Free From Law (Romans 7:1-13)

All right, Romans chapter 7, starting verse 1.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

Let's let's stand if you're able for the reading of God's word.

Since I am speaking to those who know the law, brothers and sisters, don't you know that the law rules over someone as long as he lives?

For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives.

But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband.

So then, if she is married to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress.

But in but if her husband dies, she is free from that law.

Then if she is married to another man, she is not an adulteress.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another.

You belong to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused through the law were working in us to bear fruit for death.

But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the newness of the Spirit, and not in the old letter of the law.

What should we say then?

Is the law sin?

Absolutely not.

But I would not have known sin if it were not for the law.

For example, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, do not covet.

And sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.

For apart from the law, sin is dead.

Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life again, and I died.

The commandment that was meant for life resulted in death for me.

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.

So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.

Therefore, did what is good become death to me?

Absolutely not.

But sin, in order to be recognized as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin might become sinful beyond measure.

Let's pray.

Lord, as we we start the service every week, Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for what you've given us, that we get to hold in our hands, Lord, that we get to take home with us, that we get to open together here this morning.

Lord, I pray that you would be the one speaking through your Holy Spirit here this morning.

That I would step out of the way and that you would help me to rightly divide your word.

Lord, I thank you for this passage.

I thank you for the book of Romans and all that you've been teaching us.

And I pray that we would approach it once again here this morning with open hearts, with open minds, eyes to see you here in this text, to see afresh and anew the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross for us, in our place.

And would you convict us?

Would you encourage us?

Would you do everything that you desire within us here this morning?

And let us be clay in your hands, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So Paul spent the last chapter explaining that we are no longer under the law and no longer slaves to sin, but we are now slaves to righteousness.

This, what we're going through here this morning, is a further explanation of that.

So last week, if you remember, he used the human analogy of slavery.

And this week he's going to use the human analogy analogy of marriage.

And as we'll see, chapter 7 really focuses a lot on the law.

In fact, just in these 13 verses that we're going to cover here this morning, the word law is mentioned 15 times.

And he's going to explain what it means to be dead to the law.

He's going to explain why that is so important in our relationship with Jesus.

And he's going to use this example of the effect of the law on marriage.

And once again, you'll find that we're going to be mentioning a lot of things that we've already talked about in Romans through the last weeks and even through the last months.

So if you're just joining us as we go through this book of Romans together, I might be referencing some things that you're not familiar with, but we don't have time to recap all of those things.

So, but I'm going to do that because we're trying to keep things in context as we go through the book of Romans.

Because when Paul wrote this letter, it was one complete thought from beginning to end.

The chapters and the verses were not in his letter that he wrote to the Romans.

They were added later so that we could say, turn to Romans 7, you know, strictly for that purpose.

But if you want to catch up on Romans, I would encourage you so that you do understand all the things I'm referencing to you.

We have the podcasts of every Sunday sermon that's posted every Tuesday after church on a website or anywhere that you listen to podcasts, if you want to kind of catch up and understand some of the references that I'm going to be making here today.

So with that said, let's start off in verse 1 of Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

It says, since I am speaking to those who know the law, brothers and sisters, don't you know that the law rules over someone as long as he lives?

So at first glance, this verse might seem like it's referring to the Mosaic law that God gave to Moses.

But we'll see here that within the context of this verse, he's referring actually to all laws that govern us, which includes the Mosaic law, but it also includes things like the law that is our conscience, and the law that is our civil law, and pretty much any law that we find ourselves coming under.

This is an all-encompassing law that Paul is talking about here in verse 1.

So he's saying, I know you know the law, and I know you know how it works.

And then he poses this question Don't you know that the law rules over someone as long as he lives?

So I think the ESV translation brings a little more clarity.

So I want to read you that in the ESV.

It says, that the law is binding on a person as long as he lives.

Meaning, when you die, you don't have to obey the speed limit anymore.

You don't you don't have to pay taxes anymore.

You die and the law no longer applies to you for obvious reasons.

That's the point that Paul's making here.

Which leads us to Paul's analogy with the law and marriage that we see in verse 2.

Look at that with me.

For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives.

But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband.

Death negates and nullifies the law of marriage.

You get married, and if your spouse passes away, you don't have to get a divorce to be remarried.

That law no longer applies to you.

That's what he's talking about.

Look at verse 3.

So then, if she is married to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress.

So, according to Scripture, if you're divorced without a biblical reason for that divorce, and then you get remarried, you're committing adultery.

