Dead to the Law
Romans 7:1‑6
And now we come to the high and sacred privilege of examining God's precious Word. And I invite you, if you will, to take your Bible and look at Romans chapter 7. In our continuing study of Romans, tonight we embark on a marvelous adventure into this great seventh chapter. This chapter is the first portion of Scripture that I ever taught at Grace Community Church. That was 14 years ago, more than that, I guess, a little. Pastor Elvey had died of a heart attack. I was asked to come and fill the pulpit and speak. And at the time I was really deep into Romans chapter 7 so I came and some of you will remember that I spoke for an hour and thirty minutes. My wife thought I had lost my mind. I was the guest speaker...ha. And I figured I'd give you the supreme test. If you could stand me for that long, you might be able to stand me for a few years. And here we are 14 years later back at the same marvelous passage.
My views of the passage haven't changed. My understanding of it has been enriched and deepened, thanking God for that through the years. And so I look with great anticipation on our thrill of studying this marvelous chapter.
Let me read to you the first six verses which will be the setting for our message tonight.
Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know law, how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth. For the women who hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he liveth, but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if while her husband liveth she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law so that she is no adulteress though she be married to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful impulses which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law that being dead in which we were held that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
Twenty‑three times in Romans chapter 7 there's a reference to the law. It is the theme of this chapter. Now the law of God is a glorious thing. And we need to establish that because this chapter says so much about being dead to the law that we need to understand in order to balance that off that the law of God is indeed a glorious thing, in spite of the fact that we have been set free from it.
Look with me for a moment back to the Psalms and I would draw your attention to Psalm 19. And in Psalm 19 we read these words beginning in verse 7, "The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord assure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous all together." And all of those terms, law, testimony, statutes, commandment, and ordinances refer to the law of God.
And then verse 10 says, "More to be desired are they than gold, yea than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb." Now that obviously exalts the law of God.
Look with me again 100 Psalms later to the one‑hundred and nineteenth Psalm. And I would just draw your attention to several verses, the whole Psalm is dedicated to the glory of the law of God, all 176 verses of it. But let me just draw your attention, first of all, to verse 12. "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, teach me Thy statutes." Verse 16, "I will delight myself in Thy statutes." Verse 18, "Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law." Verse 77, "For Thy law is my delight." Verse 97, "O how I love Thy law. It is my meditation all the day." Verse 136, "Rivers of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not Thy law." Verse 142, "Thy law is the truth." And verse 165, "Great peace have they who love Thy law." Finally, verse 174, "I have longed for Thy salvation, O Lord, and Thy law is my delight."
Now that truly honors the law of the Lord, the law of God. In Deuteronomy 27:26 we read this, "Cursed be he who confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them and all the people said, amen." Cursed is the person who doesn't do all the things written in the law. In Ecclesiastes chapter 12 and verse 13, the writer says, "Fear God and keep His commandments for this is the whole duty of man." So obedience to the law again is exalted.
Now look with me at the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, a very definitive Old Testament passage on the character and quality and honor of the law, Deuteronomy chapter 6. The last of the five books of Moses and we read in verse 1, "Now these are the commandments, the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord your God commanded to teach you that you might do them in the land to which you go to possess it that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command thee thou and thy son and thy son's son all the days of thy life and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it that it may be well with thee and that ye may increase mightily as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thy walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates and it shall be when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which He swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities which thou buildest not and houses full of all good things which thou fillest not and wells digged which thou digs not, vineyards and olive trees which thou plantest not, when thou shalt have eaten and be full, then beware lest thou forget the Lord who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God and serve Him and shalt swear by His name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people who are around about you, for the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee and destroy thee from off the face of the earth."
Now God is saying to them, "Obey My commandments or be destroyed." And this gives a very high position to the revealed Word, the law of God. In Isaiah chapter 42, to bring the prophetic word in, verse 21, "The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness sake," listen to this, "He will magnify the law and make it honorable." Isaiah 42:21, God will magnify the law and make it honorable. The Psalmist says that God has exalted His Word above His name.
Now all of that to say this. That as you study the Old Testament, you cannot be but overwhelmed by the dignity and the honorable character and the centrality of the revealed law of God. In Exodus 18:16, Moses said to Jethro his father‑in‑law about his design as a leader of the people, he said this, "I do make them know the statutes of God and His law," Exodus 18:16. In other words, Moses said as the leader of Israel, my job can be boiled down to this, I let the people know the law of God.
