Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Romans 7:1
Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
Ch. Rom 7:1-6. The same subject. Illustration from matrimony
1. Know ye not, &c.] The passage from hence to end of Rom 7:7 is closely connected with the last chapter. By a perfectly new simile (marriage), it illustrates further what has been just illustrated by the metaphor of slavery, and (in the first part of ch. 6) by the union of the justified with Christ; namely the Christian’s entire disconnexion from the claims, and so from the ruling influence, of sin, in virtue of the new and sacred union.
to them that know the law ] Lit. law; without article. But the immediate context shews that the Mosaic Law, (and probably especially its sanctions regarding marriage), is meant. The whole Roman Church, whether Jewish or Gentile, would be familiar with it; many of them having been disciples of the synagogue, and all being directed constantly to the use of the Old Testament by apostolic precept and example. See on Rom 4:18. This brief parenthesis is quite in keeping with the courtesy of St Paul’s writings.
hath dominion ] i.e. has a claim on him; same word as Rom 6:9, where see note.
a man ] Lit. the man; the individual, as the second party in any given case the Law being the first party.
as long as he liveth ] Not “ only as long as he liveth,” as this is sometimes explained. The emphasis is on the abiding claim of the Law up to death, which alone can cancel it. This general and certain principle is now at once applied to the special case at which St Paul aims in illustration the case of marriage.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Know ye not – This is an appeal to their own observation respecting the relation between husband and wife. The illustration Rom 7:2-3 is designed simply to show that as when a man dies, and the connection between him and his wife is dissolved, his Law ceases to be binding on her, so also a separation has taken place between Christians and the Law, in which they have become dead to it, and they are not now to attempt to draw their life and peace from it, but from that new source with which they are connected by the gospel, Rom 7:4.
For I speak to them … – Probably the apostle refers here more particularly to the Jewish members of the Roman church, who were qualified particularly to understand the nature of the Law, and to appreciate the argument. That there were many Jews in the church at Rome has been shown (see Introduction); but the illustration has no exclusive reference to them. The Law to which he appeals is sufficiently general to make the illustration intelligible to all people.
That the law – The immediate reference here is probably to the Mosaic Law. But what is here affirmed is equally true of all laws.
Hath dominion – Greek, Rules; exercises lordship. The Law is here personified, and represented as setting up a lordship over a man, and exacting obedience.
Over a man – Over the man who is under it.
As long as he liveth – The Greek here may mean either as he liveth, or as it liveth, that is, the law. But our translation has evidently expressed the sense. The sense is, that death releases a man from the laws by which he was bound in life. It is a general principle, relating to the laws of the land, the law of a parent, the law of a contract, etc. This general principle the apostle proceeds to apply in regard to the Law of God.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Rom 7:1-6
Know ye not, brethren how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
Believers not under the law as a covenant of works
I. All men are, naturally, under the law as a covenant of works.
1. As men. God made man capable of moral government; he was naturally bound to obey the will of his Maker. The moral law: perfect obedience to this law could never entitle him to any greater degree of happiness, yet God was pleased to superadd a promise of everlasting life upon obedience, to which He annexed His awful sanction, In the day that thou sinnest, thou shalt surely die. This is what we call a covenant: as such it was proposed on the part of God, and it was accepted on the part of man. Now as this covenant was made with Adam as the federal head, so all men are naturally under it.
2. As sinners. In this view sinners are under the law as a broken covenant, which therefore can afford no relief to them that seek salvation by it (Gal 3:10-12).
II. To be under the law, and especially as a broken covenant, is a most dreadful thing.
1. The law requires perfect, universal, and everlasting obedience of all that are under it. Now this law is not abolished or made void, either by Christ or by any of His apostles. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil; for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Mat 5:17-18; Rom 3:31). How dreadful then is such a state, since no mere man can thus keep it. And while the Christian betakes himself to the mercy of God in Christ, as his only hope, the sinner supports his vain confidence in the supposition that God will not insist on His claim.
2. It denounces against every transgressor the most awful curse (Jam 2:10-11; Gal 3:10).
III. Many have obtained a glorious deliverance out of this dreadful state. In Christ they are made brethren: Know ye not, brethren.
IV. They who are delivered from this state are to be distinguished from others in the ministry of the Word. Addressing himself to believers, Paul appeals to their spiritual knowledge and judgment, Know ye not.
1. There is a knowledge peculiar to the saints, whereby they know the things that are excellent; they have judgment to distinguish betwixt truth and error; an inward principle (1Jn 2:27; 1Jn 5:20) which teaches them the knowledge of every truth necessary for consolation or salvation.
2. One great reason why many know not the truth, is not merely owing to their ignorance of it, but often to their prejudice against it.
3. Sound and saving knowledge hath respect not only to the truth itself, but also to the use we are to make of it.
4. It is no inconsiderable part of our happiness when we are called to minister unto such as know the truth as it is in Jesus.
Conclusion:
1. If all men are naturally under the law as a covenant of works, who can wonder if they seek life by that covenant? Natural light, natural conscience can discover no other way of salvation.
2. If all are miserable who are under the law, especially as a broken covenant, this calls upon men who are under a profession of religion to examine themselves as to their state before God.
3. If believers are delivered from the law as a covenant, yet still let them remember, They are under the law to Christ.
4. If true believers are to be distinguished from others in the ministry of the Word, let them distinguish themselves, not only by a public profession, but also by a becoming walk and conversation. (J. Stafford.)
The believers relation to the law and to Christ
I. The believers former connection with the law.
1. The law, considered in the figurative capacity of a husband, had a right to full and implicit subjection. But alas! all mankind had violated the authority of this first husband; they had abused his rights, resisted his claims, and thus exposed themselves to the fatal consequences of his just denunciations.
2. Yet, miserable as this state is, men in general are insensible of it. They still show attachment to the law, despite their disobedience; and place, as a wife does on her husband, infatuated dependence. As God said to Eve, Thy desire shall be to thy husband, so it is with the sinner as to the law.
II. The dissolution of this connection. This consists in the sinners deliverance from the obligation to obedience as the condition of life, and from the curse attending disobedience.
1. When and how does this take place? The answer is–The law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth. Ye are become dead to the law. Here is the decease of one of the parties, by which the union is dissolved.
2. This decease refers to the death of the believer in Christ (Rom 6:7-8), who bore the curse of the law in his stead (Gal 3:13). Thus the effects of the first husbands displeasure cannot reach them.
3. And not only is the curse of the law removed, but our connection with it, as a condition of life, is forever done away, as effectually as the relation between husband and wife is dissolved by death.
III. He is then married to another, etc., which expresses the believers new relation with Jesus (see also Eph 5:30-32; Joh 3:29; Rev 21:2).
1. To this new husband all believers are subject. They feel his authority as that at once of rightful claim and of tender affection. They delight in obeying Him who loves them. And in Him they are truly blessed. He smiles upon them, and enriches them with a dowry of spiritual treasures.
2. This connection, being with Him who is raised from the dead, is indissoluble (Rom 6:9). The Husband never dies; nor do they ever die to whom He stands thus related. Joined to the Lord, they are one spirit; and the spiritual union is lasting as eternity.
IV. The consistency of this new connection with all the rights and claims of the first husband. These claims were just, and had a right to be fully implemented. The believer has not satisfied them in his own person; but his Substitute has by His obedience and death magnified the law and made it honourable. Hence the laws claims upon him cease as completely as the claims of a husband when dead on the surviving wife.
V. The absolute necessity of the dissolution of all connection with the law, in order to a sinners being joined to Christ. The two connections cannot subsist together. The sinner who is joined to Christ must die completely to the law. While he retains any connection with it, in the way of seeking or expecting life from it, he is not united to Christ. As the worship of idols was styled adultery, when practised by that people whom Jehovah had espoused to Himself–so all such connection with the law is unfaithfulness to our Divine Husband. He must be all our salvation, and all our desire. Let no one, however, think that we are pleading for freedom from the law as the rule of life. Its obligation in this sense remains immutable (Rom 3:31; 1Co 9:21, etc.).
VI. The blessed effects of the dissolution of the connection with the law, and the formation of the union with Christ. The bringing forth fruit unto God. The fruit meant is, no doubt, holy obedience and service (Rom 6:22). Such fruit is as naturally the effect of union to Christ, as the fruit of the womb is the expected result of the marriage relation. No fruit acceptable in the sight of God can be produced while the former connection continued (Rom 7:5). They who are under the law are in the flesh; and can bring forth no fruit but unto death. All is devoid of the only principle of acceptable service–faith working by love. There is no true fruit unto God produced till the connection with the law has been dissolved, and that with Christ has been formed (Rom 7:6). The fears of the law, uniting with the pride of self-righteousness, may produce considerable outward conformity to the precepts of the law; whilst there is no true principle of godliness within. There may be much in the eyes of men that is amiable; while in the sight of God all the service is rendered in the oldness of the letter–under the influence of the principles of the old, is service in newness of spirit, i.e., to serve God in sincerity, under the influence of those principles and views and dispositions which constitute a mind renewed by the Spirit of God (Eze 36:26). (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)
True Christian liberty implies
I. Freedom from the compulsory action of law. It can neither–
1. Alarm;
2. Condemn;
3. Become a source of bondage.
II. The freedom of devoted love to Christ.
1. Who has won the heart;
2. Constrains our service;
3. By His death and resurrection. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Dead to the law, married to Christ
1. The apostle has illustrated the transference that takes place at conversion by the emancipation of a slave whose services are due to the lawful superior under whom he now stands enrolled. The apostle now turns to those who know the law, and deduces from the obligations which attach to marriage, the same result, i.e., an abandonment by the believer of those doings which have their fruit unto death, and a new service which has its fruit unto God.
2. There is a certain obscurity here arising from the apparent want of sustained analogy. True, the obligations of marriage are annulled by the death of one party; but Paul only supposes the death of the husband. Now the law is evidently the husband, and the subject the wife. So that, to make good the resemblance–the law should be conceived dead, and the subject alive. Yet, in reading the first verse, one would suppose that it was on the death of the subject, and not of the law, that the connection was to be dissolved. It is true that the translation might have run thus, The law hath dominion over a man so long as it liveth; but this does not suit so well with Rom 7:4, where, instead of the law having become dead unto us, we have become dead unto it; so that some degree of that confusion which arises from a mixed analogy appears unavoidable. It so happens, too, that either supposition stands linked with very important truth–so that by admitting both, this passage becomes the envelope of two important lessons.
I. The law may be regarded as dead; and he our former husband, now taken out of the way, has left us free to enter upon an alliance with Christ.
1. The death of the law did indeed take place at the death of Christ. It was then that He blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. It was then that the law lost its power as an offended Lord to take vengeance of our trespasses. Certain venomous animals expire on the moment that they have deposited their sting and its mortal poison in the body of their victim. And thus there ensues the death of both sufferer and assailant. And on the Cross there was just such a catastrophe.
2. Without Christ the law is in living force against us. Men under earnestness, who have not found their way to Christ, stand related to it as the wife does to an outraged husband: a state of appalling danger and darkness from which there is no relief, but in the death of that husband.
3. The illustration of our text opens a way for just such a relief as would be afforded by the death of the first tyrannical husband, and by the substitution of another in his place, who had cast the veil of oblivion over the past, and who admits us to a fellowship of love and confidence. Christ would divorce you, as it were, from your old alliance with the law; and welcome you, instead, to a new and friendly alliance with Himself. He bids you cease from the fellowship altogether.
4. And to deliver this contemplation from any image so revolting as that of our rejoicing in the death of a former husband; and finding all the relief of heaven in the society of another, you have to remember that the law has become dead–not by an act which has vilified the law or done it violence, but by an act which has magnified the law and made it honourable.
4. When a sense of the law brings remorse or fearfulness into your heart, transfer your thoughts from it as your now dead, to Christ as your now living husband.
II. The believer may be regarded as dead. The other way by which marriage may be dissolved is by the death of the wife. And so the relationship between the law and the subject may be dissolved by the death of the subject (Rom 7:4). The law has no more power over its dead subject than the husband has over his dead wife.
1. This brings us back to the conception already so abundantly insisted on, that in Christ we all died in law; so that the law can have no further reckoning with us, having already had that reckoning in the person of Him who was our Surety and our Representative. And just as the criminal law has done its utmost upon him whom it has executed, so the law can do no more in the way of vengeance with us, having already done all with Him who was smitten for our iniquities.
2. After our old relationship with the law is thus put an end to, the vacancy is supplied by Him who, after having removed the law through His death out of the station it had before occupied, then rose again and now stands in its place. The wife owes a duty to her second husband as well as her first. It is true that with the former the predominant feeling may have been that of obligation mixed with great fearfulness; and that, with the latter, the predominant feeling may be sweet and spontaneous affection. But still it is evident that there will be service, possibly much greater in amount and certainly far worthier in principle. Under the law we are bidden to do and live; under Christ we are bidden to live and do. In working to the law it is all for ourselves that we may earn a wage or a reward. In working to Christ it is all the freewill offering of love and thankfulness (2Co 5:16). (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Marriage with Christ
1. The dissolution of the former marriage.
2. The new marriage.
3. Its fruits.
The believer, released from the law by dying in fellowship with the death of Christ, is free to enter into a new union with the risen Christ, in order to bring forth the fruits of holiness to Gods honour. (Archdeacon Gifford.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER VII.
The law has power over a man as long as he lives, 1.
And a wife is bound to her husband only as long as he lives,
2, 3.
Christian believers are delivered from the Mosaic law by Christ
Jesus, and united to God, 5-7.
By the law is the knowledge of sin, 8.
But it gives no power over it, 9-11.
Yet it is holy, just, and good, 12.
How it convinces of sin, and brings into bondage, 13-24.
No deliverance from its curse but by Jesus Christ, 25.
NOTES ON CHAP. VII.
The apostle having, in the preceding chapter, shown the converted Gentiles the obligations they were under to live a holy life, addresses himself here to the Jews who might hesitate to embrace the Gospel; lest, by this means, they should renounce the law, which might appear to them as a renunciation of their allegiance to God. As they rested in the law, as sufficient for justification and sanctification, it was necessary to convince them of their mistake. That the law was insufficient for their justification the apostle had proved, in chapters iii., iv., and v.; that it is insufficient for their sanctification he shows in this chapter; and introduces his discourse by showing that a believing Jew is discharged from his obligations to the law, and is at liberty to come under another and much happier constitution, viz. that of the Gospel of Christ, Ro 7:1-4. In Ro 7:5 he gives a general description of the state of a Jew, in servitude to sin, considered as under mere law. In Ro 7:6 he gives a summary account of the state of a Christian, or believing Jew, and the advantages he enjoys under the Gospel. Upon Ro 7:5 he comments, from Ro 7:7-25, and upon Ro 7:6 he comments, Ro 8:1-11.
In explaining his position in Ro 7:5 he shows:
1. That the law reaches to all the branches and latent principles of sin, Ro 7:7.
2. That it subjected the sinner to death, Ro 7:8-12, without the expectation of pardon.
3. He shows the reason why the Jew was put under it, Ro 7:13.
4. He proves that the law, considered as a rule of action, though it was spiritual, just, holy, and good in itself, yet was insufficient for sanctification, or for freeing a man from the power of inbred sin.
For, as the prevalency of sensual appetites cannot wholly extinguish the voice of reason and conscience, a man may acknowledge the law to be holy, just, and good, and yet his passions reign within him, keeping him in the most painful and degrading servitude, while the law supplied no power to deliver him from them, Ro 7:14-24, as that power can only be supplied by the grace of Jesus Christ, Ro 7:25. See Taylor.
Verse 1. For I speak to them that know the law] This is a proof that the apostle directs this part of his discourse to the Jews.
As long as he liveth?] Or, as long as It liveth; law does not extend its influence to the dead, nor do abrogated laws bind. It is all the same whether we understand these words as speaking of a law abrogated, so that it cannot command; or of its objects being dead, so that it has none to bind. In either case the law has no force.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The apostle, having showed in a former chapter how believers are freed from the dominion of sin, proceeds in this chapter to declare, that they are free also from the yoke of the Mosaical law, because that was dead to them, and they to it. This he illustrates, and proceeds by the familiar allegory of a husband and his wife: Look, as a wife is free from her husband when he is dead, and may then marry another, and be no adulteress; so believers are dead to the law, and are free to be married to another, even to Christ, that is raised from the dead, that upon their marriage they may bring forth fruit unto God.
By the law here he means the law of wedlock, or the law of Moses about that matter, as appears by the instance given in the next verse.
The word man here is common to both sexes, and may be applied to either, for both are subject to the aforementioned law.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. I speak to them that know thelawof Moses to whom, though not themselves Jews (see on Ro1:13), the Old Testament was familiar.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Know ye not, brethren,…. The apostle having asserted, Ro 6:14, that the believing Romans were “not under the law”; which he knew would be displeasing to many, and excepted to by them, especially the Jews that were among them, who though they believed in Christ, yet were zealous of the law, takes it up again, and explains and defends it. That they were the Jewish converts at Rome he here particularly addresses, appears partly from his calling them “brethren”, for they were so according to the flesh, as well as in a spiritual relation, and this he rather mentions to soften their resentments, and conciliate their minds to him; and partly from the words included in a parenthesis,
for I speak to them that know the law; not the law of nature, but the law of Moses, as the Jews did, being trained up in the knowledge of it; to these he appeals, saying, “know ye not”, for the truth of a principle or maxim he afterwards improves, which they could not be ignorant of,
how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he, or “it”,
liveth; for the word “liveth” may refer either to man or to the law. The law may be said to live, when it is in full force, and to be dead, when it is abrogated and disannulled; now whilst it lives, or is in force, it has dominion over a man; it can require and command obedience of him, and in case of disobedience can condemn him, and inflict punishment on him: and this power it has also as long as the man lives who is under it, but when he is dead it has no more dominion over him; then “the servant is free from his master”, Job 3:19; that is, from the law of his master; and children are free from the law of their parents, the wife from the law of her husband, and subjects from the law of their prince. This is so clear a point that none can doubt of it. The Jews have a saying d, that
“when a man is dead, he becomes , free from the law, and from the commands.”
d T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 30. 1. Niddah, fol. 61. 2. & T. Hieros. Kilaim, fol. 32. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| Observations Respecting the Law. | A. D. 58. |
1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? 2 For the woman which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. 3 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. 4 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. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. 6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
Among other arguments used in the foregoing chapter to persuade us against sin, and to holiness, this was one (v. 14), that we are not under the law; and this argument is here further insisted upon and explained (v. 6): We are delivered from the law. What is meant by this? And how is it an argument why sin should not reign over us, and why we should walk in newness of life? 1. We are delivered from the power of the law which curses and condemns us for the sin committed by us. The sentence of the law against us is vacated and reversed, by the death of Christ, to all true believers. The law saith, The soul that sins shall die; but we are delivered from the law. The Lord has taken away thy sin, thou shalt not die. We are redeemed from the curse of the law, Gal. iii. 13. 2. We are delivered from that power of the law which irritates and provokes the sin that dwelleth in us. This the apostle seems especially to refer to (v. 5): The motions of sins which were by the law. The law, by commanding, forbidding, threatening, corrupt and fallen man, but offering no grace to cure and strengthen, did but stir up the corruption, and, like the sun shining upon a dunghill, excite and draw up the filthy steams. We being lamed by the fall, the law comes and directs us, but provides nothing to heal and help our lameness, and so makes us halt and stumble the more. Understand this of the law not as a rule, but as a covenant of works. Now each of these is an argument why we should be holy; for here is encouragement to endeavours, though in many things we come short. We are under grace, which promises strength to do what it commands, and pardon upon repentance when we do amiss. This is the scope of these verses in general, that, in point of profession and privilege, we are under a covenant of grace, and not under a covenant of works–under the gospel of Christ, and not under the law of Moses. The difference between a law-state and a gospel-state he had before illustrated by the similitude of rising to a new life, and serving a new master; now here he speaks of is under the similitude of being married to a new husband.
I. Our first marriage was to the law, which, according to the law of marriage, was to continue only during the life of the law. The law of marriage is binding till the death of one of the parties, no matter which, and no longer. The death of either discharges both. For this he appeals to themselves, as persons knowing the law (v. 1): I speak to those that know the law. It is a great advantage to discourse with those that have knowledge, for such can more readily understand and apprehend a truth. Many of the Christians at Rome were such as had been Jews, and so were well acquainted with the law. One has some hold of knowing people. The law hath power over a man as long as he liveth; in particular, the law of marriage hath power; or, in general, every law is so limited–the laws of nations, of relations, of families, c. 1. The obligation of laws extends no further by death the servant who, while he lived, was under the yoke, is freed from his master, Job iii. 19. 2. The condemnation of laws extends no further; death is the finishing of the law. Actio moritur cum person–The action expires with the person. The severest laws could but kill the body, and after that there is no more that they can do. Thus while we were alive to the law we were under the power of it–while we were in our Old-Testament state, before the gospel came into the world, and before it came with power into our hearts. Such is the law of marriage (v. 2), the woman is bound to her husband during life, so bound to him that she cannot marry another; if she do, she shall be reckoned an adulteress, v. 3. It will make her an adulteress, not only to be defiled by, but to be married to, another man; for that is so much the worse, upon this account, that it abuses an ordinance of God, by making it to patronise the uncleanness. Thus were we married to the law (v. 5): When we were in the flesh, that is, in a carnal state, under the reigning power of sin and corruption–in the flesh as in our element–then the motions of sins which were by the law did work in our members, we were carried down the stream of sin, and the law was but as an imperfect dam, which made the stream to swell the higher, and rage the more. Our desire was towards sin, as that of the wife towards her husband, and sin ruled over us. We embraced it, loved it, devoted all to it, conversed daily with it, made it our care to please it. We were under a law of sin and death, as the wife under the law of marriage; and the product of this marriage was fruit brought forth unto death, that is, actual transgressions were produced by the original corruption, such as deserve death. Lust, having conceived by the law (which is the strength of sin, 1 Cor. xv. 56), bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death, Jam. i. 15. This is the posterity that springs from this marriage to sin and the law. This comes of the motions of sin working in our members. And this continues during life, while the law is alive to us, and we are alive to the law.
II. Our second marriage is to Christ: and how comes this about? Why,
1. We are freed, by death, from our obligation to the law as a covenant, as the wife is from her obligation to her husband, v. 3. This resemblance is not very close, nor needed it to be. You are become dead to the law, v. 4. He does not say, “The law is dead” (some think because he would avoid giving offence to those who were yet zealous for the law), but, which comes all to one, You are dead to the law. As the crucifying of the world to us, and of us to the world, amounts to one and the same thing, so doth the law dying, and our dying to it. We are delivered from the law (v. 6), katergethemen—we are nulled as to the law; our obligation to it as a husband is cassated and made void. And then he speaks of the law being dead as far as it was a law of bondage to us: That being dead wherein we were held; not the law itself, but its obligation to punishment and its provocation to sin. It is dead, it has lost its power; and this (v. 4) by the body of Christ, that is, by the sufferings of Christ in his body, by his crucified body, which abrogated the law, answered the demands of it, made satisfaction for our violation of it, purchased for us a covenant of grace, in which righteousness and strength are laid up for us, such as were not, nor could be, by the law. We are dead to the law by our union with the mystical body of Christ. By being incorporated into Christ in our baptism professedly, in our believing powerfully and effectually, we are dead to the law, have no more to do with it than the dead servant, that is free from his master, hath to do with his master’s yoke.
2. We are married to Christ. The day of our believing is the day of our espousals to the Lord Jesus. We enter upon a life of dependence on him and duty to him: Married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, a periphrasis of Christ and very pertinent here; for as our dying to sin and the law is in conformity to the death of Christ, and the crucifying of his body, so our devotedness to Christ in newness of life is in conformity to the resurrection of Christ. We are married to the raised exalted Jesus, a very honourable marriage. Compare 2Co 11:2; Eph 5:29. Now we are thus married to Christ, (1.) That we should bring forth fruit unto God, v. 4. One end of marriage is fruitfulness: God instituted the ordinance that he might seek a godly seed, Mal. ii. 15. The wife is compared to the fruitful vine, and children are called the fruit of the womb. Now the great end of our marriage to Christ is our fruitfulness in love, and grace, and every good work. This is fruit unto God, pleasing to God, according to his will, aiming at his glory. As our old marriage to sin produced fruit unto death, so our second marriage to Christ produces fruit unto God, fruits of righteousness. Good works are the children of the new nature, the products of our union with Christ, as the fruitfulness of the vine is the product of its union with the root. Whatever our professions and pretensions may be, there is no fruit brought forth to God till we are married to Christ; it is in Christ Jesus that we are created unto good works, Eph. ii. 10. The only fruit which turns to a good account is that which is brought forth in Christ. This distinguishes the good works of believers from the good works of hypocrites and self-justifiers that they are brought forth in marriage, done in union with Christ, in the name of the Lord Jesus, Col. iii. 17. This is, without controversy, one of the great mysteries of godliness. (2.) That we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter, v. 6. Being married to a new husband, we must change our way. Still we must serve, but it is a service that is perfect freedom, whereas the service of sin was a perfect drudgery: we must now serve in newness of spirit, by new spiritual rules, from new spiritual principles, in spirit and in truth, John iv. 24. There must be a renovation of our spirits wrought by the spirit of God, and in that we must serve. Not in the oldness of the letter; that is, we must not rest in mere external services, as the carnal Jews did, who gloried in their adherence to the letter of the law, and minded not the spiritual part of worship. The letter is said to kill with its bondage and terror, but we are delivered from that yoke that we may serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness, Luk 1:74; Luk 1:75. We are under the dispensation of the Spirit, and therefore must be spiritual, and serve in the spirit. Compare with this 2Co 3:3; 2Co 3:6, &c. It becomes us to worship within the veil, and no longer in the outward court.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
To men that know the law ( ). Dative plural of present active participle of . The Romans, whether Jews or Gentiles, knew the principle of law.
A man ( ). “The person,” generic term , not .
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Brethren. All Christians, not only Jews but Gentiles who are assumed to be acquainted with the Old Testament.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Know ye not brethren,” (e agnoeite, adelphoi) “Or are you all ignorant, brethren;” Do you all (as a church) not recognize?
2) “(For I speak to them that know -the law),” (ginoskousin gar nomon lolo) “For I speak to. those knowing the law,” familiar with the Law of Moses, Rom 2:17-18, and with the principal of law in general.
3) “How that the law hath dominion over a man,” (hoti ho nomos kurieuei tou anthropou eph) “That the law lord’s it over a man,” has jurisdiction over a man;
4) “As long as he liveth,” (hoson Chronon ze) “Such a time (as) he lives,” or as long as he lives, during his natural lifetime? and no longer. At death he is liberated from the law. The law binds living men, not dead men, whatever law they may be under.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
Though he had, in a brief manner, sufficiently explained the question respecting the abrogation of the law; yet as it was a difficult one, and might have given rise to many other questions, he now shows more at large how the law, with regard to us, is become abrogated; and then he sets forth what good is thereby done to us: for while it holds us separated from Christ and bound to itself, it can do nothing but condemn us. And lest any one should on this account blame the law itself, he takes up and confutes the objections of the flesh, and handles, in a striking manner, the great question respecting the use of the law. (201)
1. Know ye not, etc. Let the general proposition be that the law was given to men for no other end but to regulate the present life, and that it belongs not to those who are dead: to this he afterwards subjoins this truth — that we are dead to it through the body of Christ. Some understand, that the dominion of the law continues so long to bind us as it remains in force. But as this view is rather obscure, and does not harmonize so well with the proposition which immediately follows, I prefer to follow those who regard what is said as referring to the life of man, and not to the law. The question has indeed a peculiar force, as it affirms the certainty of what is spoken; for it shows that it was not a thing new or unknown to any of them, but acknowledged equally by them all.
(For to those who know the law I speak.) This parenthesis is to be taken in the same sense with the question, as though he had said — that he knew that they were not so unskilful in the law as to entertain any doubt on the subject. And though both sentences might be understood of all laws, it is yet better to take them as referring to the law of God, which is the subject that is discussed. There are some who think that he ascribes knowledge of the law to the Romans, because the largest part of the world was under their power and government; but this is puerile: for he addressed in part the Jews or other strangers, and in part common and obscure individuals; nay, he mainly regarded the Jews, with whom he had to do respecting the abrogation of the law: and lest they should think that he was dealing captiously with them, he declares that he took up a common principle, known to them all, of which they could by no means be ignorant, who had from their childhood been brought up in the teaching of the law.
(201) The connection of the beginning of this chapter with Rom 6:14 deserves to be noticed. He says there, that sin shall not rule over us, because we are not under law, but under grace. Then he asks, in Rom 6:15,
“
Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace?”
This last subject, according to his usual mode, he takes up first, and discusses it till the end of the chapter: and then in this chapter he reassumes the first subject — freedom from the law. This is a striking instance of the Apostle’s manner of writing, quite different from what is usual with us in the present day. He mentions two things; he proceeds with the last, and then goes back to the first. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES
Rom. 7:1.The law is lord over the man. There is nothing shocking in the assertion that we are no longer under the law. You all know that the power of the law over a man ceases at death; and we are dead.
Rom. 7:2.The soul first married to sin, then to Christ.
Rom. 7:3.Adultery considered infamous among the Romans.
Rom. 7:4.Freed from the power of the law as a covenant, having endured its curse; that the fruit of our union may be sanctified to God (Wordsworth).
Rom. 7:5.The apostle does not disparage the law, and so give countenance to the Manichan heresy. Ab sit hoc ab animo qualiscunque Christiani (Augustine).
Rom. 7:6.The law, indeed, is still our rule, our guide, our governor, but it ceases to be a tyrant over us, a tormentor of us (Dr. Barrow). The law, says Calvin, puts a check upon our external actions, but does not restrain our concupiscence. No Christian man whatsoever, says the Church of England, is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral. Delivered from the law, not as regards its moral precepts, but its carnal, external performances.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Rom. 7:1-6
A sorrowful and a joyful marriage.Happy the loving wife who is married to the true husband, Jesus Christ, feels devotion to His person, accepts with loyalty His directions, and, leaning upon His arm, walks joyfully through the wilderness of this world to the revealing realm where the spirit of St. Paul will flash the brightness of his intelligence upon the mysterious utterances made in this seventh chapter, as well as in other parts of this epistle. The first six verses of the chapter present us with an allegory. We have two marriagesthe one to the law and the other to Christ. The law reigns and has power while it has life; but its authority ceases when death supervenes. The law is dead as a reigning and oppressive power when Christ the liberator appears. All former bonds are destroyed when Christ comes and takes the wife wrongfully married. When this divine union is consummated, there is bliss indeed.
I. The first marriage is:
1. A mere legal connection. No true love enters into the relationship. There are no sweet dalliances between the soul and the law. We are seeking to carry out the allegory, so that it must not be inferred that we intend to advocate the dissolution of the marriage bond through mere incompatibilities of tempers, or the easy method by which the married may be set free in some countries.
2. An irksome restraint. The soul married to the law is bound, but longs for freedom. Notice the expressions bound by the law and sweetly married to another. Bound we may be, and are, to Christ; but it is by the silver link, the silken tie, the secret sympathy, of love.
3. A monotonous service. During this first marriage state the soul serves in oldness of the letter; the bright spirit of love does not appear upon or in the dreary pathway of the bound wife. She perhaps Pines for love, and weeps in secret; she serves in the oldness of the letter; and all freshness is being extracted from her nature.
4. A repellent relationship. The motions of sin, the passions of sin, work in the wife; and there are many quarrels between the soul and the law. The married life is marked by many bickerings, much disquietude; and the wife has many heart-burnings.
5. The source of an unpleasant family. Sometimes in earthly marriages the wife finds in her children sweet forgetfulness of the sufferings she may have endured at the hands of her husband. No blame can attach to this husband; for the law is holy, just, and good. In this case the wifes sufferings arise from the incompatibility of the relationship; and there are to her no compensations, for the fruit is unto death. None of the children wear the newness and beauty of youth. The bounding steps of young life are not heard; the joyous laughter and merry peals of healthy childhood do not enliven. Death shadows everywhere appal. A sickly group crawls through the dwelling. Who shall deliver? How long will the bondage last? Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. The crucified body of Christ, His whole mission, His complete mediatorial work, secures the laws death. The wife is set free. Let the joy bells be rung. A second marriage may be consummated.
II. The second marriage is an exact contrast to the first.
1. It is a love connection. When first the soul hears the voice of Christ, it is as the voice of the beloved speaking in gentlest whispers, that sound as heavens own music, richer than any that can strike upon human ears. The Bridegroom loves the bride out of the infinite love of His own gracious nature. That love is creating; for it produces in the bride a love brighter and more enduring than any of the loves of earth. Happy marriage day when the soul is married to Him who has been raised from the dead! The sun of heaven shines through earths gloom upon the spiritual espousals.
2. It has joyous constraint. Bound, but free. A slave, but unwilling to be liberated. A wife who has changed her name, merged her individuality, foregone her supposed rights, counted all her precious possessions as loss, and yet rejoices in her losses because she has found an infinite gain in the Husband who is chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely.
3. It is lively service. The wife serves in newness of spirit. Where love is the spirit is ever new and ever young. The soul will serve in newness of spirit through unending cycles. When we get old, the newness of the spirit abates. But this wife never feels the decrepitude of age. The newness of the spirit is never touched by the hand of time which makes other things grow worse. Earthborn spirits will die. The glories of time will be disfigured. Our realms of beauty will be laid waste. But the Christ spirit abides for evermore. The soul wife married to Christ will joyfully serve for ever.
4. It is the source of happy products. We are married unto Christ that we should bring forth fruit unto God. A beautiful family blesses the divine union. Corner stones polished after the similitude of a palace adorn. Plants grown up in youthful comeliness shed their fragrance, unfold their beauty, and provide their luscious fruit. The garners are full of all Christian graces, and afford all manner of spiritual store. Happy the wife that is in such a case; yea, happy is that soul which is married unto the risen Saviour! Let us then not continue in bondage to the law, for it is dead; let us not try to galvanise the law into the semblance of life. Let us seek for soul union with the immortal Christ; let us strive to serve in newness of spirit which is newness of love; for it has always upon it the dews of heavens bright morning.
What does it teach?A book bearing this title professes to have discovered the true interpretation of the chapter, which is said to be a description of the Jew under the Mosaic law. Our thanks must be given to every worker who seeks to throw light on biblical difficulties. Still we cannot feel that the question is settled. The theory, it is said, makes the whole chapter plain, and yet the analysis of the chapter has to us the appearance of special pleading, which is like an admission of weakness, The writer says, It is believed that learned and pious expositors, under the influence of the strong drift of thought, have taken for granted a view of the passage which is erroneous. May not this new expositor have been led wrong under the influence of the strong drift of his own thought? Take his statement: I delight in the law of God. This expression is distinctly Jewish, and not Christian. Why should not a Christian use when speaking of the law of God? is evidently connected with the Hebrew , delight, loveliness; and why should not St. Paul use the expression, I am pleased together with the lawwhat pleases the law pleases me? This delight may not amount to highest spiritual joy, for it produces a conflict. And again the author asks us to notice the hopeless wail of the wretched slave in Romans 7, and the sorrows cheerfully borne by the Christian as described in 2 Corinthians. We notice and observe that St. Paul says, We that are in the tabernacle do groan, being burdened. Is the groaning Christian of the Corinthians any worse than the wretched man of the Romans, and who at last triumphs over his wretchedness through the power of Jesus Christ? But our main objection to the writers theory is not found in his exegesis, is not contained in his statements, but in his very strange omission. He says St. Paul brings in to support his assertion an illustration (drawn, doubtless, from the recollection of his own past experience) in which he pictures a conscientious Jew, etc. Is the experience of Romans 7 drawn from the recollections of St. Paul as a Jew under the Mosaic law? Does the self-reproach of that chapter harmonise with the self-complacency of the Pharisee? The writers Jew is carnal, sold under sin. While the Saviours Jew is described as feeling himself perfect. He had no remorse. He lifted a complacent brow to heaven. His voice sounded exultingly through the temple, God, I thank Thee, etc. The writers Jew says, So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. St. Pauls Jewthe Jew of his own pre-Christian lifesays, An Hebrew of the Hebrews: as touching the law a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. When a third edition of the book is issued, we shall be glad to hear how it comes to pass that St. Paul in chap. 7 draws a picture of the Jew so different from his own recorded state. If a heathen became converted to Christianity, we could not suppose him describing a character which had no resemblance to his own, unless indeed he wanted to make himself better than his fellow. Why should St. Paul in Philippians make himself a blameless keeper of the law, and in Romans make the Jew put forth feeble attempts at keeping the law. Does any ancient or modern Jew have the strivings of Romans 7? Jews as a class are self-righteous, and consider themselves blameless. It is only when conviction works that the Jew begins to feel his shortcomings. Saul had no remorse. He persecuted the saints of God, and thought he was doing God service. He was blameless. When he was not blind, his soul was dark; but when darkness was over the visual orbs, his soul was getting a power of vision. In the house of Judas sin revived. In the days of Sauls blindness he kept crying, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? When the scales fell from his eyes, much of the despairing tone departed from his soul, and straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of Godthe power of God unto salvation, the great deliverer from the curse and the tyranny of the law. However, the theory is not so new as the words seem to imply. Something very similar is found among the fathers of the Pietistic School and the rationalistic critics. They think that the apostle introduces himself as the personification of the legal Jew. Godet appears to follow in the same pathway, though we cannot be quite sure as to his teaching. Certainly he makes light of the theory that the passage applies to the regenerate man; and Godet is perhaps more ingenious in destroying other theories than in establishing one of his own. Happy man who has never been brought into captivity to the law of sin which is in our members! If the Christian life is a fight, a contest, a struggle, then there must be an old man of sin against which the new man in Christ Jesus makes war. Perhaps there may be a combination of experiences in the passagethe experience of the enlightened and conscientious Jew. We obtain from the dark and more desponding parts of the description the experience of the soul under strong conviction, such as that felt by Saul in his days of blindness, to which we have referred; and the experience of the regenerate man who places before himself a lofty ideal, and feels how far short he comes of attaining the ideal. After all, this seventh chapter must be placed among the things of St. Paul which are hard to be understood. We do not see the necessity of straining every point, of attaching a moral meaning to every turn of a letter. Scholarship is good, but it will not enable us to attain the unattainable; and we believe that in the present state we must be willing to confess our inability to understand everything, to solve all difficulties, and to reconcile all apparent discrepancies.
Rom. 7:4. Four stages of Pauls experience.
I. We are to study the personal career of Paul as here sketched by himself.We see him at four stages.
1. As Paul the self-satisfied (see Rom. 7:9). I was alive, apart from law, once. This may mean one or both of two things:
(1) it may indicate a state of self-unsuspectingness in distinction from one of conscious transgression; or
(2) a state of self-security as opposed to one of conscious danger. Fuller autobiographic touches, as given elsewhere, throw much light upon this. Few young men are mentioned in Scripture who seem to present a more pleasant picture of the exterior bearing of their early manhood. Paul was doubtless a model of uprightness and of conscientious religiousness. There is every indication that he was as rigid a Churchman and as stern a moralist as could well be found; probably no young man could be found to surpass him as a model of social propriety. Still, as he now looks back on that self-satisfied past, he owns Apart from law, sin was dead; it lay undisturbed in the depths of the spirit, still as death. I was so content with my attainments that I actually came to a most charming conclusion about myselftouching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless! That self-complacency was destined to be disturbed,
2. At a later stage we find Paul becoming Paul the terrified. This transition is described between the latter part of the ninth verse and the close of the thirteenth. When the commandment came, sin revived; it started up as a reanimated body from the tomb, and the awful spectre of sin so alarmed me that I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. Though it promised life, yet it promised life only to law-keepers. But I was a law-breaker; hence, there I lay, under the death sentence. Nor was this all. Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. If there be any self-will, tell a man he must not do this or that, and he is at once provoked to wish to do it. Thus sin, through the commandment, becomes exceeding sinful. And hence, with the weight of the law which condemns heart sin pressing upon him, Paul sinks down oppressed.
3. Paul the struggler. He is not only convicted of sin, but he sees that the conviction is just, that the commandment is holy, just, and good. But he himself is all wrong; he wants to get right; he struggles to escape from the grasp of law. With what success he shall tell for himself in Rom. 7:14-24. And no further than this did he get; no further could he get; no further can any one ever get who has to thread his way by the light of law alone. A rule, however excellent and perfect, will never help a man to keep it. Nor did the pure and holy law help Paul to its fulfilment. So far, and so far only, under law. But oh, happy change!
4. We have now to look at Paul the free! In the first verse of the eighth chapter he shows us how things stand NOW. There is therefore NOW no condemnation, etc.i.e., from all that I have said about Christ, righteousness, grace, life, it follows that whereas I, as a guilty man, could never, under law alone, rise above a despairing struggle, yet NOW, in Christ Jesus, I am a free man! The condemning sentence of the law is no more. The life and power I wanted, which the law cannot give, are given me by Jesus; so that whereas, under law, I was a struggling captive, in Christ Jesus I am gloriously free. The law stirred up sin; Christ conquers. The law condemns; Christ absolves.
II. In this personal experience Paul sets forth the peculiarity of the believers life in Christ.We here learn:
1. That for a sinful man no conceivable relation to law alone can be perfectly satisfactory. Law, as such, can give neither absolution for sin nor power against it.
2. These two wants which law reveals are in Christ supplied.
3. If any believers never get beyond Pauls third stage (or the struggling one), they have their privileges in Christ yet to learn.
4. Some call the fourth stage, that of freedom, the higher Christian life. No; it is the Christian life.
5. When we thus receive Christ in all His fulness, then we shall cry, I have found it! I have found it! The secret of life, power, peace, freedom, song, is in Christ, and Christ alone. What law enjoins the Spirit of God creates; and to that holiness, when struggled after in vain when toiling alone, the spirit will soar by its own living power when Christ fills us with His glorious life.C. Clemance, B.A., D.D.
Rom. 7:7. Knowledge of sin by the law.Although the apostle aimed in this epistle to show that the law by itself was unable and unfitted to secure mens salvation, it is evident both that he honoured the law as an expression of the divine character and will, and that he considered it from a Christian point of view to fulfil a most important purpose. Especially in this verse does he set forth the law as awakening conscience to sin, and so preparing the way for the introduction of the gospel, both in the order of the divine dispensation and in the course of individual experience. His own spiritual history is represented as typical: I had not known sin but by the law.
I. Law is the revelation of the superior will to the subject and inferior will.There is a sense in which the word law is commonly used in the exposition of physical science. It is in such connections equivalent to uniformity of antecedence and sequence. But this, though a queer employment of the term, is secondary and figurative, part of the connotation is intentionally abandoned. The fuller meaning of law is seen when the reference is to requirements of certain modes of action, and when the requirement is made by one who has a just right to make it, a just claim upon the submission and obedience of those to whom the command is addressed. The superiority in the lawgiver does not lie simply in physical power, but in moral character and authority.
II. Being under such law implies the possession of intelligent and voluntary nature.The inferior animals are not, in the proper sense of the term, under law. Nor are babes, or idiots, or any whose moral nature is undeveloped. Man as an intelligent being can apprehend law, as an active and voluntary being can obey law. Kant has put the matter in a very striking and a very just light in saying that whilst the unintelligent creation acts according to law, an intelligent being has the prerogative of acting according to the representation of lawi.e., he can understand, consciously adopt, and willingly and without constraint obey the law. Freedom is the power to obey or to disobey.
III. In proportion to the definiteness of the law is the measure of responsibility attaching to those who are subject to it.Confining attention to human beings possessed of thought, reason, and will, we cannot fail to detect degrees of acquaintance with the revelation which in various ways is vouchsafed to the race. There are those, as for example untutored savages and the waifs and strays of a civilised community, whose knowledge of the divine will is both very imperfect and very indistinct. Such in former ages was the case of the Gentiles as compared with the highly favoured Jews. Now our Saviour Himself and, following His teaching, the highly inspired apostles have plainly taught that responsibility varies with knowledge and opportunity.
IV. On the other hand, the possession of express and verbal laws involves heightened responsibility.When the knowledge of duty is clear, defection and rebellion are aggravated in guilt. The sin of transgression is increased as the light sinned against is brighter. Such was the case with the Jews, who were worthy of sorer condemnation than the Gentiles where both were disobedient. Comparatively they only knew sin who knew the law by which sin is prohibited. True there is a general conscience, against which even the unenlightened transgressors are offenders, but they are the worst culprits who having the light walk not in it.
V. Thus the law by revealing a higher standard of duty, and by making sin exceeding sinful, prepares the way for the introduction of the divine gospel of salvation and life.The apostle avers that but for the law he had not known sini.e., comparatively. If this had been all, he would have had little reason to thank the law. But in fact the law, proving the holiness and righteousness of God and the powerlessness of man to obey, served to make the introduction of a new dispensation, that of grace, doubly welcome. Men were brought to feel their need of a Saviour, and, when that Saviour came, to receive Him with alacrity and gratitude, and to use the means prescribed by which the penalties of the law may be escaped and the blessings of eternal salvation enjoyed.Prof. Thompson.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom. 7:1-6
Christ dissolves the union.The law is but an imperfect embodiment of the justice of God. To say that the law forbids our rescue from sin is to say that the justice of God forbids it. But the death of Christ made it consistent with the justice of God to pardon the sinner. Therefore by the death of Christ we are released from the bondage to which the justice of God bound us in a way which does not contradict but manifests the justice of God, and in order that we may be united to Christ, and thus live a life devoted to God (comp. Gal. 3:13 f.). It is easy to apply this to the case of those who have broken, not only the law of Moses, but the more solemn law of Christ. As in the history of the world, so in the history of each individual, God speaks first in the form of law. Even the gospel, to those who read it first, is but an embodiment of the eternal principles of right and wrong. But these principles condemn the sinner. And many conscientious men feel that for God to pardon their sins and smile upon them would be to set aside these eternal moral principles. And because they know that God will not do this, they dare not believe His proclamation of pardon. But in this section we are reminded that the death of Christ has satisfied the eternal principles which forbade our pardon, by revealing the evitable connection of sin and death, and that, without infringing them, God may now set us free. Justification through the death of Christ, as explained in Rom. 3:26, is plainly implied in this section. For that by Christs death we are set free from a union with sin to which the law bound us can only mean that His death made it consistent with Gods justice to set us free from the power of sin, which implies, since bondage to sin is the divinely ordained penalty of committing sin, forgiveness of our past sins. We are also plainly taught that Christ died in our place; for He bowed for a time to the power of death, and became its victim in order to rescue us from its power.Beet.
Why does Paul use the wife as a figure?The difficult question in this verse is why Paul takes as an example a wife losing her husband and free to remarry, rather than a husband losing his wife and enjoying the same right; for the two cases equally demonstrate the truth of the maxim of Rom. 7:1. The fact that the law bound the woman more strictly than the husband does not suffice to explain this preference. It is the application which Paul proposes to make of his example to the spiritual life which will give us the solution of the question. It shows, in point of fact, that Paul had in view, not only the breaking of the believers soul with the law (the first husband), but also its new union to the risen Christ (the second husband). Now in this figure of the second marriage Christ could only represent the husband, and the believer, consequently, the wife. And this is what leads the apostle to take a step further, and to attribute death to the wife herself; for Christ having died, the believing soul cannot espouse Him except as itself dead. The expression to be in the flesh is very far from being synonymous with living in the body (comp. Gal. 2:20). The term flesh, denoting literally the soft parts of the body, which are the usual seat of agreeable or painful sensations, is applied in biblical language to the whole natural man, in so far as he is yet under the dominion of the love of pleasure and the fear of painthat is to say, of the tendency to self-satisfaction. The natural complacency of the ego with itselfsuch is the idea of the word flesh in the moral sense in which it is so often used in Scripture.Godet.
Mosaic law is meant.It has been a question to whom the apostles argument is addressed. Many interpreters consider him as addressing himself to Christians generally, and they think that what is here established may apply to the law written on the heart as well as to the law of Moses. But if we consider that what is here established is the releasing of men from the law alluded to, that they may be made subject to another law, we shall see that no other law can be meant but the Mosaic law and the law of the gospel. For as there can be no release from the law written on the heart, the apostles remark cannot apply to it. We must therefore admit that this part of the argument is addressed to the Jewish Christians, and that it is intended to convince them that they are now at liberty, without the violation of any duty, to forsake the law of Moses and embrace the gospel. And that the apostle has in view the law of Moses may be inferred from his addressing his argument to men who know the law, for it could hardly be said of Gentile converts that they knew the Jewish law. This illustration may seem to us to be drawn from a more familiar subject than would now be thought proper for explaining such a topic. But when we consider that in the Old Testament the relation of God to His chosen people is sometimes represented under the similitude of a marriage solemnised at Mount Sinai, and that in consequence God is represented as calling Himself their husband; and when we look back to that state of ancient manners which rendered this figurative mode of speech forcible and appropriate, we shall admit that, in speaking to the Jews, to whom this portion of the epistle is addressed, it was a very natural illustration, as well as one that explained clearly the point which the apostle meant to press on their attention. Every Jew, therefore, who carefully considered his situation merely as depending on the law must have been sensible of inordinate emotions leading him to actual sin, and he must have been aware also that for actual guilt the law made no allowance and offered no means of pardon. No doubt the Jews under the law lived in the hope of forgiveness, and no doubt those of them whose conduct was suitable to their religious privileges obtained it. But this was not derived from the strict letter of their law. It was derived from that gracious dispensation which their law prefigured, and from which alone sinners can obtain forgiveness. The law could not possibly be a principle of justification, for when ye were under its authority, saith the apostle, your corrupt propensities led you to the commission of actions which the law itself punished with death (Rom. 7:6). But now, continues he, we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.Ritchie.
Law superseded by the gospel.The apostle continues the subject of a complete sanctification, or, in other words, of a perfected human being after the model of Jesus. His object in this section is to show that every scrap and fragment of obligation to the law were annihilated. He addresses the Jews who were acquainted with the law, and shows them by a familiar illustration how entirely it had been superseded by the gospel, and how perfectly free they were to become Christians without any longer continuing to be Jews. It was a matter requiring great delicacy and address to maintain the divine legation of Moses and the original binding authority of his institutions, and at the same time to lead the Jews onward who had been thus educated, and every fibre of whose intellectual and moral being was inwoven in the law, and to open to their faith and admiration the greater beauties and glories of Christianity. In truth, the idea of the progressive nature of all religion, as well as of life in general, seems to be one of the hardest lessons for man to learn, whether under the Jewish or the Christian system. He becomes fossilised in ceremonials and creeds, and hears with reluctance the ceaseless command of Gods providence, Go up higher. In regard to the many questions how St. Pauls rhetoric shall be justified, and how the several limbs of his comparison shall be matched with one another, we have nothing to say while the main drift of his remarks is so apparent. Thus Beza says, The old man is the wife, sinful desire the husband, sins the children; and Augustine that there are threethe soul is the woman, the passions of sin the husband, and the law the law of the husband. Origen, Chrysostom, Calvin, and others, Men are the wife, the law the former husband, Christ the new one. If Paul were a writer who carried out his figures regularly, all such criticism would be very fine and useful; but he is not, and to attempt in every instance to set the different parts in order is not only a work of supererogation but of impossibility. To hunt needles in haymows, or to attach again the strewn leaves of the forest to the identical boughs from which they have fallen, would be as easy and as profitable as to pursue this word-criticism to its niceties, with a view of resting upon it any essential doctrine or precept. The Bible in general, and the writings of Paul in particular, lie, like great nature herself, vast, various, somewhat chaotic and disjointed, a creation in progress, and not a creation finished, but everywhere full of gleams of surpassing beauty, touches of deepest feeling, and electricities and magnetisms and fires of quickest power. The words of Professor Stuart are most true, and it would have been well if he had always recked his own rede: Many a time have I read the Epistle to the Romans without obtaining scarcely a glimpse of it. When I ask the reason of this, I find it in neglect to look after the general object and course of thought in the writer. Special interpretation stood in the way of general views; the explanation of words hindered the discerning of the course of thought.Livermore.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Rom. 7:6. Newness of spirit.The economy of the gospel is to put a man in a new condition, and then he will appear in a new character. St. Paul says, Now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. This statement of the apostle was strikingly illustrated in the history of Israel. The law was given, not to Israel in Egypt, but to Israel delivered out of the bondage of Egypt. God first puts Israel into a new conditiona state of libertybefore He expects Israel to appear in a new character. The fulfilling of the law was to be the test of gratitude and love for a redemption received: And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me, etc. If ye love Me, keep My commandments. Take an illustration of this text from daily life. We go into a mechanics shop. The workmen leave at 6 p.m. I enter the room at 5.45. I see one man looking at the clocksluggishly move his toolsagain look upagain work. At last the clock strikes. Down go his tools; he hastens home. I note a striking contrast in another man who seems absorbed in his work. The clock strikes, but still he works; his eye has not noted the flight of time. I linger, but still be works, and sings as he works. I go to him, and ask, Why do you remain at work when your fellow-workman has left the shop? He smiles, and says, Oh, the other man is a hireling; he is paid by the hour. My father owns the shop. Of course I am anxious that his work should turn out well. I have an interest in the business. He is a good father to me, etc. The hireling serves in the oldness of the letter; the son in the newness of the spirit. I will run in the way of Thy commandments, said David, when Thou hast enlarged my heart.Bardsleys Texts Illustrated.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Text
Rom. 7:1-6. Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth? Rom. 7:2 For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the husband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is discharged from the law of the husband. Rom. 7:3 So then if, while the husband liveth, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man. Rom. 7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God. Rom. 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. Rom. 7:6 But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
REALIZING ROMANS, Rom. 7:1-6
267.
Please, notice that this section is only a small part of a larger one, Relate it to the whole. How does it relate?
268.
A principle is stated in Rom. 7:1 that is applied later, What is it?
269.
In the example presented, are we to understand Paul to say there is no reason at all for divorce? What did Jesus say about divorce? Please remember that the thought of divorce and remarriage was not the subject under consideration in Rom. 7:1-6.
270.
Is the man whom the adulteress marries guilty also?
271.
The law was our first husband, but our husband died. What law was this? cf. Rom. 7:1.
272.
We are now married (in a figure of speech) to Christ. How will this keep us from sin?
273.
The fruit of our relationship to Christ is in what?
274.
Give the meaning of the little expression, in the flesh? cf. Rom. 7:5.
275.
Please note the progress of Satans work in man: (1) sinful passions; (2) through the law; (3) wrought in our members; (4) fruit unto death. Explain each step.
276.
We are discharged from what law? We also died in what sense?
277.
We serve in newness of spirit. Explain this expression.
278.
It is not true that all who have accepted Christ are free from the power of sin and the law. Why not? How is this answered in this very section?
Paraphrase
Rom. 7:1-6. Ye Jews think the law of Moses is of perpetual obligation; but know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them who know law), that the law of Moses, as the law of Gods temporal kingdom among the Jews, hath dominion over a man only so long as he liveth; its obligation being that of a marriage?
Rom. 7:2 For a woman who hath an husband, is bound by the law of marriage (Gen. 2:21-24) to her husband while he liveth: but if her husband die she is loosed from the law of marriage, which bound her to her husband, and hindered her from marrying any other man.
Rom. 7:3 So then such a women shall be reputed, both by God and man, an adulteress, if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another husband: but if her husband die, she is freed from that law which bound her to her husband, and hindered her to marry any other man; so that she is no adulteress, though, after his death, she be married to another husband.
Rom. 7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, since marriages are dissolved by the death of either of the parties, ye Jews, who were married to God as your king, and thereby were bound to obey the law of Moses, are loosed from that marriage and law, because ye also, as well as the Gentiles, (Rom. 6:6), have been put to death by the curse of the law in the person of Christ, that ye may be married to another, even to him who died for you, but is now raised from the dead; and that we should bring forth fruit to God.
Rom. 7:5 Besides, the law of Moses never was intended as the rule of our justification; for when we were the subjects of Gods temporal kingdom, the sinful inclinations which we had under the law, wrought effectually in the members, both of our soul and body, to bring forth such evil actions as, by the curse of that law, subjected us to death without mercy.
Rom. 7:6 But now we Jews are loosed from the law of Moses, having died with Christ by its curse in that fleshly nature by which, as descendants of Abraham, we were tied to the law, and are placed under the law of the gospel; so that we now should serve God in the new manner of the Gospel, and not in the old manner of the law.
Summary
The law rules over a man so long as he lives. As an example, take the married woman. She is bound by law to her husband while he lives. As proof that she is thus bound, if while her husband is alive, she marries another man she will act the adulteress. But when her husband dies she is released from the law which bound her to him. If she then marries she is no adulteress. And so you, my brethren, died to the law by the body of Christ when he died. You thus became released from the law, and consequently are at liberty to obey the risen Savior. When we were under the flesh, which we were before we obeyed the gospel, those sinful desires which are discovered to be such by the law, worked in us to produce fruit to death. But we are now released from the law, by dying to it, so that at present we serve God in a renewed spirit, through the gospel, and not in the old fashion prescribed in the law.
c.
Reason Number Three. Rom. 7:1-6
Comment
(1) Paul felt that he had established this premise in the minds of all Jews who would be honest in their consideration of what he had said. But to seal the argument beyond a word of retaliation, he strikes upon his readers minds the truth that in the law was found the very principle for which he was pleading. Notice his words: Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth? There is the principle. Then follows the illustration of this principle, The illustration given is that of a woman who, while married, is bound by the law to her husband, but if the husband dies she is free from the law that bound her to him. Now, of course, if she were to marry another while her husband lived she would be called an adulteress, but not so if she were to marry after her husbands death. Rom. 7:1-3
(2) Well, answers the Jew, how does that apply to the objection I have raised? How does that demonstrate that although we are free from the law we cannot continue in sin? Ah, yes, here is the wonderful application, that at the same time we were released from the law through the death of Christ (cp. Col. 2:13-16), we were joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead. While we were married to the law, Paul says that we were bound to obey it because of the responsibilities of the married state, and now that we are married to Christ we are equally bound to obey him. In our obedience to him we will bring forth fruit unto God. Rom. 7:4
Continue in sin? How can we while we are joined in spiritual marriage to Jesus Christ?
(3) Speaking of our bearing fruit unto God in our new marriage, contrariwise, we can look back to our old marriage and remember the wicked desires of Satan, coupled with a yielding of our wills. This transgression of Gods will only resulted in, the fruit of death. Rom. 7:5
(4) But now we have been discharged from the law. How did this take place? The answer is found in the fact that we were in Christ when he died, and since he in his death blotted out the law, we too have thus died with him to the law. In coming into Christ we are delivered from the bondage of the law. We now serve God with a renewed spirit, a spirit made new by Gods Spirit indwelling our bodies. We do not serve God in the old letter of the Mosaic law, but by the renewed spirit of a Christian. Rom. 7:6
140.
What is the third answer to the second objection?
141.
How does the answer demonstrate that we cannot continue in sin?
Rethinking in Outline Form
Objections to the Proposition Continued
2.
Objection concerning freedom from the law. Rom. 6:15Rom. 7:6
Objection Stated: Since you have said We are not under law (Rom. 6:14) but under the favor of God, what is to restrain us from continuing in sin?
Objection Answered:
a.