There are only a few concessions that we find in the Bible for a biblical divorce, where you have the right to get that divorce and then remarry afterwards.

Otherwise, you're to remain faithful to your vows until the day that you die.

Like it says in the second half of verse 3, look at it.

It says, But if her husband dies, she is free from that law.

Then if she is married to another man, she is not an adulteress.

You know, this may seem like a strange analogy that Paul's using right here that he's presenting to the Romans.

But let's just look at this analogy for a moment.

We were given marriage from God to be a foreshadowing of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jesus being the groom and we being the bride of Christ, the church of Christ, you and me, and all the people that are sitting around you.

And marriage shows us what it means to be one.

And what it means to be one with Jesus Christ.

To be in that close relationship with Him.

But the problem is, we were once married to the law and married to sin.

So in order for us to rightly come to Christ and be joined with Him, a death had to take place in that relationship.

And that's what frees us from that marriage that we had to sin.

It's the death of Jesus Christ.

A death had to take place in that marriage, and that's the death that Jesus died for us.

Now I love the analogy that Pastor Damian Kyle uses here.

He says, you know, think of a man that is in a courtroom and he committed three different murders.

He was convicted of the three murders, and he was sentenced to three life sentences in prison.

But as they're reading the verdict in the courtroom, the man has a heart attack, heart attack, and he dies.

Does he still have to serve those three life sentences?

No, because now he's dead to the law.

It has no more effect on him.

You don't take his body to the prison and allow it to sit there for three life sentences.

The law has no effect on him, on the offender, after he's dead.

And there's no positive outcome for anybody else if you were to take that body to the prison and leave it there for the three life sentences.

That guy is now dead to the law.

It's the same with our relationship to sin.

We are now dead to it.

Now we're alive to Jesus.

Look at verse 4.

It says, Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another.

Through Jesus' death, that he died for us, this all took place.

So that we could be dead to the law, that we could be dead to sin, and therefore free from our vows from sin.

Jesus gave us his death as an out.

As an out to that relationship with Jesus.

I'm sorry, with sin.

I better catch myself there.

As an out to that relationship with sin.

We were stuck in that relationship.

And Jesus died that death for us so that we didn't have to have that, those vows to sin anymore, that relationship to sin anymore.

And it says in the middle of verse 4, so that you may belong to another.

That's what that death was for, so that we can now belong to Jesus.

He gave us an out from the marriage to sin that we had.

Look at the second half of verse 4.

It says, You belong to him who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit to God.

And as I was saying, we are now the bride of Christ.

Once married to sin, now married to our eternal perfect groom, who is Jesus Christ.

So that we can now bear fruit for God, as it says.

And we talked a lot about this last week.

You know, bearing fruit comes from being slaves to righteousness, which comes from the Holy Spirit living in and through us, producing the fruits of the Spirit in us, which leads to sanctification.

And all of that that we just talked about all started by belonging to Jesus Christ.

Being in this relationship with Him, being the bride of Jesus Christ.

And we need to realize that what Jesus did could not be done by any human.

Jesus died so he could marry us.

Think about that.

No earthly woman could say that about any earthly man.

My fiance died so he could marry me.

Isn't that so romantic?

It can't happen, right?

No man has the capability to do that.

To say, I'm gonna physically lay down my life so that I can marry an individual.

You can't, because then that guy's dead, and you can't get married anymore.

So that's one of the reasons for Jesus' resurrection and why it was so important.

You can't be in a relationship with somebody that's dead.

And if Jesus is dead, then we can't be the bride of Jesus Christ.

Now, conversely, if he didn't die in our place, that substitutionary death, we'd still be married to sin.

And we could not be the bride of Jesus Christ.

Look at verse 5 with me.

For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused through the law were working in us to bear fruit for death.

When we were under the bondage of the law, there was no good fruit.

We had no good fruit.

You know, we can't look back at anything in our lives before Jesus Christ and say, yeah, that was beneficial to God's kingdom.

And yeah, that's something that I'm actually proud of.

You know, just like we talked about at length last week, a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.

And a good tree cannot produce bad fruit.

And when we were in the flesh, when we were still slaves to sin, those sinful passions were aroused through our rebellion to the law.

We were bearing fruit that was leading to death.

Because all sin leads to death.

Verse 6.

But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the old letter of the law.

Just as a wife is released from her marriage when her husband dies, we're released from the letter of the law when we accept Jesus' death in our place.

That gives us newness of life.

That gives us a new outlook.

It gives us a new purpose.