Do you know the last command in the Old Testament? The last exhortation as you close the final page of the book of Malachi? Listen to it. "Remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel with the statutes and ordinances."
So, from the Pentateuch to the last book of the Old Testament and all in between, the law of God is exalted. Now the result of this was that during the life of Christ and the time of the Apostle Paul, the Jews had elevated the law. In fact, they had even almost made an idol out of the law itself so that in many cases they were worshiping the law rather than the God who wrote the law. But the point is that they had a very high view of the law of God. All you need to do is to look at the Talmud which is the rabbinic commentary on God's revelation and you read from...really from one end of the Talmud to the other about the sacredness of the law of God.
Rabbi Rabba(?) said, for example, "The Holy One created man's evil inclination but created the Torah to overcome it." Now that's fairly errant theology but it does demonstrate the importance of the law. They believed that the law could overcome man's sinfulness. Rabbi Juddas(?) said, "The nature of the Holy One differs from that of mortal men. When a man prescribes a remedy, it may benefit one individual but injure another. But God gave the Torah‑‑that's the law‑‑to Israel as a source of healing for all."
Now the Jews then had developed a theology that said men can make themselves right before God by the exercise of the law, by keeping the law. So the law was sacred. Not only was it sacred because of its honorable definition in the terms of the Old Testament, but because they had made it a mode of salvation. And when you come into the New Testament, none of this is lost. It is apparent in the New Testament time that the people were equally committed to the sacredness of the law. You remember in John chapter 9 when Jesus healed the man born blind and the Pharisees came to investigate the miracle, in John 9:28 they reviled Him and they said, "Thou art His disciples," that is to the blind man, "but we are Moses' disciples, we know that God spoke unto Moses. As for this fellow, we know not from where He is."
In other words, they said we know that God spoke to Moses. Here they are advocating the law of Moses as the very revealed truth of God. And that gives us insight into how they did perceive the law. It was to them the Word of God.
Just to demonstrate it further, turn in your Bible to Acts chapter 21...Acts chapter 21. Let me show you just a brief illustration of this. Verse 20, the Apostle Paul has returned to Jerusalem after some missionary journeys. And he has brought Gentiles with him, Gentile Christians. He's brought gifts from the Gentile churches to give to the poor Jews in Jerusalem. And he comes back and he tells about what God has done among the Gentiles. And verse 20, "And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord and said to him, Thou seest, brother, (brother Paul) how many thousands of Jews there are who believe and they are all zealous of the law." Now that is a good insight into the attitude of the people toward the law. They were zealous for the law.
Now later on in that same chapter, the Apostle Paul‑‑wanting to show his own regard for God's revealed truth‑‑went into the temple in verse 27, actually verse 26, to go through a rite of purification. "And when the seven days were almost ended‑‑verse 27 says‑‑the Jews who were of Asia when they saw him in the temple stirred up all the people, laid hands on him, and crying out, Men of Israel, help, this is the man that teacheth all men everywhere against the people and the law." And, of course, a riot broke out and they would have killed Paul. As it was, they...the Romans took him and put him in prison to protect him. He stayed there two years before he got to Rome. And so it was the very zeal for the law that precipitated the imprisonment of the Apostle Paul.
So, I say to you. When we come into the New Testament era, we lose none of that dominant commitment of the people of Israel to the law. The testimony of Paul follows along the same line, does it not?, in Philippians chapter 3 where he says, "Though I might also have confidence in the flesh," and then he tells why, "Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless." So the man really a vengeance pursued the law of God.
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Now as you flow through the New Testament, this commitment to the sanctity and the dignity and the respectability and the honorable nature of God's law is not diminished at all. When you come to the epistle to the Hebrews, for example, in chapter 2 verse 2, it says that the law was the word spoken by angels who were holy beings. In Acts 7:53 it is said that it is the law received by the disposition of angels. In Acts 7:38 the law is called living oracles. In Matthew 5:17 and 18, Jesus said He didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill the law. And even the Apostle Paul, now let's go back to Romans 7, even the Apostle Paul in this very chapter exalts the law. Verse 12, "The law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good." Verse 14, "For we know that the law is spiritual." Verse 22, "For I delight in the law of God after the inward man."