Reason number one. Rom. 6:16-19
(1)
If you continue in sin you are a slave to sin. Being a slave of sin, your final destiny will be the same as your master-eternal death. Rom. 7:16 a
(2)
However, you need not choose to act this way, for you can become the bondservant of Christ through obedience to him and can enter into the benefits of sanctification. Rom. 7:16 b
(3)
Indeed, this is what you did once when you threw off the bondage of sin through your obedience to the gospel. So now even as you once gave yourselves body and soul to Satan, give yourselves to your new master. In doing this, you will be Gods own possession. Rom. 7:17-19
b.
Reason number two. Rom. 6:20-23
(1)
What fruit did you find while living in sin? You found none. Well, why do you long to return to this fruitless existence? Rom. 7:20-21
(2)
There is a wonderful reward for those who serve Christ . . . joy and peace here (which is the fruit of sanctification) and eternal life hereafter. Rom. 7:22
(3)
The wages of a life of sin is eternal death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. 7:23
142.
What fruit is brought forth by continuing in sin?
143.
Show how we have been discharged from the law.
c.
Reason number three. Rom. 7:1-6
(1)
It is a well known fact of the law that a woman is bound to the man she marries as long as her husband lives, You were once married to the law; the law died in the body of Christ, so you are free from the law. And since you have obtained your freedom you have been joined to another; this time your husband is Christ. Continue in sin? How can we while joined in spiritual marriage to Christ Jesus? Rom. 7:1-4
(2)
While in this new state, we are to bring forth fruit, not unto Satan as in times past, but unto God. Rom. 7:5
(3)
We serve God now, not like we did once, from the letter, but from our spirits. Rom. 7:6
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) Know ye not.Here again insert or: Or know ye not, &c., carrying on the thought from the end of the last chapter. Is not, argues the Apostle, what I say true? Or do I hear the old objection raised again, that the system under which the Christian is living is not one of grace in which eternal life is given freely by God, but the Mosaic law? That would show an ignorancewhich in you I cannot believeof the fact that the dominion of the Law ceases with death, of which fact it is easy to take a simple illustration.
To them that know the law.The Roman Church, as we have seen, was composed in about equal proportions of Jewish and of Gentile Christians. The Jews would naturally know the provisions of their own law, while the Gentile Christians would know them sufficiently to be aware of the fact, from their intercourse with Jewish members of their own community, and from hearing the Old Testament read in the synagogues, where their public worship was still conducted. The practice of reading from the Old Testament did not cease on the transition from Jewish to Christian modes of worship; it survives still in the First Lesson.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
VII.
(1-6) The Apostle takes up an idea to which he had alluded in Rom. 7:14-15 of the preceding chapter, Ye are not under the Law, but under grace; and as he had worked out the conclusion of the death of the Christian to sin, so now he works out that of his death to the Law. This he does by an illustration borrowed from the marriage-bond. That bond is dissolved by the death of one of the parties to it. And in like manner the death of the Christian with Christ releases him from his obligation to the Law, and opens out to him a new and spiritual service in place of his old subjection to a written code.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 7
THE NEW ALLEGIANCE ( Rom 7:1-6 ) 7:1-6 You are bound to know, brothers–for I speak to men who know what law means–that the law has authority over a man only for the duration of his life. Thus, a married woman remains bound by law to her husband as long as he is alive; but, if her husband dies, she is completely discharged from the law concerning her husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she marries another man while her husband is still alive; but, if her husband dies, she is free from the law, and she is no longer an adulteress if she marries another man. Just so, my brothers, you have died to the law, through the body of Jesus Christ (for you shared in his death by baptism) in order that you should enter into union with another, I mean, with him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God. In the days of our unaided human nature, the passions of our sins, which were set in motion by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are completely discharged from the law, because we have died to that by which we were held captive, so that we serve, not under the old written law, but in the new life of the spirit.
Seldom did Paul write so difficult and so complicated a passage as this. C. H. Dodd has said that when we are studying it we should try to forget what Paul says and to find out what he means.
The basic thought of the passage is founded on the legal maxim that death cancels all contracts. Paul begins with an illustration of this truth and wishes to use this picture as a symbol of what happens to the Christian. So long as a woman’s husband is alive, she cannot marry another without becoming an adulteress. But if her husband dies, the contract is, so to speak, cancelled, and she is free to marry anyone she likes.
In view of that, Paul could have said that we were married to sin; that sin was slain by Christ; and that, therefore, we are now free to be married to God. That is undoubtedly what he set out to say. But into this picture came the law. Paul could still have put the thing quite simply. He could have said that we were married to the law; that the law was killed by the work of Christ; and that now we are free to be married to God. But, quite suddenly, he puts it the other way, and, in his suddenly changed picture, it is we who die to the law.
How can that be? By baptism we share in the death of Christ. That means that, having died, we are discharged from all obligations to the law and become free to marry again. This time we marry, not the law, but Christ. When that happens, Christian obedience becomes, not an externally imposed obedience to some written code of laws, but an inner allegiance of the spirit to Jesus Christ.
Paul is drawing a contrast between the two states of man–without Christ and with him. Before we knew Christ we tried to rule life by obedience to the written code of the law. That was when we were in the flesh. By the flesh Paul does not mean simply the body, because a man retains a physical body to the end of the day. In man there is something which answers to the seduction of sin; and it is that part of man which provides a bridgehead for sin that Paul calls the flesh.
The flesh is human nature apart from and unaided by God. Paul says that, when our human nature was unaided by God, the law actually moved our passions to sin. What does he mean by that? More than once he has the thought that the law actually produces sin, because the very fact that a thing is forbidden lends it a certain attraction. When we had nothing but the law, we were at the mercy of sin.
Then Paul turns to the state of a man with Christ. When a man rules his life by union with Christ he rules it not by obedience to a written code of law which may actually awaken the desire to sin but by an allegiance to Jesus Christ within his spirit and his heart. Not law, but love, is the motive of his life; and the inspiration of love can make him able to do what the restraint of law was powerless to help him do.
THE EXCEEDING SINFULNESS OF SIN ( Rom 7:7-13 ) 7:7-13 What then are we to infer? That the law is sin? God forbid! So far from that, I would never have known what sin meant except through the law. I would never have known desire if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” For, when sin had, through the commandment, obtained a foothold, it produced every kind of desire in me; for, without law, sin is lifeless. Once I lived without the law; but, when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, and in that moment I knew that I had incurred the penalty of death. The commandment that was meant for life–I discovered that that very commandment was in me for death. For, when sin obtained a foothold through the commandment, it seduced me, and, through it, killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just and good. Did then that which was good become death to me? God forbid! But the reason was that sin might be revealed as sin by producing death in me, through the very thing which was in itself good, so that, through the commandment, sin might become surpassingly sinful.
Here begins one of the greatest of all passages in the New Testament; and one of the most moving; because here Paul is giving us his own spiritual autobiography and laying bare his very heart and soul.
Paul deals with the torturing paradox of the law. In itself it is a fine and a splendid thing. It is holy. That is to say it is the very voice of God. The root meaning of the word holy (hagios, G40) is different. It describes something which comes from a sphere other than this world. The law is divine and has in it the very voice of God. It is just. We have seen that the root Greek idea of justice is that it consists in giving to man, and to God, their due. Therefore the law is that which settles all relationships, human and divine. If a man perfectly kept the law, he would be in a perfect relationship both with God and with his fellow men. The law is good. That is to say, it is designed for nothing other than our highest welfare. It is meant to make a man good.
All that is true. And yet the fact remains that this same law is the very thing through which sin gains entry into a man. How does that happen? There are two ways in which the law may be said to be, in one sense, the source of sin.
(i) It defines sin. Sin without the law, as Paul said, has no existence. Until a thing is defined as sin by the law, a man cannot know that it is sin. We might find a kind of remote analogy in any game, say tennis. A man might allow the ball to bounce more than once before he returned it over the net; so long as there were no rules he could not be accused of any fault. But then the rules are made, and it is laid down that the ball must be struck over the net after only one bounce and that to allow it to bounce twice is a fault. The rules define what a fault is, and that which was allowable before they were made, now becomes a fault. So the law defines sin.
We may take a better analogy. What is pardonable in a child, or in an uncivilized man from a savage country, may not be allowable in a mature person from a civilized land. The mature, civilized person is aware of laws of conduct which the child and the savage do not know; therefore, what is pardonable in them is fault in him.
The law creates sin in the sense that it defines it. It may for long enough be legal to drive a motor car in either direction along a street; then that street is declared one-way; after that a new breach of the law exists–that of driving in a forbidden direction. The new regulation actually creates a new fault. The law, by making men aware of what it is, creates sin.
(ii) But there is a much more serious sense in which the law produces sin. One of the strange facts of life is the fascination of the forbidden thing. The Jewish rabbis and thinkers saw that human tendency at work in the Garden of Eden. Adam at first lived in innocence; a commandment was given him not to touch the forbidden tree, and given only his good; but the serpent came and subtly turned that prohibition into a temptation. The fact that the tree was forbidden made it desirable; so Adam was seduced into sin by the forbidden fruit; and death was the result.
Philo allegorized the whole story. The serpent was pleasure; Eve stood for the senses; pleasure, as it always does, wanted the forbidden thing and attacked through the senses. Adam was the reason; and, through the attack of the forbidden thing on the senses, reason was led astray, and death came.
In his Confessions there is a famous passage in which Augustine tells of the fascination of the forbidden thing.
“There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One
stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our
spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears–not to feast upon
ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just
enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice
pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for
I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to
become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and
that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in that
theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law, in order
that I, a prisoner under rules, might have a maimed counterfeit of
freedom by doing what was forbidden, with a dim similitude of
impotence? … The desire to steal was awakened simply by the
prohibition of stealing.”
Set a thing in the category of forbidden things or put a place out of bounds, and immediately they become fascinating. In that sense the law produces sin.
Paul has one revealing word which he uses of sin. “Sin,” he says, “seduced me.” There is always deception in sin. Vaughan says that sin’s delusion works in three directions. (i) We are deluded regarding the satisfaction to be found in sin. No man ever took a forbidden thing without thinking that it would make him happy, and no man ever found that it did. (ii) We are deluded regarding the excuse that can be made for it. Every man thinks that he can put up a defence for doing the wrong thing; but no man’s defence ever sounded anything else but futile when it was made in the presence of God. (iii) We are deluded regarding the probability of escaping the consequences of it. No man sins without the hope that he can get away with it. But it is true that, soon or late, our sin will find us out.
Is, then, the law a bad thing because it actually produces sin? Paul is certain that there is wisdom in the whole sequence. (i) First he is convinced that, whatever the consequence, sin had to be defined as sin. (ii) The process shows the terrible nature of sin, because sin took a thing–the law–which was holy and just as good, and twisted it into something which served the ends of evil. The awfulness of sin is shown by the fact that it could take a fine thing and make it a weapon of evil. That is what sin does. It can take the loveliness of love and turn it into lust. It can take the honourable desire for independence and turn it into the obsession for money and for power. It can take the beauty of friendship and use it as a seduction to the wrong things. That is what Carlyle called “the infinite damnability of sin.” The very fact that it took the law and made it a bridgehead to sin shows the supreme sinfulness of sin. The whole terrible process is not accidental; it is all designed to show us how awful a thing sin is, because it can take the loveliest things and defile them with a polluting touch.
THE HUMAN SITUATION ( Rom 7:14-25 ) 7:14-25 We are aware that the law is spiritual; but I am a creature of flesh and blood under the power of sin. I cannot understand what I do. What I want to do, that I do not do; but what I hate, that I do. If what I do not want to do I in point of fact do, then I acquiesce in the law, and I agree that it is fair. As it is, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin which resides in me–I mean in my human nature. To will the fair thing is within my range, but not to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do; but the evil that I do not want to do, that is the very thing I do. And if I do that very thing that I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin which resides in me. My experience of the law, then, is that I wish to do the fine thing and that the evil thing is the only thing that is within my ability. As far as my inner self is concerned, I fully agree with the law of God; but I see another law in my members, continually carrying on a campaign against the law of my mind, and making me a captive by the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this fatal body? God will! Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore with my mind I serve the law of God, but with my human nature the law of sin.
Paul is baring his very soul; and he is telling us of an experience which is of the very essence of the human situation. He knew what was right and wanted to do it; and yet, somehow, he never could. He knew what was wrong and the last thing he wanted was to do it; and yet, somehow, he did. He felt himself to be a split personality. It was as if two men were inside the one skin, pulling in different directions. He was haunted by this feeling of frustration, his ability to see what was good and his inability to do it; his ability to recognize what was wrong and his inability to refrain from doing it.
Paul’s contemporaries well knew this feeling, as, indeed, we know it ourselves. Seneca talked of “our helplessness in necessary things.” He talked about how men hate their sins and love them at the same time. Ovid, the Roman poet, had penned the famous tag: “I see the better things, and I approve them, but I follow the worse.”
No one knew this problem better than the Jews. They had solved it by saying that in every man there were two natures, called the Yetser ( H3336) hatob ( H2896) and the Yetser ( H3336) hara’ ( H7451) . It was the Jewish conviction that God had made men like that with a good impulse and an evil impulse inside them.
There were Rabbis who believed that that evil impulse was in the very embryo in the womb, there before a man was even born. It was “a malevolent second personality.” It was “man’s implacable enemy.” It was there waiting, if need be for a lifetime, for a chance to ruin man. But the Jew was equally clear, in theory, that no man need ever succumb to that evil impulse. It was all a matter of choice.
Ben Sirach wrote:
“God himself created man from the beginning.
And he left him in the hand of his own counsel.
If thou so desirest thou shalt keep the commandments,
And to perform faithfulness is of thine own good pleasure.
He hath set fire and water before thee,
Stretch forth thy hand unto whichever thou wilt.
Before man is life and death,
And whichever he liketh shall be given unto him….
He hath commanded no man to do wickedly,
Neither have he given any man licence to sin.”
( Sir_15:11-20 ).
There were certain things which would keep a man from falling to the evil impulse. There was the law. They thought of God as saying:
“I created for you the evil impulse; I created for you the law as
an antiseptic.”
“If you occupy yourself with the law you will not fall into the
power of the evil impulse…”
There was the will and the mind.
“When God created man, he implanted in him his affections
and his dispositions; and then, over all, he enthroned the sacred,
ruling mind.”
When the evil impulse attacked, the Jew held that wisdom and reason could defeat it; to be occupied with the study of the word of the Lord was safety; the law was a prophylactic; at such a time the good impulse could be called up in defence.
Paul knew all that; and knew, too, that, while it was all theoretically true, in practice it was not true. There were things in man’s human nature–that is what Paul meant by this fatal body–which answered to the seduction of sin. It is part of the human situation that we know the right and yet do the wrong, that we are never as good as we know we ought to be. At one and the same time we are haunted by goodness and haunted by sin.
From one point of view this passage might be called a demonstration of inadequacies.
(i) It demonstrates the inadequacy of human knowledge. If to know the right thing was to do it, life would be easy. But knowledge by itself does not make a man good. It is the same in every walk of life. We may know exactly how golf should be played but that is very far from being able to play it; we may know how poetry ought to be written but that is very far from being able to write it. We may know how we ought to behave in any given situation but that is very far from being able so to behave. That is the difference between religion and morality. Morality is knowledge of a code; religion is knowledge of a person; and it is only when we know Christ that we are able to do what we know we ought.
(ii) It demonstrates the inadequacy of human resolution. To resolve to do a thing is very far from doing it. There is in human nature an essential weakness of the will. The will comes up against the problems, the difficulties, the opposition–and it fails. Once Peter took a great resolution. “Even if I must die with you,” he said, “I will not deny you” ( Mat 26:35); and yet he failed badly when it came to the point. The human will unstrengthened by Christ is bound to crack.
(iii) It demonstrates the limitations of diagnosis. Paul knew quite clearly what was wrong; but he was unable to put it right. He was like a doctor who could accurately diagnose a disease but was powerless to prescribe a cure. Jesus is the one person who not only knows what is wrong, but who can also put the wrong to rights. It is not criticism he offers but help.
-Barclay’s Daily Study Bible (NT)
Fuente: Barclay Daily Study Bible
b. Emancipation from servility to law, Rom 7:1-6 .
In the apostle’s view the Christian, by his new life in the Redeemer, walks in the paths of holiness under no compulsion of law, but spontaneously and of his own free will. (Note on Rom 6:14, and on Mat 11:30.) He is, therefore, that much emancipated from law. This beautiful state of freedom from servility to law he illustrates by the case of the married female whose husband is dead and she prepared to contract a new matrimony. The woman is the new Church, the deceased husband is the forestalled law, and the new bridegroom is Christ.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1. Know the law Not by the Jewish polity alone, but universally, subjection to law terminates at death. Hence the apostle assumes that his brethren know law; not the law, with the article, as in the English translation.
Over a man Over a person; for the Greek word may imply either sex, and the apostle in fact selects a female for his illustration.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Or are you ignorant, brothers (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for so long time as he lives?’
The ‘or’, and the argument, both look back to Rom 6:14, ‘you are not under the Law but under grace’. In dealing with this Paul expresses his confidence that the Roman Christians were not ignorant of what the Law taught. This would be true, 1) because many of them were Jewish Christians; 2) because even more had probably been God-fearers before they became Christians, attending the synagogue and listening to the reading of the Law without actually becoming Jews by circumcision; 3) because the remainder, while being Gentile Christians, would have become aware of the teaching of the Law due to the fact that the Old Testament Scriptures were the Scriptures of the early church, and would be studied as such. Thus they all ‘knew the Law’. And the emphasis that he is bringing out is that, outside of Christ, the Law has dominion over a man while he lives. It seeks to control every aspect of his life. Thus the man is bound by the Law until he dies. Deliverance from the Law can only come about through death. And he is about to demonstrate that that is precisely what has happened.
We should note that the Law that he is mainly talking about is the Law as it was known to the Jews through the teaching of the Rabbis, a Law that was laid out in a series of demands and which commanded obedience to even its minutiae. To come short of that Law in any way was to be rendered ‘a sinner’, and that meant to the Jews being in danger of not enjoying eternal life and having to start again on the endless road of Law-keeping. It was a Law which put men under a burden that they could not bear (Act 15:10; Php 3:6 with Rom 7:7-10). Life became an endless attempt to observe the Law, an attempt which eventually had to fail, and meanwhile kept the mind from such ideas as mercy, compassion and justice (Mat 23:23). It was a Law from which Christ came to set us free. Paul probably also had in mind that many of the Christians in Rome were subject to Judaising tendencies (Rom 14:2-6; Rom 14:15; Rom 14:20), although he does not attack them for that, presumably because they did not put them forward as ‘necessary for salvation’. What he is against is the Law presented as essential for salvation.
It could be argued that for Gentiles ‘the law’ in question was the law written in their hearts as they revealed a sense of right and wrong (Rom 2:14), but that the main emphasis is on the Jewish Law comes out in the illustration that follows.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Deliverance From Under The Law (7:1-6).
Paul now declares that the Christian is delivered from the dominion of the Law because he has died to it in the death of Christ, and this in order that he might be conjoined with the Risen Christ like a widow is conjoined with her new husband (compare Eph 5:25-27). In other words salvation is not to be found in the keeping of the Law, but in responding to and experience the power of the risen Christ. This contrast is so important that we will look at the passage as a whole prior to examining in more detail (albeit briefly) the interpretation of the analogy or allegory in Rom 7:1-3, making the assumption that the main intention of the analogy or allegory is to bring out one example of the important way in which death releases men from the demands of the Law. The example is that the death of one side of the marriage relieves the other party to a marriage from being blameworthy if they marry again. This thus makes them ‘free (through death) from the injunction of the Law’.
But this is then applied to the relationship between Christ and His church. Through dying with Him His people are delivered from being subject to the Law in its domineering aspect, so that they can be ‘married’ to the risen Christ, thereby enjoying His life and vitality and bringing forth fruit unto God in righteous living, thus actually contributing to fulfilling the Law (Rom 2:27; Rom 8:4; Rom 13:8-10; Mat 5:17-20; Gal 5:14; Gal 6:2; Jas 2:8).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Salvation To The Uttermost (5:1-8:39).
The depths of our sin having been revealed in Rom 1:17 to Rom 3:23, and Jesus Christ’s activity, (His activity in bringing about our salvation through the cross by means of the reckoning to us of His righteousness by faith), having been made known in Rom 3:24 to Rom 4:25, Paul now sets about demonstrating the consequences of this for all true believers (Rom 5:1 to Rom 8:39). He wants us immediately to recognise that being ‘accounted as righteous’ by God will necessarily result in our becoming alive in Christ (e.g. Rom 6:4; Rom 6:11; Rom 6:22-23; Rom 7:4; Rom 8:2; Rom 8:9-11), in our ‘sanctification’ (Rom 6:22) and in the work of the Spirit within us (Rom 5:5; Rom 7:6; Rom 8:2; Rom 8:4-12).
As has been pointed out by scholars this whole section is presented in chiastic form:
A We are assured of future glory and the basis of this is what Christ has accomplished for us as we suffer for Him (Rom 5:1-21).
B This is inworked in us through His death and resurrection (Rom 6:1-11).
C Deliverance from the sin that rules within (Rom 6:12-23).
C Deliverance from the law of sin (Rom 7:1-25).
B This through the inworking in us of His death and resurrection (Rom 8:1-17).
A We are assured of future glory and the basis of this is what Christ has accomplished for us as we suffer for Him (Rom 8:18-39).
Central therefore in the chiasmus is the Christian’s deliverance from the slavery and guilt of sin. This is a reminder that God has not done His perfect work simply in order to make us acceptable to Him. He also has in mind our being perfected, our becoming like Him in His glory. And all this is the consequence of our ‘having been accounted as righteous by faith’ (Rom 5:1)
Furthermore all this comes to us ‘through our LORD Jesus Christ’ (the LORD Jesus Christ Who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead – Rom 1:4). We put LORD in capitals in order to stress that it is expressing the highest form of Lordship, the Lordship of ‘God the LORD’. LORD is regularly found in parallel with God in the New Testament and 1Co 8:6 makes clear that it is of equal weight. In the Old Testament the Greek translators translated the Name of God (YHWH) as ‘LORD’ (kurios). This phrase, ‘through our LORD Jesus Christ’ and its parallel ‘in our LORD Jesus Christ’ is indeed one of the themes of this section. Being the One Who has been ‘declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead’, it is through His power that we can experience His salvation. It is through Him that we have peace with God (Rom 5:1); it is through Him that we boast in God (Rom 5:11); it is through Him that grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life (Rom 5:21); it is in Him that we receive the gift of God which is eternal life (Rom 6:23); it is through Him that thanks for deliverance and victory are due to God (Rom 7:25); and it is in Him that we are participants in the love of God from which we will never be separated by any power whatsoever (Rom 8:39). He is the file leader of our salvation (Heb 2:10), the author and finisher of our faith (Heb 12:2), our Perfecter in readiness for that day (Eph 5:25-27).
At first sight it might appear, that in spite of the opening phrase, ‘being justified by faith’ (Rom 5:1), being followed by a description of the consequences of such justification (Rom 5:2-5), chapter 5 continues on with the theme of justification, especially in the latter part (Rom 5:6-21). And to some extent this is correct. But this is because in the economy of God justification (the accounting of men as righteous) can never be far away. It is the basis of all other benefits that we receive from God.
On the other hand it should be noted that in what follows Rom 5:1 there is a notable difference in emphasis. Whilst justification by faith is still seen as undergirding the Gospel (Rom 5:6-11; Rom 5:15-19), it now does that as something which results in ‘sanctification’ (Rom 6:22). Thus Rom 5:2-5 initially indicates how justification results in a series of experiences whereby God proceeds to ‘sanctify’ His people. And this is required because they are ‘weak’ and ‘ungodly’ (Rom 5:6) and ‘sinful’ (Rom 5:7). Consequently , this weakness has to be dealt with by means of justification (accounting as righteous) and reconciliation through the cross. But this is not to be seen as the final result. It is to be seen as leading on to a ‘saving by His life’ (Rom 5:10).
In Rom 3:24 to Rom 4:25 the emphasis had been wholly on justification (being accounted righteous) as making men right with God. Now the new element is entering in that its purpose is to result in men being made holy and righteous. Until the doctrine was firmly established, such an addition to it might have provided a misleading emphasis, for it might have suggested to some that it was necessary for justification, but now that it has been made clear that our acceptance with God is made possible by faith alone, without the need for anything else, the idea of sanctification can be introduced, an idea first mooted in Rom 5:1-11. Rom 5:12-21 then continues on with the thought that justification through the gift of the righteousness of Christ (Rom 5:15-19) is basic to the reigning life that Christians should now be leading, and to the final reception of eternal life through the reigning of God’s grace through Jesus Christ (Rom 5:17; Rom 5:21).
Thus from Rom 5:1 onwards justification is seen as undergirding subsequent sanctification and the reception of eternal life. This is a new emphasis. And then in Rom 6:1-11 another aspect of justification, that we have died with Christ and risen with Him, is presented, as the basis:
1) for our living in ‘newness of life’ (Rom 6:4).
2) for our ‘living with Him’ (Rom 6:8).
3) for our ‘being alive to God in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 6:11).
Thus teaching in Rom 5:1 to Rom 6:11 about justification is to be seen as undergirding the teaching of Rom 5:1 to Rom 8:39 on the work of the Holy Spirit and the reception of eternal life, both present and future (John speaks of both as ‘eternal life’, Paul thinks of the present experience as ‘life’ and the future experience as ‘eternal life’).
This may all be presented in a summary as follows. Note the continual mention of either the Spirit (of life), or of life, or of eternal life:
The Consequences of Justification.
1) Justification is the precursor to experiencing the glory of God (Rom 5:2, compare Rom 8:38-39) by means of endurance and character building experiences, which are utilised by the Holy Spirit in our sanctification as He sheds abroad God’s love in our hearts (Rom 5:1-5).
2) Justification and reconciliation are seen as the first steps towards dealing with our state of weakness which has resulted from our ungodliness and sinfulness, with the consequence being that we will be ‘saved by His life’ (Rom 5:10) and will be able to rejoice in God through our LORD Jesus Christ (Rom 5:11). (Rom 5:6-11).
3) All have sinned because of Adam, resulting in death for all, whether under the Law or not. But this is something which has been countered by ‘the One Who was to come’ (Rom 5:14), Who has brought the free gift of His righteousness (Rom 5:17). This has resulted firstly, in the consequent justification, and secondly, in the ability for His people, through God’s abundant grace and the gift of righteousness, to reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:17), and this as a consequence of grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life ‘through Jesus Christ our LORD’ (Rom 5:12-21).
4) Considering the question ‘are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?’ in chapterRom 6:1, Paul deals with it by pointing out that our justification has been obtained for us through His death (mentioned in each verse from 3 to 8), with the consequence being that, as we have been conjoined with Him in His death, we have ourselves died to sin, thus making it impossible that we should think in terms of continuing to live in sin. Thus, because Christ not only died but also rose from the dead (Rom 5:4-5; Rom 5:9) we can, as a result of being conjoined with Him (Rom 5:5), walk in newness of life (Rom 5:4), experience ‘living with Him’ (Rom 5:8), and enjoy ‘being alive to God in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 5:11). What follows from this is then that we should yield ourselves as instruments of righteousness to God (Rom 5:13), escaping the dominion of sin because we are ‘not under the Law but under grace’ (Rom 6:1-14).
5) Dealing with the question ‘are we to sin because we are not under the Law but under grace?’ in Rom 6:15, Paul points out that as a result of obedience from the heart to the body of teaching that we have received (originally the Apostolic tradition, now the New Testament), we are freed from the slavery of sin in order that we might become ‘the slaves/servants (douloi) of righteousness’ (Rom 6:17-18), that is, ‘slaves of God’ (Rom 6:22), which will result in the fruit of sanctification, the end of this being eternal life (Rom 6:22-23). (Rom 6:15-23).
6) As a result of dying with Christ through His sacrificial death we have been released from under the Law so that we might be conjoined with Him Who has risen from the dead so as to bring forth fruit unto righteousness. Being discharged from the Law we can therefore live in ‘newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter’. Compare how ‘circumcision of the heart’ (a true spiritual change in people wrought by God) was also said to be ‘in the spirit and not in the letter’ (Rom 2:29). (Rom 7:1-6). This in Christ we have become the true circumcision, that is, true Jews (Rom 2:28-29), a theme later taken up in chapters 9-11.
7) The parallels in Paul’s words between the effects of the tyrant ‘sin’ and the effects of the Law (see below) then raise the question, ‘is the Law to be equated with sin?’ Paul reacts strongly to such a suggestion. ‘Certainly not!’ he declares. He then goes on to point out that his position is proved by his own personal experience (demonstrated by the change from ‘we, us’ to ‘I, me’), by which it was through ‘the commandment’ that he became aware of his own sin and acknowledged his sinfulness, with the sad result for himself that instead of gaining life he lost it (Rom 5:9-11). This demonstrated that it was not the Law which was at fault. The Law was ‘holy and righteous and good’. But it also demonstrated the inability of the Law to make men acceptable in the eyes of God. This then leads into the question of what is ‘spiritual’ and what is ‘fleshly’. (Rom 7:7-13)
8) Taking up the contrast in Rom 7:6 (compare also Rom 2:2) between ‘the newness of the Spirit and the oldness of the letter’, Paul now illustrates from his own present personal experience (the past tenses have become present tenses) the fact that the Law is ‘spiritual’ (pneumatikos) while he is ‘carnal, fleshly’ (sarkikos). This is why, indeed, the Law appears to fail. It is because it can do nothing to aid him in his fleshliness. Note the implied contrast between ‘spirit’ (pneuma) and flesh’ (sarx) which is found elsewhere (e.g. in Rom 8:4-13; Gal 5:16 onwards). The Holy Spirit, introduced in Rom 5:5, and Who is active in the Christian life in Rom 7:6, is therefore now seen as involved in evidencing the holiness of the Law. The Law is ‘spiritual’ (to be received through the Spirit and effective in the realm of the Spirit). It thus caters for those who are truly spiritual, that is, for those who, whether Jew or Gentile, are ‘true Jews’ (Rom 2:29). But its fulfilment required God’s sending of His own Son ‘for sin’, condemning sin in the flesh (Rom 8:3). And as a result it will be seen as fulfilled in those who ‘walk after the Spirit’ (Rom 8:4), that is, those who ‘have the mind of the Spirit’ (Rom 8:6). In contrast to this is man as he naturally is, who, like Paul himself, is in a part of himself ‘fleshly’ (Rom 2:14; Rom 2:18), a part within him which contains ‘nothing good’, and makes him unable to respond satisfactorily to the ‘spiritual’ Law. This is because being fleshly he is driven by ‘the sin which dwells within him’ (Rom 7:17; Rom 5:20), something that results in his doing the opposite of what he really wants to do. In his inward man and in his mind he delights in the law of God, factors which involve him in a war with ‘the law of sin’ in his members (Rom 7:22-23). But in this war he only too often finds himself ‘taken captive’ and defeated (Rom 7:23), something evidenced by contrary behaviour in which he wants to do good but instead does evil (Rom 7:15-17). Crying out for deliverance he discovers the answer in ‘Jesus Christ our LORD’ with the result that he, as he is in himself, serves the law of God, although in his fleshly disposition also still serving the law of sin (Rom 7:25). And this deliverance is in consequence of the fact that ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’ has intervened in his captivity and ‘has made him free from the law of sin and death’ (Rom 8:2) as a result of Christ’s sacrifice on his behalf. Thus while he still fails and sometimes panders to the flesh he knows that he is acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, and that the Spirit will enable him to walk after the spirit, albeit with some of the lapses previously described. The ‘I’ ‘me’ verses go from Rom 7:7 to Rom 8:2 thus justifying the inclusion of Rom 8:1-4 with Rom 7:7-25 for interpretation purposes. (Rom 7:14 to Rom 8:4).
9) Paul now contrasts those who walk after the flesh and have the mind of the flesh with those who walk after the Spirit and have the mind of the Spirit (Rom 8:5-6). The former are unable to please God (Rom 8:8), but the latter, being indwelt by the Spirit, and having Christ within them, are dead through Christ’s death but alive through the Spirit Who gives life because of righteousness (Rom 8:9-10). In consequence the Christian puts to death the deeds of his body so that he might live (Rom 8:13), for if he were to live after the flesh he would die (Rom 8:13). This being led by the Spirit of God demonstrates that God’s true people are sons of God (Rom 8:14). It is the consequence of their having received the Sprit of adoption whereby they can call God ‘Father’ (Rom 8:15), and as a result they recognise that they are children of God, having become heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:16-17). (Rom 8:5-17)
10) God’s people, however, continue to experience suffering in this present age, for they are a part of the whole creation which is groaning in its present state. But one day their bodies will be redeemed (at the resurrection – Rom 5:11) and they will enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:21; Rom 8:23), something for which the groaning creation awaits with eagerness for thereby it too will be delivered. This process is aided by the fact that the Spirit Himself is groaning through God’s people and on behalf of God’s people in a way that is effective (Rom 8:18-27).
11) Paul closes this section with a glorious presentation of the certainty of the deliverance of God’s people, a process which began in eternity and will continue until their glorification, their being meanwhile kept secure by the love of Christ and of God, so that nothing will be able to separate them from His love (Rom 8:28-39).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
What Then Of The Law? Is The Law Good Or Bad? And How Does The Christian Stand In Relation To The Law. How Can It Be Fulfilled? (7:1-8:4).
Whereas chapter 6 has concentrated on our deliverance from the tyranny of sin, this chapter brings out the position of the Christian as regards the Law, deliverance from which is found in our dying with Christ and living in Him in the new life of the Spirit (Rom 7:1-6).
This question concerning the Law might not seem so important to us, but for the early church at the time that Romans was written it was a vital question. There were many Judaising Christian teachers going around claiming the need for believers to be ‘subject to the Law’. And the church in Rome had almost certainly initially first been established by Jews who had returned from the Feasts at Jerusalem where they had heard both the teaching of Christ, and later that of the Apostles (Act 2:10), and would have had to reconcile it with their own belief concerning obedience to the Law, which they had on the whole learned from the Rabbis.
Furthermore many of these probably remained in fellowship with the synagogue, and we note that when Paul was brought in chains to Rome the Jewish leaders were quite ready to listen to what he had to say (Act 28:17). In Rome Jews and Christians were at peace. Thus among many of the Jewish Christians in Rome there would have been a strong allegiance to the Law.
And whilst the church in Rome had now expanded so that the majority of the church (i.e. the churches which were scattered around Rome) were of Gentile origin, they would initially have joined in with a church which was very Jewish. After all the church was seen as the continuation of the true Israel (Rom 2:28-29; Rom 11:17-28; Act 4:24-27; Gal 3:29; Gal 6:16; Eph 2:11-22; 1Pe 1:1; 1Pe 2:9; Jas 1:1), in contrast with those who ‘say they are Jews and are not’ (Rev 2:9). The question would thus be asked, ‘How then could they not be bound by the Law?’
Paul answers the question from three viewpoints:
Firstly on the grounds that Christ through His death has delivered His people from ‘under the Law’ so that they can be conjoined with Christ, thus releasing them to new life under the Spirit (Rom 7:1-6).
Secondly on the grounds of the failure of the Law to provide a satisfactory answer to the problem of a disposition to sin (Rom 7:7-23).
And thirdly on the basis that the Law is actually fulfilled by those who walk after the Spirit (Rom 7:24 to Rom 8:4; compare Rom 2:27-29).
Paul is not denigrating the Law (Rom 3:31; Rom 7:12). He is simply indicating that it provides no means by which men can be saved from sin. As he says in Galatians, ‘if there had been a Law given which could make alive, truly righteousness would have been of the Law’ (Gal 3:21). He sees it as providing an adequate means of demonstrating that all men are sinners (Rom 2:12-16; Rom 4:15; 1Ti 1:9), and as being such that men are unable through weakness to keep it (Rom 2:21-26), so that it then points them to Christ (Gal 3:23-24). But, as he has pointed out previously, it cannot make them ‘accounted as righteous’ before God (Rom 3:19-20), nor can it enable them to grapple with sin within themselves, because of the weakness of the flesh (Rom 7:4; Rom 7:7-25). Thus he speaks of ‘what the Law could not do because it was weakened by the flesh’ (Rom 8:3 a).
In chapters 2 to 5 being ‘under the Law’ had mainly had in mind the Law as accusatory, as it brought those who failed to live up to it under condemnation, but now Paul is adding to that the Law as a supposed means of being delivered from the power of sin, something in which it failed because of man’s weakness.
It is significant that there are close parallels between chapters 6 and Rom 7:1-6, between the Christian’s relationship with ‘sin’ and his relationship with ‘the Law.’ Thus in Rom 6:2 the believer has ‘died to sin’, and in Rom 7:4 the believer is ‘dead to the Law’. In Rom 6:18; Rom 6:22 the believer is ‘freed from sin’, whilst in Rom 7:6 he is ‘freed from the Law’. In Rom 6:14 a sin no longer rules over the believer, and in Rom 7:1 neither does the Law. In Rom 6:22-23 freedom from sin results in bring forth fruit to God, whilst in Rom 7:4 the same results from freedom from the Law as a result of being ‘joined to Another’. Thus sin and the accusatory Law are seen as parallel ‘adversaries’ of the Christian which have to be dealt with by the believer dying to them Rom 6:2; Rom 6:11; Rom 7:4. No wonder Paul then asks the question that might be on his reader’s and hearer’s mind, ‘is the Law then the equivalent of sin?’ But the answer is ‘certainly not’. For whilst sin is a direct enemy seeking to keep men in slavery, the Law is good and holy, with its problem lying in our sinfulness. So there is in fact a direct contrast between sin and the Law.
But in considering the verses that follow, about which there has been much controversy, it is necessary to recognise exactly what we should compare with what. For it is important to recognise that it was not Paul who introduced our chapter divisions. Instead he used other means in order to indicate what should be seen as part of the same argument. In our Bibles chapter 7 ends at Rom 7:25. But there is a good case for arguing that it should also include Rom 8:1-4. But what is that case? It is threefold:
Firstly it lies in the fact that there is within chapters 7-8 a prominent passage in which Paul speaks of ‘I’ and ‘me’. And this passage goes from Rom 7:7 to Rom 8:2. This therefore indicates that, in spite of Rom 8:1, which we will look at when we come to it, Rom 8:2 must be included in the argument Paul is making in chapter 7.
Secondly it lies in the fact that in this passage the question of the significance of the Law is being dealt with. And this is a question which is not finalised until Rom 8:4. For the law is not only proved to be holy, righteous and good in its convicting men of sin (Rom 7:7-13), and because good men delight in it (Rom 7:22) but it is also demonstrated to be so by the fact that regenerate man approves of it and fulfils it. (We use the word ‘regenerate’ here in order to indicate those who by believing have found new life in Christ and have thus been born of the Spirit from above – Joh 3:1-6) It is in Rom 8:4 that we are informed that the law is fulfilled by those who ‘walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit’. This being so we have a second reason for not seeing chapter 7 as a separate entity in itself in Paul’s mind.
And thirdly it lies in the fact that in Rom 7:6 the Spirit/letter comparison is found. This is an idea first mentioned in Rom 2:29. Thus in Rom 7:6 ‘we (Christians) serve in newness of spirit (or ‘the Spirit’) and not in oldness of the letter’, because we have been conjoined with the risen Christ (Rom 7:4). And in view of the previous mention of the Holy Spirit in Rom 5:5, and of constant reference to Him in chapter 8, we can see no reason why we should not use a capital S here. Similarly in Rom 2:29 the same contrast brings out who is ‘a true Jew’ (whether he be Jew or Gentile) and who is not. The true Jew is one who is one inwardly (thus in his inward man – compare Rom 7:22), and the true circumcision is that of the heart, ‘in the spirit (Spirit) and not in the letter’. In both cases this is the sign of the truly regenerate man.
But brining out the importance of this is the fact that a similar contrast is then found in Rom 7:14. There ‘the Law is spiritual’ (pneumatikos) whilst Paul (and all men) are ‘fleshly’ (sarkikos). Here we have a similar contrast of ‘spirit’ (pneuma) with what is not comparable with spirit because it is inferior to it, or is even opposed to it. In the previous examples it was ‘the letter’. In this case it is ‘the flesh’ (sarx). This continued comparison could then be also seen as being made in the contrast of ‘the law of the mind’ with ‘the law of sin’ (Rom 7:23; Rom 7:25). It is certainly being made in Rom 8:1-12 where the Spirit is constantly contrasted with the flesh. Thus the theme of ‘the spirit (Spirit) as compared with something inferior can be seen as continuing on from Rom 7:6 to Rom 8:12.
These indications should warn us against trying to interpret the meaning of chapter 7 without taking into account a part of chapter 8, for the simple reason that the initial verses of chapter 8 are required in order to finish off two of the themes which are found in chapter 7, and because the use of ‘I, we, us, continues from Rom 7:7 to Rom 8:2.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Doctrinal Message: The Doctrine of Justification (An Exposition of The Gospel of Jesus Christ) In Rom 1:8 to Rom 11:36 Paul the apostle gives an exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; but it is presented from the perspective of the office and ministry of God the Father as He makes a way of justifying mankind and bringing him into his eternal glory in Heaven. Thus, we can describe Rom 1:8 to Rom 11:36 as an exposition of the doctrine of justification through faith in Jesus Christ. The body of the epistle of Romans discusses God the Father’s method of justification for mankind (Rom 3:21 to Rom 8:16), while His predestination is emphasized in the introduction (Rom 1:1-7), His divine calling introduces this section of doctrine (Rom 1:8 to Rom 3:20), and His plan of glorification for the Church (Rom 8:17-28) and for Israel are given (Rom 9:1 to Rom 11:36) are given last.
In this grand exposition of the doctrine of justification through faith in Jesus Christ Paul uses a number of examples to explain God’s way of justifying mankind. For example, Abraham’s faith is used to explain how we also put our faith in Christ to be justified before God. The analogy of Adam being a type and figure of Christ is used to explain how divine grace takes effect in the life of the believer. He uses the example of the laws of slavery and freedmen to explain our need to walk in our new lives, no longer under the bondages of sin. The illustration of marriage and widowhood is used to explain how we are now free from the Law and bound to Christ. It is very likely that the Lord quickened these examples and analogies to Paul while he sought to understand and explain this doctrine of justification in the synagogues and to the Gentiles during his years of evangelism and church planting. So, when he sat down to write out an exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul drew upon many of the examples that he had used over the years under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. The Calling of Gentiles Rom 1:8 to Rom 3:20
2. God’s Righteousness Revealed In Christ Rom 3:21 to Rom 8:16
3. Glorification by Divine Election: Glorification Rom 8:17-28
4. Summary of God’s Divine Plan of Redemption Rom 8:29-39
5. Divine Election and Israel’s Redemption Rom 9:1 to Rom 11:32
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Believer’s Life of Justification: Persevering by Being Led by the Spirit We have been declared sinners (Rom 1:18 to Rom 3:20), justified through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom 3:21 to Rom 4:25), and positioned under God’s grace (Rom 5:1-21). Paul then explains the process of how we are to walk in our lives (Rom 6:1 to Rom 8:16). We must first reckon ourselves dead to sin (Rom 6:1-14) and free from the Law (Rom 6:15 to Rom 7:6). Paul then takes a moment to explain that the Law is holy as evidenced by our struggle to overcome the very sins that are declared by the Law (Rom 7:7-25). Paul then reveals the secret to walking in the liberty of Christ Jesus, which is found as we learn to be led by the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:1-16). We learn from this passage that as we are led by the Holy Spirit we are walking in our justification provided to us by God the Father through Jesus Christ His Son. Thus, justification is maintained by walking in the Spirit, but man returns to condemnation by walking in the flesh.
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. Sanctification thru Death with Christ Rom 6:1-14
2. Sanctification thru Liberty In Christ Rom 6:15 to Rom 7:6
3. Sanctification Confirms the Law Rom 7:7-25
4. Sanctification in the Holy Spirit Rom 8:1-16
Six Aspects of the Believer’s Life of Justification – In this passage, we find six things that God has done for us, the Church. Through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we were crucified with Him. We also died, were buried, were quickened, were raised, and were seated in the heavenlies with Christ Jesus.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Sanctification thru Liberty In Christ After we reckon ourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God (Rom 6:1-14), we must then understand that we are free from the Law (Rom 6:15 to Rom 7:6).
Rom 6:15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
Rom 6:15
Rom 6:16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
Rom 6:16
Rom 6:16 “whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness” Comments – The phrase “of sin unto death” tells us that a born again believer can become a servant of sin after having been reconciled to God. This bondage to sin will result in death. This means that a person in sin will go to Hell since death in this passage of Scripture refers to spiritual separation from God. The application of the term death is made clear a few verses later in Rom 6:21 by saying that the end of a sinners’ lifestyle before he was saved is death, which means eternal separation from God in Hell. This definition of death stands in direct contrast to eternal life described in Rom 6:22. Thus, the wages of sin, whether as a sinner or a born-again believer, all results in death, according to Rom 6:23. This fact is restated again in Rom 8:13.
Rom 6:21-23, “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death . What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life . For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Rom 8:13, “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”
Rom 6:17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.
Rom 6:17
[169] Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, M. Robinson, and Allen Wikgren, The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (with Morphology) (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993, 2006), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), Romans 6:17.
Rom 6:17 Comments – Servants of sin are those who are enslaved and in bondage to sin. While we were in bondage to sin, we yielded our hearts unto God when we heart the call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While we were unable to love and serve Him because of our bondage to a sinful lifestyle. He reached down and set us free (Rom 6:18) and filled us with the Holy Spirit, all because we yielded our hearts to Him while weak and bound.
Rom 6:18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.
Rom 6:18
[170] Wayne Johnson, “Sunday School Lesson on Romans 6:1-23,” First Assembly of God, Panama City, Florida, 10 October 2010.
Scripture References – Note:
Gal 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
Rom 6:19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.
Rom 6:19
Paul is teaching a spiritual truth using a natural illustration. In the Roman world that Paul was writing, slavery was a common sight. It was not uncommon to observe a slave being sold to a new master, and receiving new compensation and conditions of service.
Rom 6:20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.
Rom 6:21 Rom 6:21
Rom 6:22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
Rom 6:23 Rom 6:23
Luk 3:14, “And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.”
1Co 9:7, “Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?”
2Co 11:8, “I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.”
Comments – The penalty of sin is death. Each person must die for the sins he commits. You can either die in Christ (Rom 6:3), or die in the second death of eternal judgment. The first death is physical death, but the second death is eternal separation from God.
Rom 6:3, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”
Rom 6:23 “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” – Comments – We are no longer in sin, but have been freed from sin. Therefore, we do not have to die for the wages of our sin because we have been made free from sin (Rom 6:22).
Rom 7:1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
Rom 7:2 Rom 7:2
Rom 7:3 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.
Rom 7:4 Rom 7:4
Rom 6:5-6, “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”
Rom 7:4 Comments – Since we died with Jesus (Rom 6:5-6, Gal 2:20), it is through Jesus that we have died to the law, no longer under its power. Now we can remarry, and the resurrected Jesus is the one to whom we have been given in marriage (2Co 11:2).
Gal 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
2Co 11:2, “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”
How did we become dead to the Law? By the body of Christ which was sacrificed on Calvary. We were crucified with Jesus on Calvary (Gal 2:20). There we died, slain by the law.
Gal 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
We were dead in trespasses and sins, held in bondage by the law. In the law of sin and death, we had no hope of coming out by ourselves. Jesus came, took the penalty of sin and death away with Him on the Cross. Therefore, we are no longer in bondage to the Law because it killed us. Now, Jesus makes us alive again, He rose again and took us for His bride. Bless the Lord, Oh, my soul, and all that is within me, bless His Holy Name!
Illustration – While studying through what Jesus did for us on Calvary, the story never grows old. It is like watching a favorite show on television. Although you know the outcome, you anticipate the danger scenes and when the final victory comes, you sigh and wipe your brow, having been caught up in the action once more.
Scripture References – Note similar verses:
Eph 2:15, “Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;”
Col 2:14, “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;”
1Pe 2:24, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”
Rom 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
Rom 7:5
Rom 8:9, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
Yet, as Christians “in the flesh,” we can still live “after the flesh.” Note the differences of the two words “in” and “after.”
Rom 8:13, “For if ye live after the flesh , ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”
Rom 7:5 “the motions of sins” Comment – The motions of sins refers to fleshy passions towards sins.
Rom 7:5 “which were by the law” Comments – By the law was the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20). That is, sinful passions are realized by the understanding of God’s law of righteous living.
Rom 3:20, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin .”
Sin comes through the Law:
1Jn 3:4, “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”
Rom 4:15, “Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.”
Therefore, if there is no law, there is no sin. Rom 7:9, “For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”
Rom 7:5 “did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death” Comments – The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). Sin brings forth death (Jas 1:15). In other words, the fruit of sin is death.
Rom 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Jas 1:15, “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
Rom 7:6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
Rom 7:6
Rom 7:25, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God ; but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Rom 7:1-6 Comments – Dead to the Law – The phrase “the Law” in this passage refers to the Mosaic Law; yet, Gentiles were never under the Mosaic Law. However, the Gentiles had the works of the Law written in their hearts (Rom 2:12-15).
Rom 2:12-15, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts , their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Freedom from the Law. 7:1-6
v. 1. Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the Law,) how that the Law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
v. 2. For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the Law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
v. 3. 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.
v. 4. 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.
v. 5. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the Law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
v. 6. But now we are delivered from the Law, that being dead wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. Paul here introduces another illustration of the statement in v. 14 of the preceding chapter that we are not under the Law, but under grace: Or do you not know, brethren, that law has power over a man as long as he lives? He appeals to their knowledge of, their familiarity with, law and legal procedure, especially on the basis of the Mosaic Law. If a person does not want to accept Paul’s argument that the believers are free from all legal obligations, there is only one alternative left, namely, to assume that the persons to whom it is directed are ignorant of that great principle according to which all obligations to the Law are terminated with death. The authority and right of the Law with regard to any man extends over his entire life, but not beyond. When a person is dead, there can be neither fulfillment nor transgression of the Law. The apostle, of course, argues entirely from the standpoint of the Law. And he demonstrates and illustrates his general statement by adducing an example, namely, that of the obligation of the marriage-tie. The woman subject to the man, the married woman, is bound to her husband by the law while he lives; but when her husband is dead, the law binding her to her husband, the command concerning the husband, is canceled, to wit, that she is his wife and that of no other man. By her husband’s death the legal relation to her husband is invalidated, rendered void, broken off, and she is free, she is no longer bound by that particular rule. And from this presentation it follows that she will be designated as an adulteress if she have become a wife, have entered into relations as a wife, with another man, while her husband is yet living; but the death of her husband gives her freedom from that particular law, in order that she might not be an adulteress if she became the wife of another. That, according to the divine economy, is the object of her freedom from the law, of her being liberated from the special ordinance concerning married women, that she may marry after the death of her husband without becoming guilty of adultery. And it is implied that the man also, by his death, is no longer bound by the law relating to his wife. The institution and ordinance of marriage embraces a mutual obligation and liability, which loses its validity when one of the contracting parties dies.
What the apostle had in mind with this reference to the obligation of the marriage law is brought out in his application: And thus, my brethren, you also have become dead to the Law through the body of Christ, in order that you should become subject to another one, unto Him that was raised from the dead, that we may bear fruit to God. The case of the believers in the New Testament is very similar to that of the married woman just discussed. They are dead to the Law. Christ was put to death, with violence, and they with Him. But by this fact they have been completely severed from any connection with the Law, through the death of Christ, and they now belong to Jesus by virtue of His resurrection. The similarity and the symbolism is clear throughout. Just as death releases every person from the obligation of the Law, so the death of Christ has definitely released us from the liability of the Law, has annulled the Law, in fact. And whereas the believers before their conversion were bound under the Law, they are now, by the death of Christ, liberated from the former obligation and now belong to the resurrected Christ as their rightful Spouse. And the result of this wonderful union is the bringing forth of fruit unto God, the fruit of good works, which are done to the praise and honor of God.
Having thus shown that the believers are freed from the Law by the death of Christ, the apostle proceeds to show the necessity and the consequence of that change: For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, the evil tendencies of sins, which were made operative, set in motion by the Law, were active in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are freed from the Law, the Law being invalidated in our case, by having died unto that in which we were being firmly held, the result being that we serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. This result can and shall be attained in our case. All men, in the state before their conversion, are in the flesh, they are sinful, weak, mortal creatures, with a mind continually directed toward that which is evil, or at best satisfied with an external morality. In that condition, the passions, the affections and desires that dominate man in his unconverted state were operative, active in our members, since our members executed the evil ideas of the heart. And the passions were all the more successful in this because they were incited by the Law. The Law, therefore, in carnal man, serves only to further or increase sin, since it does not remove the passions, but only serves to stir them up. And the object of the passions was, in the final analysis, that we should bring fruit to death. That is ever the tendency of the passions, to be operative and active in actual sins, to bring forth such shameful works as will result finally in death and destruction for the sinner, Jas 1:15. But through Christ a change has been brought about. The Law has been placed out of commission so far as we are concerned, it no longer has dominion over us. And this has been effected by our having died unto that in which we were being firmly held. By accepting Christ in faith, we have become partakers of His vicarious death, which was a satisfaction to the Law. And therefore we, having died unto our sinful flesh and unto sin, are thereby delivered from the rule of the Law. In our present state, then, in consequence of this freedom from the Law, we serve God in newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. In the former condition of man, under the Law, he has only the literal demands of the Law before him, which afford no strength and power for good, hut only stir up all the sinful desires. But in the Christian the new life and being is created and controlled by the Spirit of God. It is the resurrected Christ who through the Holy Spirit works all good things in the Christians, brings forth splendid fruits of sanctification. Note: We Christians have become partakers of all the blessings of Christ’s redemption, and thus are freed not only from the curse of the Law, but also from the rule and liability of the Law. The Law, the written Law of Moses, is no longer our lord and master, we are no longer bound by its fetters. As regenerated children of God, as His new creatures, we are bound to His good pleasure and do His will for the sake of our blessed Redeemer. We are governed only by love, led only by grace.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Rom 7:1-6
Here comes in the third illustration of the moral obligation of the baptized. It rests on the recognized principle that death cancels the claims of human law on a person (cf. Rom 6:7); and this with especial reference to the law of marriage, as being peculiarly applicable to the subject to be illustrated, since the Church is elsewhere regarded as married to Christ. As has been observed above, it is from the Law that Christians are now said to be emancipated in the death of Christ; not from sin, as in the previous sections. Hence this section might at first sight seem to introduce a new line of thought. But it is really a continuation of the same, though differently viewed; for, in the sense intended by St. Paul, being under the Law is equivalent to being under sin. How this is has already more or less appeared; and it will be shown further in the latter part of this chapter. For elucidating the connection of thought between this and the preceding sections, it may be here briefly stated thus: A fundamental axiom with the apostle is that “where no law is, there is no transgression” (Rom 4:15; cf. Rom 5:13; Rom 7:9); i.e. without law of some kind (including in the idea both external law and the law of conscience) to reveal to man the difference between right and wrong, he is not held responsible; to be a sinner before God he must know what sin is. Human sin consists in a man doing wrong, knowing it to be wrong; or, at any rate, with an original power and opportunity of knowing it to be so. (This, be it observed, is the idea running through the whole of Rom 1:1-32., in which all mankind are convicted of sin; the whole drift of the argument being that they had sinned against knowledge.) Law, then, in making sin known to man, subjects him to its guilt, and consequently to its condemnation. But this is all it does; it is all that, in itself, it can do. It can remove neither the guilt nor the dominion of sin. Its principle is simply to exact entire obedience to its requirements; and there it leaves the sinner. The above view applies to all law, and of course peculiarly to the Mosaic Law (which the writer has all along mainly in view) in proportion to the authority of its source and the strictness of its requirements. Thus it is that St. Paul regards being under the Law as the same thing as being under sin, and dying to the Law as the same thing as dying to sin. Grace, on the other hand, under which we pass in rising again with Christ, does both the things which law cannot do: it both cancels the guilt of sin (repentance and faith presumed), and also imparts power to overcome it.
Rom 7:1
Are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to persons knowing law), how that the Law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth? i.e. so long as the man liveth; not so long as the Law liveth in the sense of viget, or “remains in force,” though Origen, Ambrose, Grotius, Erasmus, and others, for reasons that will appear, understood the latter sense. It is not the natural one.
Rom 7:2-4
For (this is an instance of the application of the general principle, adduced as suiting the subject in band) the woman that hath an husband (, implying subjection, meaning properly, that is under an husband) is bound to her living husband; but if the husband die, she is loosed (; cf. Rom 7:6 and Gal 5:4. The word expresses the entire abolition of the claim of the husband’s law over her) from the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the husband die, she is free from the Law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the Law through the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we may bring forth fruit unto God. The general drift of the above verses is plain enough; namely, that, as in all cases death frees a man from the claims of human law, and, in particular, as death frees the wife from the claims of marital law, so that she may marry again, so the death of Christ, into which we were baptized, frees us from the claims of the law which formerly bound us, so that we may be married spiritually to the risen Saviour, apart from the old dominion of law, and consequently of sin. But it is not so easy to explain the intended analogy in precise terms, there being an apparent discrepance between the illustration and the application with regard to the parties supposed to die. Even before the application there is a seeming discrepance of this kind between the general statement of Rom 7:1 and the instance given in Rom 7:2. For in Rom 7:1 it is (according to the view we have taken of it) the death of the person who had been under law that frees him from it, whereas in Rom 7:2 it is the death of the husband (representing law) that frees the wife from the law she had been under. Hence the interpretation of Rom 7:1 above referred to, according to which law, and not a man, is the understood nominative to liveth. But, even if this interpretation were considered tenable, we should not thus get rid of the subsequent apparent discrepance between the illustration and the application. For in the former it is the death of the husband that frees the wife; whereas in the latter it seems to be the death of ourselves, who answer to the wife, in the death of Christ, that frees us. For that it is ourselves that are regarded as having died to the Law with Christ appears not only from other passages (e.g. Rom 7:2, Rom 7:3, Rom 7:4, Rom 7:7, Rom 7:8, Rom 7:11, in Rom 6:1-23.), but also, in the passage before us, from in Rom 7:4, and in Rom 7:6. (The reading of the Textus Receptus rests on no authority, being apparently only a conjecture of Beza’s.) There are various ways of explaining.
(1) That (notwithstanding the reasons against the supposition that have just been given) it is the Law, and not the man, that is conceived as having died in the death of Christ. Eph 2:15 and Col 2:14 may be referred to as supporting this conception. Thus the illustration and the application are made to hang together, the law of the husband being regarded as having died in the husband’s death, as the Law generally to us in Christ’s death; and we have already seen how Col 2:1 may be forced into correspondence. This view of the Law itself being regarded as having died has the weighty support of Origen, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Ambrose, and other Greek Fathers. Chrysostom accounts for the apostle introducing a different conception in Col 2:4 : by suggesting that he avoided saying explicitly that the Law had died, for fear of wounding the Jews: , . This explanation hardly commends itself as satisfactory; and besides, in addition to what has been already said, it may be observed that throughout the whole passage there is no phrase to suggest in itself the idea of the Law’s death, but only of some death which emancipates from law (ver. I being taken in its natural sense, and , in Col 2:4, being accepted as the undoubtedly true reading).
