WELCOME and THANKS for joining us.
INTRODUCTION
- Over the past few sessions, we’ve been going through the Book of ROMANS.
- In this session, we’ll be starting chapter 7.
- The text for our study this session is … Romans 7:1-12.
- Let’s pray.
Our Text
Romans 7:1-12
1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.
4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another — to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. 9 I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. 12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
What have we seen thus far?
- In Romans 6 …
- Believers, through their spiritual union with Christ, are dead to sin’s power and alive to God (Romans 6:8), freeing them to live righteously rather than continuing to sin.
- The believer is no longer enslaved to sin but rather a “slave to righteousness,” dedicating their body as an instrument for God.
- This transformation, symbolized by baptism, is a present reality, enabling a life of holiness and sanctification as they present themselves to God’s will.
- Believers are dead to sin, but alive to God (Romans 6:11) because of their union with Christ in His death and resurrection, meaning they have died to the power of sin. Because of their union with Christ, sin no longer has mastery or dominion over them (Romans 6:14), so they can consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God, embracing this new spiritual reality.
- Given their new spiritual reality, believers are to present the parts of their bodies to do “righteousness” rather than “lawlessness” (Romans 6:18-19). This act of presenting themselves results in holiness and a transformation of desires, leading to a life of obedience and service to God.
- Christians are not under law, but under grace (Romans 6:14), which means they are not under the condemnation of the law but are under God’s grace, which empowers them to live victoriously over sin.
- As believers, we have received God’s free gift of eternal life, by grace … instead of the payment of death that we earned/deserved. (Romans 6:23)
Now that we’ve reminded ourselves of the context … Let’s dive in … and see what we can glean from Romans 7:1-12.
Romans 7:1-3
1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.
According to Barclay …
The basic thought of the passage is founded on the legal maxim that death cancels all contracts. Paul begins with an illustration of this truth and wishes to use this picture as a symbol of what happens to the Christian. So long as a woman’s husband is alive, she cannot marry another without becoming an adulteress. But if her husband dies, the contract is, so to speak, cancelled, and she is free to marry anyone she likes.
Romans 7:4
4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another — to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.
- Christians in Rome (and Jewish Christians, in particular) had a choice as to what/whom they would follow. What is that choice?
- “the law” or “Him”
- What would following the right one result in?
- the bearing of fruit to God
According to Barclay …
In view of that (Rom.7:2-3), Paul could have said that we were married to sin; that sin was slain by Christ; and that, therefore, we are now free to be married to God. That is undoubtedly what he set out to say. But into this picture came the law. Paul could still have put the thing quite simply. He could have said that we were married to the law; that the law was killed by the work of Christ; and that now we are free to be married to God. But, quite suddenly, he puts it the other way, and, in his suddenly changed picture, it is we who die to the law.
How can that be? By baptism, we share in the death of Christ. That means that, having died, we are discharged from all obligations to the law and become free to marry again. This time we marry, not the law, but Christ. When that happens, Christian obedience becomes, not an externally imposed obedience to some written code of laws, but an inner allegiance of the spirit to Jesus Christ.
Romans 7:5-6
5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.
6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
- What do you think Paul is doing in these two verses?
- Contrasting two times in the now-believers’ lives
- Why do you think that?
- By the phrases “when we were” and “but now”
- What is the comparison/contrast between?
- life before deliverance with life after deliverance
- What were the believers doing when they were in the flesh?
- bearing fruit to death
- What were they now able to do (after being delivered from the law)?
- serve in the newness of the Spirit
- What is the cause of the change in lifestyles?
- The Spirit in the believers
According to Barclay …
Paul is drawing a contrast between the two states of man — without Christ and with Him.
1) Before we knew Christ we tried to rule life by obedience to the written code of the law. That was when we were in the flesh.
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- By the flesh Paul does not mean simply the body, because a man retains a physical body to the end of the day. In man there is something which answers to the seduction of sin; and it is that part of man which provides a bridgehead for sin that Paul calls the flesh. The flesh is human nature apart from and unaided by God.
