Romans 7:1-6 – Romans

Good morning.

Um, so this morning, first of all, the question to think about during the reading is who do we bear fruit for?

This morning's reading is Romans, now we're in chapter seven.

I'm going to read verse one to six.

Or do you not know, brothers, for I'm speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.

For a married woman is bound by the 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.

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 be 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 in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

So read God's word.

You're very welcome, especially if you've just come in as we've been singing.

So uh open up uh Romans 7 there.

Uh it's very easy not to open it up when the reading is happening because it's on the screen, which is wonderful that we can have it up there, but um, it's important to have it in front of you, and it'll help.

Uh, one thing that'll do is it'll help you to um see where just where it is.

It's in the middle of the book of Romans.

Um we have a bunch of chapters left.

So you can probably we're almost we're about halfway through.

Um, but Romans 7 uh verses 1 to 6 is what we're gonna look at this morning.

Uh so have that opened in front of you, whether you have a physical Bible or you're opening it up.

Um if you're opening it up on your phone, we're using the ESV, the English Standard Version, just so we're literally all on the same page.

Some of you, uh it's the it's this time of year when it's we've we've got great weather, it's exam weather.

But uh one thing about exams is, and some people some people think of them differently, and assignments and all that, is that there's actually there's the excitement of just being done.

No, I was always way too worried about my exams that I couldn't think about what was next, and so my final exam would happen, and then I get home and I just collapse.

I don't know, maybe um is anybody here like the la like just after the last exam, maybe they'd have a nap, but then straight away they just cleaned the entire house or they cleaned the bathroom.

It's like they've been putting it off for these two, three weeks as they've been focusing on the exams.

Um, that might not be you.

That's something I did, but and and you can probably remember anyway, even if you're not coming up to exams, even if you're not coming up uh to having assignments, if you're no longer a student, you can remember thinking about those endless summer days that were coming, that freedom.

And maybe you do look back at at those summer days as the most amazing uh days of freedom when you could do whatever you want, but they do come to an end.

Whether that's September rolls around and the new academic year starts up again, or if it's that you get a job and you're into the workplace, or you have a family, you become a parent, and then your freedom is completely gone, as far as I've heard.

So getting freedom is one thing, but what's on the other side of that freedom is a completely different thing.

And we all long to be set free, but we've never been able to grasp that freedom that we truly need.

So in Romans 7, Paul tells us something that it actually flies in the face of what we think about freedom, our human concept of freedom.

He says we've been set free to belong to someone else.

How can that be freedom?

So in this passage, we're gonna ask three questions, fairly simple questions, and I think you'll actually you'll know the answers uh to them all before the rest of the sermon.

But they are what have we been set free from?

What have we been set free from?

How have we been set free?

And what have we been set free for?

So it's what have we been set free?

Sorry, what have we been set free from?

What have we been set free for?

And sandwiched in the middle is how have we been set free?

And that final question of what have we been set free for is the most crucial and important thing in this passage, and it's what the other points and what what Paul is driving towards and what we're working towards.

And the answer to that one is simply, I'm sure you know this already, is that we've been set free to belong to Jesus.

And that's what we're moving towards in asking those first two questions.

So, our first question and our first point is what have we been set free from?

What seems pretty obvious in this passage, um, I hope you've been able to pick up on it, that Paul is talking about how we've been set free from the law, how we've been unbound from it.

But as we look at what Paul says here in chapter 7, just at the start of chapter 7, we see that we've actually been set free from just from more than the law, from other things.

So let's look at what we've been set free from.

There's four things.

There's that we've been set free from the law, we've been set free from living in the flesh, we've been set free from bearing fruit for death, and we've been set free from serving in that old way of the written code.

So there's four things there.

And the first one being the most uh clear and obvious one, uh, that we've been set free from the law.

So when Paul talks about being unbound, set free from the law, he's picking up from the middle of the previous chapter.