(2) That in the illustration the wife is really supposed to die when the husband dies. The death of either party to the marriage-bond cancels it; and when one dies, the other virtually dies to the law that both were under. Thus the statement of principle in Col 2:1, the particular illustration in Col 2:2, Col 2:3, and the application are made to hang together. Meyer takes this view decidedly, and cites Eph 5:28, seq., to show that the husband’s death may be considered as implying the wife’s death also.
(3) That there is a discrepance between the illustration and the application, the husband being regarded as dying in the former, and ourselves, who represent the wife, in the latter; but that this is of no consequence; the idea, common to both, of death abrogating the claims of law being sufficient for the apostle’s argument. Death, it may be said, however regarded in the application, is an ideal conception, and not an actual fact with respect to ourselves; and it is immaterial how it is regarded, as long as the idea comes out that through death, i.e. ours in the death of Christ, we are freed from the dominion of law. (So, in effect, De Wette, and also Alford.)
(4) That the former husband is not the law, but the lust of sin ( , Eph 5:5); the wife, the soul; the new husband, Christ. Augustine, who is the author of this view, puts it thus: “Cum ergo tria sint, anima, tanquam mulier; passiones peccatorum tanquam vir; et lex tanquam lex viri; non ibi peccatis mortuis, tanquam viro mortuo liberari animam dicit, sed ipsam animam mort peccato, et liberari a lege, ut sit alterius viri, i.e. Christi, cum mortua fuerit peccato, quod fit, cum adhuc manentibus in nobis desideriis et incitamentis quibusdam ad peccandum, non obedi-mus tamen, nec consentimus, mente servientes legi Dei”. Beza, taking up the view of Augustine, puts it somewhat differently, and more clearly, thus: “There are two marriages. In the first, the old man is the wife; predominating sinful desires, the husband; transgressions of every kind, the offspring. In the second, the new man is the wife; Christ, the Husband; and the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22) are the children.“ This explanation being still apparently open to the objection that, in the illustration, the wife continues the same, but not so that which corresponds to her in the application, Olshausen explains thus: “In man the old man is distinguished from the new without prejudice to the unity of his personality, which Paul subsequently (Eph 5:20) signifies by . This true personality, the proper self of man, is the wife, who in the natural state appears in marriage with the old man, and, in intercourse with him, generates sins, the end of which is death (Rom 6:21, Rom 6:22). But in the death of the mortal Christ this old man is dead with him; and, as the individual man is grafted by faith into Christ. his old man dies, by whose life he was holden under the Law.” The commentator on the Epistle in the ‘Speaker’s Commentary’ adopts this explanation, with the remark that “St. Paul’s application of the figure is quite clear, if we follow his own guidance.” The view rests mainly on, and certainly derives some support from, Eph 5:5 and Eph 5:6, if regarded as carrying out the application of the figure. Others, however, in view of the difficulties of the whole passage, may prefer to content themselves with explanation (3), as conveying as precise an idea as may possibly have been even in the apostle’s mind when he wrote. Commentators may sometimes go beyond their office in attributing to their author more exactness of thought than his words in themselves imply. It is to be observed that the con-eluding expression in Eph 5:4, “that we should bring forth fruit unto God,” brings us back to the main purport of this whole section, which begins at Rom 6:1, viz. the obligation of a holy life on Christians. In Rom 6:5, Rom 6:6, which follow, the hindrance to our living such a life “when we were in the flesh,” and our power of doing so now, are briefly intimated in preparation for what follows. It does not seem necessary to concludeas is done by those who adopt interpretation (4) of what precedesthat the illustration of the marriage bond is meant to be kept up in these two verses.
Rom 7:5
For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins which were through the Law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. In the flesh, to which might be opposed in the Spirit (cf. Rom 8:9), denotes our state when under the power of sin, before we had risen to a new life in Christ; it is virtually the same as what is meant by being under the Law, as is shown by the opposed expression in Rom 7:6, . What is signified by “the passions of sins” being “through the Law” will be considered under Rom 7:7 and Rom 7:8.
Rom 7:6
But now (meaning, as things are, not at the present time, as is shown by the aorist following) we have been (properly, we were) delivered (, the same verb as in Rom 7:2; see note on that verse) from the Law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the Spirit, and not in oldness of the letter. In the word “serve” () we observe a resumption of the idea of Rom 6:16, seq., where we were regarded under the aspect of being still bond-servants, though to a new master. There the apostle intimated that he was but speaking humanly in describing our new allegiance to righteousness as bond-service, such as we had once been under. Here he intimates the true character of our new service by the addition of the words, . These are characteristic and significant expressions. “Spirit” and “letter” are similarly contrasted (Rom 2:29; 2Co 3:6). “Spiritum literae opponit, quia antequam ad Dei voluntatem voluntas nostra per Spiritum sanctum formats sit, non habemus in Lege nisi externam literam; quae fraenum quidem externis nostris actionibus injicit, concupiscientiae autem nostrae furorem minime cohibet. Novitatem. vero Spiritui attribuit, quia in locum veteris hominis succedit; ut litera vetus dicitur quae interit per Spiritus regenerationem” (Calvin). Otherwise, with regard to newness and oldness, “Vetustatis et novitatis vocabulo Paulus spectat duo testamenta” (Bengel). That the latter idea may have suggested the expressions seems not unlikely from 2Co 3:6-18 (cf. also Heb 8:6-13). For in both these passages the idea of the verse before us enters, and in both the old and new covenants are contrasted with regard to it. It may be enough here to say that the contrast in its essence is between exacted conformity to an external code (which was the characteristic of the old covenant) and inspired allegiance to the Law of God written on the heart (which is the characteristic of the new).
Rom 7:7-25
(b) The relation of law to sin, and how law prepares the soul for emancipation in Christ from the dominion of sin. In the section of the argument which begins at Rom 7:1 we have seen that the idea of being under sin has passed into that of being under law, in such apparent connection of thought as to identify the positions. The apostle, seeing that readers might be perplexed by such identification, now, in the first place, explains what he has meant by it. Is the Law, then, sin? No, replies the apostle; the Law itself (with especial reference to the Mosaic Law as the great and authentic expression of Divine law) is holy; and its connection with sin is only thisthat, in virtue of its very holiness, it convinces of sin, and makes it sinful. And then, to the end of Rom 7:1-25., he goes on to show how this is by an analysis of the operation of law on human consciousness. He presents to us a vivid picture of a man supposed at first to be without law, and therefore unconscious of sin; but then, through law coming in, acquiring a sense of it, and yet unable to avoid it. The man assents in his conscience to the good, but is dragged down by the infection of his nature to the evil. He seems to have, as it were, two contrary laws within himself, distracting him. And so the external Law, appealing to the higher law within himself, good and holy though it be, is, in a sense, killing him; for it reveals sin to him, and makes it deadly, but does not deliver him from it, till the crisis comes in the desperate cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24). But this crisis is the precursor of deliverance; it is the last throe preceding the new birth; the Law has now done its work, having fully convinced of sin, and excited the yearning for deliverance, and in “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” the deliverance comes. How it comes is set forth in Rom 8:1-39., where the state of peace and hope, consequent on deliverance through faith in Christ, is portrayed in glowing terms, so as thus to complete the subject which we announced as being that of the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters, viz. “the moral results to believers of the revealed righteousness of God.”
Two questions have been raised and discussed with regard to Rom 8:7-25.
(1) Whether St. Paul, who writes throughout the passage in the first person singular, is describing his own personal experience, or only so writing in order to give vividness and reality to his picture of the experience of any human soul.
(2) Whether he is describing the mental experience of an unregenerate or of a regenerate man.
As to (1), his purpose undoubtedly is not to tell us about himself, but to depict generally the throes of the human soul when convinced of sin. But, in doing this, he as undoubtedly draws on his own past experience; recollections of the struggle he had himself gone through gleam evidently throughout the picture; he paints so vividly because he has felt so keenly. This makes the passage so peculiarly interesting, as being not only a striking analysis of human consciousness, but also an opening out to us of the great apostle’s inner self; of the inward pangs and dissatisfaction with himself which had, we may well believe, distracted him through the many years when he had been a zealot for the Law and apparently satisfied with it, and whenperhaps partly to stifle disturbing thoughtshe had thrown himself into the work of persecution.
Then, further, the sudden change of tone observable in the eighth chapter, which is like calm and sunshine after storm, reveals to us the change that had come over him (to which he often elsewhere refers), when “the light from heaven” had shown him an escape from his mental chaos. He was then “a new creature: old things had passed away; behold, all things had become new” (2Co 5:17).
As to question (2), an answer has been already virtually given; viz. that the condition described is that of the unregenerate; in this sensethat it is of one still under the bondage of sin and law, before the revelation to the soul of the righteousness of God, and the consequent rising to a new life in Christ. This seems obvious from its being the thought of law subjecting to sin that introduces the whole passage, and runs through itthe which connects Rom 8:14 with what precedes denoting a continuance throughout of the same line of thoughtand also from the marked change of tone in Rom 8:1-39., where the state of the regenerate is undoubtedly described.
Further, we find, in Rom 8:5 and Rom 8:6 of Rom 7:1-25., the obvious theses of the two sections that follow, in the remainder of Rom 7:1-25. and in Rom 8:1-39. respectively. Their wording exactly corresponds to the subject-matter of these sections; and Rom 8:5 distinctly expresses the state of being under law, Rom 8:6 the state of deliverance from it. Further, particular expressions in the two sections seem to be in intended contrast with each other, so as to denote contrasted states. In Rom 7:9, Rom 7:11, Rom 7:13, sin, through the Law, kills; in Rom 8:2 we have “the law of the Spirit of life.“ In Rom 7:23 the man is brought into captivity; in Rom 8:2 he is made free. In Rom 7:14, Rom 7:18 there is invincible strife between the holy Law and the carnal mind; in Rom 8:4 the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled. In Rom 7:5 we were in the flesh; in Rom 8:9 not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. And, further, could St. Paul possibly have spoken of the regenerate Christian as “sold under sin” (Rom 8:14)? His state is one of redemption from it. We do not mean that the state which begins to be described at Rom 8:14 is one devoid of grace. A condition of progress towards regeneration is described; and the final utter dissatisfaction with self, and the keen yearning after good, imply a reused and enlightened conscience: it is the state of one who is being prepared for deliverance, and is not far from the kingdom of God. All, in fact, we say is that it is not till Rom 8:1-39. that the picture of a soul emancipated by a living faith in Christ begins. We may observe, further, that the mere use of the present tense in Rom 8:14 and afterwards by no means necessitates our supposing the apostle to be speaking of his own state at the time of writing, and therefore of the state of a regenerate Christian. He uses the present to add vividness and reality to the picture; he throws himself back into, and realizes to himself again, his own former feebleness; and he thus also more clearly distinguishes between the state described and the imagined previous one before law had begun to operate.
The view which we thus confidently advocate is that of the Greek Fathers generally, the application of the passage to the regenerate Christian being apparently due to Augustine in his opposition to Pelagianism; i.e. according to his later view; for in his earlier days he had held with the Greek Fathers. Jerome also seems to have similarly changed his mind about it; and the later view of both these Fathers has been adopted by Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Corn. a Lapide, and by Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Beza, and others among the Protestants. What weighed with Augustine was that in Rom 8:17, Rom 8:20, Rom 8:22, more propension to good is implied than his doctrinal theory allowed to the natural man. Under a similar impression, Calvin says, commenting on Rom 8:17, “Porto hic locus palam evincit non nisi de pits qui jam regeniti sunt Paulum disputare. Quamdiu enim manet homo sui similis, quantus quantus est, merito censetur vitiosus.” If, however, St. Paul’s intention, obvious from his own writing, does not fit in with Augustinian or Calvinistic theology, so much the worse for the latter. The verses in question do not, in fact, express more than the apostle elsewhere allows man to be capable of, and what observation of fact shows him to be capable of, though not having yet attained to Christian faith; viz. approval of, longing for, and even striving for, what is good. It is not more than the sincere and earnest, even in the Gentile world, have been already credited with in Rom 2:1-29. of this Epistle (Rom 2:7, Rom 2:10, Rom 2:14, Rom 2:15, Rom 2:26, Rom 2:29). It does not follow that such moral earnestness is independent of Divine grace; but there is a true and effective operation of Divine grace, suitable to men’s needs and capacities, before the fulness of Pentecostal grace.
And further, however “far gone from original righteousness” man in his natural state may be, still that utter depravity attributed to him by some theologians is neither consonant with observed fact nor declared in Holy Writ. The image of God in which he was made is represented as defaced, but not obliterated. Be it observed, lastly, with regard to the whole question of the intention of this chapter, that its reference to the unregenerate precludes the wresting of some parts of it to support antinomianism. Calvin, though applying it, as said above, to the regenerate, thus alludes to and guards against any such abuse of Rom 2:17 : “Non est deprecatio so excusantis, ac si culpa vacaret; quomodo multi nugatores justam defensionem habere se putant, qua tegant sua fiagitia dum in carnem ea rejiciunt.”
It was observed in the note at the head of Rom 2:1-29. that, though the thesis to be then proved was the sinfulness of all men without exception before God, this did not seem to be in that chapter rigorously proved with regard to thoseand such it was allowed there werewho sincerely sought after righteousness, and refrained from judging others; and it was said that this apparent deficiency in the proof would be supplied in Rom 7:1-25. And so it is in this analysis of the inward consciousness of even the best in their natural state; recognizable by all as a true one in proportion to their own moral enlightenment and moral earnestness. This consideration is an additional reason for regarding Rom 7:1-25. as referring to the unregenerate; since otherwise a link in the argument on which the whole treatise rests would seem to be wanting.
We may remark also, before proceeding with our exposition, that, though we hold Rom 7:1-25. to refer to the unregenerate, and Rom 8:1-39. to the regenerate state, between which a sharp line is here drawn, yet it need not follow that either the sense of having passed at a definite time from one to the other as represented in this ideal picture, or the consciousness of entire blessedness as portrayed in Rom 8:1-39., will be realized by all, who may still be regenerate and have undergone a true conversion. Owing to the weakness of the human will, which has to work with grace, and to the infection of nature that remains in the regenerate, the triumph of the grace of the new birth is seldom, in fact, complete; and so even saints may often be still painfully conscious of the conflict described in Rom 7:1-25. They will, indeed, have the peace and assurance of Rom 8:1-39. in proportion as “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” is potent and paramount in them; but still they may not attain all at once to the ideal of their regenerate condition.
Similarly, in St. John’s Epistles the kingdoms of darkness and of light are set forth as totally distinct, and the regenerate are regarded as having passed entirely from the one into the other, so as to have the perfect love which casteth out fear; and it is of importance that the essential distinction between the two kingdoms should be kept in view. But still in actual life, as we cannot but feel, the majority of believing Christians have not so passed entirely; clouds from the old kingdom of darkness still partially overshadow most of those who, in the main, have passed into the light, and it may be difficult for us to determine to which kingdom some belong. Such would be the case even with those whom the apostle addressedpersons who had consciously, in adult life, risen to a new life in baptism; and still more will it be so with us, who were baptized in infancy, and may have grown up more or less, but few entirely, under the influence of the regenerating Spirit. Further, it is to be observed that, though the peace and confidence of Joh 8:1-59. be the growing result and reward of a true conversion, yet the practical tests of one are ever said by both St. Paul and St. John not to be feelings only, but the fruits of the Spirit in character and life.
Rom 7:7
What shall we say then? (St. Paul’s usual phrase, with following, for meeting and rejecting a possible misunderstanding of his meaning; cf. Rom 6:1.) Is the Law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known Bin, but through law. , translated “nay,” being thus taken, as in the Authorized Version, adversatively to the supposition of the Law being sin, and so a continuation of what is expressed by . So far from the Law being sin, it exposes sin. Or it may be in the sense of “howbeit,” as in the Revised Version, meaningstill, law has to do with sin so far as this, that it brings it out. For I had not known lust, except the Law had said, Thou shalt not covet; or rather, thou shalt not lust, so as to retain the correspondence of the verb with the preceding substantive. Observe, here as elsewhere, the significance of with and without the article. In the preceding section it was the Mosaic Law that wad specially in view, and it is the idea of being sin that is so indignantly repudiated at the beginning of this verse. So also, at the end, the Law of Moses is referred to as forbidding lust. Hence the article in both cases. But in the intervening phrase, , it is the principle of law generally that is regarding as making sin known. The adducing of as being made known by the Law seems to have a significance beyond that of its being one particular instance of sin being so made known. It may imply that the very propension to evil, which is the root of sin, is thus only made known as sinful. The reference is, of course, to the tenth commandment. Without it men might not have been aware of the sinfulness of desires as well as of deeds, and thus, after all, been unacquainted with the essence of sin. Further, we may suppose it to be not without a purpose that the apostle varies his verbs expressive of knowing, , and . majus est, minus. Hinc posterius, cure etiam minor gradus negatur, est in increments” (Bengel). may express personal acquaintance with the working and power of sin; , no more than knowing lust as being sin at all. If so, it does not in itself imply that the Law excites lust, in the sense that I should not have lusted as I do had not the Law forbidden me to lust.
Rom 7:8
But sin, taking occasion, through the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence (or, of lust): for without (or, apart from) law sin is dead. Here, as in Rom 5:12, seq., sin is personified as a power, antagonistic to the Law of God, that has been introduced into the world of man, causing death. In Rom 5:1-21. its first introduction was found in the scriptural account of Adam’s transgression. It has ever since been in the world, as is evidenced by the continuance of the reign of death as it comes to all men now (Rom 5:13, Rom 5:14). But it is only when men, through law, know it to be sin, that it is imputed (Rom 5:13), and so slays them spiritually. Apart from law, it is as it were dead with respect to its power over the soul to kill. It is regarded here as an enemy on the watch, seizing its occasion to kill which is offered it when law comes in. It may be observed here that, though it is not easy to define exactly in all cases what St. Paul means by death, it is evident that he means in this place more than the physical death which seemed, at first sight at least, to be exclusively referred to in Rom 5:1-21. For all die in the latter sense of the word; but only those who sin with knowledge of law in the sense intended here (see also note on Rom 5:12). It is supposed by most commentators that the expression in this verse means, not only that “the commandment” brought out lust as sin, but further that it provoked it, according to the alleged tendency of human nature to long all the more for what is forbidden; Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata. Whether or not we have this tendency to the extent sometimes supposed, the context certainly neither requires nor suggests the conception, either here or in Rom 5:5 and Rom 5:7. It is true, however, that the language of Rom 5:5 and Rom 5:8 does in itself suggest it. Against it is the reason which follows; “for without law sin is dead,” which can hardly mean (as the strong word would seem in such case to require) that lust itself is altogether dormant until prohibition excites it. Calvin interprets thus: “Detexit in me omnem concupiscentiam; quae, dum lateret, quo-dammodo nulla esse videbatur;” and on remarks, “Clarissime exprimit quem sensum habeant superiora. Perinde enim est ac si diceret, sepnltam esse sine Legs peccati notitiam.“
Rom 7:9-11
For I was alive without (or, apart from) law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived (or, sprang into life), and I died. And the commandment, which was unto life, this I found to be unto death, For sin, taking occasion, through the commandment deceived me, and through it slew me. If, in saying, “I was alive once,” the writer is at all remembering his own experience, the reference may be to the time of the innocence of childhood, before he had any distinct consciousness of the behests of law. Or it may be that he is only imagining a possible state without any consciousness of law, so as to bring out more forcibly the operation of law. On the general drift of Rom 7:9, Calvin says tersely, “Mors peccati vita est hominis: rursum vita peccati mors hominis.” In Rom 7:11 the conception of sin’s action is the same as in Rom 7:8; but the verb now used is , with obvious reference to Eve’s temptation, which is regarded as representing ours (cf. 2Co 11:3). The view of the origin of human sin presented to us in Genesis is that man at first lived at peace with God; but that the commandment,” Thou shalt not eat of it, lest thou die,” was taken advantage of by the “serpent” (answering to personified in the passage before us), inspiring sinful lust; and that so the commandment (i.e. law), though in itself holy, became the occasion of sin, and of death as its consequence; and further, that all this came about through delusion (). The thing desired was not really good for man; but the inspired by the tempter caused it to seem so. One great purpose of regenerating grace is to dispel this delusion; to bring us back to the true view of things as they are, and so to peace with God. Thus, in part, does the apostle teach us to regard the inscrutable mystery of sin, and the remedy for it in Christ.
Rom 7:12, Rom 7:13
So that the Law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Has then that which is good become death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, through that which is good working death unto me; that sin might become exceeding sinful through the commandment. The question of Rom 7:7, “Is the Law sin?” has now been answered so far as thisthat, far from being so, the commandment was in itself “unto life” (cf. Le 18:5; Rom 10:5), only that sin took occasion by it, and so got power to slay. But still it would appear that law was ultimately the cause of death. Was, then, its purpose and effect, after all, deadly? for, though not sin, it seems to have been death to us. No, it is replied; away with the thought! Its effect was only to reveal sin in its true light; it was only an Ithuriel’s spear (‘Par. Lost,’ bk. 4.),bringing out and exposing the deadly thing that before was latent. And (as is elsewhere set forth in pursuance of the line of thought) its effect in the end was really “unto life;” for its awakening of the sense of sin, and of a craving for redemption from it, was the necessary preparation for such redemption (cf. Gal 3:19, seq.).
Rom 7:14
For we know (we are all already aware of this; we recognize it as a principle; we can surely have no doubt of it; cf Rom 2:2; Rom 3:10) that the Law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. The statement of Rom 7:12 is here in effect repeated as being one that cannot be gainsaid with respect to the Law, but with use now of the epithet ; and this in opposition to myself being . The new word, , is obviously meant to express a further idea with respect to law, suitable to the line of thought now about to be pursued. Without lingering to mention varying suggestions of various commentators as to the sense in which the Law is here called spiritual, we may offer the following considerations in elucidation. and are, as is well known, constantly contrasted in the New Testament. The former sometimes denotes the “Holy Spirit of God,” and sometimes that highest part in ourselves which is in touch with the Divine Spirit. , though it may, in accordance with its original meaning, sometimes denote our mere bodily organization, is usually used to express our whole present human constitution, mental as well as bodily, considered as apart from the . When St. Paul in one place distinguishes the constituent elements of human nature, he speaks of , and (1Th 5:23). There seems to denote the animal life or soul animating the for the purposes of mere human life, but distinguished from the , which associates him with the Divine life. Usually, however, and alone are spoken of; so that the term seems to include the , expressing our whole weak human nature now, apart from the , which connects us with God (see Gal 5:17, etc.). That in this and other passages does not mean our mere bodily organization only, is further evident from sins not due to mere bodily lustssuch as want of affection, hatred, envy, pridebeing called “works of the flesh” (cf. Gal 5:19-22; 1Co 3:3). What, then, is meant by the adjective ? Applied to man, it is, in 1Co 3:2, 1Co 3:3, opposed to (or ), and in 1Co 2:14, to (cf. Jud 1:19); the latter word apparently meaning one in whom the (as above understood), and not the , dominates. Further, St. Paul (1Co 15:44) speaks of a and a , meaning by the former a tenement fitted for and adequate to the mere psychic life, and by the latter a new organism adapted for the higher life of the spirit, such as we hope to have hereafter; and in the same passage he uses the neuters, and , with reference to “the first Adam,” who was made, or became () , and “the last Adam,” who was made . Thus , generally, denotes the Divine, which man apprehends and aspires to, nay, in which he has himself a part in virtue of the original breathing into him of the breath of life ( ) directly from God (Gen 3:7), whereby he became a living soul ( ) for the purposes of his mundane life (itself above that of the brutes), but retained also a share of the Divine connecting him with God,and capable of being quickened so as to be the dominant principle of his being through contact with the . It would seem that the Law is here called , as belonging to the Divine sphere of things, and expressive of the Divine order. “The Law, both the moral law in the bosom of man, and the expression of that law in the Decalogue, is, as Augustine profoundly expresses it, a revelation of the higher order of things founded in the being of God. It is hence a ” (Tholuck). But man (t ), though still able to admire, nay, to delight in and aspire to, this higher order, cannot yet conform himself to it because of the , infected with sin, which at present enthrals him: . Thus is fitly introduced the analysis of human consciousness with reference to law which follows. The word (which, rather than , is the best-supported reading) may be used to express merely our present constitution our being of fleshso as to account for our inability, rather than our being fleshly, or carnally minded, as would imply. In two other passages (1Co 3:1 and Heb 7:16) authority is also in favour of instead of as in the Textus Receptus. Tholuck, however, doubts whether there was, in common usage, a distinction between the meaning of the two forms. The word is significant. It denotes, not our having been originally slaves (vernae), but our having been sold into slavery. Slavery to sin is not the rightful condition of our nature. We are as the Israelites in Egypt, or as the captives in Babylon who remembered Zion. Hence the possibility of deliverance, if we feel the burden of our slavery and long to be free, when the Deliverer comes.
Rom 7:15-25
For that which I do (rather, work, or perform, or accomplish, ) I know not: for not what I would, that I do (rather, practise; the verb here is ); but what I hate, that I do (). But if what I would not that I do, I consent unto the Law that it is good (). Now then ( , not in temporal sense, but meaning, as the case is) it is no more I that work (, as before) it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth not good (): for to will is present with me; but to perform () that which is good ( ) is not (), rather than as in the Textus Receptus, is the best-supported reading). For the good () that I would I do not ( ): but the evil which I would not, that I practise (). But if what I (, emphatic) would not, that I do (), it is no longer I (, again emphatic) that work () it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then the law, that to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man. But I see a different law in my members (on what is meant by “members” () see note under Rom 6:13) warring against the law of my mind, and brining me into captivity to (or, according to some readings, by) the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (probably in the same sense as “the body of sin” in Rom 6:6; see note thereon. Translate certainly as in the English Version; not this body of death, as if it meant this mortal body) Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the Law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. In the note introducing this whole section (Rom 6:7 -25)its general drift has been intimated. The following additional comments may further explain the part of it which begins at Rom 6:15.
(1) The initial introduces proof of the being in the condition spoken of in the preceding clause, viz. “sold under sin.” For (the meaning is) am I not a bond-slave, when, as I feel is the case with me, I am not my own master? But, observe, the state that goes on to be described is that of an unwilling bond-slave; not of one who likes his bondage, and has no desire to be free. The conscience is supposed already, through the operation of law, to protest against sin; to hate its thraldom; not willingly to acquiesce in it.
(2) The distinction between the verbs , , not observed in the English Version, but to which attention has been drawn in the above translation, has its meaning. Attention to the places where they occur will show their appropriateness in each case, denoting severally single acts, habitual practice, and general working, performance, or accomplishment.
(3) The English Version is wrong in rendering, in Rom 6:15, “What I would, that I do not,” so as to make the idea the same as that in Rom 6:19. There are really two different statements in the two versesthe first, of our doing what we wish not to do; the second, of our not doing what we wish to do; and after each the same conclusion is drawn in the same words, viz. that sin is the real worker ( being here the word appropriately used).
(4) The conflicting principles, or energies, of human nature, between which the individual , which wills and acts, is here regarded as being distracted, are the in which sin dwells (which has been explained above; see note under Rom 6:14) on the one hand, and the (Rom 6:23) of the (Rom 6:22) on the other. The is identified with the , rather than regarded as an intermediate personality between the two. For it is spoken of throughout as willing what is good; and,. though in Rom 6:14 it is said to be , and though, in Rom 6:18, good dwells not in it, yet the first of these expressions only means that it is in the flesh at present, and therefore in bondage; and the latter is at once qualified by the addition, ; it does not identify the with the . It is, we may remark in passing, this that is regarded as rising to a new life with Christ, so as to become a new man, delivered from bondage; this last expression, of course, involving a different idea from that of the inward man). It is to be observed, further, that throughout this section beginning at Rom 6:7, there is no distinction drawn (as elsewhere by St. Paul) between and ; the idea of , in fact, does not come in at all, except with regard to the Law, which is called . The reason is that the apostle is confining himself here to an examination of what man, even at his best, is in his mere human nature; of what thoughtful observers, though not theologians, may perceive him to be. It is a philosophical rather than a theological analysis. It is one that might commend itself to heathen philosophers, some of whom have, in fact, expressed themselves much to the same effect. Hence it is not till Rom 8:1-39., where man’s regeneration by the Divine is portrayed, that the spiritual principle in himself, through which he is capable of such regeneration, comes into view. And it will be seen that it is this very idea of that pervades that whole chapter. This essential distinction between the two chapters is sufficient in itself to disprove the theory that the regenerate state is described in Rom 7:1-25.
(5) The senses in which the word is used in this chapter require to be perceived and distinguished, its usual sense (see under Rom 2:13) not being uniformly retained. There is, however, always some appended expression to indicate any new application of the word. We find it
(a) in its usual sense, with the usual significance of the absence or the presence of the article, in Rom 7:7, Rom 7:9, Rom 7:12, Rom 7:14, Rom 7:16; and in Rom 7:22, still in the same sense, we have “the Law of God.” We find also,
(b) in Rom 7:23, “the law of my mind,” whereby I delight in the “Law of God.” Here “law” assumes a different sense from the other, but one in which the word is often used; as when we speak of the laws of nature, having in view, not so much a fiat external to nature which nature must obey, as the uniform rule according to which nature is found to work. The Latin word norma expresses the idea. Thus “the law of my mind” means the normal constitution of my higher and better self, whereby it cannot but assent to “the Law of God. Then
(c) we have “the law of sin in my members;” i.e., in a similar sense, an antagonistic rule or constitution dominant in my . Lastly,
(d) in Rom 7:21, the general law (in like sense) of my complex human nature, which necessitates this antagonism: “the law, that when I would do good” (in accordance with the law of the mind), “evil is present with me” (in virtue of the other law). Ancient and other commentators have been much puzzled as to the meaning of Rom 7:21, from taking at the beginning to denote the Mosaic Law, as usually does when preceded by the article. But not so when there is something after it to denote a different meaning; as there is here in the at the end of the verse, meaning that, not (as some have understood it) because.
(6) Difficulty has been found in the concluding clause of Rom 7:25, , etc. It follows the expression of thanksgiving, “Thanks be to God,” etc., which certainly introduced the thought of deliverance from the state that had been described; and hence it is supposed by some that this clause must be a continuance of that thought, and so to be taken as an introduction to Rom 8:1-39. rather than a summing up of the preceding argument. It is said also, in support of this view, that more entire association of the with the Law of God than was before intimated is here expressed; being written instead of simply , and being a stronger word than (Rom 8:22). Thus the meaning would be, “Though in my flesh I still serve the law of sin (the still remains in me, notwithstanding my regeneration), yet now in my very real self I not only approve, but am in subjection to, the Law of God.” It is, however, at least a question whether these slight differences of expression come to much; and both the introductory and the form of the clause suggest rather its being the summarized result of Rom 7:1-25. The additional emphasis added to (which had, indeed, already been emphatic), and the substitution of for , may serve only to bring out all the more strongly in the end what it had been the purpose of the whole passage to lead up to, viz. that man’s real self, when conscience is fully aroused, yearns for and is ready for redemption. There is no difficulty in so understanding the clause (as we should surely understand it naturally but for the preceding thanksgiving), if we regard the thanksgiving as a parenthetical exclamation, anticipating for a moment the purport of Rom 8:1-39. Such an exclamation is characteristic of St. Paul, and it adds life to the passage.
HOMILETICS
Rom 7:6
The new spirit of Christian service.
What God creates he creates for a purpose. When he gives life, there is a special career before the living creature; thus the fish is for the water, the bird for the air. When he imparts spiritual renewal, it is with a view to a new spiritual life. In re-creating human natures in the likeness of his own Son, God has it, so to speak, in his purpose that they should serve him, and that in “newness of the spirit.”
I. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW LORD TO SERVE. They are freed from the dominion of sin, from their state of bondage to the tyrant; they are endowed with spiritual liberty. And they are devoted to the personal service of Christ, that they may do his will, advance his cause, promote his glory.
II. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW MOTIVE TO SERVICE.
1. The ground of their service is redemption, the distinctive fact and doctrine of the new economy.
2. The impulse to their service is grateful love, awakened by the experience of Christ’s redeeming power and grace.
III. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW LAW OF SERVICE. This law is widely different from the “oldness of the letter.” It extends to the spiritual realm, beginning-in fact within, and working outwardly.
IV. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW EXAMPLE OF SERVICE. In the Lord Jesus they see the Servant of Jehovah, found in fashion as a man, assuming the form, the guise of a servant, ministering unto God and unto man, and in both relations fulfilling a perfect, flawless ministry.
V. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW POWER FOE SERVICE. This is the help of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of zeal and holiness, of patience and of devotion.
VI. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW MANNER OF SERVICE. They are not as the hireling who serves for wages, or as the bondman who serves from fear; but rather as the freedman who serves willingly and gratefully, as the child who serves from love. Christ introduced into the world a new style and tone of service; taught men the dignity and beauty of consecrated ministration. How precious and powerful this impulse and example have proved is known to every student of the history of Christ’s Church.
VII. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW SCOPE FOR SERVICE.
1. Mutual service is an obligation in the Church springing from mutual love. The great are to serve the lowly, and the lowly the great.
2. Universal service is enjoined upon all who would do the will of the Divine Master. In both directions the service of those for whom Christ died is the service of Christ himself.
VIII. CHRISTIANS HAVE A NEW REWARD FOR SERVICE. Nothing adventitious or external attracts those who are in sympathy with him who is at once the Servant and the Lord of all. Of all privileges, that most alluring and dear to their hearts is the favour of their Master, the joy of their Lord.
Rom 7:7
Knowledge of sin by the Law.
Although the apostle aimed in this Epistle to show that the Law by itself was unable and unfitted to secure men’s salvation, it is evident, both that he honoured the Law as an expression of the Divine character and will, and that he considered it, from a Christian point of view, to fulfil a most important purpose. Especially in this verse does he set forth the Law as awakening conscience of sin, and so preparing the way for the introduction of the gospel, both in the order of the Divine dispensations and in the course of individual experience. His own spiritual history is represented as typical: “I had not known sin, but by the Law.”
I. LAW IS THE REVELATION OF THE SUPERIOR WILL TO THE SUBJECT AND INFERIOR WILL. There is a sense in which the word “law” is commonly used in the exposition of physical science; it is in such connections equivalent to uniformity of antecedence and sequence. But this, though a proper employment of the term, is secondary and figurative; part of the connotation is intentionally abandoned. The faller meaning of law is seen when the reference is to requirement of certain modes of action; and when the requirement is made by one who has a just right to make it, a just claim upon the submission and obedience of those to whom the command is addressed. The superiority in the Lawgiver does not lie simply in physical power, but in moral character and authority.
II. BEING UNDER SUCH LAW IMPLIES THE POSSESSION OF INTELLIGENT AND VOLUNTARY NATURE. The inferior animals are not, in the proper sense of the term, under law. Nor are babes, or idiots, or any whose moral nature is undeveloped. Man, as an intelligent being, can apprehend law; as an active and voluntary being, can obey law. Kant has put the matter in a very striking and a very just light, in saying that, whilst the unintelligent creation acts according to law, an intelligent being has the prerogative of acting according to the representation of law; i.e. he can understand, consciously adopt, and willingly and without constraint obey the law. Freedom is the power to obey or to disobey.
III. IN PROPORTION TO THE DEFINITENESS OF THE LAW IS THE MEASURE OF RESPONSIBILITY ATTACHING TO THOSE WHO ARE SUBJECT TO IT. Confining attention to human beings possessed of thought, reason, and will, we cannot fail to detect degrees of acquaintance with the revelation which in various ways is vouchsafed to the race. There are those, as for example untutored savages, and the “waifs and strays” of a civilized community, whose knowledge of the Divine will is both very imperfect and very indistinct. Such in former ages was the case of the Gentiles as compared with the highly favoured Jews. Now, our Saviour himself, and, following his teaching, the inspired apostles, have plainly taught that responsibility varies with knowledge and opportunity.
IV. ON THE OTHER HAND, THE POSSESSION OF EXPRESS AND VERBAL LAW INVOLVES HEIGHTENED RESPONSIBILITY. When the knowledge of duty is clear, defection and rebellion are aggravated in guilt. The sin of transgression is increased as the light sinned against is brighter. Such was the case with the Jews, who were worthy of sorer condemnation than the Gentiles, where both were disobedient. Comparatively, they only knew sin who knew the Law by which sin is prohibited. True, there is a general conscience, against which even the unenlightened transgressors are offenders; but they are the worse culprits who, having the light, walk not in it.
V. THUS THE LAW, BY REVEALING A HIGHER STANDARD OF DUTY, AND BY MAKING SIN “EXCEEDING SINFUL,” PREPARES THE WAY FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF THE DIVINE GOSPEL OF SALVATION AND LIFE. The apostle avers that, but for the Law, he had not known sin, i.e. comparatively. If this had been all, he would have had little reason to thank the Law. But, in fact, the Law, proving the holiness and righteousness of God, and the powerlessness of man to obey, served to make the introduction of a new dispensationthat of gracedoubly welcome. Men were brought to feel their need of a Saviour, and, when that Saviour came, to receive him with alacrity and gratitude, and to use the means prescribed by which the penalties of the Law may be escaped, and the blessings of eternal salvation enjoyed.
HOMILIES BY C.H. IRWIN
Rom 7:1-17
The position of the Law under the New Testament.
The apostle is here continuing his discussion of the immoral suggestion to which he alluded in the previous chapter (Rom 7:15), “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the Law, but under grace?”
I. THE RELATION OF THE LAW TO THE CHRISTIAN.
1. he Christian’s union with Christ involves his freedom from the Law.
(1) From the Law as condemning him. “Ye are become dead to the Law by the body of Christ” (Rom 7:4). The Christian, by faith in Jesus Christ, becomes a participator in his death. “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
(2) From the Law as a motive-power. “But now we are delivered from the Law, having died to that wherein we were held [Revised Version]; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter” (Rom 7:6). The Authorized Version is here misleading when it translates, “that being dead wherein we were held.” The apostle does not speak of the Law as being dead, but of Christians as being dead to the Law. The Law is not dead, but we are dead to it. We have a higher and a better life.
2. But this union with Christ and freedom from the Law do not imply that he is free to commit sin. The principles of the Law remain, though the power of it is gone, so far as justification or condemnation of the Christian is concerned. The Law was powerless to give fife. Through the sinfulness of our nature it brought forth fruit unto death (Rom 7:5). But our very freedom from the Law is in itself a reason for holy living. Christ implants in us a new principle. We now “serve in newness of spirit.” Professor Croskery (‘Plymouth Brethrenism’) deals with this subject very fully in a chapter on “The Law as a Rule of Life.” “If Old Testament saints,” he says, “could be under the Law cud yet not under curse, because they were under the promisethat is, under the covenant of gracewhy should not New Testament saints, saved by grace, be under Law likewise, as a rule of life, without being overtaken by the curse? What difference was there between David’s sin and Peter’s sin, in relation to the Law? If David was bound to keep the ten commandments, including the seventh, are not New Testament saints similarly bound? Does not James settle this point when he says, ‘He that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill’ (Jas 2:11), and says this, too, to Christians? The passage [ch. 6:14] means, ‘Ye are not under the Law as a condition of salvation, but under a system of free grace.'” The Law still remains as the rule of life, the standard of obedience. St. Paul himself says in this same chapter, “With the mind I myself serve the Law of God” (verse 25). And our Lord himself said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil”(Mat 5:17).
II. THE RELATION OF THE LAW TO THE SINNER.
1. The Law reveals to him the depths and power of his own sinfulness. After the apostle has shown how, in the unregenerate nature, “the motions of sins, which were by the Law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death,” he asks, “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin?” (verse 7). That is to sayIs the Law therefore in itself sinful? does it encourage sin? Far from it, he says. “Nay, I had not known sin, but by the Law.” That isI had not known the force or power of sin but by the law. “Sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful” (verse 13). Some would condemn the Bible because it describes sin, and pictures some of its best characters as falling into sins of gross description. But this, so far from being a defect of the Bible, is at once an evidence of its truthfulness, and an element in its purifying power upon humanity. The Bible does not describe sin to make us love it, but to turn us from it. So it is with the Law of God. It may awaken in our minds suggestions of sins that we would not otherwise have thought of (verses 7, 8), but conscience at once recognizes that this is due, not to the Law itself, but to the sinfulness of our nature.
2. The Law remains as the standard of right life. “The Law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (verse 12); “The Law is spiritual” (verse 14). Here is the answer to those who regard the Law as abrogated. The Law is still binding as the rule of life, the standard of morality. It therefore condemns the sinner. Thus still it becomes our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ.C.H.I.
Rom 7:18-25
The inward conflict of the Christian heart.
Two forces are for ever struggling for the soul of man. Goethe, the German poet, has immortalized that for us in his great drama of ‘Faust,’ where Mephistopheles, the prince of evil, tempts a human being too successfully into the paths of destruction. Milton has immortalized it for us in his great epic, ‘Paradise Lost.’ But these great poems are, after all, but echoes of the story of the Fall as told us in the Bible. These words of St. Paul are another echo of that story of the Fall. They might have been spoken by any of us. What folly to discuss the doctrine of human depravity as the result of the Fall, when every man carries the proof of it in his own breast! Thank God, there is a Paradise Regained as well as a Paradise Lost. There is a power of good as well as of evil working on the human heart. There is “a power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness,” andsomething more than he who used those famous words meant by themthem is the personal power of a personal Saviour, coming down into this sinful world, and trying to lift men up again from their fallen and lost condition, by the power of his cress, by the power of his Divine love and mercy, by the power of his resurrection, by the power of his Spirit working upon their hearts.
I. A DESIRE AND A DELIGHT. St. Paul speaks of himself as having a desire for what is good. “When I would do good” (Rom 7:21), that is, “when I want to do good,” “when I wish to do what is right.” That in itself is a step on the upward path. But you might have a desire for what is right, and yet not be a Christian. Paul had something more than this desire for what was right; he had a delight in it. “I delight in the Law of God after the inward man” (Rom 7:22). That in itself marks him out as a true Christian. He takes pleasure in the Divine Word, although it reveals to him the sinfulness of his own heart. He delights in the Law of God, because it shows to him his Father’s will. He delights in the Law of God, because it shows to him the ideal of human character, the standard of good to which he desires to attain. Here, then, is the test, the evidence, of a true Christian. When we delight in the Law of God after the inward man, making it our constant study; when we humbly, but with earnest resolution, set ourselves to obey its precepts; this is evidence of the renewed nature and the regenerate spirit. Do we delight in the Law of God, or do we find God’s commands a burden? Is the sabbath a delight, or is it wearisome? Are the services of God’s house a pleasure which we would not miss if it were possible, a pleasure into which we throw all our capacities and energies; or are they a routine form which we go through because we think we musta kind of cold, uninteresting task, which we are anxious to get over just as soon as possible? And how is it with the duties of the Christian lifewith the duty of charity, the duty of forgiveness, the duty of liberality? If you do not delight in these things, then there is much reason to doubt if you are a Christian at all.
II. CONFLICT AND CAPTIVITY. Paul was making an analysis of his own mind. It was a complete analysis, and he has left behind a true record of it. “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Rom 7:23). We know what is right, but we often fail to do it. Probo meliora, deteriora sequor. But some one may sayThis conflict with sin and captivity to it were not the experience of a truly regenerate man. Are we not told that “he that is born of God sinneth not”? The previous statements of the apostle are an answer to this. He tells us that he delights in the Law of God after the inward mana statement which none but a true Christian could make. The fact is, the Apostle Paul was no perfectionist. He did not believe in sinless perfection. Like every true saint of God, the older he grew and the holier he became, the more he felt his own sinfulness. The more he knew of Christ, the less he thought of self. It was a humbling experience, this conflict with sin and subjection to its power. Yet we are not to suppose that when the apostle said, “When I would do good, evil is present with me,” he meant that in every instance when he wanted to do good he was absolutely prevented from accomplishing his purpose, and drawn away into positive sin by the corruption which still adhered to him. What he means is evidently thisthat in all his endeavours to do the will of God, the power of sin so interfered with his efforts that he could not do anything as he wished to do it; that the power of evil seemed to pervade his whole life, and to taint all his actions, even the best of them. Is not this the experience of every child of God? Let any one who really loves and fears God, and desires to serve him, form a purpose, any one morning of his life, to repress all sinful influences, and to set such a guard upon feeling, and temper, and word, and action throughout the day as that there shall be no cause for regret or repentance in the evening; and I think it will be found that, if the work of self-examination be faithfully and honestly performed at night, the language of the apostle will accurately describe the experience of such a one: “I find a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.”
III. TRIAL AND TRIUMPH It was a great trial to the apostle, this indwelling presence and power of sin. Under its Power, clinging constantly to him, as the dead body which the ancients used sometimes to fasten to their prisoners, he cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). This very agony of spirit was a further proof that he was a child of God. Had he been an unregenerate man, sin would have been a delight to him, instead of a wearisome and loathsome burden, from which he is anxious to be delivered. Here again is a test whether you are a Christian or not. What are your feelings in regard to sin? Is it a source of shame and grief to you when you yield to sin? Or do you see no harm in doing those things which God’s Word forbids? Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, once said in that famous school, as is recorded in his life, “What I want to see in the school, and what I cannot find, is abhorrence of evil. I always think of the psalm, ‘Neither doth he abhor that which is evil.'” The true Christian will abhor sin. It is in this sense that “he that is born of God sinneth not”does not love sin. He will look upon it as the abominable thing which God hates. Its presence in his own heart, manifesting itself in his best services and in his dealings with his fellow-men, will be a sore trial to him. It will lead him to cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” But no one need despair of deliverance, no matter how strong is the force of temptation from within or from without. Even as Paul asked the question, he answered it himself: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This story of the inward conflict teaches us many lessons. It should teach us all watchfulness and prayerfulness. It should teach us all to cultivate the higher, the better, the heavenly side of our nature. It should teach us humility. It should teach us charity toward others, when we remember the faults and failings and frailties of our own nature. It should teach us to look for and to depend upon, more than ever we have done before, the Divine strength of the mighty Saviour, and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.C.H.I.
HOMILIES BY T.F. LOCKYER
Rom 7:1-6
The two unions.
The apostle has spoken of freedom from the Law, and of the new reign of grace; but lest this freedom should be disputed, he here establishes it. The Mosaic Law, as such, touches only this present life; death does away with its claims. Christ, therefore, by his death, is freed from its demands; and we, by our spiritual fellowship with him, are likewise free. Free from the old union, to enter on the new. Such is the argument of these verses.
I. DEAD TO THE LAW. Law is not spoken of here in its Divine perfection, but in its partial, external character as revealed through Moses. A law of rigid retribution: “Do this, and live;” “Do that, and die.” A law of mere restraints, not of renewal
1. Of this law, death was the annulment, even as the penalties did not extend beyond the grave. It laid its sanctions on the whole of life; further than life it did not go. An example of this is found in the Jewish law of marriage, which, like all mere national laws of marriage, can only touch this present life. The law of the union, in such external legislation, is only until death. The death of either destroys the law.
2. Has not Christ, then, by his death, escaped the claims of all such legislation? Dying, he has died unto the dispensation of Moses; he is now no longer the Jew; the Law has no authority over him. He is now only the Divine Man; he has risen into all the spiritual freedom and power of the life of God. No narrow, prohibitive Law is the law of his risen life; but the perfect, quickening law of God. And are not we dead, in ]aim, to all the limitations and restraints of the Law? Our very union with him, by faith, releases us now from all its claims. It is as though we were dead. The unhappy marriage-bond is broken.
II. ALIVE TO CHRIST. But if so, a new marriage-bond is formed. Dead to the Law, we live to Christ. The one has no more claim; the other has every claim. We are joined to him now, indissolubly one.
1. The plenitude of spiritual power is ours in him. No law of the letter restrains, but a law of the Spirit inspires. His Spirit] which he hath “poured forth” (Act 2:33), which he hath “poured out upon us richly” (Tit 3:6). Is it not so? a law written on the heartthe law of liberty, the law of love.
2. And being thus filled with power, through faith in him, we bring forth fruit unto God. The old union, with the Law, wrought fruit, but it was fruit unto death. Its very holiness, as a mere exterior restraint in contact with our carnal nature, was an excitant to sin. Fruit unto death] yes; for, sowing to the flesh, we reaped corruption. But now, God’s law works in us, as a quickening power. God’s love is our very life; and the fruit is unto life, unto God!
Have we such union with Christ? an indefeasible union, utter and for evermore? For such is truly the new life of faith. “Christ liveth in me” (Gal 2:20): we must be satisfied with nothing short of this.T.F.L.
Rom 7:7-13
Is the Law sin?
“The sinful passions, which were through the Law” (Rom 7:5). What does the Law bring forth such fruit? Is the LAW SIN? Nay, that cannot be; on the contrary, we all acknowledge it, without dispute, as “holy,” and every separate commandment which it gives as “holy, and righteous, and good.” Nevertheless, even the holy Law has peculiar relations to the development of sin; and they are these: the Law reveals sin; the Law becomes, to a sinful man, an excitant to further sin.
I. THE LAW AS REVEALING SIN. “For,” says the apostle, “I had not known sin, except through the Law; I had not known coveting, except the Law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Here we have a general principle, and a special instance. Law, by saying, “Thou shalt not,” brings home to our conscience the knowledge that certain tendencies, which we had followed unconsciously before, are wrong; the separate commandments of the Law stamp this character of wrongness on each separate tendency respectively. Thus we learn the great distinctions of right and wrong; the particular distinctions in particular cases. To us, then, as fallen creatures, there is a great revelation of wrong. When Law first speaks, we awake to find ourselves sinful, i.e. dead! Till then? Alive, without law; yes, even as the brute beasts are alive, not being conscious of any moral disharmony or disorder. They may covet and strive and fight, but to them this is not wrong; Law is silent, and therefore sin, in its recognized character, is notit is dead. So with us. But Law comes; sin revives; we die!
II. THE LAW AS AN EXCITANT TO SIN. To innocent creatures law would be directive, and restraining; to corrupt creatures it is galling, and incentive to yet worse outbreaks. Illustrate, unruly horse. The very curbing makes it spring forth more furiously. So sin works in us, through the commandment, all manner of coveting. And surely nothing shows the exceeding sinfulness of sin more strikingly than this, that a Law which is acknowledged as holy and good should be the means of making it more rampant and riotous! Sin works death “through that which is good.” And we, meanwhile? Slain] slain, that we may desire a better life. Law the necessary preparative for redemption.
But when are these successive experiences realized? When are we “alive without law”? In the days of irresponsible infancy, when we are sinful indeed, but unconsciously sinful, yielding to the wrong tendency even as we yield to the right, not knowing, not reflecting. More or less, though only partially, this is the case among the untaught heathen also; only partially, for there is law written on the heart. To some extent the case even amongst the enlightened, even amongst the regenerate; for it is only by degrees that the Law of Christ unfolds to us its sublime perfection. And when, and to what extent, are we dead, when sin revives? As childhood develops into fuller life, and the Law without awakes the law within. Also, as the heathen, the uninstructed, are taught the fuller truth. And, in accordance with above, as the Christ unfolds to us his perfection, and we do not at once respond. And so it is that
“They who fain would serve thee best
Are conscious most of wrong within.”
But “he giveth more grace!”
T.F.L.
Rom 7:14-25
“Sold under sin!”
Such is the deplorable result of the action of God’s Law on man: sin is made to stand out blackly, in all its hideous evil; nay, it seems even stimulated to increased malignity of working. How so? Because of the intense opposition between the holy Law and an unholy nature: “For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.” But man’s nature is not without its witness for the Divine; the spiritual is captive, but not destroyed; it is capable of apprehending and desiring, though not of really purposing and performing the good: and therefore, not merely is there a conflict between the spiritual Law and man’s carnal nature, as described above, but between the spiritual nature of man himself, when quickened by the spiritual Law, and that carnal nature to which it is enslaved. These verses depict this opposition, and we have thereforethe desire for the good; the subjection to the evil; the hopeless conflict.
I. THE DESIRE FOR THE GOOD. Repeatedly, through this whole passage, the apostle speaks of those who are touched by the quickening action of the Law as desiring, and half purposing, the good. Thus, “I consent unto the Law that it is good;” “To will is present with me;” “I delight in the Law of God after the inward man;” “With the mind I serve the Law of God.” And is not this verified by our experience? Our very nature constrains us to approve, to admire, the good. We have the witness in ourselves. The spirit made after God’s image recognizes God. The light of conscience struggles upwards to its kindred light. Nay, more than this. If we do not stubbornly resist, the fair image of goodness commands, not merely our approval, but our desires. The will, bond-slave as it is, covets freedom. The subjected spirit craves to be once again in harmony with the spiritual Law. Is not this verified likewise by the history of mankind? In the ancient world, amid all the corruptions of heathendom, there were those who approved and desired the good. It shone before them in its fascinating beauty, and their eyes were fixed upon its fairness, and their souls were drawn in longing towards it. So is it still. Does not the Christ attract the gaze, the admiration even, of sinful men? And is there not stirred in many a sinful heart the longing to be at one with Christ? Yes; the spiritual Law attracts the approbation and desire of the spiritual in man. The Ego, the Self, the I, desires the good.
II. THE SUBJECTION TO THE EVIL. But is the desire accomplished? Alas! to desire the good is only to realize more intensely the utter subjection to evil. Man’s spirit is enslaved to the flesh, and, through the flesh, to sin: “sold under sin.” This thought also runs through the passage. And so abject is the enslavement, that the Ego is but the impotent instrument in the hands of sin. “It is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me,” is the thrice-uttered plaint of the captive man. And thus the very motions of the will are made in blind submission: “that which I do I know not.” Yea, even when the will would make some show of resistance, it is all in vain. For the rigid law which governs the whole nature, made to seem the more rigid in its defiance of that other holy Law of God, is”to me who would do good, evil is present;” yes, present always, as an absolute, a mocking lord. Has not the world’s history verified these things? Listen to its confessions: Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor; Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata (“I see the better things, and approve them; I follow the worse;” “We strive ever after what is forbidden, and desire the things denied to us”): so spake the heathen, in the ancient world. And is not this our experience still? We are “in the flesh,” and in our flesh “dwelleth no good thing.” Such is our natural state.
III. THE HOPELESS CONFLICT. And, this being so, is not our condition one of wretchedness, of despair? Perpetual war between the law of the mind and the law of the members; between the spirit and the flesh. But hopeless war; sin, through the flesh, triumphant always, mockingly triumphant. Yes, we may look, we may writhe in our efforts to escape; but we are boundbound hand and foot. And so our own very body, intended to be the obedient instrument of the governing spirit, has become, by the supremacy of sin, a brute lord, and is a “body of death.” Death unto death; darkness ever darker: is not the conflict hopeless? may we not well cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?”
Yes, hopeless in itself; no victory in us. But, thanks be to God, there is a mightier One, even Jesus; and he is our Helper, “mighty to save”!T.F.L.
HOMILIES BY S.R. ALDRIDGE
Rom 7:6
“Newness of spirit.”
The apostle never tires of contrasting the Sinaitic with the gospel dispensation, to the exaltation of the latter. He thinks of the former as a thraldom. “We were holden,” that is, cribbed, confined by the Law.
I. AN ESSENTIAL TO DELIVERANCE FROM Law.
1. Death must have intervened. Death is the great liberator, exhausting the penalty of the Law, and giving quittance from its captivity. The wife is released from spousal obligations by the death of her husband, and is free, therefore, to enter into a new covenant.
2. The death of Christ affords the necessary liberation. Prior to full obedience and reception of the utmost penalty of Mosaism, a fresh dispensation had been like adultery; but when the Law had been fulfilled to its extreme requirement, the death of the victim abrogated the authority of the Law.
3. The death of Christ is spiritually enacted in his followers. They repeat in essence his crucifixion of sin. His atonement is realized in their heart, and their baptism is the outward emblem of release by death and burial from a covenant of works. “He died unto sin once, but liveth unto God.” Henceforth with Christians “the terrors of law and of death can have nothing to do.”
II. THE EXCELLENCE OF THE NEW CONDITION. We are not set free to please ourselves, but belong to him “who died for us and rose again.” We enter into a fresh service.
1. The fact that it is new is a guarantee of improvement. Not everything new is better than the old. Man frequently retrogrades by his changes of custom. But when the alteration is a direct consequence of Divine intervention, there must be an advance. We cannot conceive of God taking a backward step.
2. The new service has the dewy freshness of youth about it. The resurrection-life is an awakening out of sleep, with the vigour of a glad new morning. The Christian sloughs off the old skin, to be attired in a vesture of beauty, and, like the winged butterfly emerging from the chrysalis state, he enters into an enlarged sphere of existence with corresponding capacities.
3. Voluntary service is substituted for compulsion. “Live and do” takes the place of “Do and live.” The heart has been won to God, to obedience and holiness, and “love’s labour is light.” The renewed spirit delights to exert itself in loving activity. Gratitude is a sweeter and stronger motive than authority.
4. Rules are exchanged for principles. Not the definite limiting letter governs the service, but a code of action which leaves much to be ascertained and applied by the enlightened judgment. It is the obedience of the instructed manhood, not the strict and rigid enforcement of precepts on children in their pupilage. The Law lay as a burden on men’s souls; the gospel is a “reasonable service,” clarifying the vision and guiding men as “with the eye” of God. We serve not to gain heaven, but because Christ has opened to us the kingdom of heaven. As pilgrims relieved of a heavy load, we journey joyously to the city of the King. A bird must sing, and a Christian must serve.S.R.A.
Rom 7:7-11
Knowledge of sin through Law.
The strong language in which the apostle exulted in the believer’s discharge from the Law might easily be misunderstood, and give offence to Jewish readers. It seemed to throw the onus of man’s bondage and death entirely upon the Sinaitic Law. To obviate misconception, he therefore enters into a detailed examination of the relationship of sin and Law. He insists on the Junction of Law as revealing sinthe secondary, not the primary cause of sin.
I. THE LAW MANIFESTS THE EXISTENCE OF SIN. “I had not known sin, except through the Law.” The tenth commandment is selected as a particular instance of law. The prohibition against coveting brings to light the perversity of human nature, which rebels against the idea of a thing forbidden, and longs to do the action reprobated. We know not the existence of the current till we put some barrier in the way; then the stream rages to overcome the obstacle. A precept provokes into activity the dormant selfishness; sin “revives.” Apart from a law, we had sinned without realizing that it was sin.
II. THE LAW DISPLAYS THE STRENGTH OF SIN. We must distinguish between the agent and the occasion. The commandment furnishes an opportunity of which the sinful appetites readily avail themselves to suggest disobedience. And we gauge best the power of the tide when we try to swim against it. Sin hurries us onward against the bounds which law has set up, and in our vain struggles to check the sinful impulse we learn how mighty sin is within. We had thought it easy to control our inclinations till the conflict began.
