The New Way of the Spirit -- Romans 7:1-6

The Fifteenth in a Series of Sermons on Paul's Epistle to the Romans

In Romans 6:14, Paul tells us that we are not under law but under grace. But when Paul says that we are not under law he is referring to the fact that all those in Christ are no longer condemned by the law–the so-called “second use” of the law. But the absence of the law’s condemnation does not mean in any sense that we are no longer obligated to obey the Ten Commandments. In fact, having been freed from the law’s condemnation, we are now free to obey the commandments, something we could never do while we were still slaves to sin.

We are continuing our series on the Book of Romans and we are discussing Paul’s doctrine of sanctification as set forth in Romans 6, 7 and 8. In Romans 6:1, Paul began this discussion by referring to the believer’s death to sin through union with Christ. In Romans 7, the apostle continues this discussion, now referring to the believer’s death to the law.

According to Nygren, “It is at least clear from this comparison that Paul’s thought in chapter 7 follows a course similar to that in chapter 6. The same categories are used, being simply applied to different matter.” If Romans 6 is a description of our death to sin because of our transference from domination under Adam to freedom via our union with Christ, Romans 7 describes our death to the law as an elaboration on Paul’s comment in Romans 6:14 that the Christian is no longer under law but under grace. Just as sin no longer enslaves us because we died to sin through our union with Christ, so too the law no longer condemns us because in Christ, we have died to the law’s condemnation. We now stand in a new relationship to the law.

There is a reason why Paul must address the topic of the law at this point in this epistle. As Leon Morris points out, “the place of the law in God’s scheme of things was a constant battleground in Paul’s controversies with Jewish opponents. For them the law was the greatest good, the mark of God’s kindness to his people in that he had given it to them. They studied it with the greatest of diligence, regarding even the minutest detail as important. They took it as central for any pious person as he sought to live a life of service to God. It seemed to them that Paul was rejecting this greatest of goods that God have given. Paul found himself in a difficult position. On the one hand, he could not regard the way of the law as the way of salvation, and he said this with utmost firmness. But on the other hand, it was the good gift of God and, rightly used, was of great importance.”

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Comments

[George]

This is a good general summary of how Paul deals with the dichotomy of being both under the law (the flesh) and apart from the law (the spirit) in his letter to the Romans. But the single most important paragraph in my mind is the very last one where the point is emphatically made that we are no longer slaves to sin (under the law) but "...being bound to Christ, we now serve freely and with grateful hearts..."

The key word is gratitude - our response to the great sacrifice, the atonement, that Christ has accomplished in our place should be grateful hearts.

Too many times nowadays I've heard Christ's commands in the gospels twisted into acts of law, in which case we're really not carrying them out with gratitude at all, but as people feeling obligated, as under a legal compliance...as being still under the law.

Or, as is seemingly the case among many in the boomer and subsequent generations, we have been so used to being showered with material excess that we have a tendency to take salvation for granted. Perhaps that's the answer, in part, to the back door exit from so many megachurches; the precious news of the gospel invokes temporary exhilaration which grows stale and ordinary and is soon cast away like the latest video game or iPod.