is no longer bound by that law and she is free to belong to another. This is Paul’s point in this illustration: death changes the fact that this woman is bound by the law.
Paul then goes on to apply that point to his readers. He writes, “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 not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” (7:4-6). Paul makes clear that, like the woman in the illustration, we were bound. Because of our inherent sinfulness in Adam (5:12-21), the law caused our sinful passions to rise up and demonstrate themselves – with the result that we produced fruit for death. Paul’s point is that because we have died with Christ (6:1-14), we are no longer bound in that way. That is, we are no longer under the perfect righteous requirement of that law. We are no longer under the utter condemnation of that law as it stands before us like a rigid taskmaster and declares us guilty. We are no longer enslaved to that very law that aroused our sinful passions. We have died and, as a result, we are free to belong to another – just like the woman in the illustration. We will come back to the parts of this section that address our “new husband” at the end of this text. It is enough at this point to understand that Paul’s point is that we have died to the law which held us captive. We have been released from its clutches.
As I mentioned before, such a statement as the one Paul makes in 7:1-6 would have been shocking to a number of Paul’s readers. You see, in the minds of many of Paul’s readers (and in the minds of many people today) the law is that which restrains and prevents sin. This is the reason we make laws in the first place: they keep people from doing things they should not be doing. As a result, many of Paul’s readers (and many people today) assume that the way to restrain sin is to follow particular rules and laws. So you can see why Paul’s statement would have been so shocking. Paul seems to picture the law as something that actually increased sin and helped sin hold us under bondage. Is this the right view of the law? Is the law actually a bad thing that puts us to death?
Paul answers this thought with the next section of the chapter. He actually poses the question himself and answers it emphatically: “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means!” (7:7a). So Paul makes very clear that the law is not bad. He will go on to say, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (7:12). So Paul makes very clear that he is not saying the law is bad. But what is he saying?
Paul’s answer comes in verses 7-13 as a whole, and his basic answer is that the law has been hijacked by sin. He writes, “Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” So Paul’s view of the law is that, by revealing to us what we should and should not do, it unwittingly puts us to death because sin uses it to open our minds to all forms of lawlessness.
This concept, though it may seem difficult to us, is really not that difficult for us to understand. We can see it at work in children. Without question, children are creative when it comes to finding ways to sin. But, there are times where it seems that the very command to a child not to do something seems to cause them to want to do it all the more. It is as if it is the command itself that causes them to want to sin. Does this mean the command is bad in any way? Of course not! The problem does not lie with the command or the giver of the command; the problem lies within the child’s heart.
Paul wants his readers to understand that seeing the law as something that is able to restrain sin is making the law into something that it was never meant to be. The problem is not that the law is bad but that the law by itself is just not enough to overcome sin. In fact, the law by itself actually feeds sin because sin uses it to put us to death. Sin uses the very law that was given to reveal God’s will to move our hearts to disobey that will. This is Paul’s point when he writes, “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” (7:9-11). Paul’s point is that the law, rather than having the ability to restrain sin, is actually used as a tool by sin to increase sin’s power. Paul wants his readers to understand the inherent weakness of the law on its own – used for a purpose for which it was never intended. Rather than restraining sin, it becomes a tool of sin to awaken us to more sin. And so Paul closes this section by summing up his idea in 7:13: “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.” The main problem in this whole debacle is not the law but sin. That said, the law is useless as a means of overcoming that problem of sin. It is not powerful enough to do so because it was never meant to do so.
Having laid out that we have been released from the law (7:1-6) and that we needed to be released because the law is a tool of sin to put us to death (7:7-13, Paul moves into an almost autobiographical account of his own struggles with this very issue. You see, Paul understood the minds of his readers enough to understand that they viewed the law as something that could be used to restrain and conquer sin. Paul wants them to understand that he not only understands that view intellectually but that he actually has lived out such a view and found it to be a colossal failure. There is much vigorous debate that rages around these verses about whether Paul is describing his struggle before he was a Christian or his struggle after becoming a Christian. There is no time to hash out the arguments for each side this morning and, honestly, such a debate is not the central issue of the text. Paul is thinking about his own struggles with trying to overcome sin by keeping the law. He is keenly aware of his failures in this struggle; and, in these verses, he recounts again and again his desire to keep the law and his failure to do so because of sin. Paul does not make clear if he is thinking of a past experience in his life or of his present experience because the danger of fighting sin by trying to keep the law can be present in both arenas. No Christian would be surprised to encounter an individual attempting to make themselves right with God by their own law-keeping “good works.” And no Christian would question the assertion that we as believers still struggle with sin and that we often are tempted to fight the indwelling sin in our lives by striving to keep the law better. Either way, to whomever would be reading this, Paul wants to hold up the futility of fighting sin by keeping the law.