III. THE LAW EXPOSES THE DECEITFULNESS OF SIN. “Sin beguiled me through the commandment” (Revised Version). The promises of sin are ever fair to the eye and ear: “Ye shall be as gods.” But experience reveals the fact that sin works evil to us. It is a treacherous monster dealing with us as Joab did with Amasa; it kisses us and stabs our souls. The fruit, so sweet and pleasant, turns to gall and wormwood. Sin pretends to fasten wings to the soul, but is really loading it with fetters. The operation that was to purge our vision has destroyed it. All sin is not ugly on the surface. Like some diseases and parasitical growths, it appears with an illusory brightness to mock our hopes.
IV. THE LAW EXHIBITS THE FATAL EFFECTS OF SIN. “Slew me.” “The commandment which was intended for life, I found to be unto death.” Learn the abominableness of sin which pollutes the pure stream of holy injunction into a poisoning river, and turns the inspiriting fire of the Divine Word into a destructive conflagration. In the physical death which attends so many vicious courses, we see an analogue of the moral death with which sin visits humanity. As a ray of light makes visible the motes in the atmosphere, so the commandment of God discovers to us the sinful miasmatic motions of the flesh. We confess the loss of a sense of God’s favour and of righteous peace in the soul. Push sin to its final consequences to judge of the enormity of a single act. By its fruits we know sin. It enslaves the soul and forces it to do what it would not, so that men groan under the desperate oppression. Thus the Law fulfils its purpose in the manifestation of sin, and ultimately leads to the deliverance of the believer. Sin overreaches itself, and is hoist with its own petard. Feeling the working of death and dreading the issue, we cry to him who “was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.” The Law being impotent to produce holiness, another dispensation was requisite, ushered in by Christ, who brings the “law of the Spirit of life” and peace.S.R.A.
Rom 7:22, Rom 7:23
The inner warfare.
Even prior to their self-dedication to the service of God, men are conscious of the two opposing laws of which the text speaks. The conflict is intensified and its issue rendered certain by the saving knowledge of the truth, but it is not entirely abolished. All men can therefore echo in some degree the utterance of the apostle.
I. OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW OF GOD MEANS A VICTORY WON OVER A PART OF SELF. There is a dualism in man; the lower appetites strive to subjugate the higher and nobler desires. However powerful the “law of the members,” it cannot obliterate the remembrance of a superior Law. But the carnal inclinations may be so readily followed that there is hardly any fighting at all. Howbeit, when the “inward man” asserts his sway, and the fleshy impulse is denied, this implies that a battle has been waged. It is not natural to us nor easy to do fight and to conquer evil. Sin struggles hard; the spirit may be willing to comply with the Divine dictate, but the flesh is weak unto good, and often refuses to follow the lead of the spirit. Recall the temptation and conflict of Jesus Christ in Gethsemane. The law of the members, our corporeal frame, often pleads speciously for the indulgence of a longing legitimate enough at another time or place, and this fact augments the severity of the warfare.
II. CONSIDERATIONS ADAPTED TO STRENGTHEN THE COMBATANT AGAINST SURRENDER TO THE LOWER PRINCIPLE.
1. The Law of God has authority on its side. The law of the mind is the genuine law; the other is a usurped dominion, promulgating an unlawful edict. Obedience to properly constituted authorities is the path of safety and honour for communities and individuals. Recollect, therefore, that what you are urged to do by the law of the members is flat rebellion against your King. Its force has no sovereignty behind it.
2. To succumb to the law of the members is to yield to sin and death. Reflect on the consequence of a defeat of the higher self. It implies slavery and destruction. None but the conquerors can taste life here and receive its crown hereafter.
3. Only the Law of God can excite true delight. It is called “the law of the mind,” because it is that which the clarified vision discerns as beautiful, and to which the purified judgment yields complete and lasting assent. To allow the body to govern the soul is to mar the plan of our being. For the sake of ease and pleasure to gratify a present inclination is to prefer the temporal to the eternal, and shadows to the substance. Subsequent reaction testifies to the short-lived gratification of sensual appetites. This is true of every case in which ignoble pursuits and aims have overridden the suggestions of a lofty self-sacrificing career.
4. The God who has written his Law on the pages of Scripture, and graven it on the tablets of the mind, assures us of his unfailing support in the warfare. He has given us his Son as the Captain of our salvation. “By death he death’s dark king defeated,” and by his triumph and exaltation exhibited the superiority of goodness to every other method of obtaining solid peace and honour. We may fight with confidence, for our emancipation from evil is sure. He turns our folly into wisdom and our weakness into strength through his indwelling Spirit, the ever-present Christ.S.R.A.
Rom 7:24, Rom 7:25
A cry and its answer.
Strange language to issue from the lips of the great apostle of the Gentiles! from a chosen vessel unto honour, a man in labours abundant and most blessed, with joy often rising to transport. Nor was it forced from him by some momentary excitement or the pressure of some temporary trouble. Nor is there any reference to outward afflictions and persecutions. Had he cried out when under the agonizing scourge or in the dismal dungeon, we had not been so surprised. But it is while he is enforcing truth drawn from his own inward experience he so realizes the bitterness of the spiritual conflict, that his language cannot be restrained within the limits of calm reasoning, and he bursts forth with the exclamation, “O wretched man,“ etc.! Some have been so shocked as to call this a miserable chapter, and have shifted the difficulty by passing it on one side. Others have adopted the notion that he is here describing, not his actual state, but the condition of an unregenerate man such as he was once. Yet the expression of the preceding verse, “I delight in the Law of God,” and the change of tense from the past to the present after the thirteenth verse, indicate that we have here a vivid description of the struggle that continues, though with better success, even in the Christian who is justified, but not wholly sanctified, whilst he is imprisoned in this “body of death.”
I. INQUIRE MORE CLOSELY INTO THE GROUND OF THIS EXCLAMATION. What is it of which such grievous complaint is made? He appeals for aid against a strong foe whose grasp is on his throat. The eyes of the warrior grow dim, his heart is faint, and, fearful of utter defeat, he cries, “Who will deliver me?” We may explain “the body of this death” as meaning this mortal body, the coffin of the soul, the seat and instrument of sin. But the apostle includes still more in the phrase. It denotes sin itself, this carnal mass, all the imperfections, the corrupt and evil passions of the soul. It is a body of death, because it tends to death; it infects us, and brings us down to death. The old man tries to strangle the new man, and, unlike the infant Hercules, the Christian is in danger of being overcome by the snakes that attack his feebleness. How afflicting to one who loves God and desires to do his will, to find himself thwarted at every turn, and that to succeed means a desperate conflict! Attainments in the Divine life are not reached without a struggle, and non-success is not simply imperfection; it is failure, defeat, sin gaining the mastery. This evil is grievous because it is so near and so constant. The man is chained to a dead body. Where we go our enemy accompanies us, ever ready to assault us, especially when we are at a disadvantage from fatigue or delusive security. Distant evils might be borne with some measure of equanimity; we might have a signal of their approach, and be prepared, and hope that, niter a sharp bout, they would retire. But like a sick man tormented with a diseased frame, so the “law of sin in the members” manifests its force and uniform hostility in every place.
II. DERIVE CONSOLATION FROM THE EXCLAMATION ITSELFfrom the fact of its utterance, its vehemency, etc.
1. Such a cry indicates the stirrings of Divine life within the soul. The man must be visited with God’s grace who is thus conscious of his spiritual nature, and of a longing to shake off his unworthy bondage to evil. It may be the beginning of better things if the impression be yielded to. Do not quit the fight, lest you become like men who have been temporarily aroused and warned, and have made vows of reformation, and then returned to their old apathy and sleep in sin. And this attitude of watchfulness should never be abandoned during your whole career.
2. The intensity of the cry discovers a thorough hatred of sin and a thirst after holiness. It is a passionate outburst revealing the central depths. Such a disclosure is not fit for all scenes and times; the conflict of the soul is too solemn to be profaned by casual spectators. Yet what a mark of a renewed nature is here displayed! What loathing of Corruption, as offensive to the spiritual sense! Sin may still clog the feet of the Christian and sometimes cause him to stumble, but he is never satisfied with such a condition, and calls aloud for aid. Would that this sense of the enormity of sin were more prevalent; that, like a speck of dust in the eye, there could be no ease till it be removed! Sin is a foreign body, a disturbing element, an intruder.
3. There is comfort in the very conviction of helplessness. The apostle sums up his experience as if to say, “My human purposes come to nought. Between my will and the performance there is a sad hiatus. I find no help in myself.” A lesson which has to be learnt ere we really cry for a Deliverer, and value the Saviour’s intervention. Peter, by his threefold denial, was taught his weakness, and then came the command, “Feed my lambs” We are not prepared for service in the kingdom until we confess our dependence on superhuman succour.
III. THE CRY ADMITS OF A SATISFACTORY ANSWER. A Liberator has been found, so that the apostle is not in despair; he adds, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.“ Christ assumed our body of death, crucified it, and glorified it. Thus he “Condemned sin in the flesh.” He bruised the serpent’s head. Since our Leader has conquered, we shall share his triumph. He quickens and sustains his followers by his Spirit. Stronger is he who is for us than all against us. His grace is the antidote to moral evil; by its power we may contend victoriously. The indwelling Christ is the prophecy of ultimate, complete victory. Eventually we shall quit this tabernacle of clay, and leave behind us all the avenues to temptation, and the stings and infirmities of which the body is the synonym. Clothed with a house from heaven, there shall be no obstacle to perfect obediencea service without weariness and without interruption.S.R.A.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Rom 7:1-6
The two marriages of the soul.
In the preceding chapter we saw how justification leads of necessity to sanctification. Once we realize that we have died in Jesus for sin, we are spiritually prompted to enter with a risen Saviour into newness of life. We realize our consecration to God. We give up the slavery to sin, and become slaves to God; and our fruit is found unto holiness, and our end everlasting life. The apostle, moreover, has affirmed that” we are not under Law, but under grace” (Rom 6:14). This he proceeds more fully to explain. “Slavery” may be the idea under sin, but “marriage” becomes the idea about Law. Under the Law provision was always made for a second marriage. If death took one of the married persons away, the survivor was at liberty to contract a second marriage. It is this figure which the apostle employs in the present section. He represents the soul as first wedded to Law; then, through death with Christ for sin and unto Law and resurrection with Christ to newness of life, the soul is legally warranted in contracting a second marriage, and this time with Christ himself. The Law is the soul’s first husband; and Christ becomes the second. We cannot do better, then, than consider, in the first place, the soul’s first marriage to the Law; in the second place, how this unhappy marriage is dissolved; and in the third place, the soul’s second marriage to Jesus Christ.
I. THE SOUL‘S FIRST MARRIAGE TO THE LAW. It has been thought by some that this seventh chapter comes in strangely after the third; but if we will bear in mind that in the third chapter the apostle is showing the Law to be unequal to man’s justification, while here he is showing it to be unequal to man’s sanctification, all difficulty about his line of thought will disappear. The point insisted upon in the present chapter is that, although the Law is in itself holy, it cannot make men holy. Its sanctification does not pass over to the legal soul. Now, in an unhappy marriage the husband may be quite blameless; he may, poor man, be dying his very best; but the wife proves so incorrigibly bad that nothing but wretchedness results. This, then, is the Pauline idea. The Law is holy, just, and good; but the soul wedded to the law is sinful, so that there is nothing but irritation and unhappiness as the result. In fact, the sinful soul gets provoked by the demands of Law, and acts more recklessly than if no such demands were made. This will come out more clearly as we proceed with the chapter. It is sufficient here to insist that the soul which is wedded to legalism is sure to experience an unhappy union; the legal soul finds the union with Law exacting and exasperating, and the only hope for it is in getting the union dissolved.
II. HOW THIS UNHAPPY MARRIAGE IS DISSOLVED. Now, it is important here to notice that the apostle does not represent the Law as having died. This would have been the natural use of the marriage figure. If Law be the husband, and if the soul, wedded to the Law, is to contract another union, must not the husband first die? The apostle takes another line altogether. The Law does not die; but the soul may “die to the Law,” and so die out of the legal union. If, then, having died out of the one relation, it is raised into a new life, then it is in a position to contract a second marriage. This, according]y, is the ground taken up by Paul in this passage, The soul dies-to the Law in the Person of Christ, and so the unhappy union gets dissolved. This is what is expressed in Rom 7:4, “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the Law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead” (Revised Version). That is to say, Christ died; we die by faith in him to the Law’s claims. All are met. Law, accordingly, has no further right over us. We are no longer its wife. We have died in our spiritual experience out of our old relation; that state is past. It is most important that we should see that legalism can exercise no sanctifying power. Its only fruit is pride and death (Rom 7:5). There is no hope for the soul but surrendering its legalism, and betaking itself through death and resurrection to a better union and a happier life.
III. THE SOUL‘S SECOND MARRIAGE TO JESUS CHRIST. The apostle’s idea is that the soul, having died in Jesus to the Law, and having thus dissolved the unhappy union, gets raised along with Christ and is united to him as the second and better husband. It is to a risen Saviour that the risen soul is united. Jesus is the Bridegroom, and the soul the bride (cf. Joh 3:29). And regarding this second marriage of the soul, it is a happy one; for:
1. The soul receives the Spirit of Christ, and so becomes one with him. There can be in this case no ill-asserted union. Christ can make his bride one in spirit with himself, and so the sweetest unity of spirit prevails.
2. As the risen Saviour, he secures the devotion of the soul in a way that abstract law never could. The devotion of a true wife to her husband is something essentially different from and infinitely higher than obedience to a code of laws. It is here that sanctification is secured. The soul is led to feel that a Saviour, who has lived and died for its redemption, deserves the homage of the heart. In this way obedience passes into the enthusiastic devotion of the whole nature, and becomes a passion of the soul. This is the “newness of the spirit,” as distinguished from the “oldness of the letter,” to which the apostle declares the renewed soul comes.
3. The fruit of this marriage with Christ is consecration to God. The soul is joined to the risen Saviour that “we might bring forth fruit unto God.” Now, just as in married life, when children come, they are consecrated unto God, so the fruits of our union with Christ consist in those “good works which are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God.” Good works are the united product of Christ and the believing soul. “Without me ye can do nothing,” he tells us. And so we are to rejoice in them as the fruit of that spiritual union existing between the Saviour and the soul. It is for us to test ourselves by these facts, and see to it that we are united to Christ, as the bride is to her husband. R.M.E.
Rom 7:7-13
The work of the Law in awakening the soul.
After the general statement about the two marriages of the soul, the apostle proceeds to exhibit the soul in its unregenerate state, and how it is awakened through Law to a sense of its guilt and danger. In the section now before us we have the soul presented in its state of security, and then passing into its state of alarm. The subsequent section, as we shall see, presents the soul in its regenerate condition contending successfully against its remaining corruption. Let us, then, look at
I. THE SOUL‘S SECURITY UNDER SIN. Two distinct ideas are suggested about this statefirst, that sin without Law is “dead,” by which the apostle means that it lies in a state of latency or dormancy, and is not roused into active struggle; secondly, the soul before the advent of Law is “alive,” that is, apparently alive, fancying itself quite as good and well-to-do as its fellows. It lives by its instincts, and yet has no idea of the guilt of doing so De Rougemont, “is selfish addicted to appetite (gourmand), cruel, hateful, freely and naively; he does not imagine that he is doing wrong in following his natural instincts, and as he satisfies his passions without remorse, he is content, he lives.” It has been very properly said, “Unbelief in the Law is as common as unbelief in the gospel. If men believe the gospel, they soon feel the power of it. So of the Law; if they truly believe it, they will feel the power of its condemning voice. No man can be found who will deny that he has sinned. Let a man, then, only believe, in reality, that death eternal is, according to the Law of God, annexed to his sin as a punishment, and he will be afraidhis heart will sink within him. He will have no rest, he will have fearful forebodings of wrath; and if this be not the case, then plainly he does not believe the Law To hear the Law, and yet be as hopeful and merry-hearted and unconcerned as if the Law were an idle tale or a mere man of straw, that shows a most miserable state of blindness and want of feelinga state which can be accounted for only by the fact that the Law is not credited, that its threatenings are not believed at all.” How, this state of security under sin is one of danger as well as guilt. It is a sleep on the edge of a precipice, a sleep over a mine, a mere dance of death. The sooner it ends the better. Let us, therefore, consider
II. THE SOUL‘S AWAKENING THROUGH THE LAW. The Law comes claiming consideration and belief, and the moment we receive it in good faith, the sense of security is at an end. Now, by the Law the apostle has in view the Decalogue, and he here directs special attention to the tenth commandment and its forbidding covetousness or “lust” (). It is, in fact, the spiritual rider to the whole Law, carrying the receiver of the Law into the region of the heart, and inquiring how its desires and passions are regulated. A Pharisee, such as St. Paul had been, could complacently contemplate the other commandments and regard himself as having kept them from his youth upthat is, of course, so far as outward, overt act is concerned. But the moment the tenth commandment comes in to forbid “desire” of a selfish character, the self complacency is levelled to the dust and genuine conviction begins. Here, then, we have the first step in the awakening of the soul, when the Law searches the heart with its lighted candle and exposes the selfish “desires” which lay behind all the overt acts. Not only so, but, secondly, the Law becomes the occasion, not the cause, of intensified lust“all manner of coveting” ( ). By contrariety, the soul becomes more disposed to the “desires” which have been forbidden. The holy command evokes unholy resistance. Sin is intensified through the very denunciation which the Law contains. And then, thirdly, the soul realizes through the Law its death in sin. For, as one already quoted has further observed, “the Law not only shows us our sin, but makes us feel that we are lostas good as dead. A man is in a room during the dark; he sees nothing, but imagines that he is safe. At length the day breaks. Through the window of his apartment sunlight enters; and behold, he is, though he knew not till now, in the midst of wild beasts which, like himself, have been asleep. They awake, and put on a threatening aspect. There is a serpent, uncoiling its horrid length, and there a tiger, watching its opportunity for a fatal spring. The light has come, and the man now sees his dangerhe is but a dead man. So, when the Law comes, there is seen guilt now in the past life, in every part of it. There is felt now sin in the present condition of the heart. Every moment there is a discovery of sin. Everything past and present cries, as it were, for vengeance. Death everywhere stares him in the face.”
III. THE LAW THUS REVEALS THE REAL NATURE OF SIN. As a selfish disposition, it seems to the unawakened soul a simple “taking care of number one,” as the world puts it. But the Law comes with its searching light, and lo, sin is found to be an enemy of our real interests. It antagonizes our welfare; it takes the Law and uses it as a weapon against us. In short, we discover that self-seeking in any form is mutiny against the real welfare of the soul. We discover that we are beguiled and deluded by sin; that all this self-centring is treason to the true interests within. Not only so, but the intensification of sin through the Law’s advent leads us to rightly regard it as “exceeding sinful” ( ). How dreadful and malignant sin must be when it takes a good and holy Law and works death in the soul thereby!
We have thus set before us what the Law can do. It can break up our refuge of lies in which we were trusting; it can awaken the soul to a sense of its sin and danger; but it cannot give us either “the remission of our sins or the Holy Spirit.” The salvation must come from a higher source than Law. It comes from the Saviour, who has satisfied the demands of Law and offers us deliverance in himself. The Law serves its purpose, then, when as a schoolmaster it conducts us to Christ that we may be justified by faith. May we be led by Law to him who can save us from all our sin!R.M.E.
Rom 7:14-25
The principle of progress through antagonism.
In last section we saw how the soul is awakened through the Law. This Law-work is a necessity of our times. And now we have to notice how the soul is kept awake by the antagonism going on within. For the gospel is not intended to promote at any time satisfaction with self. So far from this, it is a plan for subordinating self to its rightful Sovereign, the Saviour. And so we are not only put out of conceit with ourselves in conviction and conversion, but kept out of self-conceit by the law of Christian progress. In this section, as in other portions of his Epistles, the apostle reveals this law as that of antagonism. The impaired Spirit proves himself a militant Spirit. The special tendencies in the wild heart of man are met and controlled by the Holy Spirit, and to this war within the Christian has to reconcile himself. In fact, he is not right until this campaign of the Spirit is begun. It will help us to the proper idea to look at the law of antagonism as it obtains in the larger sphere of Christianity. To special and undesirable tendencies on the part of men, Christianity will be found to have presented such opposition as proved in due season victorious. A few leading illustrations must suffice. Take, for example, the case of those rude invaders who broke the power of imperial Rome to pieces. We call them “Vandals.” Now, they were wandering soldiers, who loved war, but hated work. They were attached to military chiefs, and so were a constant menace to the peace of Europe. The problem for the Christianity of that early age was how to curb this wandering and idle disposition and settle the nomads in Europe. And the needful antagonism was supplied in feudalism, by which the soldiers were transformed into serfs and united to their chiefs by the mutual ownership of land. And it can be shown that from this feudalism modern patriotism properly so called has sprung. In Greece, for example, in pagan times all that passed for patriotism was love of a city. No man apparently had the comprehensive love which can embrace a whole land. They were Spartans, or Athenians, but not patriots in the wider sense. But in the wake of feudalism true patriotism came, and vast nations were formed at last who were ready to die for their fatherlands. Thus Christianity antagonized the selfishness which was so rampant in pagan times. But under feudalism arose serfdom, which proved to be only a shade better than pagan slavery. How did Christianity antagonize these evils? Now, the necessity for serfs under feudalism and of slavery under paganism arose from the mischievous and mistaken idea that work is degrading. Christianity, accordingly, in the dark ages, which were not nearly so dark as some men make them, set itself to consecrate manual labour by the example of the monks. Devoted men in religious houses made manual labour, agriculture, and work of all kinds a holy thing, and so prepared the way for the industrial movement of later times. Gradually it dawned on the European mind that it is not a noble thing to have nothing in the world to do; that it is not a degrading thing to have to work; and that work may and ought to be a consecrated and noble thing. Having thus antagonized the natural indolence of men, Christianity had next to combat his unwillingness to think for himself, and this was through the Reformation of the sixteenth century under Luther. The problem of the sixteenth century was to get men, instead of leaving to others to think out the plan of salvation for them, and as priests to undertake their salvation, to think the question out for themselves, and to have as their Advocate and Mediator the one great High Priest, Christ Jesus. Luther, in his stirring treatise on the freedom of a Christian man (‘Von der Freiheit einer Christen-Menschen’), brought out in his admirable way that every believing Christian is himself a priest; and so he enfranchised human minds and gave dignity to the race. Now, this law of antagonism, which we have seen on the larger scale in Christianity, will be found in individual experience. This is evidently the idea of the present section of the Epistle. And here let us notice
I. THE LAW OF GOD PROVING DELIGHTFUL TO THE CONVERTED SOUL. (Rom 7:14, Rom 7:22.) The apostle shows that he had attained to the conviction that “the Law is spiritual;” and he could say with simple truth, “I delight in the Law of God after the inward man. This is a grand attainment. The renewed soul alone can say so. God’s Law is seen to enter into the very secrets of the soul, to discern the desires and motives of the heart, and to furnish the perfect standard. It supplies the ideal. Like the copperplate copy at the head of the schoolboy’s writing-book, God’s Law is a perfect ideal set to each struggling soul to stimulate attainment. The secret of progress in penmanship is in having the perfect copy set, not in having the standard lowered. And so God supplies us in his Law with a perfect and ideal standard of attainment, and it is a great thing gained when we have been led to delight in the spirituality and thoroughness and perfection of God’s Law.
II. THE CONSTANT SENSE OF FALLING SHORT OF THE IDEAL, The renewed soul feels that it somehow cannot do what it would. It never hits the bull’s-eye. The good that it had hoped to do is never reached; the evil it had hoped to avoid somehow gets accomplished. There is a sense of failure all through. To recur to the illustration from penmanship, the copy is found to be always very different indeed from the original. But the schoolboy does not, in consequence, insist on lowering the standard. He does not insist that the master will write him a head-line only a little better than he can write himself, and thus let him improve by easy stages. He wisely accepts the perfect pattern of what penmanship should be, and laments that he is coming towards it only by very tardy steps. In the same way, the wholesome sense of failure abides in the soul; the perfect Law antagonizes imperfect attainment, and the soul walks very softly before the Lord, and strives to please him.
III. THE CAUSE OF THE FAILURE IS FOUND IN THE BODY OF DEATH. The delight in the perfect Law and the desire after it is accompanied by a painful sense of another law counter-working what is good. It is called “sin,” that is, indwelling sin. It is called the “flesh,” that carnal part of man which militates against what is spiritual. It is called “a law in our members warring against the law of our mind.” It is called “the law of sin;” it is called “the body of this death,” or “this body of death.” Now, what a gain it is for us to rise against this old nature within, to take God’s side against it, to take the field against this old self! We are never right till by repentance we take God’s side against ourselves. The old nature has to be crucified, slain, overcome. Antagonism is thus begun. We find there is no use in blaming our progenitors, or circumstances, or environment. What we have got to do is to fight the old self in the interests of God and of that “better self” which he has given us.
IV. IN THIS HOLY WAR JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONLY DELIVERER. The apostle was ready to cry in his antagonism to indwelling sin, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The more progress made, the more intense the antipathy to the evil nature within! But the Deliverer is found in Jesus. He comes to dwell within us and be a “better self.” He dwells within us by his Holy Spirit, and this Spirit is not only militant, but victorious. The mind is reinforced, and the flesh is combated, and the result is progress through antagonism. We follow Christ to victory over ourselves. R.M.E.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Rom 7:1. Know ye not, &c. In the foregoing chapter, the Apostle shews the converted Christians the obligations that they were under to a life of holiness, and the advantages which they enjoyed for that purpose, now that they were taken into the kingdom of God. From this verse to chap. Rom 8:11 he addresses himself upon the same subject to both Jews and Gentiles, but particularly to the Jew. The Gentile had nothing to oppose to the Gospel: a man just emerged from the darkness and impurity of an idolatrous state, wanted no arguments to convince him of the necessity of a fartherdispensationforhisinstruction,justification,andsanctification;andasforwhat any of the philosophers had taught, he found all that, and indeed every moral truth which human reason can discover, transcribed and incorporatedinto the Gospel, with the addition of a surprising degree of light, utterly beyond the unassisted reach of human reason. But the Jewish Christian, either from his own prejudices, or the suggestions of his unbelieving countrymen, might be diverted from the due improvement of the Gospel. It might be suggested, “You cannot own the Gospel as a rule of life and sanctification, or put yourself under it, without renouncingthe law; which is in effect to renounce your allegiance to God, whose authority hath established it, and obliges you to adhere to it. Besides, you do not want the Gospel; the law is in all points holy, just, and true, and we acknowledge and esteem it as such:What occasion have we for the Gospel?”To confirm the unbelieving Jews against such suggestions, is the particular design of the Apostle in this chapter. The Jews rested in their law, as sufficient both for justification and sanctification.Thatit was insufficient for justification, St.Paul has already shewn: that it is insufficient for sanctification, he proves in this place; and introduces his discourse by shewing that the Jew is now discharged from his obligations to the law, as peculiar to himself, and at liberty to come under another and much happier constitution, even that of the Gospel in Christ Jesus; chap, Rom 7:1-4. In the 5th verse he gives a general description of the state of a Jew in servitude to sin, considered as under mere law. In Rom 7:6 he gives a summary account of the state of a Christian or believing Jew, and the advantages that he enjoys under the Gospel. Upon the 5th verse he comments from Rom 7:7 to the end of the chapter; and upon Rom 7:6 in chap. Rom 8:1-11. I. Commenting upon Rom 7:5, he shews, First, that the law reached to all the branches and latent principles of sin; Rom 7:7.-Secondly, that it subjected the sinner to death (Rom 7:8-12.) without the benefit of pardon.Thirdly, the reason why the Jew was put under it, Rom 7:13.Fourthly, he proves that the law, considered as a rule of action, though it was spiritual, holy, just, and good in itself, and though the Jews owned and approved it as such, yet was insufficient for sanctification, or for freeing a man from the power of lust and sin; because the prevalency of sensual appetite does not wholly extinguish reason, or silence conscience; and therefore a man’s reason and conscience might own and approve the law as good, just, and holy, and yet his passions might reign within him, and keep him in servitude to them, while the law supplied no power to deliver him from them; Rom 7:14-24. It is only the grace and favour of God in Christ, which supplies that power; Rom 7:25.II. Commenting upon the 6th verse of chap. 7: the Apostle affirms, First, that under the Gospel, and by genuine faith in Jesus Christ, the Jew was whollydelivered from the condemnation of the law, chap. Rom 8:1.Secondly, that the power of the Spirit of God to invigorate and renew our minds, and to free us from the dominion of sin, attends the Gospel dispensation; chap. Rom 8:2-4. But, thirdly, whereas it might, through mistake, be supposed, that this sanctifying principle, the Spirit of God, would work without any care or thought on their part; or whereas it might be objected, that notwithstanding this life-giving Spirit, many who professed the Gospel were wicked men; either to prevent this mistake, or to obviate this objection, the Apostle shews, that no constitution would save those from the power of sin, or from condemnation, who wilfullychoose to remain under its dominion.According to the immutable nature of things, such must perish, as well under the Gospel, as under the law itself; chap. 8: Rom 7:4-11. The reader should carefully remember, that it is the state of a Jew in the flesh (Rom 7:5.) enslaved to sin by the force of sensual appetite, and yet sensible of hisunhappy condition, upon which the Apostle discourses, and by which he proves the insufficiency of mere law for sanctification in the chapter before us.
The law hath dominion, &c. The law is to be understood as the nominative case to liveth. The law hath dominion over a man so long as it lives or subsists. So Amo 8:14. The manner [the idolatrous institutions] of Beersheba liveth. Antigone, in her noble speech to king Creon, comparing laws made at pleasure by men, with the eternal obligations of truth and right, says,
Not now, nor yesterday, but evermore, the laws Unwritten live, and none when published first can tell. SOPHOCL. ANTIG. .50: 465.
When the laws are duly executed, they are said vigere, to be in a healthy flourishing state; when not executed, to sleep.Thus Juvenal, Ubi nunc lex Julia?Dormis. Where is now the Julian law?Thou sleepest. The Apostle, Heb 8:13 describes the first covenant or constitution as labouring under the infirmities and decays of old age, and ready to vanish away, or die, as men do; James 4.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Rom 7:1 . [1513] ] Paul certainly begins now the detailed illustration, still left over, of , Rom 6:14 ; but he connects his transition to it with what immediately precedes, as is clear from the nature of (comp Rom 6:3 ). Nevertheless the logical reference of is not to be sought possibly in the previous , with which the following is here correlative (Reiche), since that has in fact no essential importance at all and is for the progress of the thought immaterial; but rather in the leading idea last expressed (Rom 7:22 ), and established (Rom 7:23 ), namely, that the Christian, freed from the service of sin and become the servant of God, has his fruit to holiness, and, as the final result, eternal life . This proposition could not be truth , if the Christian were not free from the law and did not belong to the Risen Christ instead, etc., Rom 7:1-6 .
] address to the readers collectively (comp Rom 1:13 ), not merely to the Jewish Christians (Toletus, Grotius, Estius, Ch. Schmidt, and others, including Tholuck and Philippi), because in that case an addition must have been made excluding Gentile Christians, which however is so far from being contained in , especially when it is without the article, that in the case of Christians generally the knowledge of the O. T. was of necessity to be presupposed; see below. This applies also against Hofmann’s view, that Paul, although avoiding a specific express designation, has in view that portion of his readers, which had not been capable of the misconception indicated in Rom 7:15 . This limitation also and how easily could the adroit author of the Epistle have indicated it in a delicate way! cannot be deduced either from or from . . [1516]
. . .] justifies the appeal to the readers’ own insight: for I speak to such as know the law . “We may not infer from these parenthetical words, or from Rom 7:4-6 , that the majority of the Roman congregation was composed of Jewish-Christians; [1517] for, looking to the close connection subsisting between the Jewish and Gentile-Christian portions of the Church, to the custom borrowed from the synagogue of reading from the Old Testament in public, and to the necessary and essential relations which evangelical instruction and preaching sustained to the Old Testament so that the latter was the basis from which they started, the Apostle might designate his readers generally as , and predicate of them an acquaintance with the law. Comp on Gal 4:21 . The less need is there for the assumption of a previous proselytism (de Wette, Beyschlag, and many others), with which moreover the addressing the readers in common is at variance; comp Rom 1:13 , Rom 8:12 , Rom 10:1 , Rom 11:23 , Rom 12:1 , Rom 15:14 ; Rom 15:30 , Rom 16:17 .
] not every law (Koppe, van Hengel); nor the moral law (Glckler); but the Mosaic , and that in the usual sense comprehending the whole; not merely of the law of marriage (Beza, Toletus, Bengel, Carpzov, Chr. Schmidt; comp Olshausen). This is required by the theme of the discussion generally, and by the foregoing . . . in particular.
] is not to be connected with (Hammond, Clericus, Elsner, and Mosheim), but belongs, as the order of the words demands, to .
. ] For so long time as he liveth ( as in Gal 4:1 in the sense of stretching over a period of time, see Bernhardy, p. 252; comp Ngelsbach, z. Ilias , ii. 299, Exo 3 , Ast. Lex. Plat . I. p. 768), the (personified) law is lord over the man who is subjected to it ( .). That is the subject to , is decided by Rom 7:2-4 . By the assumption of as subject (Origen, Ambrosiaster, Erasmus, Vatablus, Grotius, Estius, Bengel, Koppe, and Flatt), in which case is supposed to signify viget or valet (in spite of Rom 7:2-3 ), the discourse is quite disarranged; for Paul is not discussing the abrogation of the law, but the fact that the Christian as such is no longer under it. Nor do Rom 7:2-3 require as subject, because the point there illustrated is, that the death of the man (not of the law) dissolves the binding power of the law over him. Comp Schabb. f. 151, 2 : “postquam mortuus est homo, liber est a praeceptis;” Targ. Psa 88:6 in Wetstein on Rom 7:3 . The proposition in Rom 6:7 is similar, and presupposes this thought. To take as equivalent to (“so long as the man continues to lead his old natural life , he is a servant of the law,” Philippi, also Umbreit), is quite opposed to the context: see and in Rom 7:2-3 , with their antitheses. The emphasis , moreover, is not on (Hofmann), but, as is shown by the very expression , on , for the entire time , that he lives; it does not lose its power over him sooner than when he dies; so long as he is in life, he remains subject to it. If this is attended to and there is not introduced a wholly irrelevant “ only so long as he liveth,” the thought appears neither trivial nor disproportionate to the appeal to the legal knowledge of his readers. For there is a peculiarity of the in the fact, that it cannot have, like human laws, merely temporary force, that it cannot be altered or suspended, nor can one for a time be exempted from its control, etc. No, so long as man’s life endures, the dominion of the over him continues. [1523] Nor is the proposition incorrect (because that dominion ceases in the case of the believer, Philipppi); for it simply contains a general rule of law , which, it is self-evident, refers to the as such . If the Jew becomes a Christian, he dies as a Jew (Rom 7:4 ), and the rule in question is not invalidated.
[1513] On the entire chapter, see Achelis in the Stud. u. Krit. 1863, p. 670 ff.
[1516] . . . .
[1517] On the contrary, the inference would be: If the Church had been a Jewish-Christian one, the would in its case hare been so entirely self-evident , that we should not be able at all to see why Paul should have specially noticed it. But as converted Gentiles the readers had become acquainted with the law. This also applies against Holtzmann, Judenth. u. Christenth , p. 783.
[1523] Comp. Th Schott, p. 267; Hofmann formerly held the right view ( Schriftbew . II. 1, p. 352).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
Rom 7:1-6 . The Christian is not under the Mosaic law; but through his fellowship in the death of Christ he has died to the law, in order to belong to the Risen One and in this new union to lead a life consecrated to God .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
Fourth Section.The transition, in principle and reality, of Christians from the service of the letter under the law into the service of the Spirit under grace, by virtue of the death of Christ. Believers should live in the consciousness that they are dead to the law.Tholuck: Your marriage with Christ, having taken the place of the dominion of the law, necessarily leads to such a dominion of God in a new life.
Rom 7:1-6
1Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that [those who] know the law), how [omit how] that the law hath dominion over a man as long [ ,for as long time] as he liveth? 2For the woman which hath a husband [the married woman]1 is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth [to the living husband]; but if the husband be dead [have died],2 sheis loosed from the law of her husband. 3So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead [have died], she is free from that law; so that she Isaiah 4 no [not an]3 adulteress, though she be married to another man. Wherefore [Accordingly], my brethren, ye also are become [were made]4 dead to the law by [through] the body of Christ; [,] that [in order that]5 ye should be married to another, even to him who is [was] raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto [to]6 God. 5For when we were in the flesh, the motions [passions]7 of sins, which were by [by means of] the law, did work [,, wereefficient, wrought] in our members to bring forth fruit unto [to] death. 6But now we are [have been] delivered from the law, that being dead [having died to that]8 wherein we were held; that we should serve [so that we serve]9 in newness of spirit [the Spirit],10 and not in the oldness of the letter.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Summary.11a. The figure of marriage and the law of marriage to describe the relations of believers to the law (Rom 7:1-3); b. The application of the figure: the marriage did not remain pure, because sin, whose motions were by the law, insinuated itself. It is dissolved by death (Rom 7:4-6).
Rom 7:1. Know ye not. [. Comp. Rom 6:3. The particle implies a doubt, and connects always with some preceding categorical clause (Winer, p. 474).On the connection. Meyer deems it a resumption of Rom 6:14, but immediately linked to last main thought (Rom 6:22), viz., that the Christian had his fruit unto holiness, and the end, eternal life (which is proved in Rom 6:23).R.] Since the assumes a doubt at the beginning (Rom 3:29; Rom 6:3); the Apostle intimates that not all the believers in Rome are conscious of the whole conclusion, that the gospel has made them free from the service of the Mosaic lawa conclusion that he will now make clear to them by the figure of the law of marriage. Therefore the question, Should you not fully know the consequence of the right of marriage in case one of the couples dies? has this meaning: Should you not fully know the consequence of the death of believers by and for the law? The course of treatment is this: After having shown that they are no more under sin, with, more particular reference to the Gentiles, the Apostle now declares, with more particular reference to the Jews, that they too are no more under the law. The unity warranting this transition consists in the fact, that one cannot be under sin without being under the sense of the law, and that he cannot be under the law without being under the sense of sin. So far, therefore, our deduction extends back not only to Rom 6:14, but even to Rom 5:20; Rom 3:9; Rom 2:17. That is, the law comes into consideration here so far as it is the power of the letter, which kills (2Co 3:6)the phenomenon is completed as the experience of sin (see Rom 7:24).
Singular views: 1. Reiche: The . in Rom 7:1 refers to the in the concluding verse of chap. 6; 2. Meyer: The freedom of Christians from the law follows from the truth of the foregoing verse. But the Apostles transition consists in his design to show that Christians are just as dead to the law by baptism in the death of Christ, as they are dead to sin. This arises from the fact that they have received eternal life as the gift of God in Christ. They are therefore dead, by the death of Christ, to death, as a result of sin, as they are dead to death as a result of the law, according to Rom 7:24. [Meyers view in 4th edition is indicated above.R.]
Brethren. Certainly not merely the Jewish Christians (according to Grotius, and others; also Tholuck, in a qualified way) are meant in this address (Meyer). Yet Meyer, in denying this, overlooks the fact that the Jewish Christians are regarded most prominently, because the point in question is respecting the law (see Rom 9:3). [The only limitation being those who know the law, it must be remembered that in the apostolic age, as well as since, the knowledge of the Old Testament on the part of Christians in general is presupposed.R.]
For I speak to those who know the law. [Parenthetical, as in the E. V. Explanatory of brethren.R.] Of what law does he speak? It must not be overlooked, that what the Apostle further adduces as the design of the law, already reminds of the law of nature. Therefore Koppe: every law is meant. Glckler: the moral law. But though the Roman law might have a similar purport, the Apostle nevertheless means the Mosaic law itself; for the point of his argumentation is, that, according to the principles of the Mosaic law itself, Christians must be regarded as having been made free by this law. It is not necessary to prove that the Mosaic law in general, but not the law of marriage in particular (Beza, Carpzov [Bengel], and others), is meant here. The Jew did not have a separate marriage-law; yet the Mosaic law, with reference to the marriage-law, is meant.And who are those who know the law? Explanations: 1. The Roman Christians, the majority of whom were Jewish Christans; 2. The Jewish-Christian portion, to whom Paul addresses himself in particular (Philippi, and others); 3. In addition to these, the Gentile Christians, who, as Jewish proselytes, had been entrusted with the law (De Wette, and others); 4. Tholuck calls to mind, that the Gentile Christians became acquainted with the law. [As the customs of the synagogue remained to a large extent those of the early Christian assemblies, the Old Testament was read to all believers, as indeed was necessary to their Christian instruction. One could not be a Christian even then, and remain ignorant of the law.R.] The question in general here is not a difficult specialty of the Mosaic law, but a principle evidenced also by natural law, which, for this very reason, does not result from one passage, but from the connection of the Mosaic law. Tholuck: One of the legal maxims current among the Jews; Este endeavors in vain to prove it from the Old Testament. Yet the example of Ruth, Abigail, and even of the second marriage of Abraham, is more than one legal maxim current among the Jews. Moreover, the legal principle in Rom 6:7 is of kindred nature.
That the law hath dominion. We must not connect (Mosheim, and others), but with . Man is certainly, however, the man in question placed under the law. [Wordsworth explains: The law (of Moses) is lord over the manthe human creaturewhether man or woman. Comp. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Augustine. This takes the verb in the literal sense: to be lord, and introduces the figure of the marriage at once, thus avoiding any difficulty about the special law, for the whole law is personified. Meyer seems to favor this view also.R.]
For as long time as he liveth [ ]. According to Rom 7:2-4, the evidently refers to the man himself, and not to the law, so that, in a metaphorical sense, it would have the force (as Origen, Erasmus, Bengel, and others think) of making the figure itself plainer. This would have been to prove first that the law has no more force. Philippi understands the to be the old, natural life. See Tholuck on the contrary: in this case the appeal to legal knowledge would be inappropriate, and the figure already violated. The law is personified as master, just as sin is in the foregoing section. [And the point of the figure is not affected by referring the verb to the man, for whichever party dies, the relation ceases. Comp. Hodge.R.] Meyer gives prominence to the point, that is emphatic.12
Rom 7:2. For the married woman is bound by the law to the living husband [ . A concrete explanation of the proposition of Rom 7:1 (Meyer), introduced by , which has here the force of for example (Hodge, Alford). The perfect here denotes the continuing character of the binding (Winer, p. 255), which agrees with the emphatic (Rom 7:1). , subject to the man, married, only here in the New Testament, but current in later Greek authors.R.] The figure in Rom 7:2-3 is quite clear, but its application is difficult. Since the law is compared with the first man, and Christ with the second, this seemed to be the application that should follow: The law, as the first man of the theocratic Church, is dead; now, the Church can be freely married to Christ. Therefore even Usteri, Rckert, and others, have remarked that the figure is not clearly carried out; and Chrysostom took the view, that Paul, through forbearance toward the Jews, reversed the relation in his application, and that, instead of saying, the law or the husband is dead, he says, You who were formerly bound by the law are dead. [So Wordsworth, who, however, joins with it several other reasons.R.] Meyer, with Fritzsche, thus relieves the difficulty: In consequence of the unity of the matrimonial relation, death is an event common to both parties; when the husband is dead, the wife is legally dead to the husband. We may in this case ask, Why did not the Apostle conform his figure to the application, and designate the wife herself as the dead part? Clearly, because of the second marriage. This explanation of Fritzsche and Meyer (concinnity) is established by the Apostle, and also rendered emphatic by his language. As the woman is not dead, but is killed in respect to her marriage relation, or is situated as dead, by the natural death of her husband, so believers have not died a natural death, but are made dead to the law, since they are crucified to the law with Christ. The idea, dead in a marriage. relation is therefore the tertium comparationis. The in Rom 7:4 is therefore like the of a widow, in which also a death-like orphanage is indicated. That the law itself is also dead, as a letter, by its statutory application to the crucifixion of Christ, follows, without any thing further, from what has been said. Tholuck, not being satisfied with Meyers removal of the difficulty, seems desirous of placing himself on the side of those who give an allegorical interpretation to the passage commencing with Rom 7:2. Explanations:
1. The wife is the soul, the husband is sin; sin dies in the fellowship of believers with Christs death (Augustine, and others; Olshausen).
2. Only the can be regarded as the husband (Origen, Chrysostom, Calvin, Philippi). Likewise, with special reference to the sense of guilt (Luther); with special reference to sin (Spener).
De Wette and Meyer have properly rejected the introduction of allegory in Rom 7:2-3; it destroys all legal evidence of the figure. The Apostle did not avoid saying because he wished to give a more pregnant expression to the thought, and to include in one the other side also, but because is different from a simple , and because the retroactive inference from the act which the administration of the law has committed on the body of Christ is proximate to the dying of the law (according to Heb 8:13; decayed and waxed old). The gospel is eternally new, because it refers to only eternal relations. The law grows old from the beginning, because, in its outward and national character, it relates to transitory and ever-changing relations. Application to Catholicism and Protestantism. (All they that take the sword, &c.) , viro subjecta; the wife had no right to separate herself.13
But if the husband have died, she is loosed from the law of her husband [ , . On the conditional clause, see Textual Note2. On the verb, comp. Gal 5:4, Langes Comm., p. 127. The genitive is one of reference, of the object respecting which, see Winer, p. 177.R.] That is, which relates to her husband. On the relationship of the expression to the , comp. Meyers translation: She has become undone, and thereby free and absolved from the law which related to her husband (united her to him). (See Gal 5:4.)
Rom 7:3. She shall be called an adulteress. She receives the name in a formal and legal way. And therewith she is subject to the severest punishment of the lawstoning. [Lev 21:10; comp. Joh 8:5.]
[She is free from that law, . The article shows that the reference is to the law of the husband, hence the E. V.: that law, is correct.R.]
So that she is not an adulteress. Meyer insists upon the idea of design: in order that she be no adulteress; and declares this to be the design of the Divine legal ordinancewhich Tholuck there pedantically finds. Yet the expression here might certainly have been chosen with reference to this application. The Judaists assuredly charged the believing Jews with apostasy, and therefore with religious adultery. Hence Paul says instead of ;14 and Fritzsche has strikingly made the dependent on . [All these views are alike grammatical. That of Fritzsche is harsh, however, while Meyers seems to be adopted more to prepare the way for the parallel he makes (Rom 7:4): in order that ye should be married to another. It is not necessary to press the figure to this extent, however.R.]
Rom 7:4. Accordingly, my brethren. [, see Winer, p. 283.R.] The explanation follows here first; this is not allegorical, but symbolical, because marriage represents, in the external sphere of life, what religion does in the inward and higher (Eph 5:32).Ye also, as the widowed wife.Were made dead to the law15 [ . See Textual Note4. The verb is aorist, referring to a definite act in the past, viz., the release from the law at justification.R.] That is, in relation to the marriage-covenant. The expression is chosen, not merely because Christs death was a violent one, but also because it describes the death of Christians to the law as a death incurred by virtue of the administration of the law.
Through the body of Christ [ ]. In, and, at the same time, with Him, as He was put to death. The atoning effect of the sacrificial death cannot, at all events, be the premise here, although it is included. [The aorist shows that the reference is definite; the proposition indicates the means of the death to the law. Two opinions prevail: (1) That it refers to the atoning death of Christ as the ground of justification. So Hodge, and others. It may be urged in favor of this, that this is the means or ground of justification, and that thus the antithesis to was raised is preserved. But the Apostle generally speaks of the death of Christ in plain terms, when he refers to it. Col 1:22, which Hodge quotes as an instance of His body, meaning His death, adds the qualifying phrases, of His flesh, through death. (2) With Tholuck, Meyer, Lange, and others, it may be referred to the fellowship with Christ in His death. This view accords better with the point which the Apostle has reached in his argument, as well as the idea of union with Christ underlying this passage. This does not deny, but implies the atoning efficacy of His death, which is always latent, if not patent, in the Apostles argument. It has been the fault of some commentators, to insist en finding an expression of it, where it is only implied.R.]
Christians are dead, buried (chap. 6.), and risen (Col 3:1) with Christ; indeed, they are even, in principle, transported to heaven (Php 3:20). But since they are dead with Him, they are, like Him, dead to the law through the law (Gal 2:19). [Comp. Commentary in loco, pp. 50, 51.R.] Calvin, Grotius, Koppe, and others, have explained, that the is a milder expression for . , . This explanation does not regard the difference between natural and violent death, nor self-destruction. The law could not be dead; this would have been revolution. As a Divine form of revelation, it had to grow old and vanish away (Heb 8:13); but as a human ordinance it has itself inflicted death. Therefore the law still retained its former historical and ethical (not religious and essential) force toward those who were not dead to it by the fellowship of Christ.
Through the body of Christ, . It may be asked, in what relation this being dead with the body of Christ stands to the being reconciled by the body of Christ. Tholuck: Fellowship with the death of Christ includes freedom from the of the law (Gal 3:10), and this latter, which is brought to pass by thankful love in return, includes the death of the old man to sin (Rom 6:6) and strengthening to a new life. The becoming free from the is consummated with the development of repentance and faiththat is, with justification; the having become free from the old law is decided when the new law, the law of the Spirit, the righteousness of faith, appears (Eph 2:16).
In order that ye should be married to another [ . The clause seems to be final. In order that; the purpose of the death to the law was union to Christ.R.] , to become the possession of a husband. The figure of conjugal communion of the believing Church with the Lord (2Co 11:2; Eph 5:2; Eph 5:5; Rev 21:8). To another. The stronger is here used. [And it is more closely defined, even to him who was raised from the dead, .With good reason is this added.R.] Not only do Christians belong to the risen Christ because He has acquired them by His death (1 Peter i.), but also because they themselves, having been dead with Him, have become a heavenly race, a super-terrestrial people, who, as risen ones, can be united only with the Risen One; therefore their continued connection with the law of this life would be a misalliance. The common element of this new communion is the new life.
That we should bring forth fruit to God [ . Final clause (so Tholuck, Meyer, De Wette, Alford). The dative is dat. commodi apparently.R.] The figure of marriage leads to that of the fruit of marriage (Theodoret, Erasmus, Meyer, and others). Tholuck, on the contrary: Since a reference to (Rom 6:22) occurs, and since , , and even (Mar 4:20; Luk 8:15; Col 1:10), frequently occur in a metonyme derived from the fruits of the field, as a technical Christian phrase for the practical effects of the life of faith, and the allusion recurs in Rom 7:6, where the figure is not that of marriage, it seems very unsafe to accept the figure of the fruit of children. Reiche and Fritzsche have even rejected this interpretation, because an undignified allegory arises; they have therefore construed the figure as referring to the field, or fruits of the field. Philippi likewise; De Wette, on the contrary, accepts the former view. But the allegory of an unfruitful marriage cannot be more dignified than that of a fruitful one. Yet the spiritual fruit of righteousness, in accordance with its supersensuous nature, is produced for God, for glorifying God. [The figure must not be so pressed as to make the fruit of the marriage to God, as Father; to His glory, is the meaning.R.]
Rom 7:5. For when we were in the flesh [ . Meyer: The positive and characterizing expression for the negative: when we were not yet made dead to the law. Alford: Virtually = under the law. Hodge; When in your unrenewed and legal state. For a more thorough discussion, see the Excursus in the next section.R.] The antithesis of Rom 7:5 should serve to explain the last conclusion in Rom 7:4. The tells us: According as we were situated in our fleshly tendency, we must now also be situated in the Divine tendency. The denotes the stand point of personality; the outward tendency of life from a definite principle. Here, therefore, the tendency of life is from the principle of the flesh. Explanations: 1. Meyer: The , the humanity in us (what, then, would not be human in us?),16 in its opposition to the Divine will; the element of life in which we exist. The opposite to the of Rom 7:6. 2. Theodoret, cumenius: In the . The flesh is the material and external part of the body and the life. Therefore, since we stood in this external tendency, which, as an external and analytical form of life (dependent on the individual ), also in its better form, took the law as a combination of external and analytical precepts. [Of these, (1) is much to be preferred. Dr. Lange does not make it clear whether he adopts the view of flesh, given immediately above. There are very strong objections to it in any case.R.]
The passions of sins [ ]. According to Meyer and Tholuck, the genitive of object. From which the sins arose. Tholuck cites Jam 1:15 as proof. We hold, however, that sins are here denominated producers of the passions. For the passions, ., are not, as Tholuck holds, the same as the (according to which Luther translates lusts), but they are the enhanced by the impulse of the law. Then, in the case of sins arising as consequences of the ., the idea would follow that abortions to death have been produced from the marriage-bond of the law itself with man. The connection with the law assumes, therefore, at the same time, a connection with the (see Rom 6:13), and this, in the isolation of individual , was operative as producer by the sinful passions excited by the law in the members. The law itself did not bring forth the fruit of death; but it stirred up sin, so that the latter made the into , and thus into productive forces. [Either view is preferable to the Hendiadys: sinful feelings (Olshausen, Hodge), which is forbidden by the plural . is passive (comp. Gal 5:24), and hence it is perhaps better to take the genitive, as that of the object (which led to sins), so as to accord with what is predicated in .R.]
Which were by means of the law. . Grotius supplies , which is too little; Meyer, sc., , which is far too much. According to Rom 7:9, . Tholuck: Many of the older commentators, in order not to let the law appear in too unfavorable a light, explained thus: of the knowledge of sin communicated by the law (thus Chrysostom, Ambrose, Bullinger, and others). Yet, thus construed, would stand beyond the pragmatism of the passage. Tholuck, like Meyer, would also supply the verb. subst. [The proximity of Rom 7:7 supports the obvious meaning: occasioned by the law (Meyer: vermittelt), not caused, however.R.]
Wrought []. Middle. Were efficient in a fruitful manner.
In our members [ . Hodge weakens the force, by making this almost = in us.R.] Single productions between individual passions and individual members, in which the central consciousness was enslaved for the production of individual miscarriages.
To bring forth fruit to death [ . This clause expresses not merely the result (Hodge), but the final object of the energizing (Meyer, Alford,), being parallel to the last clause of Rom 7:4.R.] Meyer: To lead a life terminating in death. Expressing but little, almost nothing, here. That false fruit, abortions, or miscarriages, might arise (wherefore the subst. itself must be avoided). Erasmus: ex infelici matrimonio infelices ftus sustutimus, quidquid nasceretur morti exiltoque gignentes. Luther: Where the law rules over people, they are indeed not idle; they bring forth and train up many children, but they are mere bastards, who do not belong to a free mother. Meyer would also here limit death to the idea of eternal death; see above. [He also carries out the figure of progeny, which Lange retains here, so far as to make death here a personification. This is less justifiable than the reference to eternal death, which conveys a truth, and forms a fitting antithesis to (Rom 7:4).R.]
Rom 7:6. Bat now we have been delivered from the law [ (antithesis to , Rom 7:5) . Notice the aorist, which Paul uses so constantly in reference to the accomplished fact of justification.R.] We are annulled in relation to the law, and therewith the law is annulled to us. (On the reading , see the Critical Note on the Text; also Tholuck, p. 330.)
Having died to that wherein we were held [ ]. We must understand before . Meyer explains: in which we were confined as in a prison. More in harmony with the former view is this: whereby we were chained as by a legal and even matrimonial obligation. Wherefore we certainly do not need to refer merely to (with Origen, Koppe, De Wette, Philippi [Hodge], and others). Tholuck: The law, therefore, is regarded as , as a chain, analogously to the , Gal 3:23, so far as it holds its subjects in (Rom 8:15; 2Ti 1:7). The direct reference of the to sin (according to Chrysostom, cumenius, and others) is too strong on the opposite side.The cause of the chaining of man by sin on one side, as well as by the law on the other, was the totality of the , as it expressed itself in mere divisions of lust and legality. This is clear from what follows: in the oldness of the letter.
So that we serve [ . The clause is not final, as the E. V. indicates; the service is a present state, already resulting from the accomplished fact of deliverance from and death to the law. Serve God, is the meaning, the omission of being due to the self-evident difference of reference in the two phrases which follow. The consciousness of the readers would tell them that the old service was one to sin, the new one to God (so Meyer).R.] The can be spoken ironically in only a conditional manner. We have really our external life to enslave, but not after the old way, in single portions and acts, according to individual precepts, motives, and affections, but in the newness of the Spirit; therefore by virtue of the perfect principle of the Spirit, which is ever new, and always assuming a new form. The denotes not merely the sphere of activity (Meyer), but the power, the principle of activity itself.
In newness of the Spirit [ . Untenable views: That is redundant, and the dative the object of the verb ; that there is a Hendiadys (new spirit, Hodge). The E. V. is fond of Hendiadys, and very often misconstrues , but has avoided these mistakes in the present instance. Alford correctly remarks, that the datives are not as in Rom 6:4, attributes of the genitives which follow them, but states in which those genitives are the ruling elements.What is the precise force of ?R.] Meyer: It is the Holy Spirit, as the operative principle of the Christian life. Clearly, it is the spirit as itself the inward Christian principle of life, which is certainly not to be thought of without the communion of the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit as simply, operating objectively, was also the producer of the , which here constitutes the antithesis. This principle is itself an eternal newness, and has, as a result, an eternal newness as the principle of the absolute renewal. Tholuck: The spirit of grace produced by Gods gracious deed. [With Meyer, Alford, and others, it seems best to refer this to the Holy Spirit. The absence of the article is not against this view; as the opinion of Harless, that without the article is subjective, is not well established. (Comp. Meyer on Rom 8:4; Harless, Eph 2:22; Langes Comm., Gal 5:16, p. 137.) This passage seems to point to chap. 8, where occurs so frequently, in the sense of the Holy Spirit; the more so as occurs just before (Rom 7:5). The objection, that the Holy Spirit, working objectively, was the author of the letter, and hence that the antithesis requires another meaning, has not much weight. See notes on Rom 8:4 ff.R.]
And not in the oldness of the letter [ (only here) . Not = old letter (Hodge), nor yet = under the law, in the flesh, though these latter thoughts are implied. The genitive seems to be gen. auctoris, as in the previous clause.R.] On the , see Rom 2:29; 2Co 3:6. The law viewed externally, and, by its historical and subjective externalization, become an old and dying object, . Meyer writes somewhat unintelligibly: The , according to the nature of the relation in which the stands to the principle of sin in man, was necessarily sinful (see Rom 7:7 ff.), as, on the other hand, the must be necessarily moral in consequence of the vitally influencing . [The service which resulted from the rule of the letter, was not merely their old service, but a service having in it an element of decay. The service under the law, precisely the written law (when viewed as the ), was a killing yoke, is still, when the service is in the oldness of the letter. Meyer evidently means, that a law with external precepts, of the letter, necessarily so acts upon mans sinfulness, that the very service he attempts to render is sinful. The letter killeth (2Co 3:6).Such a characterization of the service under the law forms a fitting warning against a return to legalisman appropriate conclusion to this section, and a point of connection with Rom 7:7.R.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The connection with sin, according to Rom 6:12-23, was a slavish state; the connection with the law, on the other hand, according to the present section, was comparable to an earthly marriage-state. The connection of believers with Christ now appears, in comparison with this, as a super-terrestrial marriage-covenant (see Eph 5:32).
