"Free
From the penalty of the Law"
Romans
7:1-6
Romans
7:1-6, "Do you not know, brothers-for I am speaking to men
who know the law-that the law has authority over a man only
as long as he lives? For
example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as
long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released
from the law of marriage.
So then, if she marries another man while her husband
is still alive, she is called an adulteress.
But if her husband dies, she is released from that
law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another
man.
So, my brothers, you also died to the
law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another,
to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might
bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature
[margin: the flesh], the sinful passions aroused by the law
were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been
released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the
Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code [King James:
"of the letter"-i.e. "the letter of the law."]."
"Turn to Romans chapter 7 in your
Bible. While you're
doing that I want to read a letter that I received from a
man in our church who took to heart what I said about reading
Romans 6, 7 and 8 and making it a part of your life.
And you know, people will come into my office and a
lot of times they leave with this little prescription written
out. I'm going to have
printed up some prescription forms, make it look real official. It's like, if you charge people or you make
them think that it's real official, then they'll do it. If it's free they won't do it. Sometimes I could just really get up tight,
because we don't charge, and it seems like people don't listen. But then they give their money-$80 an hour somebody
was telling me they were paying to a psychologist who didn't
help. Hey man, the
Word of God is free. And
it can change your life. I mean, if you want to pay for it, go buy a
new Bible, that'll cost you 80 bucks.
[laughter] And
then, read it. It's
a good investment in your life. But I tell people, 'Read Romans 6, 7 and 8.'
I want you to read it twice a day for the next three
weeks until you understand it, until you're walking it, eating
it, thinking it. "Dear
Pastor Mark, warm greetings in the name of our Lord.
I'm writing this note to thank you for being obedient
to God's Spirit in ministry.
I have been attending Calvary Community for several
weeks and have been blessed by the teaching from God's Word.
You recently spoke of the importance of Romans 6, 7
and 8 for what I call a victorious walk. Well, dealing with the daily frustrations, attitudes
and temptations of the world was enough for me to start reading
regularly Romans 6, 7 and 8.
Consistently doing this the past couple weeks has made
a wonderful impact in my life and walk.
Realizing the true identity and power we have in Christ,
and applying that to my walk has added a step of victory and
confidence to each day, praise God. I have been so joy'd that I just had to let
you know, and I appreciate the wisdom and the knowledge that
God has shown." And
then I know it's having an impact, because he says also in
closing, "Please find an application for children's ministry."
Whoa! It's working, Hallelujah! So, I tell you, when you really begin to see
who you are in Christ, you get strong in the Lord, and when
you're strong then you can serve, and you can move forward
in your walk in your life with Christ.
It's important to serve, that you have an outflow of
service in your life. [log
onto the study on Romans 12 for more on this theme about service
and being living sacrifices through our service.] Well, I know I said look at Romans 7, and I'm
going to get there, but to set the scene for Romans 7 I just
want to remind you that Paul said in Romans 6:14 that we are
no longer under the law, but we're under grace.
In Romans 6:14 he said, "For sin shall not be master
over you, because you're not under law but under grace."
Now he didn't get a chance to develop that because
he anticipated someone interrupting saying 'Wait, wait, wait.Does
that mean that we can do anything we want?' He had started to say the same thing at the
end of chapter 5 where he says, "Now man, where sin abounds
grace does much more abound.and now we're not under the reign
of law and death, but we're under the law of grace!"
And then again he thought, 'Oh, somebody's saying 'Does
that mean that we can live any way we want?
Then we can go out and do whatever we want to do?'
So he spends most of chapter 6 saying 'No, and the
reason why you don't go out and live any way you want is not
because the law's over you saying 'Do this, do that', the
law is no longer over you, but you have Christ living in you.
That makes a difference.