In chapter six, verse 14, if you're able to um if if you have that open, we read that we're no longer under the law.

So he talks about being under the law there in verse 14 of the previous chapter, and he's picking it up here in chapter 7.

We're no longer trying to justify ourselves, we're no longer living, uh trying to make ourselves right and trying to do things to make us right.

And in the rest of chapter six, then he pressed home that sin no longer has power over us.

Despite the fact that sin is still present, it no longer has power over us.

And now in chapter seven, he's doubling down on talking about the law, and he begins to open up the place that it has in the life of the believer and how we should relate to it.

And it's scattered throughout this passage.

So in we're sticking to chapter seven here, the passage that was read, verses one to six, and it's in that first half, in verses one to three, in that example of marriage, of how a woman is released from the law that binds her to her husband when he dies, and then in the application that Paul makes in the second half of the passage, like in verse six, he says, but now we are released from the law.

And it's important for us not to just uh jump on and say, okay, there's uh point one a done.

It's important to see the richness and the breadth that there is in what Paul is saying about us who are in Christ and what it means for us as individuals, as a church, what it means for those who are married or single, those who are parents, those who aren't, those who are working, studying, or unemployed.

In being set free, in being set free from or being released from the law, we're no longer under it in all those categories, all of us.

We're no longer trying to justify ourselves by what we do.

And that's such great news that we don't have to do, do, do in order to have joy, to have peace, to have life and a future.

We don't work our fingers down to the bone, whether that's literally in the job that we have or in how we present ourselves in our in our looks or in our intelligence or in our humor or in how much we have it together or anything like that.

We've been released from all that way of earning our own fame and glory, trying to be our own heroes and saviors.

We're no longer bound to the law.

And this humbles, but it also excites us.

We're excited and relieved that we're no longer under the law, but we're humbled that we've been we've been released from the law by grace.

Like that's the very definition of no longer being under the law.

We didn't do it ourselves, we didn't earn it.

And so we don't live as those who are bound by the law, those who are in Christ Jesus.

We don't live being under the law, both in how we see ourselves and in how we relate to each other, how we see our brothers and sisters.

We interact with each other in a radically different way.

That's not based fundamentally on what we do, but that we've been set free from the law and we're no longer under it.

And that moves us on to the second thing that we've been set free from.

We've been set free from living in the flesh, as Paul puts it in verse 5.

We no longer live for the things of the flesh, the gratification of our sinful passions.

We we don't make decisions primarily based on what do I get out of this?

We don't jump straight to what's best for me.

We're not bound by thinking only about what I want or about love of self.

And so we're freed up to think about others rather than ourselves, not putting our own needs first.

And this checks out in every part of our lives.

We're free from in work, we're free from the extremes of obsessing over the work that we do and finding our identity and just obsessing over our achievement there, but also from being lazy and giving in to the desire just to please ourselves in the moment.

We're free from making ourselves number one in our relationships and decisions each and every moment.

And it's it's interesting how Paul talks about the law and our sinful passions here.

If you look in verse five again, he says that the law aroused our sinful passions.

And you could read what Paul is saying here and take it to mean that the law is sin, but I think we can be take take Paul a bit more generous than that.

And he actually goes on in the next section of chapter seven from verse seven to answer that question.

So I'll leave that mostly for next week.

But it's it's helpful.

We'll think about it just for a moment because it's helpful to think about what Paul mean by our sinful passions being aroused by the law.

Because again, it it kind of sounds like the law is the cause of my sin, that without the law I'd be sinless.

Now, even as I say this, without the law I'd be sinless, like that's just ridiculous.

Um and if you know your own heart, you know, you know that that's ridiculous.

But it's clear that there's a connection between the law and sin.

And it's helpful, it's helpful for us to think about it like this.

So, say uh you're out for a coffee and you sit, you you put your coffee down on a table, but the table's wobbly.

And after like two or three minutes, whatever, you move in your seat to get a bit more comfortable and you knock into the table and it wobbles.