2. It is only by keeping the figure of the law of marriage free from an allegorical interpretation, and by distinguishing between the figure itself and its historical application, that the evidence clearly appears which the argumentation of the Apostle contemplated, and particularly for the Jewish Christians. But this evidence still continues in force. The standpoint of external legality, and that of living faith, cannot be confused as religious principles. Both standpoints are sundered by the death of Christ. Where they seem to be united, the confession of the law, or the legal confession of faith, is the dominant religious principle; while the opposite principle has the meaning only of a historical and ethical custom, which, from its nature as a legal custom, as much limits the Catholic man of faith, as it, in the character of an evangelical custom, burdens the legal, Romanizing Protestant.
3. Tholuck: The law is annulled in relation to believers, not in its moral import, but, as Calovius remarks, quoad rigorem exactionis, quoad maledictionem, et quoad servilem coactionem. According to the Sermon on the Mount, as well as according to Paul, it is done away so far as it is fulfilled; it is annulled in a negative sense so far as it is annulled in Christian principle, the law of the Spirit. An inward principle has come from the external precept; an inward rule from the external form; an inward tendency from the external law; a unity from multiplicity; a synthesis from the analysis; and from the ordinance, Do this and live, the order, Live and do this. It must be borne in mind, that Paul here speaks of the finite, formal character of the law, and not of the law as a type of the New Testament, as it has become transformed into the law of the Spirit. [Comp. Doctrinal Notes on Galatians, Gal 3:19-29, pp. 88, 89.R.]
4. The figure of marriage, which extends through the Old Testament in typical forms, is here employed in reference to the relation between Christ and the whole body of believers. The individual believer participates freely in the marriage-bond of this body, yet not in a mystical, separatistic isolation of his relation to Christ.
5. In Rom 7:5 Paul speaks especially concerning the passions of sins, which are excited and occasioned by the law; and there is no reason for understanding among them the abnormal forms of passionate excitement. The history of Pharisaism, and of fanaticism in general, from the crucifixion of Christ down to the present day, teaches us how very much additional weight is also added by the normal forms. In this direction there has arisen the odium generis humani, as well as the increasingly strong warfare of hierarchical or ecclesiastical party-law against the eternal moral laws of humanity, in which the nature of God himself is represented, while in the statute only the distorted apparent image of the Church, and not its eternal pith, is reflected.
6. The abortions of ordinances at enmity with the gospel and humanity reached the centre of their manifestation in the crucifixion of Christ; but they everywhere reappear, where Christ is again crucified, in a grosser or more refined sense. And this not only occurs where the written revealed law is perverted into fanatical ordinances, but also where the ideals of the natural law (Rom 2:14) are distorted to fanatical caricatures, as is shown in the history of the Revolution of 1848.
7. On Rom 7:6. Tholuck: , (Rom 2:29). The former is chiefly a designation of the external principle; the latter, of the inwardly operative principle. And this inwardly operative principle is the gracious spirit produced by Gods gracious act. Calvin: Spiritum litter opponit, quia antequam ad dei voluntatem voluntas nostra per spiritum sanctum formata sit, non habemus in lege nisi externam litteram, qu frnum quidem externis nostris actionibus injicit, concupiscenti autem nostr furorem minime cohibet. And Melanchthon: Ideo dicitur littera, quia non est verus et vivus motus animi, sed est otiosa imitatio interior vel exterior, nec ibi potest esse vera invocatio, ubi cor non apprehendit remissionem peccatorum.
8. How the law, in its letter or finite relation, began to grow old immediately after the beginning of legislation, is shown to us clearly by the history of the Israelites; and Deuteronomy even gives the canonical type of this truth. The history of the Christian Church teaches, on the other hand, how the newness of the spiritual life becomes constantly newer in its power of renewal. But the same antithesis is again manifested in the continual obsolescence of the Church in the Middle Ages, and in the continued rejuvenating of the evangelical Church.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
On Rom 7:1-6
As Christians, we belong no more to the law, but to Christ. 1. Because we are dead to the law by Jesus, who abolished the power of the law; 2. Because we are united to Him by the same fact, in order to bring forth fruit to God (Rom 7:1-6).Marriage as a type of spiritual relations: 1. As a type of our relation to the law; 2. As a type of our relation to Christ (Rom 7:1-6).As the relation of man to Christ is altogether different from that to the law, so is Christian marriage, on the other hand, altogether different from that of the Old Testament (Rom 7:1-6).How death divides, but also unites (Rom 7:4).Union of heart with Christ the Risen One is the condition of the happy union of human hearts with each other so as to bring forth fruit unto God (Rom 7:4).How miserable it was to live under the law in the flesh; how happifying it is to live under grace in the Spirit! Proof: 1. Description of the state under the law: a. we were in bondage; b. sinful lusts worked in our members to bring forth fruit unto death; c. we served the letter. 2. Description of the condition under grace: a. we are free; b. the newness of the Spirit incites us to bring forth fruit unto God; c. we serve the Spirit, and not the letter any more (Rom 7:5-6).
Starke: As a thistle-bush is full of thistles, so are unconverted and carnal men full of the fruits of the flesh (Rom 7:5).Christ frees us from the burden of the law, that we may take His yoke upon us (Rom 7:6).Hedinger: We are free from the law, not as a precept of dutywhich remains perpetuallybut in its condemnation, compulsion, and sharpness (Rom 7:1).Where there is not a heart and ready will, there is only external labor and weariness; where conversion of the life and spiritual increase are not exhibited in the inner man, it is lost work and the service of the letter, even if one should wear out the temple-floor with his knees, give his body to be burned, and become a beggar and a hermit!
Spener: Our perverted nature is such, that, when any thing is forbidden, we have all the greater desire to have it. We have often seen children think less of, and have no desire for, a certain thing, for which they have all the more desire when forbidden. So, when the law forbids this and that, we are prompted toward it by our wicked nature (Rom 7:5).We are not so free that we do not have to serve any more; only the kind of service is different. Formerly it was compulsory, now it is rendered with a joyful will; then it was the letter, now it is the spirit (Rom 7:6).Roos: The truth which Paul here portrays (Rom 7:1-4) is this: that nothing but death annuls the dominion of the law.
Lisco: The complete freedom of man from the law promotes his true sanctification (Rom 7:1-6).The relation of man to the law.Application of this relation to believers (Rom 7:4).Advantages of the new state above the old one under the law (Rom 7:5-6).
Heubner: The Christian is free from the coercion of the law (Rom 7:1-6).The death of Christ became freedom from the compulsory power and curse of the law: 1. As abrogation of the Levitical sacrificial system; 2. As inducement toward free and thankful love toward God (Rom 7:4).Irreligious politicians express only their ignoble and servile manner of thinking, when they deem all religion to be only of service as a bridle for the people (Rom 7:4).The nature of the Christian is spirit: 1. In reference to faith; 2. In reference to action. The latter stands in contrast with this spirit in these same respects (Rom 7:6).
Besser: Here, for the first time since Rom 1:13, Paul addresses the saints at Rome as brethrenbrethren in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 7:1).But nowthis now is an evangelical key-note of the Epistle to the Romans; comp. Rom 3:21, and other places (Rom 7:6).
Lange: The death of Christ a serious boundary between the legal and the evangelical, believing, standpoints: 1. The meaning of this boundary itself; 2. The application: no religious confusions of the two standpoints. By a customary connection of them, one is made to mean only a moral limitation, which, after all, is not in conformity with the internal relations.The sensuous power and spiritual weakness of legalism consists in its being an earthly relation, confined to this life, though in the fear of God (in this life the head, the city of God, the apparent image of the kingdom, &c).The marriage-bond of the free Church of God is a super-terrestrial relation, and therefore the power of the renewal of the earthly life: a. Christ in the next life and in this one; b. Faith also; c. The Church as well.The reciprocal action between the law and sin unto death, a counterpart to the reciprocity between the Spirit of Christ and faith unto new life.The contrast between the Old and New Testament in its full meaning: 1. The Old Testament growing old and making old from the beginning; 2. The New Testament renewing itself and the world from the beginning.But a New Testament is in the essence of the Old, as well as an Old is in the manifestation of the New.
[Burkitt: All the wisdom of the heathen, and of the wisest persons in the world, was never able to discover the first sinful motions arising from our rebellious natures; only the holy law of God makes them known, and discovers them to be sin. Such is the holiness of the law of God, that it requires not only the purity of our actions, but also the integrity of all our faculties.Scott: Self-righteous pride and antinomian licentiousness are two fatal rocks on which immense multitudes are continually wrecked, and between which none but the Holy Spirit can pilot us; and the greatest objections of open enemies to the doctrines of grace derive their greatest plausibility from the unholy lives of many professed friends.Clarke: The law is only the means of disclosing our sinful propensity, not of producing it; as a bright beam of the sun introduced into a room shows millions of motes in all directionsbut these were not introduced by the light, but were there before, only there was not light enough to make them manifestso the evil propensity was in the heart before, but there was not light sufficient to discover it.
Literature, chiefly Homiletical, on the 7 th of Romans: Arminius, Dissertation on the True and Genuine Sense of Romans VII., Works, 2, 471; E. Elton, Complaint of a Sanctified Sinner Answered, or Explanation of the 7th Chapter of Romans, London, 1618; J. Stafford, Scripture Doctrine of Sin Considered, in Twenty-five Discourses on Romans VII., London, 1772; J. Glas, The Flesh and the Spirit, Works, 3, 142; J. Fraser, Scripture Doctrine of Sanctification; A. Knox, Letter to J. S. Harford, Esq., on the Seventh Chapter to the Romans, Remains, 3, 409.J. F. H.]
Footnotes:
[1]Rom 7:2.[The E. V. renders : which hath a husband; which is less forcible than the single word married. It is true that neither renderings convey the exact sense of the original, so well as: das dem Manne unterthnige Weib (Lange); yet, as the idea of subjection, expressed in the Greek, is still, to some extent, implied in married, it is the best rendering that can be given.The periphrasis: so long as he liveth, is altogether unnecessary; the living husband, is both more forcible and more exact.
[2]Rom 7:2.[The active verb die should be substituted for be dead. The question arises, How can we best express the delicate shade of the Greek conditional proposition: . Alford gives: have died; Wordsworth: shall have died; Amer. Bible Union: die. The first seems preferable; the second is strictly literal, since the aorist implies something which takes place antecedent to what is affirmed in the apodosis, but is not so elegant; the last is that bald conditional form, which should be reserved for the equivalent Greek form ( with the optative or indicative). These remarks apply to the same clause, as it occurs in ver 3.
[3] Rom 7:3.[The negative belongs to the verb, and is joined to the noun, at the expense of forcibleness. Forbes remarks, that here the E. V. destroys the regularity of the parallelism. The first, second, and third lines in the original correspond exactly to the fourth, fifth, and sixth respectively.
,
,
, ,
So then, as long as her husband liveth,
She shall be called an adulteress,
If she be married to another man;
But if her husband be dead,
She is free from the law so as to be no adulteress,
Though she be married to another man.
[4]Rom 7:4.[Were made dead (Amer. Bible Union), though not very elegant, is perhaps the best rendering of . Mortify, would be ambiguous here. Were slain, is preferred by Alford, because the more violent Greek verb is used, recalling the violent death of Christ; but this would point to the act of killing, rather than to the fact of being deprived of life, which is the prominent thought here.
[5]Rom 7:4.[Both clauses are final, though differing in form. By changing the first that of the E. V. into in order that, the force of the Greek is preserved, and its varied form in a measure reproduced.
[6]Rom 7:4.[As unto God is the usual rendering of , to God will serve to represent the simple dative: . The meaning seems to be: to the glory of God.The dative, is also found at the close of Rom 7:5.
[7]Rom 7:5.[The E. V. usually renders , sufferings. Here, passions (Wordsworth, and others; Lange: Leidenschaften) is etymologically exact, and, on the whole, preferable to motions, emotions (Amer. Bible Union), stirrings (Alford).
[8]Rom 7:6.[The Recepta reads ; a conjecture of Bezas, arising from a misunderstanding of the text, having no uncial support. D. E. F. G. (Vulgate, and some Latin authorities) read ; a gloss, to get rid of the participle, which was regarded as disturbing the structure of the sentence (Meyer). . A. B. C. K. L., many versions and fathers, warrant the correctness of , which is now almost universally adopted. (The English text is emended to correspond.)
[9]Rom 7:6.[The clause is ecbatic and present: .
[10]Rom 7:6.[If the reference be to the Holy Spirit, the above emendation is necessary. If not (as Dr. Lange holds), the clause should read: in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter. See Exeg. Notes on both views.R.]
[11][On the difficulty respecting the figure, see the full remarks of Prof. Stuart in loco.R.]
[12][Meyers note is excellent: Not before he dies does the law lose its dominion over him; so long as he lives, he remains subject to it. If this is considered, and an entirely irrelevant only so long as he lives be not interpolated, the thought seems neither trivial nor disproportionate to the appeal made to the legal knowledge of the readers. For a peculiarity of the consists in this, that it cannot, as human laws, have only temporary validity, or be altered, suspended, nor can one be exempt from it for a time, &c. No, so long as man lives, the dominion of the over him remains. Of course, this means previous to the death to the law (Rom 7:4).R.]
[13][She is bound to him by the lawi.e., the Mosaic lawwhich made no provision for her loosing herself (in Deu 24:2 it was the power of the husband, not the wife, to repudiate the relation). Here the law is no longer spoken of figuratively.R.]
[14][That is, they might be and were so called, but yet were not guilty of religious adultery.R.]
[15][Dr. Hodge at some length combats the view, that the Mosaic law (or rather the Jewish economy) is alone referred to throughout this passage. He rightly says: Paul here means by the law, the will of God, as a rule of duty, however revealed. See on Rom 3:20, p. 122 (also Gal 2:16, pp. 49, 52). The most untenable of all views is that which limits to the ritualistic Jewish observances.R.]
[16][To this interpolation it may be rejoined: What, then, would not be in us? What is not carnal, sinful, in us?R.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
Under the Similitude of the Marriage State, the Apostle in the opening of this Chapter, represents the Power of the Law, over a Man that is wedded to the Law, as long as he liveth. But as in the Married State, the Death of one of the Parties destroys that Law; so Christ hath delivered his Church. The Apostle closeth the Chapter, in an affecting Representation of the workings of Sin in the Flesh.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? (2) For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. (3) 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. (4) 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. (5) For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. (6) But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
The Apostle is here particularly addressing the Jews, who were well acquainted with the binding obligation of the law. And he brings forward the marriage state, by way of illustrating his argument, that the obligation to the law, like that between a man and his wife, continued in full force the whole term of life. For, a woman which hath an husband, is bound to that husband during the whole of his life. But, if he dies, the obligation is cancelled. Her marrying then, becomes no breach of chastity: the former contract is done away. This is a well-known law in common life, and indeed is founded on the law of God. It can need no further illustration. From hence then, the Apostle argues, that believers in Christ being dead to the law as a covenant of works, and the law dead to them; they are both lawfully and honorably married to Christ: and the evidence of this union appears, from bringing forth fruit unto God, from the graces of the Spirit, which in regeneration they receive. Thus the legal right of the thing is fully proved, even when considered only under the common acceptation of the customs among men, which are going on every day in ordinary life.
But, we must not stop here, in our view of the Apostle’s figure. In the relation to Christ, and his Church, it ceaseth indeed to be a figure, for it is a blessed reality. The marriage between Christ and his Church, (of which every other among men is but a type,) carries the subject infinitely higher. For, the Son of God betrothed his Church to himself before the foundation of the world, and that forever, Hos 2:19 ; Eph 1:4 . And God the Holy Ghost preached this great truth to the Church, from the beginning of the creation of God. And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him an help meet for him. And, when the woman was created from the man, and brought unto him, and were married; this union was declared to be a type and figure of Christ’s union with his Church. So Paul was directed by the Holy Ghost, in after ages, to explain this wonderful subject. And so he hath done it, in his Epistle to the Ephesians. This is a great mystery, (saith the Apostle,) but I speak concerning Christ, and his Church, Compare Gen 2:18 ; Gen 2:21-25 with Eph 5:23 to the end.
Hence therefore, it will follow, that Christ and his Church were One before the foundation of the world: that the Church was raised up to be an help meet for him, through all the departments of nature, grace, and glory: and all this, in an union, never to be dissolved. So that in this senses as the Head, and Husband of his Church, he hath always lived, and is always living. And so it is written, For thy Maker is thine husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth shall he be called, Isa 54:5 .
Neither in this sense hath there ever been, or can be, a divorce. For, although we read of the continued provocations of the Church, by reason of her adulteries; and the Lord, (speaking after the manner of men, while beholding her in her whoredoms,) saith: Plead with you mother plead, for she is not my wife; neither am I her husband: yet in the same moment bids her return, because he had betrothed her to him forever, Hos 2 , throughout. But we nowhere meet .with any bill of divorce, the Lord had given her to put her away, though he demands any to shew it. Yea, the Lord, in the after days of his flesh, when openly tabernacling among his people, declared, that the doctrine of divorce was from Moses, on account of the hardness of men’s hearts: but, (saith the Lord,) from the beginning of the creation it was not so. And, what God had joined together, no man should put asunder. It is Jehovah, in his threefold character of Persons, hath made Him, who is fellow to the Lord of Hosts, and the Church, one from everlasting: and nothing can arise in the time-state of the Church to separate. I cannot stay to write down all the scriptures which might be brought forward, in proof to this most blessed of all truths; but I earnestly beg the Reader, before he goes further, to turn to them in his Bible, according to the order in which I have marked them; and if the Lord be his teacher, the glorious doctrine will appear to him with full evidence, Pro 8:22-31 ; Eph 1:4 ; 2Ti 1:9 ; Psa 45:13 ; Eze 16 throughout; Hos 3:3 ; Isa 1:1 ; Rom 11:1-2 ; Mal 2:15-16 for treacherously, read as in the margin, unfaithfully; Mar 10:2-9 ; Jer 3:1 and Jer 3:14 .
When this view of the original, and eternal marriage of Christ and his Church is well understood, and established by scriptural evidence in the mind; we then go on to prosecute the Apostle’s beautiful illustration of the subject, as it relates to the government of the Church, during the time state of the law. The law, (we are told by the same authority, in another part of his writings,) was added because of transgressions till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. And it acted as our Schoolmaster unto Christ. But when faith is come we are no longer under a Schoolmaster, Gal 3:24-25Gal 3:24-25 . Nothing could have been more happily chosen than this figure, to illustrate the great truth the Apostle had in hand. By the coming of Christ, the Church’s lawful husband, he demands his lawful wife. And, by the work of God the Spirit in her heart in regeneration, we are now delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. Sweet and precious thought! All the rigor of the law, all the threatenings of the law, its curse and condemnation, as the ministration of death; all are done away in Christ. Christ, as the Church’s husband, surety, and head, hath redeemed her from the curse of the law, being made a curse for her. And the Church, brought by sovereign grace to the knowledge and enjoyment of her high privileges in Christ, saith: I will go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than now, Gal 3:13 ; Hos 2:7 . See Mar 10 with the Commentary.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Rom 7
Dr. Marcus Dods wrote at the age of twenty-six: ‘Whatever Paul says of the law in the seventh of Romans I have found true of the ministry; no doubt it is holy in itself, but in me it has revealed and excited an amount of sin that has slain me. Other people with stronger natures may have, doubtless have, endured a great deal more, but I could not have endured more misery than I have done since I began to preach.’
Early Letters, p. 179.
Rom 7:1
Ever since the Epistle to the Romans was written, it has become a Christian commonplace that, in all moral experience, I am divided against myself; inwardly identified with a superior call that beckons me; outwardly liable to take my lot with the inferior inclination that clings to me. In such conflict, whatever be its issue, the real self is always that which votes for the good; conformably with Plato’s rule, that no man, of his own will (though, possibly, of blind impulse), ever decides for the worse. If I choose aright, the previous strife is laid to rest, and my nature is at one with itself and its own ends. If I choose amiss, the storm within is fiercer than before; I rage against my own temptation; and if the fact be known, I am ashamed to walk abroad and carry about so false an image of myself.
Martineau.
We carry private and domestick enemies within, public and more hostile enemies without. The devil that did but buffet St. Paul, plays methinks at sharp with me. Let me be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not find the battle of Lepanto, passion against reason, reason against faith, faith against the devil, and my conscience against all. There is another man in me that’s angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me.
Sir Thomas Browne.
References. VII. 1. R. M. Benson, Redemption, p. 256. VII. 1-6. W. P. Du Bose, The Gospel According to St. Paul, p. 187. Bishop Gore, The Epistle to the Romans, 236. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 448. VII. 3, 4. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. i. p. 79. VII. 4. Ibid. vol. vi. pp. 139, 347. VII. 6. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 427. VII. 7, 8. Ibid. vol. x. p. 369. VII. 7-25. W. P. Du Bose, The Gospel According to St. Paul, p. 203. Bishop Gore, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 245. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 198.
Rom 7:9
Each man seems to learn for himself from the beginning, and discovers little by little, to his great discomfort, what should have been known long ago from such as Paul and Luther and Bunyan. And what is this? Why, it is discovered that the will has no power over the affections. While both were in disorder, while a man’s will was half for God and half for independence from God, he did not find this out distinctly; he then blamed his entire nature. But now that his will is really subdued, he begins to discern how exceedingly little power it has over his affections, and to regard one half only of his nature as diseased. He desires to speak with meekness; but he finds himself excited and bitter, if not in word, yet in heart. He desires to be chaste; and his thoughts become impure. He desires to worship God in spirit; but his mind wanders into countless imaginations. He desires to be contented; and his heart swells with a foolish ambition. He desires to be humble; but he is mortified that somebody gave him too little honour. He desires to be simple; yet he said something to make himself admired…. But the single-minded soul is distinguished by the promptitude of its aspiration after better success, the moment that failure is discerned. Not merely is there vexation at the failure (which might denote mortified pride), but an instant breathing to God, ‘Oh that my heart were as Thy heart, and that wholly!’ and this instantly renews the soul’s intercourse with God, so that complaint is not self-reproach.
F. W. Newman.
References. VII. 10. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 239. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. pp. 135, 137. VII. 12. Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 199.
The Malignity of Sin
Rom 7:13
I. Under the law sin shows itself as revolt against a personal God, and the transgression of a specific enactment. The commandment rests upon a fixed idea of authority, just, living, competent. We acknowledge no subjection to vanished dynasties of kings. In the promulgation of the law an eternal God plants Himself between sin and the soul it threatens to ravage and destroy. If sin gets its will and its way in us, it can only be through a criminal insult to the person, power, and prerogative of the Eternal. The very prohibitions of law provoke a temper of resentfulness by which the alienation of the heart from God may be measured. A profound and daring Scotch theologian has said: ‘The tendency of all sin is to Deicide’: and the implacable temper of an un regenerate man confronted with the demands of Divine law proves the truth of the terrible saying.
II. The commandment shows the exceeding sinfulness of sin by putting all its typical forms into admonitory association with each other. It suggests that an organic unity binds together the varied developments of evil. Every wanton and selfish act lies against the honour of God and the common welfare of the race. The watchword of the law promulgated by Buddha, was ‘All life is one, from that of the least to the greatest’. ‘All sin is one’ was the watchword of the law promulgated by Moses. Jesus traced all obedience to a root of love, and Jesus traced all disobedience to a counter principle. He who offends in one point is guilty of all.
III. The law also brings home to us the heinousness of sin by illustrating the disaster wrought by it in the human soul. When the conscience has become mute, insensate, unresponsive, it is often necessary to reinforce its functions by an appeal to fear. Some minds can only be taught to appreciate the seriousness of sin through a foretaste of its bitter and distressing results. Death, the wages of sin, is inseparable from its work. Sin is an infernal machine put within us to work death, and it achieves at last the will of him who was a murderer from the beginning. The law was meant to show this. The tendency of the day is to make little of the sinfulness of sin, if not, indeed, to look upon the word itself as obsolete. It has been shrewdly said that the present generation needs to make a new pilgrimage to Mount Sinai. A solid evangelical theology rests upon a right interpretation of the grim, irrefutable fact of sin. The sombre reflections suggested by the Apostle’s view of sin, and his explanation of the part played by the law in making us realise its guiltiness, are not intended to darken our lives but to make us feel our need of Jesus Christ. We shall never get back our faith in the grand fact of an ever-present redemption till we let the law do its proper work within us, by creating a just sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin.
References. VII. 13. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1095. VII. 14. M. Biggs, Practical Sermons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 116. VII. 17. W. L. Watkinson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 391. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 55. VII. 18. S. Bentley, Sermons on Prayer, p. 27. VII. 19. Archbishop Benson, Singleheart, p. 35. VII. 20. H. S. Holland, Vital Values, p. 107. VII. 21-24.-J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son, p. 239. VII. 21-25. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 306. VII. 22, 23. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii. No. 1062. VII. 22-24. A. Bradley, Sermons Chiefly on Character, p. 58.
Rom 7:23
When the Lorelei in Heine’s poem is sitting on the rock combing her yellow hair with a golden comb, or singing to the magic harp, with the music of the Rhine for the contrabasso, we fancy she is too naive and pretty not to be as good as she looks. The boatman who steers that way, and is caught in the whirlpool, will have another story to tell. So it is with our sthetic, scientific, curled and scented paganism, which cannot endure the harsh Christian doctrine, or its antiquated doctrine about the law of sin in our members.
Dr. William Barry.
Rom 7:23
Paul did not go to Adam and Genesis to get the essential testimony about sin. He went to experience for it. ‘I see,’ he says, ‘a law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity.’ This is the essential testimony respecting sin to Paul this rise of sin in his own heart and in the heart of all the men who hear him. At quite a later stage in his conception of the religious life, in quite a subordinate capacity, and for the mere purpose of illustration, comes in the allusion to Adam and to what is called original sin.
Matthew Arnold.
One of my most formidable enemies was a vivid and ill-trained imagination. Against outward and inward evils of this kind there existed a very powerful love of truth and purity, and great approval of and delight in the law of God. The antagonism of these two forces between the ages of twenty and twenty-six went nigh to threaten my reason. At length my deeply wounded conscience was pacified by faith in Christ, and a life of great happiness commenced, which still continues.
Smetham.
References. VII. 23. Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 311. T. Yates, The Examiner, 19th July, 1906, p. 697. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1459.
Rom 7:24
When we read the lives of those men who have had the deepest spiritual experience, to whom, on the one hand, the infinity of duty, the commandment exceeding broad, and, on the other, the depth of their own spiritual poverty, has been most laid bare we find them confessing that the seventh chapter of Romans describes their condition more truly than any philosopher has done. With their whole hearts they have felt St. Paul’s ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?’ Such are the men who, having themselves come out of great deeps, become the spirit-quickeners of their fellow-men, the revivers of a deeper morality. To all such there is a grim irony in the philosophic ideas when confronted with their own actuals. So hopelessly wide seems the gap between their own condition and the ‘thou shalt’ of the commandment. Not dead diagrams of virtue such men want, but living powers of righteousness. They do not quarrel with the moralists’ ideal, though it is neither the saints’ nor the poets’. They find no fault with his account of the faculty which discerns that ideal, though it is not exactly theirs. But what they ask is not the faculty to know the right, but the power to be righteous. It is because this they find not, because what reason commands, the will cannot be or do, that they are filled with despair. As well, they say, bid us lay our hand upon the stars because we see them, as realise your ideal of virtue because we discern it.
Principal Shairp.
References. VII. 24. G. C. Lorimer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 123. J. Johns, Preacher’s Magazine, vol. xix. p. 455. D. W. Simon, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 256. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 37. F. W. Farrar, Truths to Live By, p. 233. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 202.
Rom 7:24-25
But, oh! this it is which presseth me down and paineth me. Jesus Christ in His saints sitteth neighbour with our ill second, corruption, deadness, idleness, pride, lust, worldliness, self-love, security, falsehood, and a world of more the like, which I find in me, that are daily doing violence to the new man. Oh! but we have cause to carry low sails, and to cleave fast to free grace, free, free grace! Blessed be our Lord that ever that way was found out.
Samuel Rutherford.
There have been many in all ages, whether nursed in Christianity or no, whether they have been left unacquainted with the New Testament or whether it has remained to them not an unknown or incredible but an unmeaning tale, to whom at some crisis of their lives the record of St. Paul’s deliverance has come as life from the dead. The account of his case is also the account of theirs. A new man has been forming within them the sign of its presence being perhaps the more conscious antagonism of the old or a more wilful adherence to some mode of life or rule of action which has long ceased to satisfy but till it has received some assurance of Divine recognition and help, it is weak from ignorance of its proper strength, and is merely a source of inward unrest In the Gospel history, as interpreted by St. Paul, it finds the needed assurance.
T. H. Green.
References. VII. 24, 25. J. D. Thompson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 131. T. Arnold, Christian Life: Its Hopes, p. 313. C. J. Ball, The Saintly Calling, p. 121. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 235. VII. 25. Expositor (4th Series), vol. viii. p. 33; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 89. VII. 26. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 89.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
XV
SALVATION IN US
Rom 6:1-8:39
We have considered hitherto in this letter what salvation has done for us in redemption, justification and adoption. We have now before us in Rom 6:1-8:39 what salvation does in us in regeneration and sanctification of our souls, and in the resurrection and glorification of our bodies.
Two questions properly introduce this section. In Rom 3:21 he says, “But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” In view of this, in Rom 6:1 he asks, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” The meaning is this: Does salvation by grace through faith in a debt-paying substitute encourage to more sin, because the sinner does not himself pay the penalty, and thus by more sin give greater scope to superabounding grace? Or, does imputation of the penalty of sin in a substitute make void the law to the sinner personally? Or does God’s justification of the sinner, through faith, instead of his personal obedience, turn loose a defiled criminal on society eager to commit more crime because his future offenses, like his past offenses, will be charged to the substitute? These are pertinent questions of practical importance and if, indeed, this be the legitimate result of the gospel plan of salvation, it is worthy of rejection by all who love justice.
While we have already considered this matter somewhat, let us restate a reply embodying the substance of this section. The reply is in substance as follows: Whom God justifies them he also regenerates and sanctifies in soul and raises and glorifies in body. In the first element of regeneration the application of the blood of Christ by the Holy Spirit the sinner is cleansed from the defilement of sin. See Psa 51:2 ; Psa 51:7 ; Eze 36:25 ; Tit 3:5 , first clause. “The washing of regeneration,” Eph 5:26 ; “born of water,” Joh 3:5 , all of which is set forth in the type of the red heifer, Heb 9:13-14 , an Old Testament teaching for ignorance of which Christ condemned Nicodemus, Joh 3:10 . See also Rev 7:14 ; Rev 22:14 , revised version. So that the justified man is not turned loose a defiled criminal on society.
In the second element of regeneration the justified sinner is delivered from the love of sin by his renewed nature, Psa 51:10 ; Eze 36:26 ; Joh 3:3 ; Joh 3:5-6 , “born from above . . . born of the Spirit;” Tit 3:5 , second clause, “and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” So that the regenerate man has the spirit of obedience, Eze 36:27 ; Tutus Rom 2:11-14 ; Rom 3:8 . And while the obedience of the regenerate is imperfect, yet through sanctification, when it is consummated, the regenerate in soul is qualified to perfect obedience, Phi 1:6 ; Phi 3:12-14 ; 2Co 3:17-18 . And when the body is raised and glorified then this justified sinner has become personally, in soul and body, as holy and obedient as Jesus himself, 1Jn 3:2 ; Psa 17:15 , all of which is pictorially set forth in our baptism, Rom 6:4-5 ; Col 2:12 . So that faith not only does not make void the law to us personally, but is the only way by which we shall be made able to keep the law personally, and not only does not encourage to sin, but furnishes the only motives by which practically we cease from sin.
The doctrine of baptism as bearing upon this point set forth in Rom 6:1-11 is this: A justified and regenerate man is commanded to be baptized. Baptism symbolizes the burial of a dead man dead to his old life his cleansing from the sins of the old life, and this resurrection to a new life. Christ died on the cross for our sins once for all. Being dead he was buried, raised to a new life and exalted to a royal and priestly throne. All this, in the beginning of his public ministry, was prefigured in his own baptism. As he died for our sins, paying the law penalty, so we in regeneration become dead to law claims because we died to sin in his death. Being dead to the old life, we should be buried. This is represented in our baptism: “Buried in baptism.” But in regeneration we are not only slain, but made alive, or quickened. The living should not abide in the grave, therefore in our baptism there is also a symbol of our resurrection. But regeneration not only slays and makes alive, but cleanses, therefore in our baptism we are symbolically cleansed from sin, as was said to Paul, “Arise, and be baptized and wash away thy sins.” So that not only both elements of regeneration, cleansing and renewal of soul are set forth pictorially in our baptism, but also the coming resurrection and glorification of our bodies.
In Rom 6:7 we have this language: “For he that hath died is justified from sin.” That means that there are two ways in which one can satisfy the law and meet all of its claims. He can either do it by perfectly obeying the law, or he can do it by meeting the penalty of the law. Therefore it says, “He that hath died is justified from sin.” It is just like an ordinary debt. If one pays the debt he is justified from the claim. If a man commits an offense and the law decision is that he suffer the penalty of two years in the penitentiary, and he serves the two years in the penitentiary, he is justified in the eyes of the law. The law can’t take him up and try him again. While the disobedience of the law is not justified in obedience, he has paid the full penalty. Now to make the application of that: Christ died for our sins; we died in his death, just as we died in Adam and came under condemnation for it. Now when we die with Christ, that death on the cross justifies us from sin. That is what it means.
The next point is the argument from the meaning of the declaration that he that is dead is justified from sin. That argument is presented in Rom 6:12-13 , and the reason for it is given in Rom 6:14 . Let us look at those verses. If we be dead to sin we should not let sin reign in our mortal body that we should obey the lusts thereof. Neither present our members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present ourselves unto God as alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. The reason assigned is, “For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace.” In other words, “It is true that you didn’t pay that law claim, but your substitute paid it, and that puts you from under the law of condemnation. Now if you set out to pay, you set out to pay unto grace. The spirit of obedience in you is not of fear, but of love to him that died for you.” That is what is called being under grace in a matter of obedience and not under law.
What is the force of the question, “Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace?” In other words, “Because my obedience is not a condition of my salvation, shall I therefore sin?” That is the thought, and his argument against that is this: “God forbid. Know ye not that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” If a man presents himself unto grace as the principle of obedience, then it is not a life and death matter, but it is a matter of love and gratitude. It is on a different principle entirely. And in a very elaborate way he continues the argument down to verse Rom 6:23 : “For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Let us now explain the contrast in Rom 6:23 and give the argument. Here he contrasts two things, (1) the wages. This is a matter of law wages. (2) Over against that stands gift free gift. That is not a matter of wages. The wages of sin is death that is the penalty but now the free gift is eternal life. It is impossible to put his meaning any plainer than these words put it: “Are you expecting to be saved on the ground of earning your salvation as wages, or are you expecting to be saved through the free gift of God unto eternal life?” That is the thought.
Let us see the force of the illustration in Rom 7:2 : “For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the husband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is discharged from the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband liveth, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man.” The force of that as an illustration of the married life is: “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” The obligation of a wife to a husband, and their fidelity to each other, is a matter of law growing out of the relation that holds them together. So long as a husband lives and a wife lives, neither one of them can be free to marry except in a certain case, and that exception is discussed elsewhere. He is just discussing the general principles here. Now apply that illustration: “The law holds you to absolute fidelity in obedience just as the law holds the woman bound to her husband, and the husband to his wife. If you died with Christ, you are dead to that law, and therefore you can enter into another relation. You are espoused to Christ. The law that binds you now is the law of that espousal to Christ, and that is the law of freedom; not like the other, it is a matter of grace.” That is the force of that statement.
Then in Rom 7:7 , “Is the law sin?” That is an important question and he answers it. Some things in connection with it have already been answered, and in answering it particularly I will take the following position:
(1) The law is not sin. It is holy, it is just, it is good. What, then, is the relation of the law to sin? He says here that it gives the knowledge of sin: “I had not known sin except through the law.” If people were living according to different standards, every man being a judge in his own case, what A would think to be right B would think to be wrong, and vice versa. People would think conflicting things, and as long as a man held himself to be Judge of what was right and what was wrong he would not feel that he was a sinner. So the real standard, not a sliding scale, is put down among all the varying ideas of right and wrong. What is the object? It is to reveal the lack of conformity to the law: “I had not known sin, except through the law.”
(2) The second reason is that it provokes to sin. He says, “Sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me.” If children were forbidden to climb telephone poles they would all desire to climb them, and they would never think of it if they were not forbidden. So that law was designed to show just what inherent nature will bring out. A snake is very pretty at certain times, and one may think that the enmity between him and the human race is hardly justifiable, but let him give a snake the opportunity to develop just what is in him, and then he will have a different opinion. Who would have supposed that it was in human nature to do the things done in the French Revolution? Man is a good sort of creature; he would not impale a body on a bayonet; he would not burn a woman at the stake; he would not put their fingers in a thumbscrew; he would not put a man on the rack and torture him; but nobody knows the evil that is in human nature until it has a chance to show what is in it.
(3) The law brings all that out; hence, one object of the law is to make sin appear to be sin, and to be exceeding sinful to make it seem what it is, and not just a peccadillo, or a misdemeanor, but an exceedingly vile, ghastly, and hateful thing.
(4) Then the object of the law is to work death: “Sin, taking occasion by the law, beguiled and slew me.” The death there referred to is the death in one’s own mind. It means conviction that one is lost that is the death he is talking about. For he explains immediately, where he says, “I was alive apart from the law once,” that is, he felt like he was all right, but when the commandment came he saw that he was a dead man under condemnation of death. And that is one of the works of the Holy Spirit bringing about conviction, making a man see that he is a sinner, making him feel that he is a sinner, that he is exceeding sinful.
And we may distrust any kind of preaching that is dry-eyed, that has no godly sorrow, that has no repentance. If one thinks that he is a very little sinner, then a very little Saviour is needed. We depreciate our Saviour just to the extent that we extenuate our sin.
The next passage is also of real importance, (Rom 7:15-25 ). There is only one important question on it: “Is the experience there related the experience of a converted man, or of an unconverted man?” If one wants to see how men dissent on it, let him read his commentaries.
Let us see some of the points: “That which I do I know not [the word “know” is used in the sense of approve]; for not what I would, that do I practice; but what I hate, that I do. But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that it is good. So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me . . . For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practice. But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” Now is that a saved or an unsaved man? Our Methodist brethren tell us that that is the experience of an unsaved man; that we don’t get to conversion until we come to Rom 8 . I say that there we strike sanctification. The point is this: If the mind of the flesh the carnal mind is enmity against God, if it is not subject to the law of God, and neither indeed can be, then how can that mind, “delight in the law of God in the inward man?” How can he approve that which is good? From Rom 7:16 to the end of Rom 7 he discusses a certain imperfection attending the regenerate state. The experience of every regenerate man will corroborate this: “I know a certain thing is right. I am ashamed to say I didn’t do it; I know a certain thing is wrong, and I approve the law that makes it wrong, and I am ashamed to say I have done that very thing.” And if there is one thing that disturbs the Christian and troubles him, it is to find a law in his members warring against the law of his mind. That is expressed here: “Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” That expression of Paul’s has been (and I think rightly) supposed to refer to an ancient penalty inflicted on a man that had committed a certain offense. He was chained to a dead body, and he had to carry that dead body with him everywhere he went. He alive, that body dead, he would want a pure atmosphere to inhale, and that body would be exhaling the stench of corruption. It was a miserable condition: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
One of the great French preachers preached on that subject before Louis XIV. We find a reference to it in Strong’s Systematic Theology . He was talking about the two l’s; “that which I approve I do not; that which I would not do that I do.” And the French preacher was pointing out the two men in a man, and how they fought against each other, and the king interrupted him in his sermon and said, “Ah, I know those two men.” The preacher pointed at him and said, “Sire, it is somewhat to know them, but, your majesty, one or the other of them must die.” It isn’t enough just to know them; one or the other of them is going ultimately to triumph. What is the meaning of Rom 8:4 : “That the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”? Here is the fulfilment in us. It is not imputed righteousness that is being discussed here; that is justification. But it is the object of regeneration and sanctification to make a personal righteousness. The object of regeneration and sanctification is that in us the law might be fulfilled as well as for us in the death of Christ. That is the meaning of the passage, and it is one of the profoundest gratifications to me that my salvation does not stop at justification. I am glad to think that the law has no claims on me, but I could not be happy, being only justified and loving sin. I not only want to be delivered from sin but from the love of sin in regeneration, and the dominion of sin in sanctification.
The apostle describes the two minds in Rom 8:5-8 : “For they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh.” Here flesh does not mean the body. The flesh does not mean the tissues and the blood. That would constitute only a physical man. What he means by the flesh is the carnal mind. Now he is discussing the two. He continues: “But they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.” There are the two minds: “For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace: because the mind of the flesh is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be; they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” It is just like trying to wash away the soul’s sins in water.
We might take the sinner up and hold him under Niagara Falls and let it pour on him for ten thousand years and we could never wash away the soul’s sins. It was impossible for the blood of bullocks to take away sin. It is impossible for the water of baptism to take away sin. This carnal mind cannot be made into a Christian. We can whitewash it, and there are many preachers that do that sort of business. It may be outwardly beautiful, like a tomb, but inwardly it is full of rottenness and dead men’s bones.
QUESTIONS
1. What has been considered in this letter hitherto?
2. What now before us in Rom 6:1-8 -39?
3. What two questions properly introduce this section, and what their meaning?
4. What of the significance of these questions?
5. What is the reply to them embodying the substance of this section?
6. What is the doctrine of baptism bearing upon this point set forth in Rom 6:1-11 ?
7. What is the meaning of Rom 6:7 : “He that hath died is justified from sin”?
8. What is the argument based upon that statement?
9. What is the force of the question, “Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace”?
10. What is the contrast and argument in Rom 6:23 ?
11. What is the illustration in Rom 7:2 , and what the force of it?
12. In the law sin? If not, what its relation to sin?
13. Expound the passage, Rom 7:15-25 .
14. What is the meaning and application of Rom 8:4 ?
15. How does the apostle describe the two minds, and what the teaching?
XVI
SALVATION IN US (CONTINUED)
Rom 6:1-8:39
In this chapter we continue the discussion of salvation in us, or regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. Regeneration is a change of mind. The carnal mind cannot be made into a Christian, hence there must be a change. Is the change simply using the old mind, but modifying it, or is it a change like this: A woman put her baby in the cradle at night and the next morning there was another baby in the cradle which she called the changeling? That was not any imitation of the baby that was in there before. Just so we waste our time if we try to make a Christian out of the carnal mind. We can’t do it. That is why regeneration is called a creation, which is to make something out of nothing not out of a material having already existed.
What Paul is expressing here is that we may take the fallen nature of man which he has inherited from Adam and commence an educational process in the cradle, and continue it up to the adult stage and get a very respectable church member, but not a saved person.
Education has no creative power at all. He may be very proper in his behavior; he may pay the preacher; he may go to Sunday school; he may do everything in the world that will enable him to appear to be a Christian, and yet not be a Christian. There must be a breaking up of the fallow ground. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Except ye be born from above, ye cannot even see the kingdom of heaven.”
The conclusion reached by the apostle in this argument is in Rom 8:11 : “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Now the question, Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, this evil mind this evil body? It comes through Christ, but it is Christ working through the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that made Christ’s body alive; it is the Holy Spirit that will make our bodies alive at the resurrection; it is the Holy Spirit that will glorify these bodies and when they come out they will be spiritual bodies and not carnal bodies.
There is a test presented in verse Rom 8:14 : “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” Who are God’s children? Those that have the Spirit those that are led by the Spirit. We are regenerated by the Spirit, and under the guidance of that Spirit we turn away from sin. If we fall we try to fall toward heaven, and get up and try again. There is a sense of wanting to get nearer and nearer to God. We want to know whether we are Christians. Here is the test: We are led by the Spirit of God.
That brings us to the word “adoption.” What is adoption? Etymologically it is that legal process by which one, not a member of a family naturally, is legally made a member of it and an heir. There are three kinds of adoption which the apostle discusses in this letter:
1. National adoption, Rom 9:4 : “My kinsman according to the flesh who are Israelites, whose is the adoption.” Many times in the Old Testament Israel is called God’s son, the nation as a nation being his particular people.
2. The adoption of the soul of the justified man, Rom 8:15 : “Ye received the spirit of adoption.”
3. The adoption of our bodies when they are redeemed from the grave and glorified, Rom 8:23 : “Waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
The fact of our adoption is certified to us in Rom 8:15-16 : “For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God.” That is a matter of our subjective experience. As in the case of justification there must be a difference of time between the fact of our justification and our realization of its privileges, so there must be and indeed often is a difference in time between the fact of our adoption and our realization in experience that we are adopted. The cry, “Abba, Father,” means that in our experience a filial feeling toward God comes into the heart. Antecedent to this when we thought of God he seemed to us to be distant and dreadful, but when through the Holy Spirit given unto us came this conscious realization that God is a Father, it drove out all fear.
We do not feel ourselves under bondage to law, but we have the sense in our hearts of being God’s children, and as a little child readily approaches a parent in expectation of either help or comfort, we have this feeling toward our heavenly Father. It is one of the sweetest experiences of the Christian life. There is no distinction of meaning between the spirit of adoption and the Spirit’s bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, or if there is a distinction it is not appreciable in our consciousness, since it is the Spirit that bestows that filial feeling.
As an illustration of this filial feeling in the heart I cite a story of the west well-known to our boys. While two children, a little boy and his sister, were playing, the boy was stolen by the Indians and reared among them until he caught the spirit of an Indian and gloried in the Indian life. Finally he became chief of the tribe. In a war between his tribe and the white people, he was captured and it was discovered that he was not an Indian but a white man. Finally the proof accumulated as to who were his parents, yet he refused to acknowledge them. With the sullenness of a captured Indian he pined away for the wigwams and the freedom of his Indian life. Every effort to make him realize that he was a white man failed until his sister, then a grown woman, brought the toys with which the two were playing when the boy was stolen. As he looked at them his memory awakened and he stretched out his hands and claimed them as his and said, “Where is my mother?” Now here in him was a consciousness of filial feeling towards his parents from whom he had been so long alienated. Analogous to this very impression is our experience that God is our Father.
In a vivid way the apostle represents the earth, man’s habitat, as entering sympathetically into man’s longing for his complete restoration to God’s favor through adoption, Rom 8:20-23 : “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” the meaning of which is that this earth was made for man; to him was given dominion over it, but when he sinned the earth was cursed. In the language of the scripture, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” In Isa 55:12-13 , we have this vivid imagery following conversion: “The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing; and all of the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” In other words, the joy that is in the heart of the Christian constitutes a medium of rose color through which all creation seems to him more beautiful than it was before. The birds sing sweeter, the flowers exhale a sweeter perfume, the stars shine brighter, all of which is a sign, or forecast, of the redemption of the earth from the curse when man’s redemption is complete. This curse as originally pronounced upon the earth was not through any fault of creation, as our text says: “Subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who had subjected it in hope.” And very impressive and vivid is the imagery that the groaning of the earth is as travail, waiting to be redeemed from the defilement and scars and crimson stains that have been put upon it through man’s inhumanity to man on account of sin.
Other scriptures very clearly show that this redemption of the earth accompanies the redemption of man. As the earth was cleansed from defilement of sin practiced by the antediluvians through the flood, so at the coming of our Lord and the resurrection of our bodies it will be purged by fire. The language of the apostle Peter upon this subject is very impressive: “For this they wilfully forget that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God; by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens that now are and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. . . . But the day of the Lord will come as a thief: in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? But according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2Pe 3:5-7 ; 2Pe 3:10-13 ). In John’s apocalypse, referring to the restitution of all things after the judgment, he says, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more” (Rev 21:1 ). This is the day of fire referred to in Mal 4:1-3 : “For, behold, the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace; and all the proud, and all that work wickedness, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith Jehovah of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and gambol as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under soles of your feet in the day that I make, saith Jehovah of hosts.” This is the day of fire which the apostle Paul says shall try every man’s work: “But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire” (1Co 3:12-15 ).
In continuation of the theme of this section the apostle further shows the power of the work of salvation in us through the Holy Spirit the Paraclete. But the Greek word Paraclete needs to be defined. While our Lord was on the earth he was the paraclete, to whom as the paraclete the disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray,” and in many examples of his own praying and in many special lessons on prayer he taught the disciples, and they were sad at heart when at the last supper he announced his speedy going away from them, but comforted them with the assurance that he would pray the Father to send them another paraclete the Holy Spirit, who would teach them to pray acceptably. Prayers not according to the will of God are not answered. We may ask for things, being in doubt as to whether it is God’s will that such things should be granted, but the Holy Spirit is not in doubt. He knows what is according to the will of God, and hence when he moves us intensely to offer prayers those prayers will always be according to God’s will, and so will be answered. Thus while Jesus in heaven makes intercession for us before the mercy seat, the other Paraclete the Holy Spirit here on earth makes intercession in us. We are not to understand that the Holy Spirit directly prays for the Christian, but his method of intercession is to prompt us to make the right intercession, and it is in that way that he makes intercession for us. He teaches us how to pray, and what to pray for. That is why great revivals of religion are in connection with these spiritual prayers offered by God’s people. Hence the prophet says, “Thorns and briers shall come up on the land of my people till the Spirit is poured out from on high.”
The most vivid illustration of the thought is found in the prophecy Zechariah in connection with an event yet in the future, to wit, the salvation of the Jewish nation. The language is,
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. In that day shall there by a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Meggidon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the houses of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of the Shimeites apart, and their wives apart; all the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. Zec 12:10-13:1 .
It is on account of the Spirit’s intercession in us that backsliders are ever reclaimed. As we wander away from God we lose the spirit of prayer, and while we go through with the forms of prayer we are conscious that our prayers do not rise, do not take hold of the throne of God, but when the Spirit comes upon the backslider then his hard heart is melted, the fountain of his tears is unsealed, the spirit of grace and supplication comes upon him, and he is conscious that he is taking hold of the throne of mercy in his prayers.
As an illustration, many Texans have experienced the hardships of a long-continued drought, when the heavens seem to be brass and the earth seems to be iron. When vegetation dies, when dust chokes the traveler on the thoroughfare, and thirst consumes him, suddenly he comes to a well and in it is an old-fashioned pump. He leaps down from his horse, rushes to the pump, but in moving its handle he causes only a dry rattle. The reason is that through very long disuse and heat the valves of the pump have shrunk and hence cannot make suction to draw up the water. In such case water must be poured down the pump until the valves are swollen, and then as the pump handle is worked, suction draws the water as freely as at first. As that pouring the water from above down the dry pump is to its efficacy in bringing water up, so is the Spirit’s intercession in us, causing us to pray successfully and according to the will of God. In that way the two elements of the gospel plan of salvation cooperate to the everlasting security of the believer. At the heaven end of the line Jesus, the first Advocate, or Paraclete, makes intercession for us as High Priest, pleading what his expiation has done for us, while the Holy Spirit, the second Advocate, or Paraclete, works in us an intercession for us here on earth. So that both ends of the line are secure in heaven above and on earth beneath. No backslider has ever been able to work himself into the true spirit of prayerfulness any more than a dry pump can be made to bring up water by working the handle. Whenever he does pray prevailingly, it is when the Spirit works in him the grace of supplication.
QUESTIONS
1. What is regeneration? negatively and positively?
2. What is the real import of what Paul says about it?
3. What is the conclusion reached by Paul in this argument?
4. What is the test presented in Rom 8:14 ?
5. What is adoption?
6. What are the three kinds of adoption which the apostle discusses in this letter?
7. How is the fact of our adoption certified to us?
8. What is the meaning of the soul’s cry, “Abba, Father”?
9. Is there any distinction between the spirit of adoption and the Spirit’s bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God? If so, what?
10. Illustrate the filial feeling that comes to us when we are saved.
11. In what vivid way does Paul represent the earth, man’s habitat, as entering sympathetically into man’s longing for his complete restoration to God’s favor through adoption?
12. What other scriptures very clearly show this redemption of the earth accompanying the redemption of man?
13. In continuation of the theme of this section, how does the apostle further show the power of the work of salvation in us?
14. Expound and illustrate this passage.
XVII
THE FINAL WORK OF SALVATION IN US
Rom 6:1-8:39
The final work of salvation in us is expressed in Rom 8:23 the redemption of our body concerning which he adds: “For in hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which he seeth? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” The body is an essential part of the normal man, who was made dual in nature, and even in paradise God had provided for the elimination of the mortality of man’s body, through the continued eating of the tree of life. But the immortality of the body in sin would have been an unspeakable curse to man, and hence God, in expelling man from the garden, said, “Lest he put forth his hand and take of the tree of life and live forever.” But when our souls are regenerated the hope enters the heart that the body also will be saved, and we wait patiently for that part of our salvation. While the meaning of a passage in Job is somewhat disputable, the author believes that the common version is correct. It expresses the idea of Job in these words: Oh, that my words wee now written) Oh, that they were inscribed in a book I That with an iron pen and lead They were graven in the rock forever! But as for me, I know that my redeemer liveth, And that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, Yet in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, And not another: though my reins be consumed within me. Job 19:23-27 .
And the passage is akin to the expression in Psa 17:15 : “I will be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness.” This harmonizes with another very striking passage in Job: For there is hope of a tree, If it be cut down, that it will sprout again, And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old ill the earth, And the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, And put forth boughs like a plant. But a man dieth, and is laid low: Yea, mail giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, And the river wasteth and drieth up; So man lieth down and riseth not: Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, Nor be roused out of their sleep. Oh, that thou wouldst hide me in Sheol, That thou wouldst keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, That thou wouldst appoint me a set time, and remember met If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my warfare would I wait, Till my release should come. Thou wouldst call, and I would answer thee: Thou wouldst have a desire to the work of thy hands. Job 14:7-15 .
Here Job is deeply impressed with the hope of a tree cut down reviving. There is a resurrection for it, but he Bays, “When a man dies, where is he [that is, as to his soul] and if a man die shall he [as to his body] live again?” Inasmuch as the body was the work of God’s hands and originally intended to be immortal, he expresses the hope that God would hide him in the grave and appoint a set time to remember him there and then desire the work of his hands and call him forth from his long sleep.
The fulness of the salvation in us is the regeneration of the soul, its ultimate sanctification, and the resurrection and glorification of the body. It has ever been impossible to satisfy the cravings of a human heart with the hope of soul salvation only. It is ingrained in the very constitution of our being that we long for the revivification of the body. A bird escaping from its shell to fly with a new life in the air cares nothing for the cast-off shell. A butterfly emerging from the chrysalis state cares nothing for the shell that is left behind. But from the beginning of time, through this ingrained hope of immortality for the body, man has cared for the body shell after the spirit has escaped. It is evidenced in the care for the dead body characteristic of all nations. It is evidenced in the names given to graveyards. They are called cemeteries, that is, sleeping places. It is evident in the sculpture on the tombstones and in the inscriptions thereon, all tending to show that man desires an answer to the question, “If I die, shall I live again?” And the thought being, not with reference to the continuity of existence in his spiritual nature, but in his body. Hence the resurrection of the dead is made in the Christian system, a pivotal doctrine, as we learn from the letter to the Corinthians: that our faith is vain, our preaching is vain, we are yet in our sins, our fathers have perished and God’s apostles are false witnesses, if the dead rise not. That is the conclusion of the doctrine of salvation in us. All the rest of Rom 8 is devoted to a new theme.
THE EVERLASTING SECURITY OF THOSE WHO ARE JUSTIFIED BY FAITH
The argument extends from Rom 8:26 to the end of the chapter, and it is perhaps the most remarkable paragraph in inspired literature. It should be memorized by every Christian. Every thought in it has been the theme of consolatory and encouraging preaching.
Let us now consider item by item this argument on the security of the believer:
1. He takes the latitudinal view, from top to bottom. Down here he finds a Christian. Up yonder at the other end of the line is the Advocate. But there is an Advocate here, too. And these Advocates, one here on earth in the depths, and the other yonder in the heights of heaven, are going to see to it that that Christian gets there all right through prayer and faith. If a Christian sins, he must confess it and ask God to forgive him. Sometimes he has not the spirit of prayer and does not feel like asking. But God provides an advocate, the Holy Spirit, that puts into his heart the spirit of grace and supplication. And the Holy Spirit not only shows him what to pray for, but how to pray. That makes things secure at this end of the line. Up yonder the advocate in heaven, Jesus Christ the righteous, takes these petitions that the Spirit inspired on earth and goes before the Father, and pointing to the sufficiency of his shed blood in his death on the cross, secures this salvation from depth to height.
2. The unbroken sweep of the providence of God: “To them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose.”
With Christ on the mediatorial throne in heaven holding in his hand the scepter of universal dominion, constraining everything beings in heaven above and on the earth beneath and in hell below to work, not tangentially, but together for good not evil to them that love God, in the sweep of this providence all elements and forces of the material world and the spiritual world, are laid under tribute fire, earth, air, storms and earthquakes, pestilences, good angels and bad, the passions of men, the revolutions in human government all are made, under the directing power of Jesus our King, to conspire to our good. Fortune and misfortune, good report and evil report, sickness or health, life or death, prosperity or adversity, it is all one the power of God is over them all. Satan is not permitted to put even the weight of a little finger upon the Christian to worry him except in the direction that God will permit, and that will be overruled for his good.
3. This sweep of providential government under our mediatorial King accords with a linked chain of correlative doctrines reaching from eternity before time to eternity after time. The links of this chain are thus expressed in Rom 8:29-30 : “For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Before there was any world, a covenant of grace and mercy was entered into between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the evidences of which covenant are abundant in the New Testament, and the parts to be performed by each person of the God-head are clearly expressed, viz.: The Father’s grace and love in agreeing to send the Son, his covenant obligation to give the Son a seed, his foreknowledge of this seed, his predestination concerning this seed, his justification and adoption of them here in time.
Then the Son’s covenant was the obligation to assume human nature in his incarnation, voluntarily renouncing the glory that he had with the Father before the world was, and in this incarnation of humility to become obedient unto the death of the cross. The consideration held out before him, as a hope set before him, inducing him to endure the shame of the cross, and the reward bestowed upon him because of that obedience, was his resurrection, his glorification, his exaltation to the royal priestly throne and his investment with the right of judgment. And then the Spirit’s covenant-obligations were to apply this work of redemption in calling, convicting, regenerating, sanctifying and raising from the dead the seed promised to the Son, the whole of it showing that the plan of salvation was not an afterthought; that the roots of it in election and predestination are both in eternity before the world was, and the fruits of it are in eternity after the judgment. The believer is asked to consider this chain, test each link, shake it and hear it rattle, connected from eternity to eternity.
Every one that God chose in Christ is drawn by the Spirit to Christ. Every one predestinated is called by the Spirit in time, and justified in time, and will be glorified when the Lord comes.