- Paul says that, when our human nature was unaided by God, the law actually moved our passions to sin. What does he mean by that? More than once he has the thought that the law actually produces sin, because the very fact that a thing is forbidden lends it a certain attraction. When we had nothing but the law, we were at the mercy of sin.
2) Then Paul turns to the state of a man with Christ.
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- When a man rules his life by union with Christ he rules it not by obedience to a written code of law which may actually awaken the desire to sin but by an allegiance to Jesus Christ within his spirit and his heart.
- Not law, but love, is the motive of his life;
- and the inspiration of love can make him able to do what the restraint of law was powerless to help him do.
Romans 7:7
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”
- Why do you think Paul would ask if the law is sin?
- because of what the law did (or caused)?
- What useful purpose did the law serve?
- The law defined sin (showing, for example, that it was a sin to covet)
According to Barclay …
Here begins one of the greatest of all passages in the New Testament; and one of the most moving; because here Paul is giving us his own spiritual autobiography and laying bare his very heart and soul.
Paul deals with the torturing paradox of the law. In itself it is a fine and a splendid thing. It is holy. That is to say it is the very voice of God. The root meaning of the word holy (hagios) is different. It describes something which comes from a sphere other than this world. The law is divine and has in it the very voice of God. It is just. We have seen that the root Greek idea of justice is that it consists in giving to man, and to God, their due.
Therefore the law is that which settles all relationships, human and divine.
If a man perfectly kept the law, he would be in a perfect relationship both with God and with his fellow men.
Romans 7:8
8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.
- Do you find anything noteworthy about this verse? Anything strange/unexpected?
- Paul says sin produced evil desire.
- Shouldn’t it be the other way around? That evil desire produced sin.
- Note James 4:1-3 Where do wars[battles] and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war[battle]. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
- What do you understand the phrase “apart from the law, sin was dead” to be saying?
According to Barclay …
The law is good. That is to say, it is designed for nothing other than our highest welfare. It is meant to make a man good.
All that is true. And yet the fact remains that this same law is the very thing through which sin gains entry into a man. How does that happen? There are two ways in which the law may be said to be, in one sense, the source of sin.
(i) It defines sin. Sin without the law, as Paul said, has no existence. Until a thing is defined as sin by the law, a man cannot know that it is sin. We might find a kind of remote analogy in any game, say tennis. A man might allow the ball to bounce more than once before he returned it over the net; so long as there were no rules he could not be accused of any fault. But then the rules are made, and it is laid down that the ball must be struck over the net after only one bounce and that to allow it to bounce twice is a fault. The rules define what a fault is, and that which was allowable before they were made, now becomes a fault. So the law defines sin.
We may take a better analogy. What is pardonable in a child, or in an uncivilized man from a savage country, may not be allowable in a mature person from a civilized land. The mature, civilized person is aware of laws of conduct which the child and the savage do not know; therefore, what is pardonable in them is fault in him.
The law creates sin in the sense that it defines it. It may for long enough be legal to drive a motor car in either direction along a street; then that street is declared one-way; after that a new breach of the law exists — that of driving in a forbidden direction. The new regulation actually creates a new fault. The law, by making men aware of what it is, creates sin.
(ii) But there is a much more serious sense in which the law produces sin. One of the strange facts of life is the fascination of the forbidden thing. The Jewish rabbis and thinkers saw that human tendency at work in the Garden of Eden. Adam at first lived in innocence; a commandment was given him not to touch the forbidden tree, and given only his good; but the serpent came and subtly turned that prohibition into a temptation. The fact that the tree was forbidden made it desirable; so Adam was seduced into sin by the forbidden fruit; and death was the result.
Romans 7:9-11
9 I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.
- I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between v.11 and v.8 …
- verse 8 … But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire.
- verse 11 … For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me,
- Any thoughts regarding the similarities/differences in the two verses?
- Was “sin” doing the same thing in the two verses?
- What is your takeaway?
- Re: v.9, how do you think Paul was “alive once” without the law?
- He was not under the death penalty
- No sin is imputed where there is no law (Romans 5:13).
