Romans 6:20-23Paul is still talking about sanctification but has the fruit of our salvation in view. We only had death as a fruit before salvation. However, the fruit of salvation, even if it comes via trials and struggles, is fruit that leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. The cost of sin is death but God gives eternal life as a free gift. A life pleasing to God is a fruit of being slaves of God. As we submit to the Lordship of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit we have eternal life in Christ but it is a gift and not a wage. This is because it is initiated and sustained by the power of God and not by us. God doesn’t owe us anything but we owe Him everything.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. 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. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We need to be fully aware of our freedom from the law and our submission to God. So Paul uses the analogy of marriage and death to stress the finality of our break from living under the bondage of sin manifested by the law.
Romans 7:1-6When we first enter the Kingdom of God by saving faith we die to the law through the body of Christ. This is because we are then wet to Christ and our allegiance is to Him. So we are no longer captive to the law we now serve via the Holy Spirit and not via the written code of the law. But then how are we to view the law? Is this where we enter into antinomianism? No it is not and we must guard our hearts against that tendency.
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? Thus a married woman is bound by 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 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 he law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
Romans 7:7-12It is important for us to realize that the law is not bad. The law is good and it accomplished the purpose for which God revealed it. It manifested sin. You know the problem with the law ultimately was that it turned a light on my heart. The law said you shall not covet.
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Modern society considers covetousness so lightly that we can name a product “Covet”. The show called “Sex in the City” was all about the coveting of a group of women. One of the actresses now has a line of perfumes and etcetera called “Covet”.
Covetousness is a heart problem first and only an action problem later. The heart departs before the lifestyle. To covet means that you may never act on it but you have a heart desire to take and have. Cupidity is another similar word that indicates a desire to take what another has. So most cultures (without the law of God) would never ask their members to regulate their hearts and teach that covetousness is a sin. But of course it is. I could never argue now that to covet wasn’t sin. God sees my heart and so sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. God isn’t indicating that to admire my neighbor’s stuff is bad but you can see another response in your heart to test it. When my neighbor (I’m using that in the broad sense) is blessed with something then the question is, “am I thankful and blessed to see them receive it or am I annoyed and want one too or judge them for how I think they acquired it?” I’ve sometimes thought that you could think of covetousness as wanting something bad enough to take it if you could get away with it but it goes deeper than that because our heart response can reveal a covetousness in us that judges and begrudges the blessings another person receives. This problem is magnified when we don’t think the person deserves what they have. So the commandments of God had a broad impact on mankind convicting each of us of our sin.
Romans 7:13-20
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the
law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
Note that Paul has switched from using “we” to using “I” and is relating a personal experience. In the process of sanctification, if you are running with patience the race that is set before you, you encounter this frustration. We realize that the moral law given by God (along with all the requirements for heart obedience) is spiritual and pure but we see ourselves fail to live up to it over and over. We really do find ourselves looking at our actions and wondering why we do what we don’t want. Now we always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment but we wonder why, at that moment, we decided to be stupid. We want to live a life that is holy and pure before God and to be pleasing in everything we do but we fail. After salvation, we find that we are in a struggle with our sin nature during our struggle to be sanctified.
Romans 7:21-25Note that Paul’s struggle is a post salvation struggle (as we’ve said earlier) because he says that he delights in the law of God. This struggle that all Christians find themselves in would be intolerable if not for God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We each get frustrated with the failure we find in our lives if we have entered the struggle. In Chapter 8 we have an exposition of what it means to serve the law of God with our minds while we serve the law of sin with our flesh.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Romans 8:1-4The justification that we’ve been discussing removes our sin and grants us Christ’s righteousness in the atonement. We are free from the cycle of sin and death that we would otherwise still be living under. The corruption of original sin made obedience to the law impossible for us. Now, as a result of the work of Christ, we have imputed righteousness and as we walk according to the Spirit our works are acceptable to God. You have forgiveness for your sins and the leading of the Holy Spirit for works day by day. It begins and ends in Grace.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
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