4. It is impossible for finite beings to say anything against the grounds of this security, because “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Because, “He that spared not his own Son, to deliver him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?” Then the challenge is sent to the universe to find anyone who can lay any charge against God’s elect who in heaven, who among the angels, good or bad, who on the earth? No charge can be brought against a believer because it is God, the Supreme Judge, who has justified him. Justification is the verdict, or declaration, of the supreme court of heaven that in Christ the sinner is acquitted. This decision is rendered once for all, is inexorable and irreversible. It is registered in the book of life, and in the great judgment day that book will be the test book on the throne of the judgment. Whatever may be brought out from all the books that are opened, none of them are decisive and ultimate but one the book of life and it is not a docket of cases to be tried on that day, but is a register of judicial decisions already rendered; “and it shall come to pass that whosoever is not found already written in that book shall be cast into the lake of fire.” Therefore the thrill excited in the heart by that song which our congregations so often used to sing: When Thou my righteous Judge shall come, To take thy ransomed people home Shall I among them stand? Shall I, who sometimes am afraid to die Be found at thy right hand? 0, can I bear the piercing thought, What if my name should be left out!
5. The ground of this salvation is what Christ does. Spurgeon calls Rom 8:34 the four pillars upon which rests the whole superstructure of salvation. They are: (a) The death of Christ, (b) The resurrection of Christ, (c) The exaltation of Christ to the kingly throne, (d) His intercession as our great High Priest. These four doctrines are strictly correlative they fit into one another. The soul of the Christian does not at the beginning realize the strength of his salvation. Many a one has simply believed on Christ as a Saviour without ever analyzing in his own mind, or separating from each other in thought, the several things done by Christ in order to his salvation. But as he grows in knowledge of these things, he grows in grace and assurance. It was some time after my own soul was saved before I ever understood fully the power of Christ’s exaltation, or kingly throne, and still longer before I understood the power of his intercession. I got to the comfort of this last thought one day in reading a passage in Hebrews. “Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing be ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25 ). I had never before seen the difference between salvation in justification and salvation to the uttermost. In the same way we may not realize in our joy of regeneration the power of his continuing that good work in us until the day of Jesus Christ, and the great value of the Spirit’s work in taking the things of Christ and showing them to us. And as we learn each office of Christ, and just what he does in that office, the greater our sense of security. He is prophet, sacrifice, king, priest, leader, and judge.
6. The final argument underlying the security of the believer is presented in Rom 8:35-37 , that none can separate us from the love of Christ after our union is established with him. The words here are, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? In all these things we are more than conquerors.” The argument is in full accord with the statement of our Lord, Joh 10:29 : “My Father, who hath given them unto me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” It is further expressed in another passage by the apostle when he says, “I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him against that day.” And it is further expressed in the seal of the Holy Spirit. We are sealed “unto the day of redemption.”
When I was a schoolboy I was wonderfully stirred by an eloquent sermon preached by J. R. Graves in which he pointed out that fact that by faith we commit our lives to Jesus; that life is hid with Christ in God; that life is sealed with the impression of the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption, and then he asked, “Who can pluck that life out of the hands of God?” drawing this vivid picture: “If hell should open her yawning mouth and all of the demons of the pit should issue forth like huge vampires darkening water and land, could they break that seal of God? Could they soar to the heights of heaven? Could they scale its battlements? Could they beat back the angels that guard its walls? Could they penetrate into the presence of the Holy One on his eternal throne, and reach out their demon-claws and pluck our life from the bosom of God where it is hid with Christ in God?”
The pages of religious persecution are very bloody; rack, thumbscrews and fagot have been employed. Confiscation of property, expatriation from country, and bounding pursuit of the exile in foreign lands, exposedness to famine and nakedness and sword and other perils, and yet never has this persecution been able to effect a separation of the believer from his Lord. Roman emperors tried it, Julian the apostate tried it, Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V, their son, and Philip II, his son, all tried it in their time. The inquisition held its secret court; war, conflagration, and famine wrought their ruin, but the truth prevailed.
All this illustrates the truth that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The Genevan, the German, the English State churches have tried, in emulation of the Romanist union of church and state, to crush out the true spirit” of Christianity. They have been able merely to scatter the fires, to make them burn over a wider territory as it is expressed concerning the decree to scatter the ashes of Wycliffe in the river.
Now upon these arguments, the two intercessors, the sweep of God’s providence, the link chain reaching from eternity to eternity, the impossibility of any being laying a charge against one whom God has justified, the four pillars, the inability of man or devil to separate from Christ upon these, the apostle reaches this persuasion:
“For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
QUESTIONS
1. What is the final work of salvation in us?
2. What provision did God first make for the immortality of man’s body?
3. What defeated that plan, and how is this immortality finally accomplished?
4. What is Job’s testimony to this hope; What the interpretation of the passage?
5. How is this hope in man evidenced in a singular way?
6. How does Paul elsewhere make the resurrection a pivotal doctrine in the Christian system?
7. Name the six arguments for the security of those who are justified by faith as taught in Rom 8 .
8. Explain the argument based on the two intercessors.
9. What is the providential argument, and what does it include?
10. What is the link chain argument, and how many and what links in the chain?
11. In the covenant of grace, what are the parts to be performed by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively?
12. What is the nonchargeable elect argument, and what the book of life cited in this connection?
13. Recite the stanza from the old song given in this connection.
14. What is the ground of this salvation, and what the four-pillar argument?
15. Show how one may not comprehend all this when first converted, and how he may afterwards get great strength from it.
16. What the nonseparation argument, what J. R. Graves’, illustration of it, and how do the persecutions inflicted upon God’s people illustrate a great scripture truth?
17. In view of these arguments, what is Paul’s persuasion?
1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
Ver. 1. Know ye not, brethren ] Bellarmine saith of his Romans (more true perhaps of these), Romani sicut non acumina, ita nec imposturas habent. As they are not very knowing, so not cunning to deceive.
1 6. ] The explanation and proof of the assertion ch. Rom 6:14 , , : the answer to the question of Rom 6:15 having occupied Rom 6:16-23 .
1 4. ] The Christian is dead to the law by being dead with Christ, and has become His .
1. ] Connect with ch. Rom 6:14 , which is in fact the sentence immediately preceding. Reiche and Meyer connect with Rom 6:23 ; ‘The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord: this you can only doubt by being ignorant,’ &c.
Krehl believes ch. 7 to be the expansion of ‘Death is the wages of sin,’ and ch. 8, of ‘the free gift of God is eternal life.’ But not only does this division not hold, for much of ch. 8 regards the conflict with sin and infirmity, but the prominence of as the subject here forbids the connexion with .
The steps of the proof are these: The law binds a man only so long as he lives ( Rom 7:1 ): e.g. a married woman is only bound to her husband so long as he lives ( Rom 7:2-3 ): so also the Christian being dead with Christ and alive to Him is freed from the law ( Rom 7:4 ).
] Not addressed particularly to Jewish Christians: see below: but generally to the Roman church.
. . .] For I am speaking (writing) to men acquainted with the law ; i.e. the persons to whom I address this epistle are such as know the law: not ‘I speak to those who know the law,’ as if he were now addressing a different class of persons, which would require , see Gal 4:21 . Nor does the knowledge of the law here affirmed of the Romans prove that the majority of them were Jewish Christians: they may have been Gentile proselytes.
. . . ] that the (Mosaic: for of that, and not of any other law, is the whole argument) law hath power over a man (not . , ‘a man’s law,’ and absolute, ‘has dominion,’ as Hamm. and Dr. Burton, which is very questionable Greek and still worse sense) as long time as he (the man, see Rom 7:4 ; Rom 7:6 : not the law , as Origen, Erasm., Grot., Estius, al., which would introduce the irrelevant question of the abrogation of the law , whereas the whole matter in argument is the relation of the Christian to the law) lives .
Rom 1:18 to Rom 11:36 . ] THE DOCTRINAL EXPOSITION OF THE ABOVE TRUTH: THAT THE GOSPEL IS THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION TO EVERY ONE THAT BELIEVETH. And herein, ch. Rom 1:18 to Rom 3:20 , inasmuch as this power of God consists in the revelation of God’s righteousness in man by faith, and in order to faith the first requisite is the recognition of man’s unworthiness, and incapability to work a righteousness for himself, the Apostle begins by proving that all, Gentiles and Jews, are GUILTY before God, as holding back the truth in unrighteousness. And FIRST, ch. Rom 1:18-32 , OF THE GENTILES.
12 8:39. ] THE POWER OF GOD (ch. Rom 1:16 ) IS SET FORTH AS FREEING FROM THE DOMINION OF SIN AND DEATH, AND ISSUING IN SALVATION.
Rom 7:1-6 . For , cf. Rom 6:3 . Chap. 6 contains the argument which is illustrated in these verses, and the question alludes to it: not to accept the argument that the Christian is free from all legal obligations leaves no alternative but to suppose the persons to whom it is addressed ignorant of the principle by which the duration of all legal obligations is determined. This they cannot be, for Paul speaks = to people who know what law is. Neither Roman nor Mosaic law is specially referred to: the argument rests on the nature of law in general. Even in , though in applying the principle Paul would think first of the Mosaic law, it is not exclusively referred to.
Romans Chapter 7
The apostle had already laid down that sin should not have dominion over the Christian, because he is not under law but under grace. He now unfolds the relations of the believer, even had he been a Jew, to the law; and this he does with admirable wisdom which the mass of his best expositors that it has been my lot to see, not to speak of others, have failed to appreciate
“Or are ye ignorant, brethren, for I speak to [men] knowing law, that the law has dominion over the man as long time as he lives? For the married woman is bound to the living husband by law; but if the husband die, she is discharged from the law of the husband.” (Ver. 1, 2.) Thus death is the grand principle, as with sin, so with law. It is indeed a confessed and universal axiom. It was fitting to take up the woman rather than the man, because he is treating of our responsibility to do the will of the Lord; and it is emphatically the woman’s place to obey her husband. But this, as he demonstrates, is quite independent of the law, which simply deals with man alive in the flesh. Now his thesis in the preceding chapter was the death of the Christian with Christ, which is no less true and forcible when applied to the law as to sin. During the husband’s life the wife is bound; if he have died, she is quit. Death severs the bond. “Therefore then, while the husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress, if she belong to another man. But if the husband die, she is free from the law so as not to be an adulteress by belonging to another man.” (Ver. 3.) It is difficult to conceive a blow more destructive to the common notion of putting the Christian under the law as his rule of life. Two husbands are intolerable. Not only is the law not the actual husband, but the apostle will not hear of Christ and the law. It must be Christ alone. To admit of any other association is to be false to Him. If the law had been the old husband, such is no longer the relationship of the Christian. Death having come in, the former obligation terminates, and there is freedom to belong to another without fear of adultery, even to Christ exclusively. Compare for our practice Phi 3:13 , Phi 3:14 .
“So that, my brethren, ye also have been put to death to the law by the body of Christ that ye should belong to another – him that was raised out of [the] dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.” (Ver. 5.) Far from its being the aim of God to maintain the rule of the law, the express design and effect of grace is to bring the Christian (even if a Jew formerly) out of the old relationship into an absolutely new one founded on the death of Christ, that he should henceforth belong exclusively to Him risen from among the dead, and this in order to glorify God by fruits acceptable to Him.
It will be observed, however, that the apostle carefully abstains from the least insinuation that the law is dead. Not so does God deliver. The law lives to curse and kill all within its sphere. But we by death with Christ pass out of its power to touch us; and having a new husband, even Christ risen, we dare not allow any other spiritual rule: else we are guilty of what is most grievous in His eyes and an utter breach of our new relationship. And this alone secures fruitfulness Godward. Subjection to Christ fulfils the law without thinking of any one or thing but Him. You cannot serve, you ought not to serve, two masters.
“For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins that [were] by the law wrought in our members to the bearing fruit to death; but now have we got discharge from the law, having died in what we were held, so as for us to serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter.” (Ver. 6.)
Thus evidently the flesh and the law (as we may add the world) are correlative; and the Christian belongs to neither, but to Christ, and to Him risen from the dead. We are no longer in the flesh; we were there, and to this state the law applied: it is made not for the righteous, but the unrighteous. The Christian is dead to law, not it to anybody. Not only does the law work death and condemnation to the unbeliever, but the Christian who meddles with it as a rule for his path will prove it, if taught of God, to be a rule, not of life, but of death. As Christ is our life, so is He our pattern and power through the Holy Ghost, who forms us according to the word which reveals Him to our souls.
It is scarcely needful to point out how false is the doctrine of the common text and translation, which the margin corrects. If true, Antinomianism would follow, than which nothing is more false and evil. Death to law as well as to sin is the fruit of Christ’s death and resurrection, and the privilege of the Christian. The law lives to condemn every living soul who pretends to a righteousness of his own.
The passage on which we now enter has been the occasion of as extraordinary discord in thought and comment as any other in the epistle, and I cannot but think with small fruit as to intelligence of God’s mind revealed in it. The source of the difficulty is the ordinary one – ignorance of the Christian’s position or standing, and consequently of his relation to the law. Had the six preceding verses of Rom 7 been understood, there would have been no such obscurity and no room for such divergence among those who have discussed it. But death with Christ to sin and law is an unknown region, and the loss to souls from ignorance of it is incalculable.
The point, which divides the mass of those who have written and preached on it, as well is of multitudes of those influenced by them, is the question whether the experience described is that of a natural man or of a Christian. It is assumed on both sides that one or other it must be. But the assumption is an error, and the failure of both lies exactly here. It is impossible rightly to understand the passage if applied either to a natural man or to a Christian. There may be, there is, a transitional state constantly found in souls when they are born again, but not yet in conscious deliverance; and this is the precise state, here in question. Paul may have passed as most do through this experience more or less during the three days, when without sight he neither ate nor drank. He was converted then, no longer therefore a natural man, but not yet filled with the Holy Ghost. Certainly he personates the case and reasons it out fully from verse 7 to the end of the chapter. It is the case of one quickened, but not yet submitting to the righteousness of God. Hence, being jealous for God but ignorant of the full place in which redemption sets the believer, such a soul places itself under law; and the operation of the law is therefore exhibited to us. There is an awakened conscience, but no power. If the new nature were not there, such experience could not be: if the Holy Ghost were there, power would follow, as we see in Rom 8 where we have the proper normal state of the Christian. The state described, however, is in no case I believe final, but transitional, though bad and legal teaching may keep a soul in it till grace acts fully, it may be, on a deathbed, or what is equivalent.
“What then shall we say? [Is] the law sin? Let it not be. But I should not have known sin unless by law; for lust also I had not known unless the law had said, Thou shalt not lust. But sin, having taken occasion by the commandment, wrought out in me every [manner of] lust; for apart from law sin [is] dead. But I was alive apart from law once; but the commandment having come, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment that [was] unto life was even found for me unto death. For sin, having taken occasion by the commandment, deceived, and by it slew me. So that the law [is] holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good. Did then the good become death to me? Let it not be; but sin, that it might appear sin, working out death to me by the good, that sin might become excessively sinful by the commandment.” (Ver. 7-13.)
Thus the apostle takes pains to relieve the law of all censure. Far from this, it was the excellency of the law which was so fatal to the sinner. It knows no mercy; it cannot mitigate its terms or its punishment. By the law is the full knowledge of sin, said the apostle in Rom 3 . So here, whether objectively or in inward consciousness, law is the means of its discovery, not from any defect in law but from the sinfulness of sin, which is here personified as the foe that is seizing a point for attacking man. But here the apostle is occupied with the proof not of guilty acts but of an alien rebellious nature, and hence singles out the last commandment, the prohibition of covetousness or lust, as the most adapted to convict of sin, not merely of sins. And how true this is! Who does not know the irritation produced by a restraint on the will? So all manner of lust is excited, for apart from law sin is dead: let the commandment have come, and all is over. It never did, it cannot, improve the flesh, but contrariwise provokes it by the curb applied. What is really wanted is a new nature and a transforming object; but law neither communicates the one nor reveals the other: grace does both through Christ our Lord. The fault is solely in the first man, the deliverance is exclusively in the Second. Law sets forth what man ought to be, but condemns him necessarily for the sin it makes active and manifest, without the smallest power to save from it any more than to strengthen against it. On the contrary, says the apostle, “I was alive apart from law once, but, the commandment having come, sin revived and I died.” Thus what pointed to life only proved an instrument of death. But if the living man die, law cannot quicken the dead. It is the Son’s to quicken whom He will, even as the Father does. But here again the apostle is careful to lay all blame on sin, which, having taken occasion by the commandment, slew by it the deceived man. Thus the law is vindicated, the nature it in vain appeals to is alone in fault; for the commandment is holy, just, and good. Did then the good become death to me? asks the apostle. Not so; it is sin here again he treats as the true culprit, “sin that it might appear sin, working out death to me by the good, that sin might become excessively sinful by the commandment.” Could the Jew, however prejudiced against grace, however prepossessed in favour of law, complain with justice? Is it not the evident truth?
The apostle turns now to a discussion of the working of the law, and the discovery which the renewed man makes of no good thing in him, that is, in his flesh. It is one set free reflecting on his state when under law. “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal,* sold under sin.” (Ver. 14.) Thus it is opened by the technical expression of christian knowledge, and this inwardly. But the soul is shut up to a sense of its own overwhelming evil. Only observe it is the bitter sense of bondage to sin, and not the love of sin. Still, though it is one born again, there is no strength whatever. “For what I work out I know (or, own) not, for not what I wish I do, but what I hate this I am doing. But if what I do not wish this I am doing, I agree to the law that [it is] good; but now [it is] no longer I that work it out, but the sin that dwelleth in me.” (Ver. 15-17.) It is no small anguish for the soul to feel, who had thought that to be forgiven was all, and that after this nothing but light and joy remained. And now to find oneself weighed down by a constant inward dead weight of evil, to prove experimentally that one is a slave to sin, effort only making it manifest, is a distress as grave as it is unexpected. He learns, however, that it is not himself that loves sin, for he really hates it. Sin is there, and it is not himself now, as he learns even in this painful experience. But what a wretched state! what slavery!
* The best authorities (, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc.) read , not as in the received text. The difference is that the former is a confession of being mere flesh physically. So it is in 2Co 3:3 ; Heb 7:16 , and probably in 1Co 3:1 (but not in verses 3, 4, where the other form is clearly right). In Rom 15:27 ; 1Co 9:11 ; 2Co 1:12 ; 2Co 10:4 ; 1Pe 2:11 , it is , in most of which the physical idea of flesh would be out of place. In our text the difference is of some importance as corroborating the scope of the passage that the will was not engaged. Were this meant to be expressed, would be the more proper term.
It is evident that the state described is not that of deliverance; it is not therefore the normal state of the Christian, but one of transition. The reader will be perhaps as pleased as I with the substance of the following note, which I did not expect from Doddridge. “The apostle here, by a very dexterous turn, changes the person and speaks as of himself. This he elsewhere does (Rom 3:6 ; 1Co 10:30 ; chap. 4: 6) when he is only personating another character. And the character here assumed is that of a man, first ignorant of the law, then under it, and sincerely desiring to please God, but finding to his sorrow the weakness of the motives it suggested, and the sad discouragement under which it left him; and last of all with transport discovering the gospel, and gaining pardon and strength, peace and joy by it. But to suppose he speaks all these things of himself or the confirmed Christian – that he really was when he wrote this epistle – is not only foreign but contrary to the whole scope of his discourse, as well as to what is expressly asserted, Rom 8:2 .”
It is a question of power coming in, not of will; for he is supposed to will the contrary, but alas! does what he wills not. Thus the moral character of both natures is made plain. The flesh never goes along with the moral judgment and desire of the renewed man while under law. But it is well to observe that there is another discussion in verses 18-20 leading to the same result and closing similarly, only with greater emphasis personally in its course. “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, no good dwelleth; for to will is present with me, but to work out the good [is] not; for I am not doing good which I wish; but evil which I wish not, this I do. But if what I wish not, this I am doing, [it is] no longer I that work it out, but the sin that dwelleth in me.” (Ver. 18-20.)
It is a renewed “I,” but obliged to feel that it is powerless. The hated evil continually gains the day, and the good that is acknowledged and valued slips through undone – a dreadful lesson, yet the truth of our nature, wholesome and needful to learn. Grace turns it to excellent account, and ere long, if there be simplicity and subjection of heart through the Holy Ghost to Christ.
In all the previous process it is striking to see how totally eclipsed is every object and power of faith. It is throughout self, though not self indulged and gratified, but self proving to itself intense cause of misery and disappointment. Christ in the end becomes all the more welcome; and the deliverance is of grace, not activity of self, through Him. After this activity in the energy of the Spirit can safely follow: before it, if possible, it would only veil the knowledge of self from us, and so far hide the truth and foster both self-love and self-righteousness.
It will be observed too, how admirably the apostle, while asserting fully the new place which grace gives by our having part with Christ in His death, guards the law from all impeachment. Let the Jew be ever so sensitive, God’s honour is safe; and it was not Paul who forgot or wounded it, whatever the adversaries of the gospel averred. As the law was not sin, so it was not death. The entire fault lay in man’s sin, not in God’s law. The converted feel this and cleave to the law, let it be ever so peremptory and painful. But it never does nor can deliver; on the contrary, it demonstrates the abject, thorough, hopeless bondage to sin in which our nature is held – the more felt, the more the sanctity of the law is owned. Under law, therefore, the renewed soul finds peace impossible. Impossible in this state to do anything but condemn oneself. This is true and good as far as it goes, but it is not the christian state, though it is the condition in which Christians must find themselves till they know deliverance from their state of sin, and not the forgiveness of their sins alone.
We see progress before full sense of emancipation comes. It is in the second discussion, not the first, that the soul is represented as saying “in me, that is, in my flesh, no good dwelleth.” The distinction of the new nature from the old becomes more apparent, though power is still wanting. The next verses show us how the misery is brought to a crisis, but through grace to a close.
Verses 21-23 furnish the conclusion from the discussion we have seen doubly pursued. “I find then the law for me wishing to do the right thing that evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.” Guilt is not the matter in hand, but power, or rather the total absence of it; so that, with the best possible dispositions and desires, all ends in captivity to sin, though it is now hated. It is not the soul in the death and darkness of nature, but renewed. God is loved, evil abhorred; but the soul finds itself powerless either to give effect to the one or to avoid the other. There is progress notwithstanding, sad as the experience is still, and slow as the soul itself may be, to realize or allow it. Hence, he now speaks of the opposition he finds in his members, the law of sin that is there. There is a growing sense of distinctness, as well as of internal conflict. This does not give peace any more than power – far from it. As far as feeling goes, never was he more intensely miserable.
But the deepening of the darkness precedes the light of day. New light dawns when all seemed most forlorn. “Wretched man I! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” This expression of distress, not without hope, yet bordering on despair, is the direct road to the Deliverer. The mistake was looking to himself, the humiliating process was the discovery of his own powerlessness for good however loved, against his own evil however honestly detested. All turns on the question of a Deliverer outside self. All expectation of victory over self by himself is proved to be the sheerest vanity of vanities. Another becomes the true and sole resource. Who that other is remains not for a moment an object of hesitation to the believer. The inquiry has only to be raised in order to receive the most decided and triumphant answer. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Jesus is not alone the one ground of pardon through His blood-shedding; He is equally the Deliverer from the withering sense of death which the believer experiences when, honestly seeking to subdue his own will and work out the good he delights in and eschew the ill he hates. Broken to nothingness by the continual proof of his own failure, spite of prayer, watching, and efforts of every conceivable kind, he abandons himself as hopelessly wretched, looks out of himself inquiringly, and answers at once the demand of his soul with a song of thanksgiving for Jesus.
The Spirit of God, however, takes care at once to guard the soul, now humble and filled with praise, from the illusion that the flesh is changed for the better. Not so: the two natures retain each its own character. “Therefore then I myself with the mind serve God’s law, but with the flesh sin’s law.” (Ver. 25.) We shall see more of the deliverance itself, and its consequences, in the following chapter. Meanwhile we learn here that, if the flesh acts at all, it can only be to sin. Such is its law. Deliverance does not alter the bent of man’s nature, which is the same in all, in the Christian as in the unbeliever. Only the former, not the latter, has a new nature, deliverance in and through Christ, and the Holy Spirit as the power of enjoying his privileges and of walking accordingly, as we shall soon learn.
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Rom 7:1-3
1Or 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? 2For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. 3So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.
Rom 7:1 “(for I am speaking to those who know the law)” This could refer to
1. believing Jews only
2. the conflict between believing Jews and Gentiles in the Roman church
3. law in a general sense as relative to all mankind (cf. Rom 2:14-15)
4. to new Gentile believers involved in learning about their new faith (catechism, Rom 6:17) from the OT Scriptures
“the law” This is the main thrust of the chapter (cf. Rom 7:1-2; Rom 7:4-6, etc). However, Paul used the term in several different senses (natural law; Mosaic Law; societal norms). It seems that Paul’s discussion was triggered by Rom 6:14. His presentation is parallel to the structure of Romans 6. See Contextual Insights, C. The Mosaic Law and its relationship to the New Covenant in Christ is also discussed in Rom 3:21-31; Rom 4:13-16.
NASB”that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives”
NKJV”that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives”
NRSV”that the law is binding on a person only during that person’s lifetime”
TEV”The law rules over a man only as long as he lives”
NJB”that laws affect a person only during his lifetime”
This is literally “lord it over” (kurieu, cf. Rom 6:9; Rom 6:14). The Mosaic Law was both a great blessing (cf. Psalms 19; Psalms 119), and a horrible curse (cf. Gal 3:13; Eph 2:15; Col 2:14). With physical death, obligations to the Law cease. This is the same metaphor used in Romans 6 concerning the believer’s death to sin.
Rom 7:2 “for the married woman” This is Paul’s major illustration in Rom 7:1-6. In Romans 6 he picked up on death ending a person’s obligation as a slave. Here, marriage and its obligations is the focus. The illustration is inverted because it is the husband who died so that the widow could remarry, whereas in Paul’s analogy, it is the believer who died and, therefore, is alive to God.
“she is released” This is the same verb as in Rom 6:6; it means “made inoperative,” “to render useless,” or “to be done away with.” In Rom 6:6, it was in the aorist passive, here it is perfect passive, meaning “has been and continues to be released.” See Special Topic at Rom 3:3.
Rom 7:3 “she shall be called an adulteress” This comment is related to the Jewish argument between the rabbinical schools of Shammai and Hillel over Deu 24:1-4; particularly “some indecency.” The Hillel school was the liberal group that would allow divorce for any reason. The Shammai school was the conservative group that would allow divorce only for adultery or some other sexual impropriety (cf. Mat 5:32; Mat 19:9).
Know ye not. See Rom 6:3.
speak. App-121.
know. App-132.
the. Omit.
law. Greek. nomas. Occurs over 190 times, of which about two-thirds are in Paul’s Epistles, the greater number being in Romans and 31 in Galatians. There are 23 in this chapter.
dominion over. See Rom 6:9, Rom 6:14.
a = the.
man. Greek. anthropos. App-123. The general term, meaning either man or woman.
as long = for (App-104.) such time (Greek. chronos).
1-6.] The explanation and proof of the assertion ch. Rom 6:14, , : the answer to the question of Rom 6:15 having occupied Rom 6:16-23.
Romans chapter 7.
Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) ( Rom 7:1 )
In other words, I am talking now to the Jews, and how that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. “Don’t you realize,” Paul said, “you that know the law,”
that the law has dominion over you as long as you live? ( Rom 7:1 )
One example of the law that he brings to show the point,
For the woman which has a husband is bound by the law to the husband as long as he is living; but if the husband is dead, she is freed from the law of the husband. So then if, while her husband is living, she be married to another man, she be called an adulteress: but if her husband is dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man ( Rom 7:2-3 ).
He is using this particular example out of the law to show that the law has power over a person as long as they are living.
Wherefore, my brethren, you have become dead to the law by the body of Jesus Christ ( Rom 7:4 );
Now Paul has just told us in the chapter 6 that we are crucified with Christ, “Know ye not, that the old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be put out of business.” So that I have been crucified with Christ, the law no longer has any affect upon me. I am now freed from the law through my death with Christ. It is ended, my relationship with the law as a means for a righteous standing before God. “We have become dead to the law by the body of Christ,”
that we should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God ( Rom 7:4 ).
It isn’t that I have been freed from the law that I might live any kind of way that I might want to live after my flesh, fulfilling the desires of my flesh. That is not what he is talking about at all. I have been set free from the law because it could never make me righteous. I have been set free from the law only to be married to another, even unto Jesus Christ, to be joined unto Him. The life that I now live is a life of bearing fruit, but the fruit of the believer’s life is actually in many cases living by even a stricter standard than even the law would require. “For the love of Christ constrains me,” Paul said. For the love of Christ I would not do that which would cause a weaker brother to stumble. For Christ’s sake, married to Christ, joined now unto Christ in this new relationship with God in the new covenant through Jesus Christ does not mean that I am free to indulge in my flesh. Far from it. It means that I am bound now by even a greater law, the law of love. The law of love for Jesus Christ.
And now my life is producing fruit for Him. Whereas, I once was under the law as a standard of my righteousness or my standing before God, which could never give me a consistent standing before God. For those that are under the law are under the works of the law, and those who are in Christ are bearing fruit unto righteousness. For the fruit of the righteous life and that fruit is the proof of my relationship with Him.
“Ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall bring forth much fruit” ( Joh 15:4-5 ). If your life isn’t bringing forth fruit, then it is saying that you are not abiding in Him and His Word isn’t abiding in you, because fruit is the natural consequence of relationship.
Now the works could never get me a righteous standing before God. Jesus gave me a righteous standing before God, and because of that, because I am now married unto Him and have this new relationship with God through Christ, my life is bringing forth righteous fruit. Love with its characteristics of joy, and peace, and long-suffering, and gentleness, and goodness, temperance, now these things do not make me righteous, but they are the effect of my righteousness that I now have through my faith in Jesus Christ. I trust you can see the difference.
Once I was trying to do these things so I could be righteous before God. And I was struggling as I was trying to do these things. But when I came to this new relationship with God, dead to the law, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, those things I was struggling so hard to do under the law and failing to do, I now do as just the natural consequence of my abiding in Him, and His life, His love, His fruit, coming forth from me.
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death ( Rom 7:5 ).
That’s the works of the flesh are manifested, which are these, Galatians chapter 5. And Paul gives us that listing. And when we were in flesh we had the fruit of the fleshly life: murders, strife, hatred, seditions, adultery, fornication, all of these works of the flesh are unto death.
But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter of the law ( Rom 7:6 ).
So I serve God, not legally, but I serve God in the spirit now. Rather than a legal relationship with God, I have a loving relationship with God, serving Him in the spirit, in the newness of life in Christ.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. No, I had not known what sin was, but by the law ( Rom 7:7 ):
The law is not sin itself. It reveals what sin is. The law is good if we understand the purpose of the law. The law is not good for what people are seeking to derive from the law. People are seeking to derive a righteous standing before God from the law. You can’t do that. Obedience to the law will not give you a righteous standing before God; it will only show you where you have failed to stand before God. “By the law is the knowledge of sin” ( Rom 3:20 ). God never intended the law to make a man righteous. “If righteousness could come by the law, then Christ died in vain” ( Gal 2:21 ). He wouldn’t have had to die if a man could be righteous by keeping the law.
So the law came to show us our bankrupt spiritual state, causing us to realize that I cannot keep the standards of the law, and thus, forcing me to cast myself upon the grace of God that He has offered to me through Jesus Christ. The law was intended by God to force me to come to Jesus Christ, and the law properly understood will do that. Now as the law is misinterpreted, as man is so capable of doing, misinterpreting God’s Word. People have then taken the law and used it as a standard of righteousness and have become extremely self-righteous as they seek to obey the law, bending it wherever it doesn’t fit their particular circumstance. I can interpret, then, that law so that I am under it. I’m on the good side of it. We have that tendency of taking the law and using it as a standard for holiness or righteousness, and well, I feel like I’m more righteous than you. I am not doing those things that you are doing, or I am doing things that you are not doing that make me more holy. But my righteousness before God is not predicated upon my keeping of the law. The law was to reveal what sin is. Paul said, “I had not known sin except by the law.”
for I had not known to lust [or to covet was sin, I didn’t know that was a sin,] except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet ( Rom 7:7 ).
I didn’t know to have the strong desire was a sin.
You see, as a Pharisee Paul only thought that the fulfilling of the strong desire was sin. You can have a strong sexual attraction to someone, desire a sexual relationship with them, and Paul felt that that wasn’t sin. It was sin only if I entered in and had the sexual relationship with them, nothing wrong with the desire, that is not sin. Until one day the Spirit spoke to Paul’s heart concerning the law, and it said, “Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt have the strong desire.” Whoops! Rather than now feeling self-righteous because I never had relationships sexually with another woman, I feel guilty because I have had a strong desire.
You remember Jesus said, “You have heard that it hath been said by those of old time, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ But I say unto you, whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already in his heart” ( Mat 5:28 ). In other words, Jesus is pointing out the law is spiritual. Paul didn’t know that as a Pharisee, but in his smug, self-righteousness as a Pharisee he felt that he was obedient to the law of God. “Thou shalt not commit adultery, I have never done that. I am innocent.” “Thou shalt not have a strong desire for thy neighbor’s wife.” Oh, oh! So suddenly he realizes that the law itself dealt with a spiritual issue, that strong desire that is there. So I would not have known that to have this strong desire was a sin, except the law should say, “Thou shalt not have the strong desire or covet.”
Then sin, taking an occasion by the commandment ( Rom 7:8 ),
Sin capitalizing on this. I discovered I have all kinds of strong desires.
It wrought in me all manner of [strong desires or lusts] ( Rom 7:8 ).
Translated there concupiscence, which is an ardent desire and usually for sex. Paul didn’t know that was wrong except the law said, “Thou shalt not have the strong desires, covet.”
So he said,
I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I was dead ( Rom 7:9 ).
What is he saying? “As a Pharisee, I thought that I had a standing before God. I thought that I was righteous. Alive unto God once, I thought as a Pharisee.” In fact, Paul is writing to the Philippians, he said, “If any man has whereof to boast in the flesh, I have more than anybody else. Hey, I am a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, tribe of Benjamin. I was circumcised the eighth day. I was a Pharisee, and concerning the righteousness which is of the law, I was blameless” ( Php 3:4-6 ). He was one of those that Jesus was constantly referring to when He was talking about the Pharisees. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,” that was Paul. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, going around in his long robes, saying his prayers on the street corners, sounding the trumpet before his giving of his offering unto God. That was Paul. “Hey, I was blameless. But when I realized that the law was spiritual . . . ” which things Jesus sought to point out in Mat 5:1-48 , the Sermon on the Mount, those five contrasts that He gave with the way the Pharisees were interpreting the law and the way God intended the law; the Pharisees interrupting the law in a physical way, God intending the law in a spiritual way. When Paul came to the realization that the law was spiritual, and it was dealing, really, with the attitudes more than the actions of a man, the attitude from which the actions spring. “Hey, wait a minute, I have never clubbed my brother to death, but I sure would have loved to. I was so mad I could have killed him.” And so he suddenly realized that anger that was in him, that hatred that was there was a violation of the law of God. That strong desire that he had was a violation of the law of God. So when the commandment came, sin was there, it was alive and I was dead because the law condemned me to death. The law was now my judge and it had condemned me to death, because I have violated the law spiritually in my heart, in my mind. I am guilty. Thus, the law condemned me to death.
And the commandment, which was [intended to life] ordained to life, I found to be unto death ( Rom 7:10 ).
The law from which I thought I was alive unto God was really a thing that condemned me unto death.
For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and it slew me ( Rom 7:11 ).
The law can do nothing but condemn each of you to death; it cannot make you righteous before God. It cannot make you a righteous standing before God. You can never become righteous before God by your works or by your efforts. All that the law can do, the rules and regulations that you might seek to follow, all they can do is condemn you to death because you have failed to keep them.
Paul acknowledges that,
The law is holy, the commandment is holy, and just, and good ( Rom 7:12 ).
Nothing wrong with the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.” Nothing wrong with the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal.” Nothing wrong with the commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul.” There is nothing wrong with the commandment. It is holy. It is just. It is right. It is good. That is the way I should live. I know I should live that way. It is not the commandment that is at fault. It is me that is at fault.
Was then that which was good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin ( Rom 7:13 ),
It wasn’t the law that killed me but my sin that killed me. Actually, the law just declared it. Nothing wrong with the law, but it is my sin that has brought me to death, for the wages of sin is death, the soul that sins it shall surely die. So the commandments . . . it isn’t in the commandments, it is in sin in me. The violation of the commandments that brought death.
But sin, that it might appear sinful, working death in me by that which is good; that is the law that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful ( Rom 7:13 ).
Again, the law was intended by God to make the whole world guilty before God so that the whole world would seek that righteousness which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. That righteousness that God has provided to cause man to once and forever desist from trying to have his whole righteous standing before God by his own efforts.
For we know that the law is spiritual ( Rom 7:14 ):
Paul didn’t always know that, you see. But now he does. The law is spiritual,
but I am carnal ( Rom 7:14 ),
That’s where the rub comes in. Nothing’s wrong with the law; holy, just, and good. But I am carnal and my sin brought death.
For that which I do I really don’t want to do: for what I would, that I do not do; but what I hate, that I am doing ( Rom 7:15 ).
Now Paul is talking about the struggle in his own life when he came to the realization that the law was spiritual and that he was carnal.
consenting to the law that is good ( Rom 7:16 ).
Recognizing that this is the right way to live and I should be living this way: the good that I would, I do not; that which I do, I allow not. I really am doing things that I don’t in my own mind allow. Those things that I am hating I am doing.
Trying to please God in the flesh has to be one of the most frustrating experiences in the world. Trying to attain a righteous standing before God by my works has to be one of the most frustrating things in the world, because I have found with Paul that I do not always do what I know I should do. It is so easy for me to not do the things I should. I have seen people in distress on the freeway, parked on the side, problems. And as I drove by, the Spirit prompted me to help them. And I said, “You can’t be serious. You know how busy I am. I have got an appointment and I can’t stop.” The good that I would I don’t, and that which I would not, I do. Someone lays a hot fudge sundae before me, and I know I shouldn’t, but I do it. That hot fudge sundae can be many things. I know I shouldn’t, but I do it anyhow. That which I hate I do.
Now if then I am doing those things that I don’t want to do, and I am consenting to the law that it is good. Then it is no more I that am doing it, but the sin that is dwelling in me ( Rom 7:16-17 ).
I found that there is a dual nature: the flesh and the spirit. These two are warring against each other, and there are times when I yield to the flesh. And I hate myself for yielding to the flesh, because my spirit wants to live after God and please God. When I yield to the flesh I feel miserable. I hate myself for doing what I have done. The real me after the spirit wants to please God. There is another part of me, the flesh that wants to please the flesh. There is that sinful part of me, that fleshly part of me, that oftentimes leads me to do those things I don’t want to do. If you really get down to the basic heart of the issue, I want to live to please God. I consent to the law it is good. I want to live a righteous life; I want to live the life that would be pleasing unto the Father.
Now, if I am doing those things that I don’t want to do, it really isn’t me. It is the sinful flesh, or the sinful nature that is in me.
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) there dwelleth no good thing ( Rom 7:18 ):
Our problem is that we don’t believe that yet. For man, it seems, is trying to reform his flesh and improve his flesh. Improve my fleshly performance. It seems that man constantly is looking for some good in the flesh. Some redeeming characteristic, trying in the flesh to give God some cause to love me so that I can boast a little bit in myself and say, “Well, God loves me because I am so sweet. Because I never loose my temper, because I always react in such a kind generous way, so God loves me because I am so kind and generous.” Too bad you are not kind and generous, so that God can love you as much as He loves me. We haven’t yet come to the full acknowledgement of the truth that in me, that is, in my flesh there dwells no good thing.
I need to come to that truth so that I will learn to have absolutely no confidence in my flesh. I have found in the years of walking with the Lord every area where I had confidence in my flesh God has allowed me to fall, to show me that I don’t have the strength, the ability, the power, the capacity that I thought I had. I used to say, “Chuck the rock,” and I was stupid enough to believe it. But I’ll tell you, He fractured me. Now it’s, “Chuck the sand.” I mean He crushed me. I know that in me, that is, in my flesh there dwells no good thing. For there is nothing wrong with my will.
my desire, it is present with me ( Rom 7:18 );
The desire to do the right thing, the desire to live for God, the desire to serve the Lord, the desire to pray, the desire to read His Word, the desire to draw closer, that is all there. But taking the desire and putting it into actuality, that is the rub, that is the problem.
how to perform that which I would I don’t know ( Rom 7:18 ).
I don’t do. My, if I could just be all that I desired to be for God. What a spiritual giant I would be. The desire is there, but how to perform it I just can’t find.
For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I am doing that which I would not, it is no more me that do it, but sin that dwells in me ( Rom 7:19-20 ).
He is repeating this point for emphasis. He has already made it in verses Rom 7:16 , and Rom 7:17 , but for emphasis he is repeating it.
I find then there is a law [Murphy’s], that, when I would do good, evil is present with me ( Rom 7:21 ).
My desire to do something good for God, but evil is there.
For I delight in the law of God after the inward man ( Rom 7:22 ):
In my heart, in my spirit I delight in God’s law.
But I see another law in my body, that is warring against the law of my mind, and it brings me into captivity to the law of sin which is [in my body] in the members of my body. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of sin? ( Rom 7:23-24 )
The body of death. And so Paul’s cry. And I have come to that same point in my life where I cried out as Paul cried out, realizing the weakness of my flesh and the failure in my flesh, the inability to perform that good which I would for God and that nagging weakness in doing those things that I didn’t want to. I came with Paul to this point of despair, “O wretched man that I am.”
Now, unfortunately, when I first came to that point of despair I didn’t ask the question that Paul asked. I came to the point of despair and said, “O wretched man that I am, how can I deliver myself from this miserable state?” I was open to another scheme, another try. If I will just count ten, if I will just stop first and think, “What would Jesus do?” We have all of these self-help methods of improvement for myself. How to live a successfully carnal Christian life, in five easy lessons. O wretched man that I am.
One day I came with Paul to the point of despair once more, but this time it was total despair, and with Paul I cried, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?” because I had given up on trying to do it myself. I had found out that place of defeat where I ceased from trying to do it myself and turned it over completely to Jesus Christ was the place of the initial victory in my life. It was no longer I, but Christ now in me, and as I began to yield to those forces of God’s Spirit that He had made available to me.
Now the net effect and result is, as I have now entered into this glorious victory in Jesus Christ and this glorious relationship with God through Christ, I cannot stand here and brag to you of all that I did and all of my efforts or all that I am doing . . . the hours that I put in serving the Lord and the sacrifices that I have made. God forbid that I should boast save in the cross of Jesus Christ, because therein is my victory. Because I couldn’t deliver myself, and I didn’t deliver myself, but God by His Spirit delivered me from the bondage of the life after the flesh, and He set me free by His Spirit to serve Him. Now, He allowed me to come to the point of total despair where I ceased trying in myself to do it, so that as the victory came I would not be taking credit for the victory, but I could only give glory unto God who has caused me to always triumph through Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, it seems that God has to let us sink to the bottom and to total despair in ourselves, lest we should boast in what we have become, because of learning some secret whereby I was able to bring my flesh into an acceptable position before God. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of death? And in the very question the fact that he is questioning who, indicates the answer there is one outside of me who can do for me what I can never do for myself. The capacity to do what I should do. The capacity to not to do what I shouldn’t do. So Paul concludes,
I thank God ( Rom 7:25 )
This is the answer to the question, who shall deliver me?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord ( Rom 7:25 ).
He has delivered me, thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then with my mind I serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin ( Rom 7:25 ).
My mind, my heart is what God is looking at. And with my mind and heart I serve the law of God, though I am still in this body. Yet, there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.
So here I am. Don’t, don’t, don’t think that I am trying to stand up here before you and tell you I have arrived and I am now perfect. God help me if I made that impression, because I will stumble right before your eyes to prove that I am not. God will allow me to do that. No, I am not perfect. I am still in a body of flesh, and as I am still in this body of flesh, I am going to have emotions of the flesh and sin. Thank God I don’t have to yield to them anymore. Thank God I can have victory and power over it. Thank God if I do there is no condemnation because I am in Christ Jesus. It doesn’t mean that because there is no condemnation I just go out and willfully live after the flesh. God forbid. But if I stumble, I don’t fall. The Lord picks me up; the Lord sustains me. For my mind, my heart I desire God and God’s best for my life, and the desire to serve Him with all that I have and with all that I am.
So I have this new relationship, this relationship with God after the spirit, and we’ll will get into that in chapter 8, which is really the answer to Paul’s chapter 7. As he’s been brought to the despair of his self-efforts. He is now brought to the glorious work of God’s Spirit within his life and that victory through the Spirit. So next Sunday night Rom 8:1-39 . And I’m glad that we’ll be able to take a full evening in chapter 8, because even that will not be enough, but we’ll just do what we can.
May the Lord be with you and bless you this week. May you experience the power of God’s Spirit in your life doing for you what you couldn’t do for yourself, bringing you to that place that God would have you to walk in the Spirit after the things of the Spirit. In Jesus’ name. Amen. “
Rom 7:1-3. Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so 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.
He merely states this as an illustration.
Rom 7:4. 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.
While we were under the law, we could not come into the bonds of the new covenant, the covenant of grace. But, through the death of Christ, we are dead to the law, and therefore we are set free from the principle and covenant of law, and we have come under the covenant of grace.
Rom 7:5. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
Sin is the transgression of the law. Therefore, out of the law, by reason of our corruption, springs sin. And, in our past lives, we did indeed find sin to be very fruitful. It grew very fast in our members, and it brought forth much fruit unto death.
Rom 7:6. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
No longer is the message to us, This do, and thou shalt live. No more are we slaves under bondage; but we have come into a new state, we are free, rejoicing in the glorious liberty of the children of God; and what we now do is done out of a spirit of love, and not of fear. We are not seeking after holiness in order to be saved by it, neither do we seek to escape from sin because we are under any fear of being cast into hell. We have another spirit altogether within us.
Rom 7:7. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid.
Nay, so far from being sin, the law is the great detective of sin, discovering it, and letting us know what sin really is.
Rom 7:7-8. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.
Or, covetousness. The very fact that God said to us, Do it not, wrought upon our nature so that we wanted to do it, and that which God commanded, which was a matter of indifference to us while we were in ignorance of his will, became, by reason of the depravity of our hearts, a thing to be resisted just because he had enjoined it upon us. Ah, me! what wicked hearts are ours that fetch evil even out of good!
Rom 7:8-9. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
I did not know how sinful I was until Gods commandment came to me.
Sin seemed to be dead within me, and I thought myself a righteous man; but when the law of God came home to my heart and conscience, and I understood that even a sinful thought would ruin me, that a hasty word had the essence of murder in it, and that the utmost uncleanness might lurk under the cover of what seemed a mere custom of my fellow-men, when I found out all this, sin did indeed live, but I died so far as righteousness was concerned.
Rom 7:10-13. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid.
If I sinned the more when Gods commandment was revealed to me; and if, by the light of the law, sin was made more apparent to me, and became so exceeding sinful that it drove me to despair, and so to commit still worse sin; the fault was not in the law, but in sin, and in me, the sinner.
Rom 7:13-14. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual:
The law of the Lord is a far higher thing than it seems to be in the esteem of many people. Talk not of it as a mere decalogue. It has far-reaching hands, and it affects the secret thoughts and purposes of men, and even their stray imaginations come under its supremacy. The law is spiritual.
Rom 7:14. But I am carnal, sold under sin.
I am carnal. There is the source of all the mischief, a disobedient and rebellious subject, not an irksome law. The law is good enough, it is absolutely perfect; but, says the apostle, I am carnal, fleshly, sold under sin.
Rom 7:15. For that which I do I allow not:
The man himself does that which is evil, but his conscience revolts against it.
Rom 7:15. For what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
This is a strange contradiction, a man who has grace enough to will to do good, and yet does it not. There are two men in the one man, the new nature struggling against the old nature. This must be a renewed man who talks in this fashion, or else he could not say that he hated sin; yet there must be a part of him still imperfect, or else he would not do that which he hates.
Rom 7:16. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
If I do that against which and my conscience rebel, so far, the better part of me owns the goodness of the law, though the baser part of me rebels against it.
Rom 7:17. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
The renewed man still stands out against sin. His heart is not wishful to sin, but that old nature within him will sin even to the end.
Rom 7:18-19. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
Oh, how often have men, who have been struggling after holiness, had to use these words of the apostle! The more holy they become, the more they realize that there is still a something better beyond them, after which they struggle, but to which they cannot yet attain; so still they cry, The good that we would we do not: but the evil which we would not, that we do.
Rom 7:20. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
The true man the newborn man is struggling after that which is right. The real I , the immortal ego, is still pressing forward, like a ship beating up against wind and tide, and striving to reach the harbor where it shall find perfect rest. Oh, what struggles, what contentions, what rightings, there are within the men and women in whom the grace of God is working mightily! Those who have but little grace can take things easily, and swim with the current; but where grace is mighty, sin will fight for the mastery, though it must yield ultimately, for there can never be any true peace until it is subdued.
Rom 7:21. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
Speaking for myself, I can say that, often, when I am most earnest in prayer, stray thoughts will come into my mind to draw me off from the holy work of supplication; and when I am most intently aiming at humility, then the shadow of pride falls upon me. Do not gracious men generally find it so? If their experience is like that of the apostle Paul, or like that of many another child of God whose biography one delights to read, it is so, and it will be so.
Rom 7:22-24. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
These are birth-pangs, the throes and anguish of a regenerated spirit. The Christian man is fighting his way to sure and certain victory; so, the more of this wretchedness that he feels, the better, if it be only caused by a consciousness that sin is still lurking within him, and that he longs to be rid of it.
Rom 7:25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
This exposition consisted of readings from Romans 7, and Rom 8:1-4.
Rom 7:1. ) The disjunctive interrogation. There is a close connection here with ch. 6, the words of which, at Rom 7:6; Rom 7:14; Rom 7:21, , , , … again occur prominently in this chapter. The comparison of the Old and New state is continued.-, to them that know) the Jews; although it is the duty of all Christians to know the law.- , the law) for example, of marriage. The whole law, in consonance with the opening of this portion, is put by synecdoche,[67] for the law of marriage.- , over a man) i.e., over a woman, Rom 7:2, comp. 1Pe 3:4, where the inner [the hidden man] presupposes the outer man, and the parallelism consists in this, that man is predicated also separately of the woman, not merely of Adam, the husband [viro, the man, in the restricted sense of the term.] Man here is used generically; but in the second verse, Paul applies it in a special and subordinate sense to the woman, as falling under the generic term.- , as long as) neither any longer nor any shorter.-, lives) the Law [lives. But Engl. Vers. As long as he-the husband-liveth.] A personification. In the apodosis, life and death are ascribed, not to the law, but to us; whereas, here we have the protasis, in which, according to the meaning of the apostle, life or death is ascribed to the [marriage] law itself, and to the husband. What is here said, depends on the nature of the things related, which are the law and man. When either party dies, the other is considered to be dead. Thus the protasis and apodosis cohere.
[67] See Appendix.
Rom 7:1
Rom 7:1
Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men who know the law),-[They knew the law, for it was constantly read and expounded in their hearing; and the practice of appealing to the Jewish Scripture made even Gentile believers familiar with them.] Having shown in the preceding chapter that the recipients of divine grace were forbidden to sin that grace may abound, they were bound to serve God. He now shows that the law of Moses had been taken out of the way, and that they were no longer under it, having been committed to the service of Christ.
that the law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth?-There is a difficulty in this verse as translated by both the King James Version and the American Revised Version. They make it say that the man is in subjection to the law so long as the man lives. But the context shows that when the law ceases to be in force, the man is released from obligation to that law. Greenfield, in his Notes on the Greek New Testament, translates it: The law hath dominion over a man so long as it is in force, and no longer. There is nothing in the Greek that forbids this translation, and the sense requires it. The law has been taken out of the way by Jesus in his death on the cross. He had fulfilled the law, and it was in his person nailed to the cross.
Continuing his argument, the apostle showed under the marital figure that a change of covenant changes the center of responsibility.
Then we have one of the great personal and experimental passages of the Pauline writings. The pronouns change from the plural to the singular. The whole of the seventh chapter gives us a picture of the religious experience of Paul up to the time of his meeting with Christ. It deals with his condition before the law, his experience at the coming of the law, and his subsequent experience under the law. He made two statements: “I was alive apart from the law once”; “The commandment came . . . and I died.” When was the apostle alive apart from the law, and when did the commandment come, so that he died? When he spoke of having been alive apart from law, he referred to those days of his infancy and childhood in which without consciousness of law there was no consciousness of sin and he was living the life that was without any sense of distance between himself and God. “The commandment came, sin revived, I died.” The apostle carefully declared what particular commandment it was that brought home to him this sense of sin. “Thou shalt not covet.” In that he discovered that he was violating the divine commandment, and so he died.
The experience next described is of a man seeking the highest. Here is a double experience in the life of one man, doing hated things, and by his very hatred of them consenting to the goodness of the law which forbids them. Terrible indeed is the condition, so terrible that he broke out in that cry that tells the whole story of his inner consciousness. “Wretched man that I Amo 1:1-15 who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” While thus the apostle wrote the words which reveal the agony of his past condition, he wrote them from his present sense of victory and deliverance, and so parenthetically answered his question, in the words, “I thank God through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
THE TRANSITION FROM LAW TO GRACE. ANALOGY OF MARRIAGE
7:1-6. Take another illustration from the Law of Marriage. The Marriage Law only binds a woman while her husband lives. So with the Christian. He was wedded, as it were, to his old sinful state; and all that time he was subject to the law applicable to that state. But this old life of his was killed through his identification with the death of Christ; so as to set him free to contract a new marriage-with Christ, no longer dead but risen: and the fruit of that marriage should be a new life quickened by the Spirit.
1 I say that you are free from the Law of Moses and from Sin. You will see how: unless you need to be reminded of a fact which your acquaintance with the nature of Law will readily suggest to you, that Law, for the man who comes under it, is only in force during his lifetime. 2Thus for instance a woman in wedlock is forbidden by law to desert her living husband. But if her husband should die, she is absolved from the provisions of the statute Of the Husband. 3Hence while her husband is alive, she will be styled an adulteress if she marry another man: but if her husband die, she is free from that statute, so that no one can call her an adulteress, though she be married to another man.
4 We may apply this in an allegory, in which the wife is the Christians self or ego; the first husband, his old unregenerate state, burdened with all the penalties attaching to it.
You then, my brethren in Christ, had this old state killed in you-brought to an abrupt and violent end-by your identification with the crucified Christ, whose death you reproduce spiritually. And this death of your old self left you free to enter upon a new marriage with the same Christ, who triumphed over death-a triumph in which you too share-that in union with Him you, and indeed all of us Christians, may be fruitful in good works, to the glory and praise of God. 5Our new marriage must be fruitful, as our old marriage was. When we had nothing better to guide us than this frail humanity of ours, so liable to temptation, at that time too a process of generation was going on. The impressions of sense, suggestive of sin, stimulated into perverse activity by their legal prohibition, kept plying this bodily organism of ours in such a way as to engender acts that only went to swell the garners of Death. 6But now all that has been brought to an end. Law and the state of sin are so inextricably linked together, that in dying, at our baptism, a moral death, to that old state of sin we were absolved or discharged from the Law, which used to hold us prisoners under the penalties to which sin laid us open. And through this discharge we are enabled to serve God in a new state, the ruling principle of which is Spirit, in place of that old state, presided over by Written Law.
1-6. The text of this section-and indeed of the whole chapter-is still, Ye are not under Law, but under Grace; and the Apostle brings forward another illustration to show how the transition from Law to Grace has been effected, and what should be its consequences.
In the working out of this illustration there is a certain amount of intricacy, due to an apparent shifting of the stand-point in the middle of the paragraph. The Apostle begins by showing how with the death of her husband the law which binds a married woman becomes a dead letter. He goes on to say in the application, not The Law is dead to you, but You are dead to the Law-which looks like a change of position, though a legitimate one.
Gif. however may be right in explaining the transition rather differently, viz. by means of the of ch. 6:6. The self of the man is double; there is an old self and a new self; or rather the self remains the same throughout, but it passes through different states, or phases. Bearing this in mind we shall find the metaphor work out consistently.
The Wife = the true self, or ego, which is permanent through all change.
The (first) Husband = the old state before conversion to Christianity.
The law of the husband = the law which condemned that old state.
The new Marriage = the union upon which the convert enters with Christ.
The crucial phrase is in ver. 4. According to the way in which we explain this will be our explanation of the whole passage. See the note ad loc.
There is yet another train of thought which comes in with vv. 4-6. The idea of marriage naturally suggests the offspring of marriage. In the case of the Christian the fruit of his union with Christ is a holy life.
1. : [surely you know this-that the rgime of Law has come to an end, and that Grace has superseded it.] Or do you require to be told that death closes all accounts, and therefore that the state of things to which Law belongs ceased through the death of the Christian with Christ-that mystical death spoken of in the last chapter?
: I speak (lit. am talking) to men acquainted with Law. At once the absence of the article and the nature of the case go to show that what is meant here is not Roman Law (Weiss), of which there is no reason to suppose that St. Paul would possess any detailed knowledge, nor yet the Law of Moses more particularly considered (Lips.), but a general principle of all Law; an obvious axiom of political justice-that death clears all scores, and that a dead man can no longer be prosecuted or punished (cf. Hort, Rom. and Eph. p. 24).
2. : [the truth of this may be proved by a case in point.] For a woman in the state of wedlock is bound by law to her living husband. : a classical word, found in LXX.
: is completely (perf.) absolved or discharged (lit. nullified or annulled, her status as a wife is abolished). The two correlative phrases are treated by St. Paul as practically convertible: the woman is annulled from the law, and the law is annulled to the woman. For see on 3:3.
: from that section of the statute-book which is headed The Husband, the section which lays down his rights and duties. Gif. compares the law of the leper Lev 14:2; the law of the Nazirite Num 6:13.
3. . The meanings of ramify in two directions. The fundamental idea is that of transacting business or managing affairs. Hence we get on the one hand, from the notion of doing business under a certain name, from Polybius onwards (1) to bear a name or title ( Polyb. V. Lev_2); and so simply, as here, to be called or styled (Act 11:26 ); and on the other hand (2) from the notion of having dealings with, giving audience to a person, in a special sense, of the answers, communications, revelations, given by an oracle or by God. So six times in LXX of Jerem., Joseph. Antiq., Plutarch, &c. From this sense we get pass. to be warned or admonished by God (Mat 2:12, Mat 2:22; Act 10:22; Heb 8:5; Heb 11:7). Hence also subst. , a Divine or oracular response, 2 Macc. 2:4; Rom 11:4. Burton (M. and T. 69) calls the fut. here a gnomic future as stating what will customarily happen when occasion offers.
= : the stress is thrown back upon , so as not to be, causing her not to be,-not so that she is. According to Burton here denotes conceived result; but see the note on in ver. 6 below.
4. with indic. introduces a consequences which follows as a matter of fact.
. We have said that the exact interpretation of the whole passage turns upon this phrase. It is commonly explained as another way of saying You had the Law killed to you. So Chrys. , , . , ; (cf. Euthym.-Zig.). In favour of this is the parallel in ver. 2, and in ver. 6. But on the other hand it is strange to speak of the same persons at one moment as killed and the next as married again. There is therefore a strong attraction in the explanation of Gif., who makes = not the whole self but the old self, i.e. the old state of the self which was really crucified with Christ (ch. 6:6), and the death of which really leaves the man (= the wife in the allegory) free to contract a new union. This moral death of the Christian to his past also does away with the Law. The Law had its hold upon him only through sin; but in discarding his sins he discards also the pains and penalties which attached to them. Nothing can touch him further. His old heathen or Jewish antecedents have passed away; he is under obligation only to Christ.