And what happens?

The coffee spills out.

Now, why did the coffee spill out?

It's because there's coffee in the cup.

That's why coffee spilled out.

If there was nothing in the cup, would anything have spilled out?

No.

If there was water in the cup, would coffee have spilled out?

No, water would have spilled out.

If there was tea in the cup, it'd be tea all over the table.

And so it is for us.

The law, it may arouse our sinful passions, but it's from those sinful fleshly desires that sin comes.

And again, by sinful passions and flesh, I mean living for yourself, where you're number one in every sphere of your life.

It's from this that we've been set free from and released.

And closely tied to this is that we've been set free from bearing fruit for death.

To continue with that image, with that scene of spilling your coffee, it's actually more like there's there's a harmful corrosive substance in the cup, and when it spills, when it spills over, it wreaks havoc.

It causes damage to the table, and then toxic gases come up in the air, filling the air with these, yeah, these toxic gases that cause death if inhaled.

That might sound extreme, but that's what Paul is talking about.

That's what we're bound to.

In being under the law and living in the flesh, where we live for and try to justify ourselves, it always leads to death.

So that's the third thing that we've been set free from, from bearing fruit for death.

And again, it's it's closely tied to um being set free from living in the flesh.

And it's it's true not only eternally, in that without being united to Christ and being released from the law, our end is death.

It's death forever in hell, but it's also in the everyday.

It leads to death in our relationships.

It leads to death even in our own minds and how we interact with everything around us.

In our relationships, we put ourselves first and we sin against others, and that puts distance between us.

I'm sure you've felt that awful feeling when a friendship turns from being something good to something where it feels like death because of the distance between you, because of something that's happened.

Or when your sinful passions cause you to hate someone.

Jesus says that hating your brother in your heart, that's murder.

It's death.

But thanks be to God that we are no longer bound to this cycle of sinful passions being aroused by the law and leading to death throughout our lives.

Rather, we're free to love those around us.

And finally, we've been set free from serving in the old way of the written code.

Paul is again picking up on something from the previous chapter, and he's driving it home for the believer in Christ Jesus here in chapter 7.

You see, we all serve.

Ever since creation, we all work.

But it's about what motivates us and what we work for.

If we serve in the old way of the written code, that is, the law, then we're never going to have any joy.

We're never going to love.

We'll never have peace, we'll never truly be patient, we'll never be good, we'll never be self-controlled.

I wonder if you've ever been with someone who seems really patient and they seem really kind until they're not.

They hold it in for so long and they give the impression of being a good impatient person, but then it all comes out in an angry outburst of fire and steam.

Serving in the old way of the written code is a bit like having a container that can hold it in some pressure.

And from the outside outside, it seems like nothing is wrong, it seems like nothing's going on, it can actually look fine.

But on the inside, things are only building up and could blow with just just one more bit of pressure, just one more person being stupid, just one more thing going wrong.

And if the motivation for good living is just keeping these rules, this written code, then at some point it will fail.

But you, Christian, brother, sister, you've been set free from this.

You've been set free from serving this way.

And as much as I try to live like I'm supposed to, I just keep messing up.

But you're not alone.

Sin is still present.

We looked at that the last couple of weeks.

We're we're attracted by living in the flesh.

We're attracted to gratify our own desires and try to justify ourselves.

But there is a greater, deeper reality that you have been released from the law.

You are no longer under it.

Sin's hold and power over you has been broken.

You have been set free from living in the flesh and from doing things that lead to death.

And this is all certain and secure in how we've been set free.

That brings us on to our second main point.

How have we been set free?

And this point is shorter, but it and it only has one sub-point, but it's crucial.

It only has one answer.

How have we been set free?

We've been set free through death with Christ.

Look at verse 4.

You also have died to the law through the body of Christ.

We've died to the law through Christ.

We've died with Christ.