Paul begins this account of his struggle by reiterating the goodness of the law and his own wickedness: “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (7:14). He then launches into explaining his own struggle: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 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. 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. 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” (7:15-23). These nine verses are a graphic depiction of an individual who is striving with all that they are to keep the law of God and overcome sin. The problem is that no amount of striving can make this happen. Paul makes clear that he desired to keep the law and was striving to do so. The problem was that while he thought he was destroying the sin in his life, he was actually feeding its very roots. The law that he was striving to keep was actually putting him to death because sin was using it to destroy him. He understood in his mind the reality that he should obey the specific commands of the law, but he was unable to make his members do what his mind knew he should do. Why? It was because of the sin that resided in him. As he says at the end of verse 25, “I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Paul knew what needed to be done but was unable to do it. So, to those of us reading these words almost 2,000 years after they were written, the exhortation would be the same. Paul did not record his struggles just to tell us a bit more about his life. Paul recorded this struggle because it is a universal struggle. As I mentioned before, we inevitably tend to think that the way we fight sin is by keeping the law. And to all of us who would be tempted to think that, I declare to you from the life and words of Paul that such a pursuit is futile. No matter how much you desire to be done with the sin in your life and no matter how much you strive and fight in your mind to make your body obey the law, you will never obey the law. You will fail miserably because the sin that dwells within you will use that law to put you to death. You will live forever defeated and frustrated and stuck in the battle that Paul describes in 7:14-25. And do not be mistaken, Paul never intended for his readers to get comfortable stuck in this struggle. This struggle is not the place that any human being, Christian or non-Christian, should nestle up and relax. If that was the case, Paul never would have written Romans 8, which we will look at next week.
So it is clear that Paul is trying to destroy the idea that sin can be overcome by keeping the law. In fact, sin uses the law to destroy so that we are held captive by both sin and the law. While knowing this reality might be helpful (“knowing is half the battle”), we might be forgiven for asking, “But how do I overcome this? How do I overcome sin?” Rest assured, Paul did not leave his readers without a word of hope. It comes in the midst of his own recounted struggles as he writes, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24-25a). Here is the answer: what was impossible through the law is possible through Christ. Sin is never overcome by keeping the law. It is overcome by Christ. And so, as it regards the personal sins and struggles in our own lives, we never overcome them by keeping the law but by trusting in Christ. Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that once you place your faith in Christ, the struggle with sin ends. Paul exhorts his Christian readers in Romans 8 to “put to death the deeds of the body.” The struggle continues. However, what does not continue is our being mastered by sin and being under its dominion. What does not continue is our condemnation under sin as Romans 8;1 makes clear. Rather than being held captive under sin and the law in such a way that we seem to do nothing but sin (7:14-25), we experience freedom from the rigorous demands of the law and freedom to live in the newness of life that comes through the Spirit.
And that thought takes us back to the beginning of our text. From the beginning, as we saw earlier, Paul made clear to his readers that they had died to, and were released from, the law. But he also made clear that they were not a widow who remained alone after her husband died. Rather, “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 dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God (7:4 – emphasis added). He goes on to say, “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit (7:6 – emphasis added). Here is the answer. Sin is overcome in us through the body of Christ. We are released from the law through the body of Christ. This fact that we have overcome and been released does not mean that we no longer sin. Rather, it means that it is no longer about rights and wrongs and which of those two outweighs the other. It is about faith in Christ and trust that his work was enough to redeem us apart from any law-keeping or labors on our part. It is about new life in the Spirit that no longer focuses on keeping rules and regulations and laws but that produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It is not obeying so that we might be sinless, perfect people but about obeying because we have put on the new self in Christ so as to exalt him rather than exalting the rule of sin.
So, in line with this section of Romans, Paul wants his readers to understand that another result of having been justified by faith is that they are released from the law. They are free from fighting to keep the law’s many requirements. Because of Christ’s death, it is no longer about getting everything right because everything has been gotten right for us. It is no longer about never sinning but it is about faith. So, as we come to the table, we remember the object of our faith. The ultimate goal of our salvation is not that we would be free from sin but that we would love and exalt Jesus Christ. Being set free from the law and from sin is a means to that end. So use this truth to exalt your Savior this morning. Let us rejoice as we remember him together. Amen.