. The force of here is, You, my readers, as well as the wife in the allegory.
. The way in which the death of the old man is brought about is through the identification of the Christian with the Death of Christ. The Christian takes his place, as it were, with Christ upon the Cross, and there has his old self crucified. The body of Christ here meant is the crucified body: the Christian shares in that crucifixion, and so gets rid of his sinful past. We are thus taken back to the symbolism of the last chapter (6:6), to which St. Paul also throws in an allusion in . The two lines of symbolism really run parallel to each other and it is easy to connect them.
= The Husband:
Crucifixion of the . . = Death of the Husband:
Resurrection = Re-Marriage:
, = .
. Lips. takes this not of being married to another husband, but of joining another master, on the ground that there is no marriage to the Law. This however (1) is unnecessary, because marriage to the old man carries with it subjection to the Law, so that the dissolution of the marriage involves release from the Law by a step which is close and inevitable; (2) it is wrong, because of , which it is clearly forced and against the context to refer, as Lips. does, to anything but the offspring of marriage.
. The natural sequel to the metaphor of Marriage. The fruit which the Christian, wedded to Christ, is to bear is of course that of a reformed life.
5. . This verse develops the idea contained in : the new marriage ought to be fruitful, because the old one was. is the opposite of : the one is a life which has no higher object than the gratification of the senses, the other is a life permeated by the Spirit. Although is human nature especially on the side of its frailty, it does not follow that there is any dualism in St. Pauls conception or that he regards the body as inherently sinful. Indeed this very passage proves the contrary. It implies that it is possible to be in the body without being in the flesh. The body, as such, is plastic to influences of either kind: it may be worked upon by Sin through the senses, or it may be worked upon by the Spirit. In either case the motive-force comes from without. The body itself is neutral. See esp. the excellent discussion in Gifford, pp. 48-52.
: has the same sort of ambiguity as our word passion. It means (1) an impression, esp. a painful impression or suffering; (2) the reaction which follows upon some strong impression of sense (cf. Gal 5:24). The gen. = connected with sins, leading to sins.
. Here St. Paul, as his manner is, throws up a finger-post which points to the coming section of his argument. The phrase is explained at length in the next paragraph: it refers to the effect of Law in calling forth and aggravating sin.
. The pricks and stings of passion were active in our members (cf. 1Th 2:13; 2Th 2:7; 2Co 1:6, 2Co 1:4:12; Gal 5:6, &c.).
: dat. commodi, contrasted with , above.
6. . But as it is we (in our peccant part, the old man) were discharged or annulled from the Law (i.e. we had an end put to our relations with the Law; by the death of our old man there was nothing left on which the Law could wreak its vengeance; we were struck with atrophy in respect to it: see on ver. 2). ; Chrys. We observe how Chrys. here practically comes round to the same side as Gif.
The renderings of are rather interesting, and show the difficulty of finding an exact equivalent in other languages: evacuati sumus Tert.; soluti sumus Codd. Clarom. Sangerm. Vulg. (= we were unbounden Wic.; we are loosed Rhem.); we are delivered Tyn. Cran. Genev. AV.; we are discharged RV.; nous avons t dgags Oltr. (Le Nouveau Test., Geneva, 1874); nun aber sind wir fr das Gesetz nicht mehr da Weizscker (Das Neue Test., Freiburg i. B. 1882, Exo_2).
. AV. apparently read , for which there is no MS. authority, but which seems to be derived by a mistake of Beza following Erasmus from a comment of Chrysostoms (see Tisch. ad loc.). The Western text (D E F G, codd. ap. Orig.-lat. and most Latins) boldly corrects to , which would go with , and which gives an easier construction, though not a better sense. After we must supply , just as in 6:21 we had to supply .
. The antecedent of is taken by nearly all commentators as equivalent to (whether or is regarded as masc. or better neutr.). Gif. argues against referring it to the old state, the old man, that this is not sufficiently suggested by the context. But wherever death is spoken of it is primarily this old state, or old man which dies, so that the use of the term alone seems enough to suggest it. It was this old sinful state which brought man under the grip of the Law; when the sinful life ceased the Law lost its hold.
: not so that we serve (RV. and most commentators), but so as to serve, i. e. enabling us to serve. The stress is thrown back upon ,-we were so completely discharged as to set us free to serve.
The true distinction between with infin. and with indic., which is not always observed in RV., is well stated by Goodwin, Moods and Tenses, ed. 1889, 584 (with the quotation from Shilleto, De Fals. Leg. App. in the note), and for N. T. by the late Canon T. S. Evans in the Expos. for 1882, 1:3 ff.: with indic. states the definite result which as a matter of fact does follow; with infin. states the contemplated result which in the natural course ought to follow. with indic. lays stress on the effect; with infin. on the cause. Thus in 1Co 1:7 = causing or inspiring you to feel behindhand (see Sp. Comm. ad loc.); in Mat 13:32 , = becomes a tree big enough for the birds to come, &c. It will be seen that the distinction corresponds to the difference in the general character of the two moods.
. In each case the gen. is what is called of apposition: it denotes that in which the newness, or oldness, consists. The essential feature of the new state is that it is one of Spirit; of the old state, that it is regulated by written Law. The period of the Paraclete has succeeded to the period which took its character from the Sinaitic legislation. The Christian life turns on an inspiration from above, not on an elaborate code of commands and prohibitions. A fuller explanation of the is given in ch. 8.
It is perhaps well to remind the reader who is not careful to check the study of the English versions by the Greek that the opposition between and is not exactly identical with that which we are in the habit of drawing between the letter and the spirit as the literal and spiritual sense of a writing. In this antithesis is with St. Paul always the Law of Moses, as a written code, while is the operation of the Holy Spirit characteristic of Christianity (cf. Rom 2:29; 2Co 3:6).
LAW AND SIN
7:7-25. If release from Sin means release from Law, must we then identify Law with Sin? No. Law reveals the sinfulness of Sin, and by this very revelation stirs up the dormant Sin to action. But this is not because the Law itself is evil-on the contrary it is good-but that Sin may be exposed and its guilt aggravated (vv. 7-13).
This is what takes place. I have a double self. But my better self is impotent to prevent me from doing wrong (vv. 14-17). It is equally impotent to make me do right (vv. 18-21). There is thus a constant conflict going on, from which, unaided. I can hope for no deliverance. But, God be thanked, through Christ deliverance comes! (vv. 21-25).
7 I spoke a moment ago of sinful passions working through Law, and of the death to Sin as carrying with it a release from the Law. Does it follow that the Law itself is actually a form of Sin? An intolerable thought! On the contrary it was the Law and nothing else through which I learnt the true nature of Sin. For instance, I knew the sinfulness of covetous or illicit desire only by the Law saying Thou shalt not covet. 8But the lurking Sin within me started into activity, and by the help of that express command, provoking to that which it prohibited, led me into all kinds of conscious and sinful covetousness. For without Law to bring it out Sin lies dead-inert and passive. 9And while sin was dead, I-my inner self-was alive, in happy unconsciousness, following my bent with no pangs of conscience excited by Law. But then came this Tenth Commandment; and with its coming Sin awoke to life, while I-sad and tragic contrast-died the living death of sin, precursor of eternal death. 10And the commandment which was given to point men the way to life, this very commandment was found in my case to lead to death. 11For Sin took advantage of it, and by the help of the commandment-at once confronting me with the knowledge of right and provoking me to do that which was wrong-it betrayed me, so that I fell; and the commandment was the weapon with which it slew me. 12The result is that the Law, as a whole, is holy, inasmuch as it proceeds from God: and each single commandment has the like character of holiness, justice, and beneficence. 13Am I then to say that a thing so excellent in itself to me proved fatal? Not for a moment. It was rather the demon Sin which wrought the mischief. And the reason why it was permitted to do so was that it might be shown in its true colours, convicted of being the pernicious thing that it is, by the fact that it made use of a good instrument, Law, to work out upon me the doom of death. For this reason Sin was permitted to have its way, in order that through its perverted use of the Divine commandment it might be seen in all its utter hideousness.
14The blame cannot attach to the Law. For we all know that the Law has its origin from the Spirit of God and derives its character from that Spirit, while I, poor mortal, am made of frail human flesh and blood, sold like any slave in the market into the servitude of Sin. 15It is not the Law, and not my own deliberate self, which is the cause of the evil; because my actions are executed blindly with no proper concurrence of the will. I purpose one way, I act another. I hate a thing, but do it. 16And by this very fact that I hate the thing that I do, my conscience bears testimony to the Law, and recognizes its excellence. 17So that the state of the case is this. It is not I, my true self, who put into act what is repugnant to me, but Sin which has possession of me. 18For I am aware that in me as I appear to the outer world-in this body that does me grievous wrong, there dwells (in any permanent and predominating shape) nothing that is good. The will indeed to do good is mine, and I can command it; but the performance I cannot command. 19For the actual thing that I do is not the good that I wish to do; but my moral agency appears in the evil that I wish to avoid. 20But if I thus do what I do not wish to do, then the active force in me, the agent that carries out the act, is not my true self (which is rather seen in the wish to do right), but the tyrant Sin which holds possession of me. 21I find therefore this law-if so it may be called-this stern necessity laid upon me from without, that much as I wish to do what is good, the evil lies at my door. 22For I am a divided being. In my innermost self, the thinking and reasoning part of me, I respond joyfully to the Law of God. 23But then I see a different Law dominating this bodily organism of mine, and making me do its behests. This other Law makes the field in arms against the Law of Reason and Conscience, and drags me away captive in the fetters of Sin, the Power which has such a fatal grip upon my body. 24Unhappy man that I am-torn with a conflict from which there seems to be no issue! This body from which proceed so many sinful impulses; this body which makes itself the instrument of so many acts of sin; this body which is thus dragging me down to death.-How shall I ever get free from it? What Deliverer will come and rescue me from its oppression?
25A Deliverer has come. And I can only thank God, approaching His Presence in humble gratitude, through Him to whom the deliverance is due-Jesus Messiah, our Lord.
Without His intervention-so long as I am left to my own unaided self-the state that I have been describing may be briefly summarized. In this twofold capacity of mine I serve two masters: with my conscience I serve the Law of God; with my bodily organism the Law of Sin.
7. So far Sin and Law have been seen in such close connexion that it becomes necessary to define more exactly the relation between them. In discussing this the Apostle is led to consider the action of both upon the character and the struggle to which they give rise in the soul.
It is evident that Marcion had this section, as Tertullian turns against him St. Pauls refusal to listen to any attack upon the Law, which Marcion ascribed to the Demiurge: Abominatur apostolus criminationem legis Quid deo imputas legis quod legi eius apostolus imputare non audet? Atquin et accumulat: Lex sancta, et praeceptum eius iustum et bonum. Si taliter veneratur legem creatoris, quomodo ipsum destruat nescio.
. It had just been shown (ver. 5) that Sin makes use of the Law to effect the destruction of the sinner. Does it follow that Sin is to be identified with the Law? Do the two so overlap each other that the Law itself comes under the description of Sin? St. Paul, like every pious Jew, repels this conclusion with horror.
contradicts emphatically the notion that the Law is Sin. On the contrary the Law first told me what Sin was.
. It is not quite certain whether this is to be taken hypothetically (for , omitted to give a greater sense of actuality, Khner, Gr. Gramm. ii. 176 f.) or whether it is simply temporal. Lips. Oltr. and others adopt the hypothetical sense both here and with below. Gif. Va. make both and plain statement of fact. Mey.-W. Go. take temporally, hypothetically. As the context is a sort of historical retrospect the simple statement seems most in place.
. is best explained as = for also, for indeed (Gif. Win. liii. p. 561 E. T.; otherwise Va.). The general proposition is proved by a concrete example.
retain their proper meanings: , I learnt, implies more intimate experimental acquaintance; is simple knowledge that there was such a thing as lust.
. The Greek word has a wider sense than out covet; it includes every kind of illicit desire.
8. : getting a start, finding a point dappui, or, as we should say, something to take hold of. In a military sense = a base of operations (Thuc. i. 90. 2, &c.). In a literary sense = to take a hint, adopt a suggestion; cf. Eus. Ep. ad Carpianum . And so here in a moral sense: Sin exists, but apart from Law it has nothing to work upon, no means of producing guilt. Law gives it just the opportunity it wants.
: see p. 145, sup.
. The prep. and the position of the word show that it is better taken with than with , . is the single commandment; the code as a whole.
. A standing thought which we have had before, 4:15; 5:13: cf. 3:20.
9. ( B ; 17). St. Paul uses a vivid figurative expression, not of course with the full richness of meaning which he sometimes gives to it (1:17; 8:13, &c.). He is describing the state prior to Law primarily in himself as a child before the consciousness of law has taken hold upon him; but he uses this experience as typical of that both of individuals and nations before they are restrained by express command. The natural man flourishes; he does freely and without hesitation all that he has a mind to do; he puts forth all his vitality, unembarrassed by the checks and thwartings of conscience. It is the kind of life which is seen at its best in some of the productions of Greek art. Greek life had no doubt its deeper and more serious side; but this comes out more in its poetry and philosophy: the frieze of the Parthenon is the consummate expression of a life that does not look beyond the morrow and has no inward perplexities to trouble its enjoyment of to-day. See the general discussion below.
: sprang into life (T. K. Abbott). Sin at first is there, but dormant; not until it has the help of the Law does it become an active power of mischief.
11. . The language is suggested by the description of the Fall (Gen 3:13 LXX; cf. 2Co 11:3; 1Ti 2:14). Sin here takes the place of the Tempter there. In both cases the commandment-acknowledged only to be broken-is the instrument which is made use of to bring about the disastrous and fatal end.
12. . The expects a following . St. Paul had probably intended to write , or something of the kind; but he digresses to explain how a good Law can have evil consequences, and so he fails to complete the sentence on the same plan on which he had begun it. On St. Pauls view of the nature and functions of the Law see below.
It is hardly safe to argue with Zahn (Gesch. d. K. ii. 517) from the language of Tertullian (given above on ver. 7) that that writer had before him a corrupt Marcionitic text-not, Zahn thinks, actually due to Marcion, but corrupted since his time- for . . It is more probable that Tert. is reproducing his text rather freely: in De Pudic. 6 he leaves out , lex quidem sancta est et praeceptum sanctum et optimum (the use of superlative for positive is fairly common in Latin versions and writers).
13. Why was this strange perversion of so excellent a thing as the Law permitted? This very perversion served to aggravate the horror of Sin: not content with the evil which it is in itself it must needs turn to evil that which was at once Divine in its origin and beneficent in its purpose. To say this was to pronounce its condemnation: it was like giving it full scope, so that the whole world might see () of what extremities ( ) Sin was capable.
14. The section which follows explains more fully by a psychological analysis how it is that the Law is broken and that Sin works such havoc. There is a germ of good in human nature, a genuine desire to do what is right, but this is overborne by the force of temptation acting through the bodily appetites and passions.
. The Law is spiritual, as the Manna and the Water from the Rock were spiritual (1Co 10:3, 1Co 10:4) in the sense of being Spirit-caused or Spirit-given, but with the further connotation that the character of the Law is such as corresponds to its origin.
( c L P al.) denotes simply the material of which human nature is composed, made of flesh and blood (1Co 3:1; 2Co 3:3), and as such exposed to all the temptations which act through the body.
There has been considerable controversy as to the bearing of the antithesis in St. Paul between the and . It has been maintained that this antithesis amounts to dualism, that St. Paul regards the as inherently evil and the cause of evil, and that this dualistic conception is Greek or Hellenistic and not Jewish in its origin. So, but with differences among themselves, Holsten (1855, 1868), Rich. Schmidt (1870), Ldemann (1872), and to some extent Pfleiderer (1873). [In the second edition of his Paulinismus (1890), Pfleiderer refers so much of St. Pauls teaching on this head as seems to go beyond the O. T. not to Hellenism, but to the later Jewish doctrine of the Fall, much as it has been expounded above, p. 136 ff. In this we need not greatly differ from him.] The most elaborate reply was that of H. H. Wendt, Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist (Gotha, 1878), which was made the basis of an excellent treatise in English by Dr. W. P. Dickson, St. Pauls Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit, Glasgow, 1883. Reference may also be made to the well-considered statement of Dr. Gifford (Romans, pp. 48-52). The controversy may now be regarded as practically closed. Its result is summed up by Lipsius in these decisive words: The Pauline anthropology rests entirely on an Old Testament base; the elements in it which are supposed to be derived from Hellenistic dualism must simply be denied (sind einfach zu bestreiten). The points peculiar to St. Paul, according to Lipsius, are the sharper contrast between the Divine and the human , and the reading of a more ethical sense into , which was originally physical, so that in Gal 5:19 ff., Rom 8:4 ff. the becomes a principle directly at war with the . In the present passage (Rom 7:14-25) the opposing principle is , and the is only the material medium (Substrat) of sensual impulses and desires. We may add that this is St. Pauls essential view, of which all else is but the variant expression.
15. = perficio, perpetro, to carry into effect, put into execution: = ago, to act as a moral and responsible being: = facio,to produce a certain result without reference to its moral character, and simply as it might be produced by inanimate mechanism (see also the notes on ch. 1:32: 2:9). Of course the specific sense may not be always marked by the context, but here it is well borne out throughout. For a fuller account of the distinction see Schmidt, Lat. u. Gr. Synonymik, p. 294 ff.
appears to describe the harmonious and conscious working of will and motive, the former deliberately accepting and carrying out the promptings of the latter. The man acts, so to speak, blindly: he is not a fully conscious agent: a force which he cannot resist takes the decision out of his hands.
. The exact distinction between and has been much disputed, and is difficult to mark. On the whole it seems that, especially in N. T. usage, lays the greater stress on the idea of purpose, deliberation, on the more emotional aspect of will: in this context it is evidently something short of the final act of volition, and practically = wish, desire. See especially the full and excellent note in Grm.-Thay.
17. : as it is, as the case really lies; the contrast is logical, not temporal.
. [Read with B, Method. (ap. Phot. cod., non autem ap. Epiph.)] This indwelling Sin corresponds to the indwelling Spirit of the next chapter: a further proof that the Power which exerts so baneful an influence is not merely an attribute of the man himself but has an objective existence.
18. , , …The part of the man in which Sin thus establishes itself is not his higher self, his conscience, but his lower self, the flesh, which, if not itself evil, is too easily made the instrument of evil.
: lies to my hand, within my reach.
A B C 47 67** al., Edd.: D E F G K L P &c.
20. B C D E F G al., WH. RV.: A K L P &c., Tisch. WH. marg.
21. : I find then this rule, this constraining principle, hardly this constantly recurring experience, which would be too modern. The here mentioned is akin to the of ver. 23. It is not merely the observed fact that the will to do good is forestalled by evil, but the coercion of the will that is thus exercised. Lips. seems to be nearest to the mark, das Gesetz d. h. die objectiv mir auferlegte Nothwendigkeit.
Many commentators, from Chrysostom onwards, have tried to make = the Mosaic Law: but either (i) they read into the passage more than the context will allow; or (ii) they give to the sentence a construction which is linguistically intolerable. The best attempt in this direction is prob. that of Va. who translates, I find then with regard to the Law, that to me who would fain do that which is good, to me (I say) that which is evil is present. He supposes a double break in the construction: (1) put as if the sentence had been intended to run I find then the Law-when I wish to do good-powerless to help me; and (2) repeated for the sake of clearness. It is apparently in a similar sense that Dr. T. K. Abbott proposes as an alternative rendering (the first being as above), With respect to the law, I find, &c. But the anacoluthon after seems too great even for dictation to an amanuensis. Other expedients like those of Mey. (not Mey.-W.) Fri. Ew. are still more impossible. See esp. Gif. Additional Note, p. 145.
22. : what it approves, I gladly and cordially approve.
. St. Paul, as we have seen (on 6:6), makes great use of this phrase , which goes back as far as Plato. Now he contrasts the old with the new man (or, as we should say, the old with the new self); now he contrasts the outer man, or the body ( 2Co 4:16), with the inner man, the conscience or reason (2Co 4:16; Eph 3:16).
23. : a different law (for the distinction between , different, and , another, a second, see the commentators on Gal 1:6, Gal 1:7).
There are two Imperatives () within the man: one, that of conscience; the other, that proceeding from the action of Sin upon the body. One of these Imperatives is the moral law, Thou shalt and Thou shalt not; the other is the violent impulse of passion.
. For see on 1:28: it is the rational part of conscience, the faculty which decides between right and wrong: strictly speaking it belongs to the region of morals rather than to that of intercourse with God, or religion; but it may be associated with and brought under the influence of the (Eph 4:23 : cf. Rom 12:2), just as on the other hand it may be corrupted by the flesh (Rom 1:28).
24. . A heart-rending cry, from the depths of despair. It is difficult to think of this as exactly St. Pauls own experience: as a Christian he seems above it, as a Pharisee below it-self-satisfaction was too ingrained in the Pharisaic temper, the performance of Pharisaic righteousness was too well within the compass of an average will. But St. Paul was not an ordinary Pharisee. He dealt too honestly with himself, so that sooner or later the self-satisfaction natural to the Pharisee must give way: and his experience as a Christian would throw back a lurid light on those old days of which he was now ashamed. So that, what with his knowledge of himself, and what with his sympathetic penetration into the hearts of others, he had doubtless materials enough for the picture which he has drawn here with such extraordinary power. He has sat for his own likeness; but there are ideal traits in the picture as well.
. In construction might go with (from this body of death): but it is far better to take it in the more natural connexion with ; the body of this death which already has me in its clutches. Sin and death are inseparable: as the body involves me in sin it also involves me in mortality; physical death to be followed by eternal, the death of the body by the death of the soul.
25. … A terse compressed summary of the previous paragraph, vv. 7-24, describing in two strokes the state of things prior to the intervention of Christ. The expression is that which comes from deep feeling. The particular phrases hardly seem to need further explanation.
. The true reading is probably . The evidence stands thus.
B, Sah., Orig. semel Hieron. semel.
a C2 (de C* non liquet) minusc. aliq., Boh. Arm., Cyr.-Alex. Jo.-Damasc.
D E 38, d e Vulg., Orig.-lat. bis Hieron. semel Ambrstr.
F G, f g, cf. Iren.-lat.
* A K L P &c., Syrr. Goth., Orig. bis Chrys. Theodrt. al. [ Method. ap. Epiph. cod., sed vel Epiph. edd. pr.; vid. Bonwetsch, Methodius von Olympus, i. 204.]
It is easy to see how the reading of B would explain all the rest. The reading of the mass of MSS. would be derived from it (not at once but by successive steps) by the doubling of two pairs of letters,
[][].
The descent of the other readings may be best represented by a table.
The other possibility would be that had got reduced to by successive dropping of letters. But this must have taken place very early. It is also conceivable that preceded only.
The Inward Conflict
Two subjects for discussion are raised, or are commonly treated as if they were raised, by this section. (1) Is the experience described that of the regenerate or unregenerate man? (2) Is it, or is it not, the experience of St. Paul himself?
1 (). Origen and the mass of Greek Fathers held that the passage refers to the unregenerate man. (i) Appeal is made to such expressions as ver. 14, [ ] vv. 19, 20, ver. 24. It is argued that language like this is nowhere found of the regenerate state. (ii) When other expressions are adduced which seem to make for the opposite conclusion, it is urged that parallels to them may be quoted from Pagan literature, e. g. the video meliora of Ovid and many other like sayings in Euripides, Xenophon, Seneca, Epictetus (see Dr. T*. K. Abbott on ver. 15 of this chapter). (iii) The use of the present tense is explained as dramatic. The Apostle throws himself back into the time which he is describing.
() Another group of writers, Methodius (ob. 310 a.d.), Augustine and the Latin Fathers generally, the Reformers especially on the Calvinistic side, refer the passage rather to the regenerate. (i) An opposite set of expressions is quoted, [ ] ver. 15, ver. 21, ver. 22. It is said that these are inconsistent with the of Col 1:21 and with descriptions like that of Rom 8:7, Rom 8:8. (ii) Stress is laid on the present tenses: and in proof that these imply a present experience, reference is made to passages like 1Co 9:27 . That even the regenerate may have this mixed experience is thought to be proved, e.g. by Gal 5:17.
Clearly there is a double strain of language. The state of things described is certainly a conflict in which opposite forces are struggling for the mastery.
Whether such a state belongs to the regenerate or the unregenerate man seems to push us back upon the further question, What we mean by regenerate. The word is used in a higher and a lower sense. In the lower sense it is applied to all baptized Christians. In that sense there can be little doubt that the experience described may fairly come within it.
But on the other hand, the higher stages of the spiritual life seem to be really excluded. The sigh of relief in ver. 25 marks a dividing line between a period of conflict and a period where conflict is practically ended. This shows that the present tenses are in any case not to be taken too literally. Three steps appear to be distinguished, (i) the life of unconscious morality (ver. 9), happy, but only from ignorance and thoughtlessness; (ii) then the sharp collision between law and the sinful appetites waking to activity; (iii) the end which is at last put to the stress and strain of this collision by the intervention of Christ and of the Spirit of Christ, of which more will be said in the next chapter. The state there described is that of the truly and fully regenerate; the prolonged struggle which precedes seems to be more rightly defined as inter regenerandum (Gif. after Dean Jackson).
Or perhaps we should do better still to refuse to introduce so technical a term as regeneration into a context from which it is wholly absent. St. Paul, it is true, regarded Christianity as operating a change in man. But here, whether the moment described is before or after the embracing of Christianity, in any case abstraction is made of all that is Christian. Law and the soul are brought face to face with each other, and there is nothing between them. Not until we come to ver. 25 is there a single expression used which belongs to Christianity. And the use of it marks that the conflict is ended.
(2) As to the further question whether St. Paul is speaking of himself or of some other man we observe that the crisis which is described here is not at least the same as that which is commonly known as his Conversion. Here the crisis is moral; there it was in the first instance intellectual, turning upon the acceptance of the proposition that Jesus was truly the Messiah. The decisive point in the conflict may be indeed the appropriation of Christ through His Spirit, but it is at least not an intellectual conviction, such as might exist along with a severe moral struggle. On the other hand, the whole description is so vivid and so sincere, so evidently wrung from the anguish of direct personal experience, that it is difficult to think of it as purely imaginary. It is really not so much imaginary as imaginative. It is not a literal photograph of any one stage in the Apostles career, but it is a constructive picture drawn by him in bold lines from elements supplied to him by self-introspection. We may well believe that the regretful reminiscence of bright unconscious innocence goes back to the days of his own childhood before he had begun to feel the conviction of Sin. The incubus of the Law he had felt most keenly when he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Without putting an exact date to the struggle which follows we shall probably not be wrong in referring the main features of it especially to the period before his Conversion. It was then that the powerlessness of the Law to do anything but aggravate sin was brought home to him. And all his experience, at whatever date, of the struggle of the natural man with temptation is here gathered together and concentrated in a single portraiture. It would obviously be a mistake to apply a generalized experience like this too rigidly. The process described comes to different men at different times and in different degrees; to one early, to another later; in one man it would lead up to Christianity, in another it might follow it; in one it would be quick and sudden, in another the slow growth of years. We cannot lay down any rule. In any case it is the mark of a genuine faith to be able to say with the Apostle, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is just in his manner to sum up thus in a sentence what he is about to expand into a chapter. The break occurs at a very suitable place: ch. 8 is the true conclusion to ch. 7.
St. Pauls View of the Law
It was in his view of the Mosaic Law that St. Paul must have seemed most revolutionary to his countrymen. And yet it would be a mistake to suppose that he ever lost that reverence for the Law as a Divine institution in which every Jew was born and bred and to which he himself was still more completely committed by his early education as a Pharisee (Gal 1:14; Php 3:5 f.). This old feeling of his comes out in emotional passages like Rom 9:4 (cf. 3:2; 2:25, &c.). And even where, as in the section before us, he is bringing out most forcibly the ineffectiveness of the Law to restrain human passion the Apostle still lays down expressly that the Law itself is holy and righteous and good; and a little lower down (ver. 14) he gives it the epithet spiritual, which is equivalent to ascribing to it a direct Divine origin.
It was only because of his intense sincerity and honesty in facing facts that St. Paul ever brought himself to give up his belief in the sufficiency of the Law; and there is no greater proof of his power and penetration of mind than the way in which, when once his thoughts were turned into this channel, he followed out the whole subject into its inmost recesses. We can hardly doubt that his criticism of the Law as a principle of religion dates back to a time before his definite conversion to Christianity. The process described in this chapter clearly belongs to a period when the Law of Moses was the one authority which the Apostle recognized. It represents just the kind of difficulties and struggles which would be endured long before they led to a complete shifting of belief, and which would only lead to it then because a new and a better solution had been found. The apparent suddenness of St. Pauls conversion was due to the tenacity with which he held on to his Jewish faith and his reluctance to yield to conclusions which were merely negative. It was not till a whole group of positive convictions grew up within him and showed their power of supplying the vacant place that the Apostle withdrew his allegiance, and when he had done so came by degrees to see the true place of the Law in the Divine economy.
From the time that he came to write the Epistle to the Romans the process is mapped out before us pretty clearly.
The doubts began, as we have seen, in psychological experience. With the best will in the world St. Paul had found that really to keep the Law was a matter of infinite difficulty. However much it drew him one way there were counter influences which drew him another. And these counter influences proved the stronger of the two. The Law itself was cold, inert, passive. It pointed severely to the path of right and duty, but there its function ended; it gave no help towards the performance of that which it required. Nay, by a certain strange perversity in human nature, it seemed actually to provoke to disobedience. The very fact that a thing was forbidden seemed to make its attractions all the greater (Rom 7:8). And so the last state was worse than the first. The one sentence in which St. Paul sums up his experience of Law is (Rom 3:20). Its effect therefore was only to increase the condemnation: it multiplied sin (Rom 5:20); it worked wrath (Rom 4:15); it brought mankind under a curse (Gal 3:10).
And this was equally true of the individual and of the race; the better and fuller the law the more glaring was the contrast to the practice of those who lived under it. The Jews were at the head of all mankind in their privileges, but morally they were not much better than the Gentiles. In the course of his travels St. Paul was led to visit a number of the scattered colonies of Jews, and when he compares them with the Gentiles he can only turn upon them a biting irony (Rom 2:17-29).
The truth must be acknowledged; as a system, Law of whatever kind had failed. The breakdown of the Jewish Law was most complete just because that law was the best. It stood out in history as a monument, revealing the right and condemning the wrong, heaping up the pile of human guilt, and nothing more. On a large scale for the race, as on a small scale for the individual, the same verdict held, .
Clearly the fault of all this was not with the Law. The fault lay in the miserable weakness of human nature (Rom 8:3). The Law, as a code of commandments, did all that it was intended to do. But it needed to be supplemented. And it was just this supplementing which Christianity brought, and by bringing it set the Law in its true light and in its right place in the evolution of the Divine plan. St. Paul sees spread before him the whole expanse of history. The dividing line across it is the Coming of the Messiah. All previous to that is a period of Law-first of imperfect law, such law as was supplied by natural religion and conscience; and then of relatively perfect law, the law given by God from Sinai. It was not to be supposed that this gift of law increased the sum of human happiness. Rather the contrary. In the infancy of the world, as in the infancy of the individual, there was a blithe unconsciousness of right and wrong; impulse was followed wherever it led; the primrose path of enjoyment had no dark shadow cast over it. Law was this dark shadow. In proportion as it became stricter, it deepened the gloom. If law had been kept, or where law was kept, it brought with it a new kind of happiness; but to a serious spirit like St. Pauls it seemed as if the law was never kept-never satisfactorily kept-at all. There was a Rabbinical commonplace, a stern rule of self-judgement, which was fatal to peace of mind: Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all (Jam 2:10; cf. Gal 3:16; Rom 10:5). Any true happiness therefore, any true relief, must be sought elsewhere. And it was this happiness and relief which St. Paul sought and found in Christ. The last verse of ch. 7 marks the point at which the great burden which lay upon the conscience rolls away; and the next chapter begins with an uplifting of the heart in recovered peace and serenity; There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
Taken thus in connexion with that new order of things into which it was to pass and empty itself, the old order of Law had at last its difficulties cleared away. It remained as a stage of salutary and necessary discipline. All Gods ways are not bright upon the surface. But the very clouds which He draws over the heavens will break in blessings; and break just at that moment when their darkness is felt to be most oppressive. St. Paul himself saw the gloomy period of law through to its end ( Rom 10:4); and his own pages reflect, better than any other, the new hopes and energies by which it was succeeded.
Gif. Gifford.
Lips. Lipsius.
&c. always qualify the word which precedes, not that which follows:
Chrys. Chrysostom.
Euthym.-Zig. Euthymius Zigabenus.
Tert. Tertullian.
Vulg. Vulgate.
Wic. Wiclif.
Rhem. Rheims (or Douay).
Tyn. Tyndale.
Genev. Geneva.
AV. Authorized Version.
RV. Revised Version.
Oltr. Oltramare.
Tisch. Tischendorf.
D Cod. Claromontanus
E Cod. Sangermanensis
F Cod. Augiensis
G Cod. Boernerianus
codd. codices.
Orig.-lat. Latin Version of Origen
Va. Vaughan.
Mey.-W. Meyer-Weisa.
Go. Godet.
Win. Winers Grammar.
Eus. Eusebius.
B Cod. Vaticanus
Cod. Sinaiticus, corrector c
L Cod. Angelicus
P Cod. Porphyrianus
al. alii, alibi.
Cod. Sinaiticus
Epiph. Epiphanius.
A Cod. Alexandrinus
C Cod. Ephraemi Rescriptus
K Cod. Mosquensis
WH. Westcott and Hort.
Mey. Meyer.
Fri. Fritzsche (C. F. A.).
Sah. Sahidic.
Orig. Origen.
Cod. Sinaiticus, corrector a
Boh. Bohairic.
Arm. Armenian.
Cyr.-Alex. Cyril of Alexandria.
d Latin version of D
e Latin version of E
f Latin version of F
g Latin version of G
Syrr. Syriac.
Goth. Gothic.
Theodrt. Theodoret.
Method. Methodius.
Gif. Gifford.
&c. always qualify the word which precedes, not that which follows:
the Law Makes Sin Known
Rom 7:1-13
To make his meaning clear the Apostle now enters upon a parable drawn from domestic life. He says that we are married to the Law as our first husband, and seek, through union with it, to bring forth fruit unto God. Every convert earnestly endeavors, in the first impulse of the new life, to be good and to form, by incessant effort, a life that is pleasing to God. Like Cain we bring the fruit of the ground, extorted from the soil by the sweat of the brow.
But we are soon disappointed in the result. Our laborious care ends in failure. Sinful desires are too masterful. As Luther said, The old Adam is too strong for the young Melanchthon. Then we see that the Cross has put death between us and our painful effort. We learn that the marriage contract which bound us to our first husband, the Law, has been dissolved. We are set free to enter into marriage union with the blessed Lord, and He, by His indwelling Spirit, effects in us what our own energies have failed to produce. We are joined to Him that was raised up from the dead, and bring forth fruit unto God.
The seventh chapter takes up another phase of things that would be particularly hard for the Jewish believer to comprehend. It raises and answers the question, What is the rule of life for the yielded believer? The Jew would naturally say, The law given at Sinai. The apostles answer is Christ risen! Alas, how many Gentile believers have missed the point here as well as those who came out of Judaism.
That it is his Jewish-Christian brethren who are primarily before him is clear from the opening verse. Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law), how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth. Now it is unthinkable that he is using the term the law here in any different sense to that which he has had in mind as he has used it over and over again in the former chapters. The law, here, means the law of Moses, and it means nothing else. It means that which was the heart of the law of Moses, the ten words given on Sinai. And his argument here is that the law has dominion over men until death ends its authority or ends their relationship to it. But he has just been showing us in the clearest possible way that we have died with Christ; therefore we died not only unto sin, but we have died to the law as a rule of life. Is this then to leave us lawless? Not at all: for we are now, as he shows elsewhere (1Co 9:21), under law to Christ, or en-lawed, that is, legitimately subject to Christ our new Head. He is Husband as well as Head, even as Ephesians Chapter 5 so clearly shows.
This truth is illustrated in a very convincing way in verses Rom 7:2-3, and the application is made in verse Rom 7:4. A woman married to a husband is legally bound to him in that relationship until death severs the tie. If she marries another while her husband is living she becomes an adulteress. But when the first husband is dead she is free to marry another with no blame attaching to her for so doing.
Even so, death has ended the relationship of the believer to the law, not the death of the law but our death with Christ, which has brought the old order to an end. We are now free to be married to another, even to the risen Christ in order that we might bring forth fruit unto God.
The somewhat weird and amazing conception has been drawn from the apostles illustration that the first husband is not the law at all but our old man. This is utterly illogical and untenable, for, as we have seen, the old man is myself as a man in the flesh. I was not married to myself! Such a suggestion is the very height of absurdity. The Jewish believer was once linked with the legal covenant. It was proposed as a means of producing fruit for God. It only stirred up all that was evil in the heart. Death has dissolved the former relationship, and the one who once looked to the law for fruit now looks to Christ risen and, as the heart is occupied with Him, that is produced in the life in which God can delight.
He says, When we were in the flesh (that is, in the natural state, as unsaved men) the motions of sins which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. This clearly establishes the position taken above. The law was the husband, the active agent through whom we hoped to bring forth fruit unto God. But instead of that, we brought forth fruit unto death, all our travail and suffering in the hope of producing righteousness ended in disappointment, the child was still-born.
But now we are delivered from the law, having died to that (relationship) wherein we were held (note the marginal reading) that we might serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter (vs. Rom 7:6). In the illustration the first husband dies and the woman is free to be married to another. In the application he does not say the law has died, but the point he makes is that death (and for us it is Christs death) has ended the relationship in which we stood toward it. So there is after all no real disagreement; in either case the former condition is ended by death. The law, as we have seen, was addressed to man in the flesh, and this was our former state, but now all is changed. We are no longer in the flesh, but (as the next chapter will show us) in the Spirit, and so in a new state to which the law in no sense applies. Again the old question comes to the fore: If all this be true shall we sin then? Are we to be lawless because not under law? By no means. The law must simply be recognized as having a special ministry but not as the rule of the new life. It is a great detector of sin. Paul could say, I had not known sin but by the law. That is, he had not detected the evil nature within-so correct was his outward deportment-had not the law said, Thou shalt not covet. The sin-nature rebelled against this and wrought in him all manner of covetousness, or unsatisfied desire. Observe carefully how conclusively this proves that it was the ten commandments he has had in view throughout. To say it is the ceremonial law alone to which we have died is absurd in view of this statement. Where is the word found that forbids covetousness? In the ten commandments. Therefore the law means the divine ordinances engraved on tables of stone.
Apart from the law sin was dead, that is, inert and unrecognized. Sins there were even before the law was given, but sin-the nature-was not recognized till the law provoked it.
He says, I was alive once without the law; but when the commandment came, which was ordained (or proposed) to life, I found it to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it slew me (vers. Rom 7:9-11). In other words it is as though he said, I was blissfully unconscious of my true moral condition before God as a sinner until the force of the commandment forbidding covetousness came home to me. I had not realized that evil desire was in itself sinful, providing the desire was not carried out. But the law made this manifest. I struggled to keep down all unlawful desire; but sin-an evil principle within-was too strong for repression. It circumvented me, deceived me, and so by violation of the commandment brought me consciously under sentence of death. This is exactly what the law was intended to do, as he shows in the epistle to the Galatians as well as here. The law was added because of (or, with a view to) transgressions. That is, the law served to give to sin the specific character of transgression, thus deepening the sense of guilt and unworthiness.
Therefore, he concludes, the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. The fault is not in the law but in me.
Well, then, he asks, was this holy law made death to me? Not at all, but it detected that in him which could only result in death-namely, sin, which in order that it might be made manifest in all its hideousness was brought fully to light by the law, thus working death in him by that which he owns to be in itself good. And so sin, by means of the legal enactment, is made exceeding sinful.
Verses Rom 7:14-25 have been taken by many as the legitimate experience of a Christian throughout all his life. Others have thought that it could not be the conflict of a real Christian at all, but that Paul was describing the conflict between the higher and lower desires of the natural man, particularly of an unconverted Jew under law. But both views are clearly contrary to the argument of this part of the epistle.
As to the latter interpretation, it should be remembered that in this entire section of the epistle the question is the deliverance of a believer from the power of sin, and not of an unbeliever from his sins. Moreover no unsaved man can honestly say, I delight in the law of God after the inward man. It is only those who possess the new nature who can so speak. And as to this being the normal experience of one already saved I shall attempt to show as we go on with the study of the 7th and 8th chapters that there is an orderly progression from the bewilderment of chapter 7 to the intelligence and walk in the Spirit of chapter 8. All Christians doubtless know something of the state depicted in verses Rom 7:14-25 of this 7th chapter, but once out of it no one need ever go through it again. It is not merely the conflict between the two natures. If it were, one might indeed be back in the same unhappy experience again and again. It gives us the exercises of a quickened soul under law who has not yet learned the way of deliverance. This once learned, one is free from the law forever. I have said earlier in the address that primarily here we have a believing Jew struggling to obtain holiness by using the law as a rule of life and resolutely attempting to compel his old nature to be subject to it. In Christendom now the average Gentile believer goes through the same experience; for legality is commonly taught almost everywhere.
Therefore when one is converted it is but natural to reason that now one has been born of God it is only a matter of determination and persistent endeavor to subject oneself to the law, and one will achieve a life of holiness. And God Himself permits the test to be made in order that His people may learn experimentally that the flesh in the believer is no better than the flesh in an unbeliever. When he ceases from self-effort he finds deliverance through the Spirit by occupation with the risen Christ.
Paul writes in the first person singular, not necessarily as depicting a lengthy experience of his own (though he may have gone through it), but in order that each reader may enter into it sympathetically and understanding for himself.
The law is spiritual, that is, it is of God, it is holy and supernatural. But I am carnal, even though a believer; I am more or less dominated by the flesh. In 1Corinthians Chapters 2 and 3 we have distinguished for us the natural man, that is, the unsaved man; the carnal man, who is a child of God undelivered; and the spiritual man, the Christian who lives and walks in the Spirit.
Here the carnal man is sold under sin, that is he is subject to the power of the evil nature to which he has died in Christ, a blessed truth indeed, but one which has not yet been apprehended in faith. Consequently he continually finds himself going contrary to the deepest desires of his divinely-implanted new nature. He practises things he does not want to do. He fails to carry out his determinations for good. The sins he commits he hates. The good he loves he has not the strength to perform. But this proves to him that there is a something within him which is to be distinguished from his real self as a child of God. He has the fleshly nature still, though born of God. He knows the law is good. He wants to keep it, and slowly the consciousness dawns upon him that it is not really himself as united to Christ who fails. It is sin, dwelling in him, which is exercising control (vers. Rom 7:14-17).
So he learns the weakness and unprofitableness of the flesh. I know, he says, that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing. He wants to do good but he lacks the power to perform aright. Still he gives up slowly the effort to force the flesh to behave itself and to be subject to the law.
But the good he would do, he does not, and the evil he would not do, he does. This but establishes him in the conclusion already come to, that, It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. A law, or principle of action, then, has been discovered. He goes with the good and does the evil. According to the inward man he delights in the law of God, but this does not produce the holiness he expected. He must learn to delight in Christ risen to reach the goal of his desires! This he reaches later, but meantime he is occupied with the discovery of the two natures with their different desires and activities. He detects another law, a principle, in his members (that is, the members of the body through which the carnal mind works) which wars against the law of his renewed mind taking him captive to the sin-principle which is inseparable from his physical members so long as he is in this life. This principle he calls the law of sin and death. Were it not for this principle or controlling power there would be no danger of perverting or misusing any human desire, or propensity. Almost convinced that the struggle must go on during the entire course of his earthly existence he cries in anguish, Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death! He is like a living man chained to a polluted, because corrupt, corpse, and unable to snap the chains. He cannot make the corpse clean and subject, no matter how he tries. It is the cry of hopelessness so far as self-effort is concerned. He is brought to the end of human resources. In a moment he gets a vision by faith of the risen Christ. He alone is the Deliverer from Sins power, as well as the Saviour from the penalty of guilt. I thank God, he cries, through Jesus Christ our Lord! He has found the way out. Not the law but Christ in glory is the rule of life for the Christian.
But the actual entering into this is reserved for the next section. Meantime he confesses So then with the mind (that is, the renewed mind) I myself (the real man as God sees him) serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. Such an experience cannot be the Christian ideal. The next chapter which we take up separately shows the way out of this perplexing and unsatisfactory state.
If I am addressing any believer who is even now in the agonizing throes of this terrific struggle, endeavoring to subject the flesh to the holy law of God, let me urge you to accept Gods own verdict on the flesh and acknowledge the impossibility of ever making it behave itself. Do not fight with it. It will overthrow you every time. Turn away from it; cease from it altogether; and look away from self and law to Christ risen.
Israel of old wanted to find a short cut through Edom, type of the flesh, but the children of Esau came out armed to contest their way. The command of God was to turn away and compass the land of Edom. And so with us; it is as we turn altogether from self-occupation we find deliverance and victory in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
Rom 7:1-6
“Law versus Grace.”.
Note:-
I. St. Paul’s maxim that it is death which puts an end to all obligation created by statute law. Expositors have often remarked how fond this apostle was of legal phraseology, and especially of illustrations borrowed from jurisprudence. His whole doctrine of justification, as we have it in the earlier portion of this Epistle, is in fact cast in a forensic mould. The verses immediately preceding this chapter describe conversion in language borrowed from an ancient legal process for the manumission of slaves. In harmony with the same obvious tendency of his mind, St. Paul is here borrowing a legal maxim to set forth the necessity for our Lord’s judicial death; and citing an instance of it from the marriage law of the Hebrews. The maxim is this: nothing save death can ordinarily cancel the binding obligation of civil law over its subjects; but death always does so. What we are clearly meant to gather from this legal illustration is that the decease of Jesus as the legal representative of His people was necessary, in order to dissolve the claims over them of the Divine law.
II. St. Paul contends that it is indispensable that men should be loosed from the legal obligation, if ever they were to attain to real holiness. The lex scripta of Mosaism failed because it was only a lex scripta. It stood over against the fallen nature of man as the bare utterance of a stronger will, an imperative as cold and rigid as the stone it was graved upon, with nothing about it to quicken inward affection or move the deep springs of spiritual good in the human heart. In the gospel a new Word steps into the vacant seat of moral control, and begins to exert his quickening influence upon the moral life. That other is Christ Himself, risen from the dead and reigning in virtue of the grace He brings. If I am so joined to Him as to be delivered from the law through His death, then I must be so joined to Him as to be animated by His life. In the room of the dead letter of Moses’ decalogue, prescribing duty to a dead soul, Christ breathes into the man a living spirit. The love for what pleases God proves itself the parent of a troop of happy impulses and pure affections and glad obediences to all the holy and perfect will of our Father in heaven.
J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 191.
Reference: Rom 7:1.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 248.
Rom 7:4
I. “Ye are dead.” This spiritual death must surely be in some profound sense-so often and so earnestly is the phrase reiterated-the mystical image of that death from which it derives its name. Whither does death conduct us? “Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise,” said the Lord of Life to the dying penitent. He Himself “preached to spirits in confinement,” preserved in the secret citadel of God; a world where, as He declared, all live unto Him, and whose happier region perhaps is typified by the bosom of Abraham, which the Jews employed to express it and which our Lord has consecrated by His adoption. The triumphant fulness of heavenly glory seems to demand the body no less than the spirit; and may we not fairly deem, with many of our safest and holiest divines, that there is beyond this scene, in some lone region of the illimitable universe, a home for the spirit, embodied, or clad it may be, with some fine and invisible materialism, where in the calm expectation of consummate bliss it learns the art of higher happiness, and trains its faculties for coming glory. And as in all our physical changes spiritual changes more essential seem pictured, I cannot but think that as our death represents the spiritual death that opens the Christian’s course, so this intervening state of holy anticipation seems eminently to represent the peculiar blessedness that follows death to sin and to the law.
II. Departed saints are dead to the world, dead to its sins, dead to its avenging law. It cannot cast its shadow across the grave, and it cannot prolong one pang of bitterness, one touch of temptation. Its waves are broken beneath the walls of that sheltered paradise. These are the franchised of Christ and of death; dust has returned to dust that the spirit might return unto God; they have died into His eternal life. This is the story of the dying saint; such dying saints must you be even now, if you would live even now with Jesus.
W. Archer Butler, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 116.
References: Rom 7:4.-Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 56. Rom 7:5-25.-Homilist, new series, vol. i., p. 109. Rom 7:6.-H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 11; Ibid., Sermons, 10th series, p. 217. Rom 7:6, Rom 7:25.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., p. 216.
Rom 7:7
I. These are searching words, and direct our thoughts to the hidden light in pursuance of the design of explaining and enforcing the plan of man’s justification in the gospel through the merits of Jesus Christ by faith. The Apostle shows that all men, Jew and Gentile alike, are sinners, deserving of death; that the law could not justify because all had disobeyed the law; and by baptism into Christ’s death the Christian had died, as it were, to the law, and is no more bound to the law of the covenant than a woman after her husband’s death is by the vows of her first marriage. Having thus been obliged to speak disparagingly of the law as a covenant in comparison with the gospel, the Apostle hastens to prevent an inference derogatory to the law itself, and consequently to the character of Him who gave it. The law has laid down a broad clear rule of right, and by taking away every plea of ignorance, and placing the weight of God’s authority in the scale, it has, as it were, opened our eyes, and shown us that we are sinners.
II. Consider the sin of unlawful desires. The product of our corrupt nature may spring up spontaneously from the original soil, an evidence always of original sin, the parent of actual sin. The world is full of occasions which call them forth; the devil suggests, and the heart too readily answers to the call. They are the first steps towards the acts of sin and the actual violation of the letter of God’s law, and when they in reality take place, the struggle issues, either in resisting the temptation by Divine grace and overcoming it, or a sin which results from yielding and defeat. The desire of sin, when indulged in, is as sinful as the act itself. The sinfulness of unlawful desires impresses upon us all the necessity of self-examination and watchfulness and prayer. Such desires are the natural offspring of our own evil heart, we are liable to their intrusion at all times and in all places. We should accustom ourselves to examine our desires, our thoughts, wishes, and external temptations, and judge them, not as carrying no guilt because not proceeding to the outward deed, but as mental acts, having their own moral character, and, as such, condemned or acquitted by the spiritual law of God. The weapons of this warfare of ours must not be carnal, but from God, and mighty to the pulling down of strongholds, if we would cast down the imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against God.
Bishop Temple, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, March 11th, 1880.
References: Rom 7:7.-Bishop Temple, Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ix., p. 145; Ibid., Church of England Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 145.
Rom 7:7-13
A Chapter in Saul’s Early Life.
I. St. Paul repels with energy the idea that there can be anything essentially bad, unholy, or immoral about the blessed law of God itself. On the contrary, but for that law he could never have reached any real knowledge of sin. Only by the law’s clear discovery of moral good does it bring home to us the conviction of sin’s sinfulness. During childhood, and sometimes well on into early youth, we do not realise God’s law. A moment arrives when the law of God comes home to the conscience with new power. In the case of young Saul, it was especially the tenth commandment which came home. It became plain to him that God forbids not merely doing wrong, but wishing wrong. He saw that to be good, therefore, one has to watch the earliest budding of a bad wish within the heart-nay, that if the bad wish bud there at all, the law is already, and in that fact, broken. Ah! the happy dream life was ended then. Here was the death of all his peace and gladness. “Sin revived,” says he, with a terse pathos, “sin awoke unto life, and I died.”
II. The law had failed, then, shall we say? Instead of quenching sin in Saul’s soul it had inflamed it. It had produced self-condemnation, inward strife, despair, and death. Was the law to blame for that? No, it was the very perfection and glory of the Decalogue that it contained that tenth and most spiritual precept. It was just its exceeding broadness and nobleness which made it impossible for unregenerate Saul to keep it. It was no fault of the law that it wrought in Saul lust and death; but it was the fault of what Saul had now learned to know as sin. Not sins, but sin: not sinfulness even as a simple quality of the sinner, but sin as a force, a dread and mighty factor in the human soul, which lies deep, deeper than desire, and proves itself strong, stronger than the better will that strives against it. In His mercy God meant men to learn this bitter, humbling, but most salutary lesson, that the natural heart is at enmity against God, since it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 201.
Rom 7:9
The Place of the Law in the Salvation of Sinners.
We have here:-
I. A life which a man enjoys in and of himself before he knows God. “I was alive without the law once.” This is the natural state of the fallen. It is here called life, and elsewhere it is called death. The wide diversity of the names employed to designate the same thing need not cause surprise. The one term expresses the true state of the man, and the other term expresses the man’s own view of his state. In God’s sight it is death; in his own imagination it is life.
II. The Exodus from that Egypt; the escape from that false life by a dying. “The commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” (1) “The commandment came.” It is no longer an imitation law, modelled on the measure of his own attainments, which might be pressed upon his conscience, and yet not extinguish his self-righteous life. It is the unchanging will of the unchanging God-the word which liveth and abideth for ever. It is a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. (2) “Sin revived” at the entrance of this visitant. The commandment coming in did not cause, but only detected, sin. It was by the light of the commandment, when it came, that he discovered the sin which had all along been living and reigning in his heart and life. (3) “I died.” The life in which he had hitherto trusted was extinguished then. Chased by the strange usurper from every part of its long-cherished home, the life flickers over it a moment, like the flame of an expiring lamp, and then darts away into the unseen.
III. He lives in another life. No interval of time separated the two. The death that led from one life was the birth of another. It is one act. The dying is the living. The exodus from this life is the entrance into that. He does not remain one moment dead. The instant after his death, you hear him exclaiming, “I died.” His own voice declaring how and when he died is the surest evidence that he lives. “Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” “Our life is hid with Christ in God.”
W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits, p. 69.
References: Rom 7:9.-H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 299. Rom 7:9-25.-H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. iii., p. 179.
Rom 7:11
I. The sentiment of law, nowadays, is killing the living consciousness in man; it was so, it has been so, in all ages; man is not only in danger from the great majesties of nature, he is in danger not less from himself and from his own works. In many directions they are assuming proportions not less than terrible to him. He may say with the Apostle, “The law slew me.” What, then, did the word law mean to St. Paul? What did he find in it? The whole Epistle to the Romans is an exhibition of the reconciliation made by God, of man with His law. It is to us a cold, hard word; but it represents that which is highest in God-order, holiness, rectitude. The moderns think they have advanced far, when they discover that the universe moves upon the wheels of law. Paul plainly enough declares that, and he further opens his epistle declaring that man alone breaks through the barriers of law. This is the subject of the first chapter. Immoral is unlawful.
II. I conceive, then, that so long as we limit the Pauline conception of the word law to the legalism of Judaism, we do injustice, not only to the argument of the Apostle, but still more injustice to the scope and intention of the Christian system. When I hear Paul speak of the law of God, I understand by it God’s expressed will. But then we know that will is the expression of God’s character. God is a sovereign, but He has a law in His own being, beyond and beneath which He cannot go. He can do nothing unholy. He can do nothing wrong, nothing beneath the character of God.
III. The law of consciousness is used by the Apostle, when he rises from the review of the symmetry of things to the conditions of character by which God has made Himself known to us. But the birth of consciousness in the soul is the awakening of conscience; and while consciousness broods over matter, as a master over a slave, conscience, a still more inexorable master, broods over the consciousness. Law is still a terror, that which is fixed; the rigid hard law of things is still a sentence and a doom. But the law becomes our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. He is a new force in the soul. Terrified by what is fixed and arbitrary in law, I wanted to find the security of the law of permanence transcended by the law of change, and I find it here. I discover how “the law and the Spirit of life sets free from the law of sin,” that is conscience, “and of death,” that is nature.
E. Paxton Hood, Dark Sayings on a Harp, p. 173.
References: Rom 7:11.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1045; C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of the Cross and Passion, p. 241.
Rom 7:12
It is plain that the revelation of the law is made to assist us in copying the pattern which is there set before us. Consider the defect of character which is the natural consequence of not being fully impressed with each one of these three characteristics of God’s government and His creation.
I. A man may be deficient in a sense of the holiness of the law. Of course he who does not feel the holiness of the law will not fully feel its goodness, still less its justice. The defect of such a man’s character is a tendency to be earthly. To have his hopes, his aims, his labours, bounded by this present life; to lose all hold of the heavenly, unearthly side of religion; to be much more moral than devotional; to cut out all his duties by an earthly pattern. This defect of character admits of many degrees. But it is plain that such a man is not fashioned on the highest type. His service may be genuine as far as it goes; but it is imperfect, not only as all human service is imperfect in the execution, but imperfect in the very conception and idea.
II. Again, a man may not have a strong sense of the goodness of God’s law. Such a man, of course, has but a poor and narrow idea of holiness. But still he may have much more sense of that than of God’s goodness. He shuts himself out from much that is tender, much that touches the heart, much that softens and blesses, because he will not open his senses to receive the gifts of his Maker.
III. Lastly, a man may be wanting in a sense of the justice of God’s government. And perhaps for us imperfect creatures this is the most dangerous deficiency of all. Such a one generally shows his want by a weak desire to bury the past. He has no sense of a sin once done being a substantive thing tied inevitably to substantive consequences. And for this very reason he cannot feel any need for a Redeemer or a redemption. And so he never comes with a full acknowledgment of his guilt to the foot of the Cross, resigning soul and body to Him who alone can cleanse.
Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, p. 111.
Rom 7:13
I. What is sin? Rebellion-the resistance of a human mind against the sovereignty of its Creator. It little matters, in comparison, what may be the act by which a rebel shows that he is a rebel; the fact is the important thing-that he is in a state of rebellion. Man measures sin by the degree of the injury which a sin inflicts on society, or upon the man who does it. God measures sin by the degree of the rebellion which He sees in that sin against Himself. What we call the sin is in His sight only the index of the sinfulness which lies deep down in the heart.
II. No sin is single, no sin is solitary, there are no islands in sin. The principle of obedience is a single thing; the man that has broken one law has violated the principle of obedience, and therefore he is as much a breaker of the law as if he had broken a thousand things. Again, all God’s law is one law. It resolves itself into one-Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. He that hath done one sin did not love God; therefore by his want of love he has brought himself guilty to the count of all the law-for the law is love.
III. Every sin which a man does, lies in a series-in which that one sin is a link, and none can calculate what will be the chain of repetitions and the chain of consequences, which shall stretch on and on from sin to sin, from person to person, from circle to circle, from age to age-beyond time into eternity. The sins that we do very soon pass out of our memory, in the crowd of new and pressing engagements and thoughts which come around us; we perhaps very little realise now the sins which once pressed very heavily and were very vivid to our consciences. But with God’s view each one sin is as green and fresh as at the moment when it was done. Let us try then to look on sin as God looks on it, and we shall better appreciate the infinite grace of Him who was made sin for us.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 319.
References: Rom 7:13.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1095; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 71; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., P. 103.