And that sounds like a ridiculous way of answering how have we been set free, that it's through our death.

How can we be free if if we've died?

And there are amazing truths about Christ being our substitute.

And and that meaning that I have freedom, that I've been freed especially from death.

And that makes sense.

I've been freed because Christ died for me.

But here Paul is saying that we've died.

If we have faith in Christ, if we have faith that we're united to him.

And we symbolize that death in baptism.

Because we are indeed, we we when we when we're submerged, we show that we've died with Christ.

Through our faith in him, being identified with him as one of his people, one who has died with him and has been raised with him too.

Paul said something very similar in chapter six.

He said that we've died to sin, and here he says now that we've died to the law.

And what he's pulling out here is the certainty and the finality of the end of us being bound to the law.

We've been completely released from the law because we have died with Christ.

That's what Paul is saying in the first half, in that first section, in verses one to three.

He starts off in verse one, he uses common knowledge in verse one to start making this point.

Someone is only bound to the law as long as they're alive.

And then in verses two to three, he goes on to bring up this example of a woman being married and her husband dying.

It's true that the law is the law only binds the two people as long as they're both married.

That's why we say, uh, till death do us part in marriage covenants.

As long as they're both alive, they're bound to each other by law.

But if one of them dies, the other one is free.

And actually, they're both free, it's just one is alive and one isn't.

And so the woman is completely free to marry another man.

She's not bound to that marriage covenant any longer.

She's being released from the law of marriage, and that's forever.

There's no chance of that first marriage ever starting again.

The husband is he's died.

And so it is with us.

There's no chance of us being bound to the law again.

There's no opportunity because a death has occurred.

The only thing that's different for us and this example in verses 1 to 3 is it's not our husband who's died, it's us.

We've died.

That's why we've been released from the law, from living in the flesh, from bearing fruit for death, and from serving in the old way of the written code.

It's because we've died with Christ, having been united to him by faith.

This is such good news because any fear we we may have had about being bound to the law again is completely gone.

It's gone for good because we have died.

That means we've been released from the law.

It's hard to remember that in the moments when sin comes knocking, when sin's crouching at the door.

But we have been released from the law because we have died.

So when we forget how we should interact with the law, that we're no longer under it.

When we forget that we've been set free from that old way, we see the death of our Lord, and we remember that we've died with him.

That's what we'll remember.

In the Lord's Supper, in in a little bit.

That's what we remember when we think about our baptism, when we see others being baptized, when we when we sing together of the gospel, that's what we remember.

And finally, what have we been set free for?

And this is what it's all been driving towards.

We've been set free to belong to Jesus.

We've been set free to have life, to bear fruit for God, and to serve in the new way of the Spirit.

We're going to look at those, what should I have?

Four things there.

But the main one being that we belong to Jesus.

And this is so important.

It's so important that we belong to Jesus.

We've been set free to belong to another.

At the end of the very famous movie Schindler's List, there's a scene where Soviet officer comes in riding on a horse to all the workers.

They're outside, they've been sleeping overnight.

Schindler, I think, left the night before.

And he'd saved them all.

They've all been saved.

But the Soviet officer comes riding in and says, You've all been liberated by the Soviet army.

They've all been set free.

Again, they'd survived those years under the Nazi regime because of Oskar Schindler.

And now they've been set free.

They've been liberated by the Soviets.

But one of them asks, one of the ones who've been liberated, they ask, where should we go?

And the officer replies by saying, Don't go to the east.

They hate you there.

And if I were you, I wouldn't go west either.

They've nowhere to go.

They've been liberated, but they weren't really free.

They had nowhere to go.

But thankfully, and I hope you can see the warmth in this passage, that this passage doesn't share that sadness and that hopelessness.

We've not been merely set free from the law.

We've been set free to belong to Jesus.

And we've been set free with a purpose to bear fruit for God and to serve in the new way of the Spirit.

So, firstly, we've been set free to belong to Jesus.

