Romans 7:1-12
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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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.” But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
Paul is continuing to answer the question he posed in the last chapter, “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” Paul picks up a new metaphor. Before he talked about masters and slaves. Now he uses the illustration of marriage.
In the marriage vows we say, “till death do we part”. And marriage is supposed to be for life. When one spouse dies the remaining spouse is free to marry another. We were hitched to sin and sin remains alive and well. Look at the world around you for evidence of that. It is we who have died, joined in Christ’s death. We are free to marry another.
One of the purposes of marriage is procreation. In this metaphor of marriage to sin our union brought forth only death but in Christ we bear fruit to God, fruit that leads to eternal life. Romans 6:22, “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”
Paul anticipates a new objection. Are you saying that the law is sin? Rhetorically the answer is no, but let’s try a metaphor of our own. The water in a small pond may be sparkling clear but take a stick and stir up the bottom and what happens? The muck, that is sin, was always there but it was stirred up by the stick, that is the law.
Very small children don’t understand rules and the law has no meaning or effect for them. But the first time mommy says no and the child willfully disobeys the muck is stirred up revealing the latent sin nature in the child.
Our parents rules were mostly for our safety and our good and God’s rules are for our good but without Christ they merely stir up the muck within and reveal the filth that was always there.
Psalm 119:75, “I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
Knowing the will of God and our inability to even begin on it, like our muddy pond trying to clean itself by sloshing around more and more it can seem like God is out to get us by asking us to do the impossible. But consider that it is not our effort that makes us clean but the cross of Jesus Christ which removes all our filth and muck and makes it so that we are sparkling clear in the Son.
brotherpayne 