And he talks about how you have a new nature [and this
nature is actually writing God's Law in your hearts and minds,
cf. Jeremiah 31:31-33; Hebrews 8:6-13]. And really, gang, if you missed out on the last
few weeks' tapes on Romans, you need to get the Romans 6 tapes
and listen to them. I
mean, don't just depend on what you can get here, whenever
you can get here. You take some responsibility for your own spiritual
walk. Get those tapes,
and listen to them, and begin to understand who you are in
Christ. It will-just like it did with this one brother-it
will radically change your life and help you in your everyday
nitty-gritty stuff, not just, you know, theology. Theology is nothing until it's applied, it's
got to be applied to our walk, applied to our lives. So, anyway, back in chapter 6, verse 14, he
says 'Look, you're not under law but under grace.' And then he gets sidetracked again by somebody
saying 'So that means we can live any way we want.' It's like every time you say that, you have
to say 'No, now that doesn't mean that we can.'
So finally now in chapter 7, verse 1 he comes to the
point where he's able to explain to us just how we got out from under the law. Because
you just can't decide 'I'm not going to be under the law.' You can't just decide 'Well, today I don't feel
like obeying the laws of the land, I'm going to go to Dilard's
and I'm going to take whatever I want.'
And you go up to the jewelry counter and you say 'Oh,
there's some nice watches there', and you take them and put
them in your pocket. And
you see there's a nice shirt and you take it and you stuff
it in your shirt. And
when you walk out, and they knock you down and tie your hands
behind your back and arrest you for shoplifting, and you tell
them 'Well, I just didn't feel like being under the law today.'
You know what? The little men with white jackets are going
to come. They're going
to say, 'Ah, excuse me. You
can't do that.' 'How can we not be under law, Paul? That's the question.' Law's a moral permanent thing, you can't
just decide that you're going to do away with it. So in this first part of Romans 7, Paul tells
us how we got
released from the law. And
the title of my message is "FREE FROM THE LAW."
Now let's look at chapter 7, verse 1.
"Or do you not know, brethren, for I am speaking to those who
know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person
as long as he lives." Now that is so basic, that is so
simple, and that is so important.
He says, 'Don't you know, brethren, I'm talking to
those of you who know law'-the word "the" is not there, you
can cross out "the" if you want to before "law", it's not
there in the Greek. He'
saying 'Those of you who understand law in general, Jewish,
Gentile, pagan religion, let's just talk law for a minute.
Law has dominion as long as they're alive.
Right? Right? Simple. Yeah,
the law is a binding authority on us as long as we're alive. Policemen don't sit and wait in cemeteries for
someone to do something wrong-do they?
No, because the dead people are not the ones they're
having the problems with.
It's the people that are alive that they have the problems
with. I don't know
of any laws that have to deal with what a dead person can
or cannot do. Dead
people are released from the law.
OK, verse
2, Paul
now used the legal institution of marriage to make his point. Listen. "For the married woman is bound"-and the
Greek there is "permanently bound"-"by
law to her husband while he is living.
But if her husband dies she is released from the law
concerning the husband." Makes sense. "So then,
if while her husband is living, she's joined to another man,
she shall be called an adulteress.
But if her husband dies she's free from the law, so
that she is not an adulteress though she's joined to another
man."
Paul's
saying, 'Look, look at marriage, there's some similarities
here. He says, 'Marriage is binding on a person for
life, that's the way God intended it to be.'
And you can't just leave your marriage partner and
go and be married to someone else.
Remember that funny little man who got married to how
many women? He's in
jail here in Arizona. Remember
him? He was married
to dozens of women. Well,
you can't do that. That
law says you can't do that, that's bigamy.
[No, that's polygamy!]
That's against the law. The Bible calls it adultery. OK? And
he didn't get away with it.
Well, so in the same way, with our problem with the
law is that, the law has a jurisdiction over a person as long
as the person's alive. And as long as I'm alive, I'm sort of married
to the law. And I can't
just decide 'Well, I'm going to do away with the law, and
be married to Christ.' You can't just do that, that would be adultery.
And God isn't recognizing divorce. Divorce is something that came much later, and
in Paul's analogy, divorce isn't an option here. And so he's saying 'There's only one way to
get out of that bad marriage, and that's for someone to die.' Don't get any ideas, anybody. [laughter and chuckles] (I called an attorney and asked 'Will I be legally
responsible if somebody does somebody in after this message-no.) The way of release is death. If one partner in a marriage dies, the marriage
is dissolved. And the
surviving partner is then free to remarry.