And to Timothy he wrote, "But we know that the law is good," 1 Timothy 1:8. So you can take it all the way from the beginning of the Old Testament right through the New Testament and God's law is exalted, God's law is lifted up both in the eyes of the Jew and the Gentile who came to Christ in the church.
Looking at it conversely, how would you define sin? How would you define sin? First John 3:4, "Sin is a transgression of the...what?...law." So the law is the essential reality. To sum up all of this, I would draw your attention to Romans 3:31. And in Romans 3:31 we read this, that just after Paul has talked about justification by faith he says, "Do we then make void the law through faith?" In other words, if you can come to God by faith and you don't have to do the law, you don't have to keep the law in your own human strength, if we...if God accepts you by faith, do we then make void the law or render it useless? And the answer is me genoito in the Greek which is the strongest negative, no, no, no, no, no way, impossible, God forbid, "rather we establish the law." So, Paul wants to establish the place of the law.
Now, with that all in mind that the law is sacred, holy, just, good, honorable, respectable, and all that, look with me at chapter 3 verse 19 and we'll draw ourselves into chapter 7 now. Chapter 3 verse 19, "Now we know that whatever things the law saith it saith to them that under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God, therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be...what?...justified." Now listen, the law is good, the law is holy, the law is righteous, the law is honorable, the law reflects the mind and heart of God but nobody no time under any circumstances be justified by keeping the law.
Now go to chapter 5 verse 20. "Moreover, if you don't get saved by the law, what's the law for? Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound." In other words, instead of the law creating righteousness, the law made sin...what?...abound.
Now let's go one more step and we'll get to the seventh chapter. Chapter 6 verse 14, "For sin shall not have dominion over you," and here is an absolutely shocking statement to a Jew who all his or her life long had been committed to the law. "For sin shall not have dominion over you for ye are not under the law but under grace." Now a statement like that has to be defended. It just has to be defended. There's no way that Paul can make that statement in 6:14 and then walk away from it and write the rest of this epistle. It's going to leave such a massive block in their minds, he has to deal with what he just said. We are not under the law.
Now would you notice there are two basic statements in verse 14? "For sin shall not have dominion over you," that's the first statement. Now listen carefully. He explained the meaning of that statement in chapter 6 verses 15 to 23, that is an exposition of that statement. The second statement, "for you are not under the law but under grace," he explains in chapter 7. He makes those two statements. Explains one and then the other because he cannot leave them unexplained. For those who have such a high and sacred view of the law will be devastated by his statement and they will jettison all of his theology when he says you are not under the law, they have all their life time lived under the law. It's all they've known. So he must explain it. And I believe he does it in chapter 7. So now you understand the rationale for chapter 7, against a background of such affirmation of God's law, there must be some explanation about what it means to say we are not under the law. It seems that men have been under the law for a long time, how has that and why has that changed?
Now let me give you an overview before we go specifically into chapter 7. And I'm hurrying as rapidly as I can. Remember the context of all of this. The major theme of Romans is justification by faith. In other words, you're saved not by keeping the law but by believing, right? Through grace. Now we have started with justification by faith in chapter 3, the first couple of chapters showed us how sinful we are...we hit chapter 3 verse 21 and we get into justification by faith and it runs all the way to the end of chapter 8. Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8...all justification by faith, that's the theme of all of those. And then in 9 to 11 he applies it to Israel and the in 12 till the end he shows how it works out in living. But the main theme is justification by faith.
Having presented the doctrine itself in chapters 3 and 4, he then is presenting the fruit of that doctrine. And the first one was chapter 5 and in chapter 5 we learned that the first fruit of justification was security. We have peace with God. That's settled. Security.
The second fruit of which he speaks in chapter 6 is holiness. We have union with Christ in chapter 6. And now His holiness is imparted to us. So the fruit of justification, first security, second holiness, now we come to chapter 7 and the third fruit is liberty...liberty. We are free from the law. Marvelous. And we're going to see even more fruit of justification. But the point that we've been trying to stress since we got into this thing in chapter 3 is that salvation has tremendous effect. You cannot claim to be a Christian without a demonstrable effect in your life. Salvation transforms people.