And now we can serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the old way that we used to serve.

Because the old way that we used to serve was leading to death.

When we died to sin, our relationship was changed forever.

And we only died to sin because of the death of Jesus Christ.

His substitutionary death in our place that we now get to claim.

And now, being filled with the Holy Spirit that we received when we gave our life to Jesus, we can now bear the fruit that the Spirit produces within us.

And now we get to serve in the newness of the Spirit, as it says right here in this verse.

And we no longer have to serve the letter of the law.

Now, just in general, question for you.

Does everybody know what the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law means?

I think in general most of us do, but I think it might be a good refresher to know the difference.

The spirit of the law versus the letter of the law.

And I'm not talking about the Holy Spirit when I say the spirit of the law.

Spirit just means the intent or the heart behind the law.

Not that we even apply to the Mosaic Law, but just any law that we're under.

So I want to give you an example.

There was a stop sign near where I grew up that made you stop.

There was like this main road that nobody had to stop, but then there was this Y that came up in kind of at this angle right here, and there was a stop sign because the other traffic didn't stop.

And there was that stop sign.

But the thing is you could see about a mile in this direction.

And if click glance over your shoulder, you could see about a quarter mile, you know, in the opposite direction.

And this is out in the fields in the middle of nowhere, Soledad that I'm talking about.

And so not a lot of traffic.

But my whole life, including when I got my license and started driving, I don't think I ever saw anybody stop at that stop sign.

You know, the letter of the law says we need to come to a complete stop, count to three in our head, and then go.

Which I know everybody here does whenever they hit a stop sign, right?

Absolutely.

But the spirit of the law for that stop sign at that intersection was for safety.

It was to prevent accidents where those two roads merge together.

And people usually roll through that stop sign, probably going about 20 miles an hour when no cars are in sight, obviously, or no police are in sight, obviously.

But the the spirit was to make sure that there was safety at that intersection.

And as far as I saw growing up, everybody upheld the spirit of the law.

You don't have the right of way, oncoming traffic does not stop, be careful at this intersection.

But if there was nobody in sight in either direction, why go from 55 miles an hour to a complete stop, count to three, and then get back up to 55 miles per hour?

And I'm not just trying to justify all the times I ran the stop sign, I promise.

The heart behind the stop sign was to let people know they were approaching a possible danger.

Oncoming traffic was not going to stop.

You see the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law?

We get to serve in the newness of the Holy Spirit, and we no longer serve the letter of the law.

There's a newfound freedom in the new covenant with Jesus Christ where we want to serve and submit everything to God, not because of the letter of the law, but because of the Holy Spirit.

But we're no longer subject as believers, as followers of Christ, we're no longer subject to the letter of the law.

If we walk in the Holy Spirit, in an abiding relationship with Christ, we will always follow the spirit of the law.

But we no longer have to worry about the letter of the law.

I mean, could you imagine living to the letter of the Mosaic Law today?

That means no more bacon for anybody.

No more shrimp.

Heavy restrictions on what we can do on Saturdays.

It means no more cheeseburgers either.

You can't have dairy and meat at the same time with the letter of the law.

That's the letter of the Mosaic Law.

The Holy Spirit now reigns in us to direct us and convict us and make sure we are upholding the spirit of the law, which is for our own protection and is for the protection of others.

You know, the law is good, as we're going to see in verse 7, but it no longer rules over us.

It no longer has a say in our standing before God.

Now, before we jump into verse 7, I want us to make a quick note of something.

As we go through verses 7 through 13, we'll see it's written in past tense.

So Paul's going to be giving us a part of his personal testimony, and this is part of that testimony before he came to Jesus Christ.

And then when we get to 14, verses 14 through 25, which is what we're going to cover next week, Paul's going to switch things over to the present tense, and he's going to tell us what things are like now that he is a follower of Jesus Christ.

So let's look at verse 7 together.

It says, What should we say then?

Is the law sin?

Absolutely not.

So Paul's devil's advocate question and answer, he gives the Roman Church once again.

But as we piece together all that he's been talking about regarding the law, you can see how someone may draw the conclusion that the law is sin.

Because if we have to die to the law to follow Christ, then the law must be bad, right?

This is what he's trying to defend against.

He's nipping that argument in the bud and he uses the second half of verse 7 to prove that the law does have merit.

And from this point until the end of chapter 7, like I said, it's going to be all Paul's personal testimony.

Look at the second half of verse 7.

But I would not have known sin if it were not for the law.