Right? That's
what he says in verse 3, "So then," he says,
"if while her husband is living,
she's joined to another man, she'd be an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she's free from the
law, and she can be joined to somebody else."-and wouldn't be an adulteress then.
So the death of your partner would release you from
that marriage, you'd be freed, you'd be released. The death of either party ends the relationship
and frees the surviving partner to remarry another. And so, death ends the relationship with the
law. And when you think
about it, death ends the relationship to all law. Remember a guy by the name of Lee
Harvey Oswald? He was
the man who was accused of assassinating President John F.
Kennedy. He should have, by law, been tried, and most
likely he would have been convicted of killing the President,
and then would have been executed.
But he never was tried.
He got out of it. He never was convicted, he never was executed,
he got out of it. How? Well, he himself was assassinated. He was killed. And he's a very good example of what happens
to you when you die, concerning the law.
The law, which would have had him condemned, jailed
and imprisoned, and all these charges against him, all of
that was gone once he died. I mean, they didn't bring in Oswald's corpse
into the court room and set it up, prop it up, you know, 'All
right, you are accused of.and did you pull the trigger?
Was it your bullets, etc?'
And then they say 'You are guilty' and then drag the
corpse to the electric chair and electrocute it once, and
then throw it in the box and put it in a hole in the ground.
They didn't do that. Why? Because
death severed all of his relationship with the law. It was severed. He had no more relationship with the law, because
he was dead. You can't
prosecute a dead man. The
law can only be enforced for the living.
But that's not very comforting when you really think
about it, because sure I can be released from the law by death,
but then it's too late. Right?
You can say, 'Well, I'm dying, but at least I'll be-gasp,
choke, gasp-free from the law-gasp.' I mean, great! You're free from the law, but you're also dead!
So how can we be delivered from the grip of the law
in our lives? You have
to die to get free from the law-how can we be delivered from
the grip of the law in our lives, and yet continue to live
for Jesus Christ? That is a problem. And God has always used to these kind of problems
with us, and so God came up with a solution.
And guess who provided the solution?
None other than Jesus Christ [Yeshua haMeshiach], and
verse 4 gives us the solution. "Therefore my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the
body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to him
who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for
God." Verse 6, "But now we
have been released from the law, having died to that by which
we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit,
and not in oldness of the letter." The way that we've been set from
our marriage to the law is perfectly legal and right. And that's important. Maybe you're thinking that's not important,
but if you ever deal with someone who is a real law person
[they just look at it a different way, but come to the same
conclusions in the end] who says 'Hey, Christians have to
keep the law today. You
have to observe this day [Sabbath], you have to observe these
Feasts, you have to eat this food, or God's not pleased with
you. Listen, you need to understand that you just
can't tell them 'Well, the law's been done away with.' They're going to look at you like 'Have you
lost your mind?' 'What
do you mean the law has been done away with?
You can't do away with a moral thing.'
'You can't just do away with something that's right.'
And so you have to understand Romans 7.
Romans 7 is awesome!
He's saying, 'Exactly, we couldn't do away with the
law, we're married to that husband, the law.
We couldn't get rid of him. The only way to be released from the law was
for us to die.'
And so we died in Christ. Remember my illustration with the
ink? Remember how Christ
was the blue ink? And
we were the white cloth, and when we were baptized into Christ,
we became one with him, and when we come up out of that, we have Christ in us. We are
part of him, and he is in us, and we are in union with him. That union, that death, also was your death
to the law, you died. The
old you died.
I told you "the old man", "the old
woman" she died, and we've been made new creatures, we're
alive in Christ. Everybody
in Adam's family is married to the law, but the way you get
out of Adam's family is to be born a second time, born into
Christ's [Meshiach's] family. That's why you must be born again. So we have been released from the law through
the death of Christ. And
so that when he died, like baptism symbolizes, when he died,
I'm with him in that. And when you go into the water, it's like being
buried like Christ was buried.