- Re: v.10, how could the commandment have brought life?
- by his keeping of it
- How did it “bring death” to Paul?
- by making him guilty, thereby putting him under the death penalty
According to Guzik in his EnduringWord Commentary …
And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death: Sin does this by deception. Sin deceives us:
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- because sin falsely promises satisfaction.
- because sin falsely claims an adequate excuse.
- because sin falsely promises an escape from punishment.
For sin… deceived me: It isn’t the law that deceives us, but it is sin that uses the law as an occasion for rebellion. This is why Jesus said, you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). The truth makes us free from the deceptions of sin.
and by it killed me: Sin, when followed, leads to death – not life. One of Satan’s greatest deceptions is to get us to think of sin as something good that an unpleasant God wants to deprive us of. When God warns us away from sin, He warns us away from something that will kill us.
According to Barclay …
Philo allegorized the whole story. The serpent was pleasure; Eve stood for the senses; pleasure, as it always does, wanted the forbidden thing and attacked through the senses. Adam was the reason; and, through the attack of the forbidden thing on the senses, reason was led astray, and death came.
In his Confessions, there is a famous passage in which Augustine tells of the fascination of the forbidden thing.
“There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears — not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in that theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law, in order that I, a prisoner under rules, might have a maimed counterfeit of freedom by doing what was forbidden, with a dim similitude of impotence? … The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing.”
Set a thing in the category of forbidden things or put a place out of bounds, and immediately they become fascinating. In that sense, the law produces sin.
Paul has one revealing word which he uses of sin. “Sin,” he says, “seduced me.” There is always deception in sin. Vaughan says that sin’s delusion works in three directions.
(i) We are deluded regarding the satisfaction to be found in sin. No man ever took a forbidden thing without thinking that it would make him happy, and no man ever found that it did.
(ii) We are deluded regarding the excuse that can be made for it. Every man thinks that he can put up a defence for doing the wrong thing; but no man’s defence ever sounded anything else but futile when it was made in the presence of God.
(iii) We are deluded regarding the probability of escaping the consequences of it. No man sins without the hope that he can get away with it. But it is true that, soon or late, our sin will find us out.
Romans 7:12
12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
- Why is Paul saying this?
- He is responding to the question he asked in v.7 (Romans 7:7)
- The fact that we are free from “the law” … and dead to “the law” … does not mean that “the law” is bad or evil.
- The problem is not (was never) with the law; the problem is (and always was) with
thepeople (Note Hebrews 8:7-8).- The first covenant (the Old Covenant) had a fault.
- But that fault was NOT with the law; the fault was because of the people (the Israelites).
- The New Covenant became necessary because of the “fault” of the people –the Israelites. (Hebrews 8:7)
According to Guzik, in his EnduringWord Commentary …
Therefore the law is holy: Paul understands how someone might take him as saying that he is against the law – but he isn’t at all. It is true that we must die to sin (Romans 6:2) and we must die to the law (Romans 7:4). But that should not be taken to mean that Paul believes that sin and law are in the same basket. The problem is in us, not in the law. Nevertheless, sin corrupts the work or effect of the law, so we must die to both.
According to Barclay …
Is, then, the law a bad thing because it actually produces sin? Paul is certain that there is wisdom in the whole sequence.
(i) First he is convinced that, whatever the consequence, sin had to be defined as sin.
(ii) The process shows the terrible nature of sin, because sin took a thing — the law — which was holy and just as good, and twisted it into something which served the ends of evil.
The awfulness of sin is shown by the fact that it could take a fine thing and make it a weapon of evil. That is what sin does. It can take the loveliness of love and turn it into lust. It can take the honourable desire for independence and turn it into the obsession for money and for power. It can take the beauty of friendship and use it as a seduction to the wrong things. That is what Carlyle called “the infinite damnability of sin.” The very fact that it took the law and made it a bridgehead to sin shows the supreme sinfulness of sin.
The whole terrible process is not accidental; it is all designed to show us how awful a thing sin is, because it can take the loveliest things and defile them with a polluting touch.