Romans 7 is the chapter that the Holy Spirit used to set my mind and conscience free from the good and holy law given through Moses. The law leads us into pride, despair, or apathy. I’ve cycled through all three responses, the latest being despair. The law that was given through Moses is also known as the ministry that brings death, 2 Corinthians 3:7-18. 

Romans 5 – we are set free from God’s wrath

Romans 6 – we are set free from sin

Romans 7 – we are set free from law

Romans 8 – we are set free from a mind set on law and sin, death.

 

 

 

Romans 7 – we are set free from law

Verse 1-3. “Since I am speaking to those who know the law,” The 613 commands, including the 10 commandments, and the summary: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind; love your neighbor as yourself. “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 if her husband dies, she is free from that law. Then, if she is married to another man, she is not an adulteress.”

 

Verse 4a. “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ” In the same way as the woman is no longer married to her husband, you are no longer married to the law of Moses. It no longer rules over you. It still rules over the rest of the world as the wisdom of the world, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31. The law is not abolished. The law of Moses is the world’s wisdom. Christ is our wisdom. Christ is not the law of Moses. If Christ is the law of Moses then Christ is a stumbling block. This is grace and truth, the heart of the law and gospel distinction. John 1:17, The law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Jesus is distinct from the law that came through Moses. You have been put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ at the cross “so that you may belong to another.” Take up this cross, or this mindset, so that you are not married to Moses and Jesus at the same time, committing adultery.

Verse 4b. “You belong to him who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.” The fruit that we bear for God is faith, forgiveness, and freedom. 

1. Faith: your sins are forgiven and you have a righteousness and a holiness with which you can see the Lord on account of Christ, crucified and resurrected. 

2. Forgiveness:  I am writing to you, little children, since your sins have been forgiven on account of his name, 1 John 2:12. 

3. Freedom: For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1. The law of Moses is a yoke of slavery, Galatians 4:21-5:10.

Verse 5-6. “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused through the law” The 10 words, and the 2 words that summarize the law and the prophets “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.” The ministry of the Spirit is to convict us of a righteousness that comes by faith, apart from the works of the law. The law of Moses gets set aside only in Christ, See 2 Corinthians 3:7-18. We are moving from a mind set on the lesser glory of the law, to a mind set on the greater glory of the Spirit. From glory to glory our minds are being sanctified. The Spirit is now our guide. The law is not our guide.  Galatians 3:23 Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed. 24 The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. 25 But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus.

 

Verse 7-12. “What should we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not!” A paradox of the law: the law itself is not sin. The law is not of faith, Galatians 3:12. Anything that is not of faith is sin, Romans 14:23. “On the contrary, 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.” In Christ, you are apart from the law. You have died in relation to the law through the body of Christ, and sin is dead. This is a mindset, a mind set on the Spirit. On one hand, if we live under the law of Moses, we break the whole law all day every day, James 2:8-10. On the other hand, if we live under the law of faith, we are not sinning according to the law of faith, 1 John 3:4-10. According to the law of Moses we still sin, but our sin does not belong to us anymore. It belongs to Jesus now. According to the law of faith we uphold the law of Moses, Romans 3:31 by our faith in Christ, who fulfilled all the law and the prophets, and put us under the law of faith.

 

Verse 9-13. “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.” 1 Timothy 2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed. A side note for those who teach that women are gullible and men are not, Paul is admitting he was gullible. So too, sin seizes an opportunity through the commandment, deceives us, and through it kills us. “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! On the contrary, 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.” The good and holy law was given to increase sin in us. The law came along to multiply the trespass, Romans 5:20. Romans 7 describes our dysfunctional relationship with the law that ministers sin and death. 1 Corinthians 15:56 bears witness by saying, the power of sin is the law, and the sting of death is sin. Jesus sets us free from the good and holy law that increases sin in us. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, we are set free from the condemnation of the law, and from the good and holy law itself, so that we may bear fruit for God.

 

Verse 14-24. “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave to sin.  For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me.” This is describing our dysfunctional relationship to the good and holy law. The law says Do Not!, and we find ourselves doing the thing we are not to do. Paul is confessing that he cannot obey the good and holy law, I cannot obey it either, and here the Spirit is setting us free from this good and holy law. Romans 8:2 the law of the Spirit of life in Christ sets us free from the law of sin and death. “So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  You also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ, Romans 7:4.

Verse 25. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.” Romans 6:14 For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace. Galatians 5:16 I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

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Jesus’ commands are not the same as the law that came through Moses. Jesus’ New Covenant commands are believe and love. Believe that your sins are forgiven and you are holy on account of Christ, crucified and resurrected. Love one another as I have loved you: you have died in relation to the law through the body of Christ. 

1 John 3:21 Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight. 23 Now this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps his commands remains in him, and he in him. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us.

John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. 17 He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.

John 15:12 “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.

 

17 “This is what I command you: Love one another.

Paul uses Romans 7 to love us, by telling us how Jesus has loved us, when he set us free from the good and holy law through His own body on the cross. The power of sin is the law, and apart from the law sin is dead. Now we need to rethink how we read the New Covenant. The great commission would now be understood as setting Christians free from the law that came through Moses, and giving them a righteousness that they have received by faith, grace, and truth came through Jesus Christ. This is the good news of the gospel of grace.

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We are the righteousness of God by faith apart from the works of the law.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.

Romans 10:4  For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Galatians 2:21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Romans 10:9-10 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. 

2 Corinthians 5:20-21 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf: “Be reconciled to God.”  He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

Related:

Romans 8 

Romans 12 – Appeals to a Freed Conscience, Pastor Mark Anderson