And when you come up out of the water, it's like being
raised in the resurrection with Jesus Christ.
And we're just acting out what has happened in the
spiritual realm. You're
dead to the law. The
law wasn't done away with-don't say the law was done away
with-it wasn't done away with.
It was fulfilled though. [I'm beginning to see, and I think this is what
he's getting at-from all my studies of the New Testament,
Paul and Peter, and John show that we are supposed to try
to live by the law, overcoming sin, putting sin out.
And John said in 1st John 3:4 that "sin
is the transgression of the law." So what we have been freed from is the penalty
of the law. Paul brings out in verse 7 of Romans 7 that
the law is our spiritual mirror, showing us where the spiritual
dirt is. We are to use it as a spiritual mirror in the
washing-sanctification process.
James brings the same identical point out in James
1:22-25. So, far from the law being put out of our lives,
it has a different purpose for believers in Jesus, Yeshua. It's our spiritual mirror, while the Holy Spirit
who indwells us is the water that helps us wash the sin away. Ever try to wash dirt off without water? It doesn't work. The law by itself is powerless to wash the dirt
of sin away. It can
only show where the dirt is.
But the law as far as the penalty aspect of it has
been canceled. But
here's a caution. The
believer that fails to put sin out using the law as a spiritual
mirror, and the Holy Spirit as the enabling, washing "water",
will not be granted eternal life.
That is what the Bible says. Read Galatians 5:19-21. The new covenant is defined by the Bible as
God writing his law into our hearts and minds.
Now some believers, Sabbatarians and Torah-observant
Jewish believers in Yeshua, chose to have God write his Old
Testament Law of God into their hearts and minds, and Paul
in Romans 14 said this is all well and good, they are free
to follow their Christian conscience in such matters. Other Christians chose to have God write his
New Testament Law of Christ into their hearts and minds through
the Holy Spirit, and he does so.
The Old Testament required those under the Law of God given
to Moses to observe it all on their
own without God's Holy Spirit empowerment.
That was the Old Covenant. They found out it was impossible, thus God proposed
a new covenant. Now
we're not under the penalty of the law, whichever version
of that law we desire for God to write into our hearts and
minds. We're free now
to work with God in the sanctification or God's cleanup process
of our lives. We're
still told to obey God, and yes his law, but not without his
empowerment, and yes, during the process, we're free from
the penalty of the law. Without a penalty, it's like the law doesn't
apply to us, or it applies to us about as much as it would
apply to a dead person. That
doesn't nullify the law, it's purpose has merely changed.
Hope this helps. Those
who are labeled legalists are just as much a part of God's
sanctification process, and growing in the grace and knowledge
of Jesus Christ as the rest of us.
In God's good time, God will help them understand the
process better. But that is in God's hands. I strongly recommend against getting into any
arguments with them about the law being done away. It would prove spiritually counterproductive
to them and their spiritual growth.
And if they, in their reasoning with you were to decide
to say, give up observing the Sabbath or Holy Days, against
their Christian conscience, then as Paul pointed out in Romans
14:22-23, you would be causing them to sin. Do not do that.] And you've been released from law, freed from
the law, in
a way that honors the law. It's like
you got out of that marriage, in a way that honored marriage. You got out of it without a divorce, and without
an affair. You died. That got you out of the marriage. The institution of marriage was still held in
great honor, you didn't commit a great sin, and you're free. And the glorious thing is that when we died
in Christ, we died in order to live.
We died in order to live.
And so God has provided a just way to justify us. It's
a fair and square law-honoring legal way.
He holds up the law, he says 'Yes the law is right,
and eternal and good, and on the other hand, he saves us sinners-and
it's all by us dying in Christ.
His death counted for more deaths than his own.
His death counted for all of us, because we were in him, we were in Christ when he died.
God set all our sins on him, God placed all of us upon Christ when he
died, and when he rose again.
That's the theology.
That's neat. That's incredible.
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