For example, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, do not covet.

The Mosaic Law, which he's referring to here, is where we get that the covet law that he's mentioning.

It's good and it's perfect and it's holy.

It was given to us by God, so it has to be perfect.

The problem is.

And it always has been, is our inability to follow it because of sin and because of rebellion in our heart.

And Paul goes on to tell us why the law is good, saying the merit of the law is the clarity that it brings to each individual.

He says, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, do not covet.

We're back to that fast-paced river that we've been talking about.

The law lets us know which fast-paced rivers to stay away from.

That could sweep us away, that could be harmful to us, that could lead to our death.

In Paul's own life, he says it identified coveting.

He had an issue with coveting, but he didn't know it until he read the law.

You know, and who knew coveting would be bad if there wasn't a law?

Who knew before God's law that longing for your neighbor's car was a sin?

You know, I didn't steal it, I didn't kill my neighbor for it, I was just looking.

There's no harm in looking at my neighbor's car, right?

While I was becoming more and more unsatisfied with the car that I had, and more and more upset that I didn't get the car and my neighbor did.

I mean, I deserve it more than my neighbor does.

My neighbor's a jerk, right?

That is where my neighbor's not a jerk, by the way.

I'm not saying a very nice neighbors.

But that's where coveting can lead.

Is we can spiral down uh into it.

We might not seem like, oh, I was just looking can be bad, but that's where it can lead.

Look at verse 8.

And sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produce in me coveting of every kind.

For apart from the law, sin is dead.

Like we talked about in Romans 3.20, the knowledge of sin comes through the law.

The law doesn't cause the sin, it identifies it.

It brings clarity.

And a few weeks back, you know, we compared it to an MRI machine.

It doesn't cause the issue, it identifies the existing issue that we already have.

But what happens sometimes when we gain that clarity from the law is rebellion.

That don't tell me what to do kind of attitude can kind of come up as soon as we know what we're not supposed to be doing.

Now, an honest question, and you don't have to raise your hand, but when you see a speed limit sign that says 65 miles an hour, how many of us actually set our cruise control to 65 miles an hour?

It's usually, huh, I think I could probably set it to 72 and not get caught.

You know, isn't that kind of our tendency?

Oh, it's 65?

Let's just see if we can push this a little bit far.

Let's see if we can step our toes over those boundaries.

You know, so often there's a line that we know we're not supposed to cross.

But how often do we creep up and put our toes over?

Just to kind of see how far we can go or take a full step and see how far we can get away with something without getting in trouble.

It's just human nature.

That knowing where the boundary is makes us want to rebel against it.

It's that battle that we constantly have with our flesh on a daily basis.

And then look at the very end of verse 8.

It says, For apart from the law, sin is dead.

Without the law, sin loses its power.

Rebellion wouldn't be so enticing if we didn't know where that line was drawn in the sand.

Proverbs 9:17 says, stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten secretly is tasty.

Proverbs 9:17

You know, the forbidden or the stolen fruit always tastes better just because of that act of rebellion that kind of stirs up inside of us.

And stolen fruit always tastes better than the fruit that's not stolen.

Because that's the rebellion in us, the wanting to push or push the boundaries as much as we can.

Look at verse 9.

Once I was alive apart from the law.

But when the commandment came, sin sprang to life again, and I died.

The commandment that was meant for life resulted in death for me.

The idea being, at one time Paul lived without understanding of the law.

Like a little kid that doesn't know better, or somebody that's before the age of accountability.

But when Paul learned the command not to covet, the power of sin and that rebellion that he felt within himself came to life within him.

And that innocence of not knowing the law died.

Then he became accountable and condemned by the law.

And it says the commandment that was meant for life resulted in death for me.

A spiritual death, Paul's talking about.

He became a slave to sin.

Look at verse 11.

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.

Once sin came to life in Paul, it deceived him as sin always will.

And it usually sounds something like this.

Oh, you know, don't deprive yourself of the things God's telling you not to do.

Don't deprive yourself of the things God says isn't good for you.

You know, it's going to be pleasurable.

It's going to be fun.

And God just doesn't want you to have a good time.

Or, like we saw in the garden, you know, did he really say not to eat of the tree of good and evil?

What if his motives are bad and he's just holding you back?

Or what if he's just holding good things back from you?

Sin deceives.

And it always leads to death.

And Paul's sin deceived him.

And then he says it spill it killed him spiritually.

You know, the next time that we find ourselves really tempted, like really tempted, where we're having that dialogue in our head of should I do this or should I not?