That's the essence of what Paul is spending chapter after chapter to tell us. We have in chapter 5 peace with God. We have in chapter 6 union with Christ. We have in chapter 7 freedom from the law. All of that is the fruit of salvation. And that all really answers the rather silly question in chapter 6 verse 1, doesn't it? "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" You see, that's what the critic would say. Your doctrine of justification by faith through grace means that you can just sin all you want and every time you sin God has grace so your doctrine leads to unrighteous living. In other words, the legalist says, "Boy, we keep people toeing the mark here. We've got all the rules. When you come along and say you're not saved by the law, the law can't save you, you can't keep the law, you're saved by grace through faith, you're just turning people loose and they're going to run amuck." And so they accuse him of the doctrine that leads to sin and he says quite the opposite. True salvation leads to holiness, right? That's what we saw in chapter 6. It doesn't lead to license, it leads to the very opposite of license. It leads to holiness, chapter 6. Chapter 7, it leads to freedom from the law.
Now let's take the first section of chapter 7 and look at it. I'm going to give you four points: the axiom, the analogy, the application, and the affirmation. Here we go.
The axiom...and Paul is good at establishing self‑evident axiomatic principles. "Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know law, how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he lives." Now that isn't any profound theological statement, that's just an axiom. By axiom we mean a self‑evident truth that doesn't have to be proven. It's just apparent. It's just patently obvious. He calls them brethren. And he needs, at this point, to interject an affectionate greeting because by now some of the Jews are ready to stone him because of his saying we are not under the law. And so affectionately he may reach out to them with a tender sensitivity that a subject filled with such tension demands. And he says to them, "Know ye not," the idea is you're really not ignorant of this, it's assuming that they know. He appeals to what he assumes they know. He's rather tactful. He gives them the benefit of the doubt. He's saying you know this because I speak to them that know law. It is an arthoris(?) construction which means there's no definite article. I'm talking to people who understand law. Everyone knows this whether Greek law, Hebrew law, Roman law, Mosaic law, biblical law, Jewish law, any law. Anybody who knows law knows that law only has dominion over living people. Have you noticed that about it? When you see a drunk who gets into a crash and gets killed, you don't see an officer bending over a corpse writing a ticket. The law does not apply to a dead person. And you will all remember the assassination of the President John F. Kennedy, and then the immediate assassination of the one who killed him, Lee Harvey Oswald, and you will also remember that he was never tried because the law has jurisdiction only over living people. Now that's axiomatic, that's just obvious truth. The law only applies to people that are alive. Now that's the axiom.
He moves from that to the analogy. And this is a fascinating analogy in verses 2 and 3. And he uses an analogy from marriage. And please do me a favor, and I wish I could have said this to some commentators who've written on the passage, don't turn an analogy into an allegory or you really get mixed up. If you don't understand what I just said, don't worry about it. But people who try to take this very simple analogy meant to point up one single truth and explode the thing into a full blown analogy, get really mixed up. It's a very simple analogy.
Verse 2, "For the woman who hath an husband," you got that? Not too hard, is it? It's a married lady. "She's bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. If he's dead, she's loosed from the law of her husband." Right? The marriage law doesn't apply if your husband's dead. You're not bound to the corpse the rest of your life. It's a very simple analogy. Now the key thought is "as long as he lives." Law binds people only while they're alive.
Verse 3 kind of expands it. "So then, if while her husband lives she be married to another man, she should be called an adulteress," that's right, isn't it? You can't do that. You'd not only be called an adulteress, you'd be called a what? A polygamist. You can't do that, or a bigamist. You can't go marry somebody else. As long as you're married to your husband and he's alive, you can't go do that. Now there's not a divorce situation seen here. There's not all kinds of complications. Very simple, when you're married to one person and he's alive, you can't go marry somebody else. "But if her husband be dead, she's free from that law so that she is no adulteress though she be married to another man." And the whole point of the analogy is just to say that law only applies in marriage as long as both partners are alive. When one dies, that law of marriage is no longer applicable.
How free is she? It says in verse 3 she's free from that law. How free is she? She's free to be exactly as she was before she ever married the guy in the first place. She's just as free as she was when she was a virgin. She's so free that she can go marry another man. And we know this is pointed out in the New Testament in 1 Timothy 5:14. Paul says the younger widows, I want to go and get married, right? First Timothy 5:14, and in 1 Corinthians 7:39 Paul says those of you who are widows, marry on