And again, this is the central thing that Paul is communicating at the start of chapter 7.

And it's so warm, isn't it?

We belong to another.

And that warmth Paul expresses in how he writes as well.

There's this familial closeness in how he addresses his readers.

He he calls them brothers in verses one and four.

He actually hasn't called them brothers since he greeted them back in chapter one.

Back in chapter one, he told them that he's thankful for them and how he longs to be with them, that they might be mutually encouraged, that he might encourage them and they might encourage him.

But what Paul's encouraging them in here is that they belong to Jesus.

That's the reason they've been released from the law.

That's the wonderful result of being united to Christ in his death.

Not just that we're no longer under the law, but that we belong to Jesus.

You, brother, sister, you belong to another.

You belong to Jesus.

So when you face the rejection of others, you know you belong to him.

When you mess up, you belong to him.

You can be comforted that you belong to Christ.

You belong to another.

You've been set free by him to belong to him.

And because we belong to him and are united to him, it means that we have life.

We've been set free to have life.

In verse 4, it says we belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead.

This again is a comfort and gives us, it gives us more assurance that we're not going to be bound to the law again, but we also see that we have life in him.

I touched on this earlier that in baptism we've been buried with Christ as we're submerged.

And then as we come out of the water, it symbolizes how we've been raised to newness of life in him.

And because we belong to him and have eternal life in him, we then bear fruit for God.

We've been set free to bear fruit for God.

We haven't just been set free, we've been transformed.

We haven't just been set free from bearing fruit for death.

We now bear good fruit, which brings life.

You've been set free, and now you can live for God.

We love Him and others.

That's what we've been set free to do.

We've been set free to have joy and peace because we belong to Jesus.

We've been set free to have patience and to be truly kind because our hearts, they're new.

We've been united to Christ in his death and in his resurrection.

And what I'm describing there might sound a lot like keeping the law.

And it is like that.

Remember what I said earlier, it's it's not the law that causes us to sin, it's our sinful passions aroused by the law.

That's why it's so important that we've had our hearts transformed.

We now have hearts that want to love God and to love others.

And that's how Jesus sums up the law: love God and love others.

And we've been given the Spirit to dwell in us and to help us.

We've been set free to serve in this new way of the Spirit.

God has transformed our hearts.

And our service is now fueled by His Spirit.

We're no longer motivated by rule keeping.

We serve Him and others empowered by His very Spirit.

We don't follow rules for the sake of rules in order to justify ourselves.

And we're not set free to serve nothing either.

We all serve something.

So we've been set free to bear fruit for God and to serve with the help of God's indwelling spirit.

And this this redeems our work.

When we work, we're serving.

Again, we don't obsess over our work, but neither are we lazy because we serve in this new way.

A new way that doesn't find its hope in what it does.

We don't serve to earn our favor or salvation.

Our motivation for work has completely changed.

The same is true in our marriages, in our families and in our relationships here in church.

We serve with the Spirit working in us.

We treat people how God sees them because his spirit dwells in us.

We move towards others in love because he does.

Husbands, we serve our wives and we we lay our lives down for them because Christ gave up his life for his bride, for the church.

And it's it's that we get to serve.

I'm talking to everyone here, not just husbands.

We get to serve.

We get to serve with the power of God's Spirit enabling us.

We don't do it in our own strength.

We don't muster up enough effort to produce fruit for God, and which is then judged.

No, that that would be putting ourselves under the law again.

God actually works in you.

He produces good fruit in you for his glory and for the good of his people.

And he prepared those good works in advance for you.

So because we've died with Christ and are united to him in his death and in his resurrection, we've been set free from the law, from living for ourselves and heading towards death, to live completely differently by the power of his spirit.

And in all this, we belong to him, to our Lord Jesus.

When you're tempted to despair, remember you belong to Jesus.

When you see sin around the corner, remember that you're his.

When you're fearful and alone, remember that you're bound eternally to him.