Remember that sin always wants to deceive you.

And it wants to deceive you so it can kill you.

Kind of makes the argument that's going on in your head a little bit easier when you could break it down to that.

Of this thing that sounds pleasurable, this thing that sounds really good.

Actually, it's just a deception.

And Satan wants to kill me through that deception.

Verse 12.

So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.

He proves that the law is not sinful, as he mentioned.

The law is actually holy.

It's something God gave us for our own protection.

Something that God gave us actually in love.

The law has never been the issue.

It's never been the bad guy.

It's all sin's fault.

And it's always sin's fault.

The law just points out our sin.

And sometimes that knowledge of the law is what stirs up that rebellion within us.

But again, it's because of sin.

It's not because of the law.

Look at verse 13.

Therefore, did what is good become death to me?

Absolutely not.

But sin, in order to be recognized as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment, sin might become sinful beyond measure.

Sin distorts the law.

Something that is holy into something that people start wondering if it's bad.

Sin was producing death in Paul through what is good, through the law.

That sin might become sinful beyond measure, as he says right here.

He says, the law is good.

It's my flesh that I can't get to cooperate.

It's my flesh that constantly wants to rebel against the line that God drew in the sand.

It's my flesh that's doing the opposite of what I want it to do, which is going to be a big part of uh of what we're going through the next couple of weeks.

And if Jesus, think about this, if Jesus could be tempted, he never gave in, but he was actually truly tempted.

And if the apostle Paul could struggle in this way that he's telling us right here, you better believe that we're going to have some of those same temptations.

And like Paul, have the same struggle to say no to the flesh in those situations.

Because we're stuck in this old man until we die.

We're stuck in this flesh and blood until we die.

And we will struggle against the rebellion of our flesh constantly.

That's saying inside of us, you know, don't let anybody tell you what to do.

You know, you are your own person.

You have rights.

Do not allow anybody, including God, to tell you what to do.

Because that's what our flesh constantly is telling us.

That we know better.

And it always comes down to pride.

But living a life to God is about submission.

It's about humility.

It's about doing the will of another.

That will being God's will.

It's about living for another kingdom that is not of this world.

You know, my prayer for us as a church is that every new day is a day in deeper surrender to the Lord.

Because that's what God desires from us more than anything else is a deeper, daily surrender to Him.

He just wants more of us.

So here's what I want us leaving here with today.

Here's what I want us thinking about as we go out those doors, as we go about our daily week.

What are we not surrendering to the Lord?

What is it that God wants us to surrender that we're holding on to because we think that we know better?

What is it that God wants us to surrender to Him?

That we're holding on to tightly because we don't want God telling us what to do.

I think when it comes down to it, I think it's just us not trusting that God wants what's best for us.

When we find ourselves holding on to things that we refuse to surrender to him.

If we truly trust that he has what's best for us, he desires what's best for us, then there's no reason that we shouldn't be surrendering everything that we have to him.

Will you please pray with me?

Lord, we thank you that you are sovereign, that you are good, that you desire us.

And you're not, you don't just desire us, you desire all of us.

You desire more and more each day.

Because you are a good, loving Father that cares about us, that desires what is good in us more than we do.

So, Lord, help us to build that trust.

Help us to surrender to you in every way.

And if there's anything that we're holding on to here this morning, but I pray that we that you would first make us aware of it if we're not, or maybe we're very aware of it and we're just struggling to hold on to whatever it might be.

Whatever the case is, Lord, we want to surrender everything to you.

To not hold anything back, to hand it over, and to say, Lord, do as you please with me.

Lord, we cannot do this on our own.

We understand that.

But Lord, you gave us the Holy Spirit to be living in and through us, to be our guide and our counselor, our wisdom, Lord, to be our teacher in every way.

So Lord, I pray that we'd come to that deeper place of surrender, a deeper place of allowing the Holy Spirit to live in and through us.

But we need help, we need strength, we cannot do this on our own.

But you've made a way where we don't need to.

And we thank you so much for that.

Lord, we thank you for the gift of Jesus, that substitutionary death in our place, so that we don't have to be married to sin anymore.

Lord, I pray if there's anybody in this room that has not come to that place of accepting that substitutionary death, of making you, Lord, of making you our Savior, accepting that free gift that you've given, I pray that today would be the day of salvation.

Lord, today would be that day of surrendering ourselves completely to you and starting that walk with you from day one.

Lord, we pray that you would do the work here this morning.

In Jesus' name.