Rom 7:14-25
Dualism in the Life.
I. This is the earliest place in this Epistle where the two terms “flesh and spirit” occur in clear contrast, with the peculiar ethical sense conferred upon them by one another. In the next chapter we find them in constant use, as the key words of his argument. The point of St. Paul here is that the law of God partakes of His own nature. It, too, is spiritual. It reflects the Divine character, for it expresses the Divine will, and therefore between it and the nature of man, as man now is, there holds precisely the same incompatibility which our Lord affirmed between what is born of the flesh and what is born of the spirit. In this sad closing picture of his own experience, even after his mind had become reconciled to the law, St. Paul has made himself a mirror in which men of earnest holiness and habits of self-scrutiny have in every age seen themselves reflected. Such an internal dualism-such a strife of opposites-such a comparative impotency to realise the good they propose, are standing characteristics of saintliness, if we may judge saints by their most secret confessions and self-examinations.
II. St. Paul speaks of the law in his members as waging such successful war, that it even carried him off at times into captivity, like a prisoner of war. For the sinful principle which has its seat in an inborn disposition makes sudden sallies when a soul is off its guard, then leaps on with some gust of passion, and before it can gather itself up to resist it is swept forward by the unexpected pressure and is lost. So anger overtakes some, so lust others. Let us entreat God for a watchful temper. In Christ Jesus is a spirit of life. What the law never could do, because it was weak through the flesh, God has done in Christ. The Spirit whom we have received in Christ is the true answer to every “Who shall deliver?” Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 211.
References: Rom 7:18.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84; W. Ground, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 316; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 5th series, p. 115. Rom 7:19.-H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 364.
Rom 7:20
What are the lessons of life which we have to deduce from the doctrine of original sin?
I. First, of course, there is that dependence on God’s help, which we can never too often repeat to our hearts as our only stay. We have to learn not merely as an abstract truth but as a living fact, as a principle which will check and control, and yet uphold our hearts throughout the day, that we are in God’s hands and not our own. We are not the real combatants in the great battle; rather our souls are the battle-field, and Christ and sin fight there for supremacy, and we can but surrender ourselves to one of the two. We are weak and helpless, except in as much as God may help us. If we would ask what are the tokens of our having learnt the lesson, the answer is, that besides the quiet trust in God, the chief token of our having learnt to lean on God, and not on ourselves, is the avoidance of all unnecessary temptation.
II. As on the one hand we learn our absolute dependence on God, so do we learn and get comfort in our Christian warfare. We learn that there is a sense in which we can, like the Apostle, disclaim our own faults and say as he did, “It is not I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” In so far as we do not consent to our own faults, in so far they are not our own; in so far as we yield to them, they are ours. And God who is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things, can see when we have honestly striven, and assuredly will not deny His help in such a struggle.
III. We must not be disappointed, or cast down, or disheartened, because we find our self-improvement very much slower than we expect or like. The evil to be cured is past human remedy. God will cure it if we wish. But He will cure it in His own way, and at His own time. We must be content to fight the battle in His name and strength, and leave the issue in His hands.
Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, p. 122.
References: Rom 7:21.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 262. Rom 7:21-25.-A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons, p. 458.
Rom 7:22-23
Victory amid Strife.
I. There are, says an ancient father, four states of man. In the first, man struggles not, but is subdued; in the second, he struggles and is still subdued; in the third, he struggles and subdues; in the fourth, he has to struggle no more. The first state of heavy sluggish acquiescence in sin is man’s condition when not under the law of God. The second, of a fruitless, ineffectual struggle, is his state under the law, but not with the fulness of Divine grace. The third, wherein he is in the main victorious, is under the full grace of the gospel. The fourth, of tranquil freedom from all struggle, is in the blessed and everlasting peace. Three of these states there are now. However any be under the power of grace, they, while in the flesh, must have conflict still. It would not be a state of trial without conflict. And this conflict is within, as well as without. This very condition of our being must be good for us, since God, after He has redeemed, regenerated, renewed us, has given us of His Spirit, and made us members of His Son, united us to Christ, and made us temples of the Holy Ghost, but still leaves more or less responsibility in those whom He willed to sit on His right hand and on His left in His kingdom.
II. This conflict is continual. It spreads through the whole life and through every part in man. Man is besieged on all sides. No power, no faculty, no sense, is free from this warfare. Every sense is tempted or tempts to sin; the law of sin is found, although by God’s grace it reigns not, in all our members. But though the whole man is besieged thus within and without, his inward self, his life, his soul, where God dwells, whereby he is united to God, is hemmed in, but not overcome, unless his will consents. “Sin lieth at the door.” The will holds the door closed; the will alone opens the door. If thou open not the door thyself, sin cannot enter in. Resist the very first motions. It is then that thou art most in thy own power. Be not weary of resisting, although the temptation come again and again. Each such resistance is an act of obedience to God; each, done by His grace, draws down more of His grace to thee; in each His good pleasure will the more rest upon thee; by each thou wilt become more a vessel of His grace and love, more fitted and enlarged for His everlasting love.
E. B. Pusey, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 327.
References: Rom 7:22, Rom 7:23.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1062; A. P. Peabody, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 397.
Rom 7:22-25
I. When a man begins to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and, discontented with himself, attempts to improve himself, he soon begins to find a painful truth in many a word of the Bible to which he gave little heed, as long as he was contented with himself and with doing just what pleased him, right or wrong. He soon finds out the meaning and the truth of that terrible struggle between the good in him and the evil in him, of which St. Paul speaks so bitterly in the text. How, when he tries to do good, evil is present with him. How he delights in the law of God with his inward mind, and yet finds another law in his body warring against the law of God, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. How he is crippled by old habits, weakened by cowardice, by laziness, by vanity, by general inability of will, till he is ready-disgusted at himself and his own weakness-to cry, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
II. Let him but utter that cry honestly; let him once find out that he wants something outside himself to help him, to deliver him, to strengthen him, to stir up his weak will, to give him grace and power to do what he knows instead of merely admiring it and leaving it undone; let a man only find out that; let him see that he needs a helper, a deliverer, a strengthener, in one word a Saviour, and he will find one. Like St. Paul, after crying “O wretched man that I am!” he will be able to answer himself, “I thank God-God will deliver me, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ will stir up this weak will of mine, Christ will give me strength and power, faithfully to fulfil all my good desires, because He Himself has put them into my heart-not to mock me, not to disappoint me, not to make me wretched with the sight of noble graces and virtues to which I cannot attain, but to fulfil His work in me.”
C. Kingsley, All Saints’ Day, p. 41.
References: Rom 7:22-25.-Plain Sermons by Contributors to “Tracts for the Times,” vol. iii., p. 34. Rom 7:23.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1459. Rom 7:24.-Good Words, vol. iii., p. 445; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 37; C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of the Cross and Passion, p. 227.
Rom 7:24-25
I. The consciousness of sin is so far a universal fact of human nature, that if any one of us is without it, it is because of some disease and defect in his own mind. The conviction of sin may be stifled, nay, it is stifled every day, and yet it is universal as light is universal, although some may shut their eyes close and admit none of it; so is the consciousness of sin universal, although many believe that they have got rid of it altogether. For this very absence of conviction only proves the incompleteness of their nature. They deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them. They are sleeping steeped in cold mists and poisonous dews, but they know not the poison because they are asleep. Yet fire burns and poison destroys not the less, when the senses that are sentinels against them desert their posts. Every man whose nature is complete and awake and active knows that there is such a thing as sin and that he is a partaker in it.
II. In what does the consciousness of sin consist? It is the consciousness of division and strife within a man. His mind is not at peace with itself. In our pride we revolt against God, and all our inner thoughts start into rebellion against us. Today, with its high hopes and promises, passes censure on tomorrow with its foolish outbreaks and lame performances. If we could add a little weight to our will, or abate but a little from the force of our temptations!-but as it is, the secret record of our lives would be a register of unfulfilled intentions.
III. Such a condition must be one of misery, out of which it is natural to try to escape, either by the door of deliverance opened to us by Christ in His gospel, or through the gates of death and hell. And all these belong not to the nature of sin itself, but only to our consciousness of it. Let us remember that the Physician is close at hand, who will pour balm into our wounds, who will create a new heart and a new spirit within us.
Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln’s Inn Sermons, p. 188.
References: Rom 7:24, Rom 7:25.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 235; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 313; J. Wells, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 5; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 347; Ibid., vol. xiv., p. 356; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 96. Rom 7:25.-Good Words, vol. iii., p. 447. Rom 8:1.-G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons, p. 157; Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament, p. 128; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. i., p. 420; vol. ii., p. 258; vol. vii., p. 113; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 44. Rom 8:1-4.-D. Bagot, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 125.
CHAPTER 7
1. The Law and its Dominion. (Rom 7:1-3.)
2. Dead to the Law and Married to Another. (Rom 7:4-6.)
3. Concerning the Law; its Activities and Purpose. (Rom 7:7-13.)
4. The Experience of a Believer in Bondage to the Law. (Rom 7:14-24.)
5. The Triumphant note of Deliverance. (Rom 7:25.)
Rom 7:1-3
The law is now more fully taken up. We have learned before that by the works of the law no man can be justified before God. But when the sinner is justified by faith, does he need the law to please God? Can obedience to the law produce in him the fruit of holiness unto God? What is the relation of the justified believer to the law? Is he still under the dominion of the law or is he also delivered from the law and its bondage? These questions are answered in this chapter. An important principle is stated in the first verse. The law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. The law has dominion over man (both Jews and Gentiles). The law, which is holy, just and good (Rom 7:12) condemns man, his sinful nature and the fruits of that sinful nature, and in this sense it has dominion over every man and holds him in its grasp. But when death takes place, the rule of the law is broken. It cannot touch a dead man. The penalty of the broken law is death, when that sentence is executed, the law can have no longer dominion.
An illustration from the marriage law as instituted by God is given to make this clear. Husband and wife are united in a union till death dissolves it. The married woman is bound by that law to her husband as long as he lives. When he dies she is free and can be married to another. And we are become dead to the law by the body of Christ. The body of Christ means the death of Christ on the Cross. On the cross He bore the judgment which is our due. He bore the penalty and the curse of the law for us. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Gal 3:13). The penalty of the broken law has been met and the law is vindicated. Inasmuch, then as His death is our death, in that we died with Christ, the law can have no more dominion over us; we are dead to the law by the body of Christ.
Rom 7:4-6
The old union is dissolved. Death has done its work and it is now possible after being freed from the law to be married to another. In Galatians the question about the law and its authority is viewed from another side. The law was the schoolmaster unto Christ; now after faith is come, the full truth concerning redemption by the death of Christ is made known, we are no longer under a schoolmaster (Gal 3:23-25). Being then dead to the law by the body of Christ we are married to another. And this other One is He who died for us and who is risen from the dead. Justified believers are in a living union with a risen Christ; He lives in us and we live in Him. And the result of this most blessed union is fruit unto God. The law could not produce any fruit whatever but only death; nor can the legal principle bring forth fruit unto God in a believer. Ephraim was joined to idols as we read in Hosea. But Ephraim observed the Lord, heard Him and became like a green fir tree. And the Lord adds, From Me is thy fruit found (Hos 14:8). The parable of the vine and the branches (Joh 15:1-27) illustrates in a simple and blessed way the apostolic statement, Married unto another–that we should bring forth fruit unto God. As the branch is in closest union with the vine and the sap of the vine produces the fruit, so are we one with Christ, and abiding in Him we bring forth the fruit unto holiness, the fruit which pleases God.
And when we were in the flesh (our former state) the passions of sins were by the law. The law by its holy character brings out what the natural man is and stirs up the passions of sins. But it is different now. We are delivered from the law and we can serve in newness of Spirit. We have a new nature, even eternal life, and in that we can render a true spiritual service.
Rom 7:7-13
Is the law sin? is the next question raised. It springs logically from the statement that the passions of sins, coming out of an evil, sinful heart, were by the law and bringing forth fruit unto death. Still another God forbid is the answer. The law was given that we might have through that law the knowledge of sin. I had not known sin, but by the law. I would not be conscious of lust, unless the law said, Thou shalt not covet. The law given by a holy God is Gods detective. The law forbids and the commandment at once brings out what is in the heart of man. Therefore, no blame can be put upon the law. Sin is that which must be blamed. Sin is lawlessness, rebellion against God and the law brings out that rebellion. Therefore apart from the law sin was dead, that is, dormant. But as soon as the commandment is given, the evil heart rebels against it and man is detected to be a sinner and a transgressor. Let us notice the change of the pronoun we to I. Some thirty times this little word I is found in Rom 7:7-25. We are brought upon the ground of personal experience; it has to be discovered and learned experimentally. The Apostle personifies this experience and speaks thus personally describing how a believer learns the lessons about the law, how the law cannot help a justified believer, and but makes of him a wretched man. It must also have been his own experience.
For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. This is the experience of a man who is ignorant of the spirituality of the law. He thinks himself alive, but when the commandment came, its spiritual demands realized (the law is spiritual, Rom 7:14), the false notion of being alive was detected, for sin revived and he died, which means that sin, discovered by the law, condemned him to death. And the commandment which was unto life was found for me to be unto death. In connection with the commandment, the law, it is written, This do, and thou shalt live. And so in this experience–he tries next to get life by the law, but he found it was unto death, for the declaration of the law is Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them (Gal 3:10; Deu 27:26). He speaks of sin, his evil nature, as one who had deceived him into all this, so that the law could manifest its power in slaying him. Rom 7:12 is the real answer to the question, Is the law sin? The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good. And because the law is holy it gives knowledge of sin and detects sin, bringing it to light in all its hideousness and then pronounces the sentence of death. One other question is asked, Was then that which is good (the law) made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. It all comes back upon sin (the evil nature, the flesh). Thus by the commandment sin becomes exceeding sinful.
Rom 7:14-24
But all this must be learned by experience, especially the fact I am carnal, the knowledge that in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing and that I have no power, I am powerless against indwelling sin. What person is it who describes his experience in these words? Some have applied it exclusively to the Apostle. Others state that it pictures an awakened sinner and not a converted man. The man described is born again, but is in bondage to the law and is ignorant of his deliverance in Christ. We find first the statement we know that the law is spiritual. This is the knowledge which a true Christian possesses concerning the law. And the Christian who knows this great truth, that the law is spiritual, also has learned another truth. I am carnal and sold under sin. Here then it is where experience begins. True Christian experience is to know our full deliverance in Christ and to walk in the Spirit; the experience of a Christian in struggling with the old nature and discovering what is that old nature, the flesh, is put before us in Rom 7:15-24. That we have here a converted person is seen by the fact first of all, that he does not want to do evil, he wants to do good and cannot do it and therefore hates what he does. The carnal nature, the flesh, which is still in a converted person, is thus demonstrated as enslaving him, however, he is no longer a willing slave, but he hates that old thing which has the mastery over him. In hating it and condemning sin, he does the same what the law does, for it also condemns sin. In this way he consents to the law that it is good. The seventeenth verse is of much importance. Now then it is no more I that really do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. He learns the difference between himself as born again, in possession of a new nature, and the old nature. He begins to distinguish himself as in possession of a new nature that wills to do good, hating evil, and sin in him, the flesh in which dwells nothing good, but all that is evil. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. It is a great discovery to find out by experience, that although the believer is born again, he has a nature in him which is evil, which cannot bring forth a good thing. But the will is present with him to do good, because he is born again; however, he finds not the power in himself to perform what is good. And now the conflict between the two natures is on. It brings out some important facts. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. He as born again, no longer loves sin; he hates it. Because he does that which he does not want to do he can truthfully say it is no more I that do it. Furthermore he delights in the law of God after the inward man. This can never be said of an unconverted man, but only he who has a new nature can delight in the law of God. But he finds himself in helpless captivity to the law of sin which is at work in his members. He finds out that while he has a new nature to will good and to hate evil, he has no power; sin is too strong for him. And this is to teach the believer that he must get power to overcome outside of himself. All his resolutions and good wishes cannot supply the strength to do. That he is self-occupied, seeking power by what he does and tries to do, is seen from the use of the little word I. The name of the One in whom we have deliverance, Christ, is not mentioned once. The case is clear, it is the description of the experience of a believer, who is justified, born again, in union with Christ, dead with Him, risen with Him and indwelt by the Holy Spirit; but he lacks the knowledge of this and tries by his own efforts and in his own strength, through keeping the law, to obtain holiness. Having discovered that nothing good dwells in his flesh; that the flesh is not himself, but sin in him and that, because it is too strong for him, he is powerless, the cry of despair is uttered by him. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? He has reached the end of self. He looks now for deliverance from another source, outside of himself. The answer comes at once. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. In Him there is deliverance and what that deliverance is, we shall learn from the first four verses of the eighth chapter. The two laws are mentioned once more in the last verse of this chapter. With the mind, as born again, he serves the law and the law gives him no power; in the struggle with the old nature he is enslaved by the law of sin.
sin
Sin. (See Scofield “Rom 3:23”).
Know: Rom 6:3
brethren: Rom 9:3, Rom 10:1
them that: Rom 2:17, Rom 2:18, Ezr 7:25, Pro 6:23, 1Co 9:8, Gal 4:21
the law: Rom 7:6, Rom 6:14
a man: Or, person, either man or woman; [Strong’s G444] and homo having this extent of signification.
Reciprocal: Mar 10:9 – General
THE OPENING WORDS of chapter 7 direct our minds back to the 14th and 15th verses of the previous chapter, where the apostle had plainly stated that the believer is not under law but under grace. A tremendous controversy had raged around this point, to which the Acts bears witness-especially Rom 15:1-33.
That point was authoritatively settled at Jerusalem as regards the Gentile believers. They were not to be put under the law. But was the point as clear when Jewish believers were in question?
It was evidently by no means clear to the Jewish believers themselves. Act 21:20, proves this. It was very necessary therefore that Paul should make the matter abundantly plain and definite; hence his recurring to the theme as he opens this chapter. The words enclosed in brackets in verse Rom 7:1 show that he is now specially addressing himself to his Jewish brethren. They alone knew the law, in the proper sense of the term. Gentiles might know something about it as observers from without: Israel knew it from within, as having been put under it. This remark of Pauls furnishes us with an important key to the chapter, indicating the point from which things are viewed.
The first six verses of this chapter are doctrinal in nature, showing the way by which the believer is delivered from the bondage of law and brought into connection with Christ. From verse Rom 7:7 onwards, we have a passage which is highly experimental. The actions of the law, on the heart and conscience of one who fears God, are detailed. We are given an insight into the experimental workings of law which ultimately prepare the believer for the experience of the deliverance found in Christ and in the Spirit of God. It is a remarkable fact that in all chapter 7 there is not one mention of the Holy Spirit; whereas in chapter 8 there is probably more mention of Him than in any other chapter of the Bible.
The Apostles starting point is the well known fact that law extends its sway over a man as long as he lives. Death, and death only, terminates its dominion. This is seen very clearly in connection with the divine law of marriage, as stated in verses Rom 7:2-3.
The same principle applies in spiritual things, as verse Rom 7:4 states, though it does not apply in exactly the same way. The law is in the position of husband and we who believe are in the position of wife. Yet it is not that death has come in upon the law, but that we have died. Verse Rom 7:4 is quite plain as to this. Verse Rom 7:6 appears to say that the law has died, only here the correct reading is found in the margin of reference Bibles. It is not, that being dead…, but rather, being dead to that… The two verses quite agree.
We have become dead to the law by the body of Christ. This at first sight seems somewhat obscure. Paul refers, we believe, to that which was involved in our Lord taking the body prepared for Him, and thereby becoming a Man. He took that body with a view to suffering death, and hence the body of Christ is used as signifying His death. It is the same figure of speech as we have in Col 1:22, where we are said to be reconciled in the body of His flesh, through death.
We have died from under laws dominion in the death of Christ. In this way our connection with the first husband has ceased. But all is in view of our entering into a new connection under the risen Christ. Every Jew found the old husband-the law-very stern and unbending, a wife-beater in fact; though they had to admit they richly deserved all they got. We, Gentiles, can hardly imagine how great the relief when the converted Jew discovered that he was now under Christ and not under law. Married to Christ, risen from the dead, the standard set was higher than it ever was under law, but now an unbounded supply flowed from Him of the grace and power needed, and hence fruit for God became a possibility. As Husband, Christ is the Fountain-head of all support, guidance, comfort and power.
How striking the contrast which verse Rom 7:5 presents! Indeed the verse itself is very striking for it names four things that go together:-flesh, law, sins, death. Of old the law was imposed upon a people in the flesh. In result it simply stirred into action the sin which ever lies latent in the flesh. Consequently the motions or passions of sins were aroused and death followed as Gods judgment upon all. Flesh here is not our bodies, but the fallen nature which has its seat in our present bodies. Every unconverted person is in the flesh; that is, the flesh dominates them and characterizes their state. But you notice that for believers that state has passed away. The Apostle says when we were in the flesh.
Another contrast confronts us when we turn to verse Rom 7:6. when we were… But now. Having died with Christ, we are not only dead to sin, as chapter 6 enforces, but dead also to the law and therefore delivered from it. Consequently we can now serve God in an entirely new way. We not only do new things, but we do those new things in a new spirit. In the previous chapter we read of newness of life. (verse Rom 7:4.) Now we read of newness of spirit.
We read of people in Old Testament days who turned from lives of recklessness and sin to the fear of God-Manasseh, King of Judah, for instance, as recorded in 2Ch 33:11-19. It might perhaps be said of him that he walked in newness of life during the last years of his reign. Yet he could only serve God according to the principles and ways of the law-system under which he was. It was impossible for newness of spirit to mark him. If we want to see service in newness of spirit we must turn to a converted Jew of this present period of grace. He may once have done his best to serve God in the spirit of strict law-keeping. Now he discovers himself to be a son and heir of God in Christ Jesus, and he serves in the spirit of a son with a father-a spirit which is altogether new.
An employer may set two men to a certain task, one of them being his own son. If the young man in any degree realizes the relationship in which he stands he will set about the work in a spirit altogether different to that of a hired servant. Our illustration would perhaps have been even nearer the mark had we supposed the case of a wife serving her husbands interests. Delivered from the law by death, the death of Christ, we are linked with the risen Christ in order to fruitfully serve God in a spirit that is new.
Teaching such as this most evidently brings Christ into prominence and puts the law into the shade. Does it in any way cast an aspersion on the law? Does it even infer that there was something wrong with it? This point is taken up in verses Rom 7:7-13, and it is made abundantly clear that the law was perfect as far as it went. The mischief was not with the law but with the sin which rose up against the law, finding in the law indeed that which provoked it, and also that which condemned it.
Verse Rom 7:7 tells us how the law exposed and condemned sin. Before the law came we sinned but did not realize what sinners we were. Directly the law spoke we discovered the true state of the case. Just as a plumb-line reveals the crookedness of a tottering wall, so the law exposed us.
Yet it was sin and not law that wrought the mischief, as verse Rom 7:8 states; though sin somewhat camouflaged itself by springing into activity directly it was confronted with the definite prohibition of the law. The very fact that we were told not to do a thing provoked us to do it!
As a matter of fact then the law affected us in two ways. First, it stirred up sin into action. It drew a line and forbade us to step over it. Sin promptly stirred us up to transgress by stepping over it. Second, in the presence of this transgression the law solemnly pronounced the death sentence upon us. True, the law set life before us; saying, This do, and thou shalt live. Yet in point of fact all it ever did in regard to us was to condemn us to death, as failing utterly to do what it commanded. These two results of the law are tersely stated at the end of verse 9:- Sin revived, and I died.
This being the state of the case, no blame of any kind attaches itself to the law, which is holy, and just, and good. Sin, not the law, is the culprit. Sin worked death, though it was by the law that the sentence of death was pronounced. Sin indeed was working before ever the law was given, but directly it was given sin had no excuse and its defiance became outrageous. Sin by the commandment coming became exceeding sinful, as verse Rom 7:13 tells us.
We have now got to a part of the chapter where the Apostle speaks in the first person singular. In verses Rom 7:5-6 it was we… we… we… after the question with which verse Rom 7:7 opens it is all I… I… me… I… This is because he now speaks experimentally, and when experience is in question each must speak for himself.
The opening words of verse Rom 7:14 may seem to be an exception to what we have just said but they are not. It is a fact that the law is spiritual, and not a mere matter of experience-and it is stated as a fact which we know In contrast with it stands what I am, and this has to be learned as a matter of sad experience, carnal, sold under sin.
How do we learn what we are? Why, by making a genuine effort to conform to the spiritual demand which the law makes. The more earnest we are about it the more effectively is the lesson burned into our souls. We learn our sinfulness in trying to be good!
Let us recall what we learned in chapter 6 for there we were shown the way. Realizing by faith that we are identified with Christ in His death we understand that we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, and consequently we are to yield ourselves and our members to God for His will and pleasure. Our souls fully assent to this as right and proper, and we say to ourselves, with considerable enthusiasm perhaps, Exactly! that is what I am going to do.
We essay to do it, and lo! we receive a very disagreeable shock. Our intentions are of the best but we somehow are without power to put these things into practice. We see the good and approve it in our minds, yet we fail to do it. We recognize the evil of which we disapprove, and yet we are ensnared by it. A very distressing and humiliating state of affairs, which we find stated in verse 19.
In verses Rom 7:14-23 we get I no less than 24 times. Me and my occur 10 times. The speaker evidently describes an experience, during which he was simply swamped in self-occupation. All his thoughts were turned in upon himself. This is not surprising for this is exactly the normal effect of the law upon an awakened and conscientious soul. As we examine those verses, we can see that the exercises recorded resulted in valuable discoveries.
1. He discovered by experience the good and holy character of the law. It is good as verse Rom 7:9 states; but he now has to say I consent unto the law that it is good.
2. He discovered by experience his own fallen state: not only carnal but sold under sin. Anyone who has to confess that he is so overpowered to be compelled to avoid what he wishes and practice what he hates, and so be in the humiliating position of continually disowning his own actions (verse Rom 7:15) is indeed enslaved. We are like slaves sold in the market to a tyrannical master:-sold under sin.
3. Yet he learns to distinguish between what has been wrought in him by God-what we call the new nature-and the flesh which is the old nature. Verse Rom 7:17 shews this. He recognizes that there is his true I connected with the new nature, and an I or a me which he has to repudiate, as being the old nature.
4. He learns by experience the true character of that old nature. If it be a question of me, that is, the flesh (here you see, it is the old me that he has to repudiate) in that no good is found, as verse Rom 7:18 tells us. Good simply is not there. So it is useless searching for it. Have some of us spent weary months, or even years, looking for good in a place where it is non-existent?
5. He learns further that though he is now possessed of a new nature, an inward man (verse Rom 7:22) yet that in itself bestows no strength upon him. The inward man may delight in Gods holy law; his mind may consent to the law that it is good, but all the same there is a more powerful force working in his members that enslaves him.
What a heart breaking state of affairs! Some of us have known it bitterly enough. Others of us have a taste of it now. And if any as yet have not known it they may well be alarmed, for it at once raises a question as to whether they are as yet possessed of a new nature. If there is nothing but the old nature, struggles and exercises such as these must in the nature of things be unknown.
Such exercises are of great value as preparing the soul for the gladness of a divinely wrought deliverance.
As we draw near to the end of chapter 7 it is important for us to notice that in this passage the word law is used in two senses. In the great majority of instances it refers of course to the law of God formulated through Moses. In verses Rom 7:2-3 however we get the law of a husband; in verse Rom 7:21, a law; in verses Rom 7:23; Rom 7:25, another law, the law of my mind, and the law of sin. In these cases the word is evidently used to signify a power or force which acts uniformly in a given direction: in just the sense in which we use the word when we talk of the laws of nature.
If then we read again the above verses, substituting the words, controlling force for the word, law, we may gain a somewhat clearer view of what the Apostle is saying. Take verse 23. The controlling force with each of us should be our minds: our bodies should be held in the subject place. This should be so in a very special way with those whose minds have been renewed by the power of God. But there is sin to be reckoned with, which exerts its controlling force in our members. The terrible fact has to be faced by us, and experimentally learned, that if left to ourselves, sin proves itself the stronger force, assumes control and we are held in captivity.
No wonder the Apostle in the remembrance of it cries out in anguish, O wretched man that I am! We too know something of this wretchedness, surely. Have we never felt ourselves to be like a wretched seagull bedraggled from head to tail with filthy oil discharged from passing motor-ships? The law of its mind, the law of air both without and within its feathers, is totally overcome by the horrid law of sticky oil! And who shall deliver it? It has no power in itself. Unless someone captures and cleanses it, it must die.
Verse Rom 7:24 contains not only the agonized exclamation but also that important question, Who shall deliver me? The form of the question is important. Earlier in the story, when the speaker was passing through the experiences detailed in verses Rom 7:14-19 for instance, his question would have been, How shall I deliver myself? He was still searching for something within himself which would accomplish it, but searching in vain. Now he is beginning to look outside himself for a deliverer.
When not only our self-confidence but our self-hope also is shattered, we have taken a big step forward. We inevitably then begin to look outside ourselves. At first perhaps we only look for help, and consequently look in wrong directions. Yet sooner or later we discover it is not help that we need, but rather a positive deliverance by a power that is not of ourselves at all. Then, very soon, we find the answer to our cry. Deliverance is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord, thanks be to God! He is as able to deliver us from the slavery of sin as He is from the guilt of our sins.
7:1
Rom 7:1. The fact that his brethren understood the working principles of law as it pertained to marriage, prompted Paul to draw comparison between Christ and Moses.
Rom 7:1. Or are ye ignorant. (Comp. chap. Rom 6:3.) In thus appealing to experience, it is implied that every believer, whether he can explain it or not, feels that he is in the state described in chap. Rom 6:22-23, and hence has some knowledge of his freedom from the law. This knowledge the Apostle would bring into clearness and power.
Brethren, etc. Not addressed to the Jewish Christians alone; for in that age, especially, the knowledge of the Old Testament on the part of all Christians was presupposed; the custom of reading the Old Testament probably obtained in their assemblies.
Know the law. The law of Moses is meant, although the article is wanting in the original; for while the argument might hold true when based upon law in general, the subject under discussion is the relation to the Mosaic law.
The law hath dominion, etc. The whole law is meant, not simply the law of marriage: for that has not yet come into view.
For as long time, etc. This is a peculiarity of the Mosaic law, that it cannot, like human laws, have merely temporary validity, or be altered, suspended, nor can one be exempt from it for a time (Meyer). But compare the death to the law (Rom 7:4).
Subdivision 3. (Rom 7:1-25; Rom 8:1-4.)
Realized deliverance as united to Christ by the Spirit.
We come to the working all this out in experience, then. What we have had already is complete enough indeed as to our title to be free: it is the making good to us, with its blessed consequences, of that “life in Christ Jesus,” which is the very “law of the Spirit” which delivers us from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). But as the law of the Spirit we are yet to see it, and how Christ comes to have experimentally the place He must have for such result. For the whole aim and work of the Spirit is to exalt Christ; and alas, for the Christian also there needs for this a weaning from self which is apt to be a terribly slow process, -self hiding under the most specious forms of self-renunciation and the quest of holiness. And here is found one of the great mysteries of the divine ways, by an unsubduable self to turn one from self, and bring the sweetest and most effectual remedy out of incurable evil, strength out of weakness, and hope out of despair. It is here that, for the first time we learn what “flesh” is, and conscious captivity to a law of sin in the members brings us to the experience of a liberty which is the assured privilege of the “man in Christ.”
It is here also that we find the true character of the law and our need of deliverance from it, in order that we may bring forth fruit to God; the death of Christ being our death to it, as truly as we saw it to be our death to sin before. The law is no more dead than sin is, but we are dead to it -a wholly different thing. The first husband must go, that we may rightly belong to the Second; for we cannot be joined to the two at once. And it is by the Spirit that we are united; the Spirit being as much the seal of Christ’s claim to us as it is the Father’s acknowledgment of His spiritual children.
As through the previous subdivision we had the reckoning of faith, so in the present we have this put in connection with experience, which is first of all made to bear witness to the need one has of this, and then becomes the joyful experience of faith itself:
The relation of the law to a sinner has already been fully shown. Here it makes known sin, and charges man’s guilt against him, but has no remedy. There were types and shadows, as we know, that looked on to the coming Deliverer, but in this very way pointed away from themselves. In itself it brought upon men wrath only, reckoning up sin in detail, and bringing to an end the ignorance of former times at which God winked, and thus making the offence abound. Justification, peace with God, the glorious righteousness of God which now is manifested in favor of every one who believeth in Jesus, -these things have been fully declared as the fruit of the gospel only, and we are no longer engaged in the discussion of them. It is not the approach of the sinner to God which is before us now, but the walk of the saint -a totally different thing, and which we must not mix up with it, or all lines will become blurred, and the truth no longer distinguishable. Doubtless there are principles which run through both: for the Christian guided by his own reasonings merely argues very much after the manner of the natural man, and God’s thoughts will not be his thoughts until he is content to have these revealed to him as Scripture has revealed them, and accepts them humbly without the modifications which he is so prone to impose on them. That righteousness is not by the works of the law he may be now convinced, and rejoicing in the realization that Christ alone is this to him, while yet in the matter of holiness he is well-nigh as legal as ever. God’s way is to proclaim Christ for both, but often to deaf ears on the part of believers themselves, who having begun in the Spirit, would yet be perfected by the flesh. For saint as for sinner before, it is hard to accept in simplicity the mortifying truth that “no flesh shall glory in His Presence.” Thus for long, it may be, in the conflict between God’s thoughts and his own, both his own experiences and the word of truth are shrouded in darkness to him; and preferring the way of experience, he finds it the hard teacher which proverbially it is, and at last, if taught truly by it, is only forced to turn to that which he has been unwittingly, yet not the less really, resisting, to learn what it alone can teach him, and that, after all, the moral of his disappointment and misery is to be found in his controverting the way of the Spirit to make Christ as much sanctification as righteousness to him, and to have no flesh glory in the presence of God.
But whatever the sameness of the principle involved, it is of all importance to realize, as already said, that here there is no question of peace or acceptance, but of fruit and the ability to produce it. If we mix these things together, and say, here is a soul not at rest as to acceptance, then it may at once be pleaded that the reason for the fruitlessness he finds is simply on this account! Thus the lesson in its breadth will not be learnt, and those who realize in themselves the impotence confessed in the experience here will be tempted to deny the reality of what is theirs, because of the barrenness of the life over which they groan. It is one thing to find no ability to make or assure oneself of peace with God through one’s works, and quite another to find, when the question is one of producing the holiness which God claims, and which it is the instinct of the Christian man to crave, that still there is an impracticable obstacle in the way -a “flesh” in which dwelleth no good thing -which renders futile all his efforts! -to have to say, not when I would find evidence of my salvation, still less when I would make my peace with God, but simply, “when I would do good evil is present with me,” and “the good that I would I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do”! when consciously “I delight in the law of God after the inward man,” then to “find another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members!”
There are two views as to these expressions into which it is well known that Christians have got, which equally, but in opposite ways, destroy their proper meaning. The one, which used to be considered, strange as it may seem, the evangelical one, simply accepts the misery of the experience here described, as the ordained and normal condition of the child of God. Ignoring the fact that it is a state of captivity which is ascribed to a law of sin, from which the law of the Spirit is expressly stated to deliver us, it separates, as the division of the chapters does, the bondage from the freedom only by some strange process of thought to identify the one with the other; the experience is taken to be the actual experience of the apostle at the time he was writing, and naturally it is not to be supposed that the state of Christians in general is beyond that of the apostle. The deliverance is, of course, in this case incidental only to special crises of the conflict, and does not affect the general conclusion which is reached at the end of the chapter, that “with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Against such a view the reaction of the Christian instinct has led many to an opposite extreme, which asserts not only a permanent deliverance from the law of sin for the believer, but a complete removal of the flesh itself, an absolute and experimental death to sin. This does not so much concern us at the present moment; and the misapprehension as to the latter term we have already considered.
1. The apostle first of all shows that the law itself declares the limit of law. And notice that this applies as much to the law of Moses as to any mere human code. The law has dominion over a man as long as he liveth; so long, but no longer: death ends its claim. He brings forward the law of marriage in illustration of this; and here, of course, every one who knows law would admit it at once. But using marriage as he does immediately, simply in a figurative way, it would not suffice for his argument as to the believer’s relation to the law (of Moses) except the principle fully applied to this. We have elsewhere looked at this, and most important every way it surely is. Moses’ law has to do with the present life, and not beyond. (See notes on Exo 34:1-7, ante). How necessary and how blessed that it should be so! For if “the man that doeth these things shall live in them,” and “the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” really defined for all eternity the conditions of life and death, who that was under it could escape eternal condemnation? But God could not bind His own hands in such a fashion. The law being intended to give the knowledge of sin, and to cut off from self-righteousness, tested man where he was, and before the eyes of men. The death it threatened did not appertain to a scene outside man’s ken, where unable to know the facts, he might dream as he pleased of the issue of his trial, but it faced him here and now. “Die!” did he die? Universal history, with every grey hair upon his head, relentlessly gave verdict against him. Yet lost and hopeless as he was on this ground, it did not cut him off from the hope of eternal mercy. Much depends then upon the truth of the apostle’s words here, that the law’s dominion over a man is as long as he liveth, but no longer.
When he applies his figure of marriage to illustrate the previous relation of law to the people of God, it would not have answered his purpose at all if the Jew after all could say to him, “Well, but this is only a figure; and you are not really entitled to argue from it as if it were a fact!” But not if he could say, “The figurative purpose for which I use it does not prevent its being a true illustration of the scope of the law; and death really does break the link of relationship between the believer and the law just as my figure intimates, -call it marriage or what you please.”
The term “marriage” does, however, suit his purpose here in a remarkable way, as we shall see directly; for it expresses such a relation as might be abused to very galling lordship, while it none the less allows comparison with the sweet and peculiar, exclusive relationship of the Church to Christ, and gives at once the opportunity to raise the question, which here is so important, of fruitfulness or barrenness in these contrasted conditions.
It is plain that, while addressing, himself to all believers now, and not to Jews only (for the lesson remains still for us, and for all time), Paul yet looks back to the old dispensation -to the people of God under it, raising no question of other differences which are not in point, but treating all as one continuous history, -a history which in principle is the history of individuals still. For the law, though God is no longer putting people under it, is that which naturally men accept everywhere as from Him, being indeed unable to think out for themselves any other than a legal system. This is, of course, the immense importance for us of this dreary detail of human experience. For the mass of us repeat the history of Israel in this respect, and have to be allowed to learn in this way what we will not learn from the word of God alone. Gentiles as we may be, the Jew is in us all, and we have as a rule to plod on under the yoke which they found so heavy, and yet would not exchange for the easy yoke of Christ. The deliverance must in a sense come to us through the law itself, as the apostle says: “I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God” (Gal 2:19).
2. Deliverance for us is accomplished in the self-same way as we have before seen with regard to the deliverance from sin: “Wherefore my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law by the body of the Christ, to become Another’s -His who was raised from among the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God.” A hard thing this to realize, that for fruitfulness also, and not merely for justification, we must be delivered from that law the holiness of which is so absolute, and the severity of which against sin we have had to learn in the cross on which Jesus died to redeem us! But how natural to think that in this view of the Cross we have exhausted its meaning; and even when such a scripture as the present is before us, to seek escape from its plain significance. Even here many see nothing else than deliverance from legal curse: “that is, freed from the law as a rule of justification, we are at liberty to accept of the offers of gratuitous acceptance made to us in the gospel” (Hodge). On the other hand, we are familiar with the distinctions drawn between the moral and the ceremonial law, the ordinances, which, it is allowed, have passed away before the fulness of Christian light, while the ten commandments are asserted to remain as what was graven upon the tables of stone, as of permanent obligation, -the perfect rule of life for believers still.
But neither of these interpretations will stand the test of a fair analysis of the words of the apostle. The question of justification by law has long been settled, and there is here nothing which would indicate any return to it. In all this part, at least until the beginning of the eighth chapter, there is not a word which could even be imagined to be equivalent or akin to justification. The purport here, as we are definitely told, of deliverance from the law is that we may bring forth fruit to God. We are set free absolutely, not from the law in this or that aspect, but without any such reserve at all; and as for the law in its ceremonial part, it can be easily seen by any one who cares to look that there is no reference to it all the way through the experience which is detailed to us. It is not the ceremonial law that says, “Thou shalt not lust,” nor which reveals a law of sin in the members!*
{*The distinction so often pressed between moral and ceremonial law is one which Scripture does not make. Law is the expression of the will of God, whether it be in some moral command or some outward ceremonial. Is not this suggested by the presence of the fourth commandment? While the observance of a day of rest is of the greatest benefit to man, yet the special day to be observed and the nature of the observance are, as we might say, arbitrary. There is nothing intrinsically immoral in the disregard of the seventh day, as there would be in the violation of the sixth or seventh commandments. And yet the fourth commandment was as binding as any of the others, because it was the expressed will of God. So all the ceremonial law was His will for His people. But all is done away in Christ, and we are told that the very law “written and engravers in stones” -the ten commandments -has been done away (2Co 3:7; 2Co 3:13). -S.R.}
No, it is from the law as a whole that the deliverance must be. “Holy, just and good” as it surely is, it is not the less on that account, as the apostle elsewhere declares, “the strength of sin” (1Co 15:56); and that which is such can no more be the means of sanctification than of justification. How it is the strength of sin the experience to which we shall presently come will make abundantly clear to us. We have but the statement as yet -the text upon which the comment is to follow immediately.
The statement is in itself absolutely plain, that if, as has already been shown us with regard to sin, the believer is dead with Christ through Christ’s substitutionary death for him, and if the law has dominion over a man only “so long as he liveth,” then over him as in the value of the death of Christ before God, law has ceased to have dominion: he is “made dead to the law by the body of Christ.” Thus, and thus alone, is he free to become Another’s, as part of that Church which is the Bride of Christ. This is a peculiar, exclusive relationship, the apostle would tell us, which forbids the old relationship to the law. That was barren; this is to be fruitful: or rather, that, as long as one abides in it, forbids fruit. Its professed aim was fruit, and thus it claimed the husband’s place; and this, for purposes of perfect wisdom, was for a time, and tentatively, allowed, -a relationship too, which only death could sever: not that the law is dead -that is nowhere said -but we are; it was a relationship to men in the flesh, but “they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” A man in the flesh is just a living man; and the cross of Christ is the death sentence, under which he lay, executed upon him, which faith owns, while it finds its deliverance in it, and in Him raised from the dead the One to whom now its every tie is; in a new and blessed life which is not of the old creation, but of the new. But, as has been said, this yet remains to be worked out practically for us in that which follows: as yet we have but the statement, of which we are now to see the meaning and value.
3. The apostle goes on at once to the experience, -though at present only the brief statement still; but he shows the nature and cause of the barrenness of the law, which while to God it is that, is not merely that. Fruit there is, but not to God; it is “fruit unto death.” “For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law, wrought in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death.” We see why the law is fruitless, or worse: it produces the passions of sins -a strange alliance as it might seem between sin and law, but it is not that, but opposition, as must surely be, and as the detailed experience will fully show: the holy requirements of the law are to the man in the flesh but the presenting of claims it) contradiction to the “mind of the flesh,” which is enmity against God (Rom 8:7). It is merely chafed and irritated, its state brought out, not altered, the knowledge of sin produced, which we have seen to be the characteristic effect of law, but with the result of the aggravation of the whole condition. But we must pause here, to look more closely at all that is in question.
The man in the flesh is in its primary sense, as should be evident, just the living man. Here there may be no moral implication whatever, as we are well aware; but it is important to realize, when we come to the meaning of the expression as we find it now employed in that part of Romans upon which we have entered, the original force, upon which the moral one is based. The man in the flesh is in this sense the living, natural man, who has never yet known the death of Christ for sinners, and is, therefore, but identified with the old creation and the flesh; as the Lord says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” Flesh is all that he is. Spirit and soul are hidden, as it were, in this, from which they now take their character. Their life is in the world of sense, in the old creation; there is no real outlook beyond. “When we were in the flesh” applies thus solely to those not in Christ; and the effect of law upon such is what is here described. It is true that there is a mingled experience between this and the proper Christian one, which is presently shown us, and which must be carefully distinguished from either; but for the proper understanding of this mixed condition we must realize the two conditions apart, which are thus mingled. No Christian can be in that state of which it is said that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” But it is just the misery of these that the Christian heart and the unchristian experience are seemingly joined together, although not without a certain modification of one by the other. Of this we shall have presently to speak; but as yet it is not considered, but the two opposite conditions are put in sharpest contrast, so that we may learn them aright. “When we were in the flesh” and “fruit unto death” mark the first of these, that of the natural man whereas the soul in the experience of bondage, soon to be before us, can yet say of the sin from which he has not found deliverance, “It is no more I that do it,” and “I consent unto the law that it is good.”
The Christian condition is now put in contrast with that of the natural man: “but now we are set free from the law, having died in that in which we were held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.”
As already said, it is not the law that is dead, but we: but death having come in on either side cancels the tie. That was to the man in the flesh, but the man in the flesh is gone; we are dead in the death of Christ, and so in the flesh no longer. Hagar the bondwoman, as the apostle says elsewhere, is the law that gendereth to bondage, and we are set free to enjoy a true and blessed freedom. The law is the ministration of death, and we died in that in which we were held; but thus we found Christ who has died, and under the curse of the law, so that we are set free in a new resurrection life, -still to serve, for Christ our Lord has served and still serves -would we be set free from that? -nay, but to serve in newness of spirit, serving in joy of soul, and no more in the old drudgery yet superficiality of the letter, pressed from the outside upon unwilling hearts.
This closes the doctrine of the deliverance; which we cannot, however, fully learn save in the experience of it as practically wrought out in the soul. For this, therefore, we go back of the deliverance to realize the state out of which we are delivered.
4. The apostle carefully leads us on step by step. After the doctrine we have the experience which illustrates and enforces the doctrine. This also is first given us in brief, and then we have the exercises which spring out of the experience, and which make us to realize its meaning and importance. The law of sin in the members is then finally seen as the insurmountable barrier to man which shuts him off from the attainment of the holiness which divine grace has taught every one born of God to long for; and then, as in a moment, the groan of self-despair is cut short by the shout of victory; that which he seeks for is attained, though in a manner how different from his expectation; the law of the Spirit has delivered him from the law of sin and death.
With the experience indeed, questions begin at once in the soul, which press for an answer. What means this strange, perpetual connection between sin and law? “Is the law sin?” This connection is not now that of a doctrine, about which one might go astray; it is a fact of consciousness far too manifest to be denied or evaded; but the attitude of the one towards the other is equally unmistakable. Law is the detective under divine government, continually searching out and manifesting it in the light of infinite and omniscient holiness. How startling a revelation as to man, that to provoke lust in him, God has only to forbid it! Sin in its essential character is rebellion against God! Sin takes occasion by the commandment itself to awake all manner of lust against it. And who is not conscious of this tremendous fact that there is a pleasure in sin just as sin -in one’s own will and way, as that? And think of God having forbidden, not merely a step in the direction of my own will as against His, but even a desire to take that step! How entirely this last commandment of the ten removes the question of true righteousness from being that of the outward life simply, and makes it impossible to think of any righteousness on our part fit for Him! What a new light it throws upon the words, “The man that doeth these things shall live in them”! Yet how simple it is, that a heart set upon that which is not in the will of God for me is moral distance from Him to that extent: for God’s will is never arbitrary merely, but is the expression of His nature; His way may he in the sea, and hidden from me, but it is always in the sanctuary too.
If, then, there be in me one bit of self-seeking, how must this inexorable, all-embracing law search it out and awake it into vehement life! No wonder that the apostle says that “without law sin is dead!” This is its efficacy, in fact, while it may seem, when we are seeking help from it, its impotence rather (its impotence is indeed one element of its power), that under its rule sin revives, and we die. It is the ministration of death, though on its face proposing life: what is avowedly for life, is found (and invariably found) to be unto death. And behind all this, though at present quite unseen, divine love and wisdom work; so that death itself is really a “ministration” -the death of self-confidence, and so of self-occupation also, that Christ may in result be all in all.
Meanwhile, sin is but discovered by the law, as roused and having strength given to it by the commandment. It should be quite plain that the apostle is not speaking of his present experience in all this, for we shall find him go far beyond it. His “I was alive without the law once,” looks certainly like what was personal to himself; although, of course, it would in fact be the experience of others also, or there would be little use in recalling it. In all the rest that we have here, the “I” is evidently merely illustrative. It is a pronoun significant enough in its constant repetition through all this part, while Christ and the Spirit are not mentioned. The language of self-occupation cannot be mistaken, and it is only God’s mercy when in such a condition there is little else to speak of but sin and misery. Good self is a worse adversary to Christ than bad self; and it is a good thing if when with our backs to the sun, self becomes but a shadow darkening all we look upon. Law is as we have seen, in its place of service here, and if honestly listened to, the service it will do is excellent. It is a teacher, however, whose work is to make itself unnecessary, and like the plow to which we may compare it, when once the precious seed has taken root and is growing up to harvest, its use would be as disastrous as before it was beneficial.
5. But we have now to look at the exercises and reasonings incident to such a transitional stage as we cannot but here recognize. It is, as we see, the experience of a soul converted truly to God (for no other could say truthfully what is here said), but as yet unconscious of God’s way of power and sanctification; taking up the law in all sincerity to work out holiness by it with God’s help, as before it had sought to work out peace and justification. The necessary result is that self-occupation which the law entails upon all under it. The end sought, whatever the plea of holiness, is necessarily self-satisfaction, if in the most plausible form, and that is the element which spoils as holiness everything into which it enters. Pride was the form in which sin entered first among the angels, where there could be as yet no temptation from without; and it seems the only conceivable way of failure and apostasy under such conditions. Ezekiel describes it in words which, while openly addressed to the king of Tyre, picture surely no mere earthly king. There is but one who could fit this description, and he the prince of all potentates in a world which has rejected the true Prince. Here then is the description:
“Thus saith the Lord God, Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, . . . Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, until iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore will I cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God, and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground.” . . . (Eze 28:12-17).
How unutterably solemn is such a fall! and how deeply instructive for us, with whom Satan’s attempt is constantly to animate us with the same spirit, while God’s desire and design cannot but be as earnest to “hide pride from man” (Job 33:17). “Ye shall be as God,” was the first temptation, the success of which has left its poison in the depths of our being. Take the apostle as a pregnant example, whose very exaltation to the third heaven, instead of quenching for ever any remainder of such a spirit, necessitated, as he himself has told us, a thorn for him in the flesh, lest he should find in it the incitement to a spiritual exaltation! (2Co 12:7). What a demonstration for us all of the existence of the flesh still in the most advanced Christians, and of the way in which pride may come into the holiest things! The work of the Spirit is certainly not to comfort us in any self-satisfaction, -too perilous a thing at the best! yet it is here that even the necessity of self-judgment will be urged to keep us occupied with that which true self-judgment would make us turn away from altogether! but to our next:
(1) Once again the apostle emphatically affirms the holiness of the law, and more: the law is not only holy: the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. What is the great principle upon which it insists, but love? “Love,” he says elsewhere, “is the fulfilment (or full measure) of the law” (Rom 13:10). In the very giving of the law, disastrous to men as its first consequences may be, love reigns; the law itself is the handmaid of grace. Yet to a soul in the confusion which we find here, at cross purposes with God, and unable to see the end to which it is approaching, this goodness of the law seems only itself confusion in view of the death-sentence which it has brought in. “Did then that which is good,” he asks, “become death unto me?” But conscience answers at once, No, the goodness of the law only makes the character of sin the more manifest and more hateful. The law is right in issuing these commands, against which the evil in me thus rebels. They only establish the authority of Him who only has authority. This spirit of rebellion is against Him who is all that that word “God” implies; and if it be in me, He is right in laying it bare, as well as in the condemnation of it.
(2) A further consequence: -I am in contradiction to myself; I am, spite of myself, in bondage to the evil. We know -all Christians do -that the law is spiritual; but I -he cannot say “we” there; it is an exceptional state in him, and terrible in its exceptionality -“I am carnal, sold under sin.” The bondage is clear, in that he cannot sanction, but hates, the very things he practises. He wishes to do the thing he cannot do; but his efforts only make apparent the fetters with which he is bound. His heart and will consent to the law that it is right. Mournful as his condition is, yet he himself, he affirms, is not the real worker of the evil. He is in the grasp of that from which he cannot escape, but yet can separate himself, and which he personifies, to enable him to separate himself the more clearly from it; a horrible, false self which fetters and oppresses what is now through grace his true self. It is evident that here is the converted man, conscious of what divine grace has wrought in him, and not doubting that he has right to disclaim and cast from him what nevertheless dwells in and masters him. It is a question of power all through, and not of peace: -that is never raised. To raise it is to introduce what confuses the whole; for if peace with God is not yet known by him who is going through this conflict, then it is impossible not to draw the conclusion that, for one who has peace, no such experience is possible: which is against the abundant witness of many who are passing through it.
It will be said that the possession of peace will necessarily modify the experience, and there is no doubt that the experience as we have it here must, in any case, be modified. It is given us, as it were, in downright black and white, without shading. No one exactly and always does what he does not approve, but the absolute way in which this is given helps us better to understand the condition; but to introduce the question of peace with God does not merely modify the experience, but alters the whole character of it. As it is plain, the apostle never raises that question here. It is simply power which he has not, and a bondage to the evil which perplexes and harasses him when he would see fruit of his life for God.
(3) The result is the manifestation of what Scripture calls “the flesh.” The meaning of the term, as already said, is not difficult to comprehend. The man in the flesh is, as to his higher part, his spirit and soul, immersed, as it were, in the body. He lives a sense-life in the world around him, not drawing his motives from eternity or from the presence of God, which, in fact, he does not recognize. The man before us is not thus. God, and what is pleasing to Him, has become for him the question of his life; but the flesh itself is not, as we see, removed by this. He has not merely to struggle with it, but is rather captive to it, until he has found the secret of deliverance. He is seeking this at present in a wrong way. He is seeking in himself a better state, in which he can find satisfaction. He puts it, of course, as a question of holiness. Does not God require holiness? Must he not produce it for Him then? God suffers him to be met with this impracticable body of sin over which he is not really master and cannot be. In the flesh good does not dwell. To will is present with him; to work out the right, is not. The good that he would he does not practise. The evil that he would not, that he does. He repeats this over again as the distress that weighs upon him, and his own personal abhorrence of it, and right to reject it as not himself.
6. This, then, ends the experience. There is nothing more to be said about it. It is simply summed up in the words that close this part. There is a law of sin in the members. We must carefully distinguish this from the presence of sin itself. Sin remains in us as Christians. We have always to watch, always to guard against it, but a law of sin is a very different matter. A law of sin sets sin in authority and that is surely a wholly unchristian state, although Christians have to pass through it in order to find the freedom which is proper to them. “I delight,” he says, “in the law of God according to the inner man, but I behold another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which is in my members.” That ends the whole matter. Deliver himself he cannot. Find strength for this from God, still he cannot. He must come to that point in which he cries out to Another, and deliverance is really found in a way which no man could ever think out for himself or realize, except as taught of God.
7.(1) It closes then with a groan, the groan of absolute despair as to one’s self. It is not, “How shall I?” any more, but, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Immediately thereupon the answer comes: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is the first time that that blessed Name comes into the whole experience. Experience it is still, but of the power of a Deliverer. There is no explanation, however, further. A great mistake has been made by interpreters generally in supposing that the verse that follows describes, in fact, the delivered man, whereas, upon the face of it there is no deliverance. It is a man in bondage and not a free man who is described there. But, in order to find the deliverance, we must ignore entirely the divisions of the chapters and take in the first verses of the eighth chapter, which, in the common version and in the minds of most, are cut off entirely from it. Thus, the deliverance and the bondage are strangely confused. A man who is bondservant to the law of God, that law which gendereth to bondage, is taken to be the man who is consciously dead to the law by the body of Christ and over whom it has no more dominion; and the man who, with the flesh still serves the law of sin, is taken again to be the one who is free from it! The law of sin is that which the law of the Spirit delivers from. There is no “law” of sin when the law of the Spirit has thus delivered. Thus it is plain that on neither side does the last verse of the chapter describe the freeman. It is a going back, rather, to the old experience, in order that now there may be the full explanation Of the way of deliverance. That has not yet been given. To say that Christ is the Deliverer does not describe the deliverance, and it would be indeed a poor conclusion, after all the misery of this experience that we have been through, to find absolutely no account of the way out.
(2) The last verse, therefore, is still the bondage. The man distinguishes indeed himself from himself, but we have seen that he was able to do that before this. That, in fact, is not a deliverance. He is still, as he says, a bondservant in both respects, as to the law and as to sin. The answer comes in the assurance which immediately follows now, that, “There is now, therefore, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” That may seem to lead us hack to the question of justification, but there is more than that here. Justification may be indeed the basis, as it is of necessity all through, but the law which delivers him is found in the principle developed for us in the sixth chapter, as already stated, the law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus. “In Christ” means identification with Christ, and it is manifest that when a soul is able to identify himself in a full, practical way, with the Christ who is before God for him, he is at once out of the condition which has just made him utter the groan of despair. If he can find his true self in Christ, Christ is not in the bondage; there is in Him no body of sin, no sin at all, much less a law of it, and he is in Him before God. That may not seem at first to settle the difficulty. If it be a question of power, it is still the man down here who has to possess this power, but in the state of self-occupation in which one under the law necessarily is, there can be no possession of power. In the vain attempt to find complacency in a spiritual condition of his own, his eyes are really off Christ, and, as we have said, he sees but his own shadow. God allows this, in order that Christ may be indeed a constant necessity to him and that he may cease to think of himself, good self or bad self, to rejoice in the One who is made all things to him. Thus we shall find in what follows, that there is this singular result. In the conflict which still may be, as we find it in the eighth chapter, the adversaries are no longer one self to another self, but the Spirit to the flesh. Strange it may seem that the flesh remains while the very one of whom he speaks as himself, through this experience which has just been recited, now, nevertheless, drops out entirely. It is not self at war with self any more. The self that would have gained the battle is really out of the battle. It is the Spirit who leads, and who alone can lead in the path of victory, and where we have the Spirit, it is of necessity Christ who is before the soul, and not self in any wise.
(3) The words of the second verse have, I doubt not, been also read without their due emphasis. It is not simply “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath set me free,” it is not “the law of the Spirit of life,” but there is the clear statement now of what the law of the Spirit, that is, the ruling principle which has come to displace the law of sin, in fact is. The law of the Spirit is that of life in Christ Jesus. We reckon ourselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” Our life is only there, in Him. This is not a mere principle of truth embraced. It is a change which enables the Spirit of God now to be freely upon our side. Through all that we have had in the past chapter, the Spirit most evidently has no place in the experience. The Spirit’s law is that we are, for power as well as for peace, for holiness as well as for justification, in Christ wholly. Life in Christ Jesus is the answer to the death which the law preached, and I am free to forget myself entirely in Him. This self-forgetfulness the legal man dreads, as being almost the same as unholiness. Are we free to forget ourselves after this manner? But, in fact, self-consciousness is that which spoils every Christian grace. To remember Christ, is of necessity holiness. To identify ourselves with Him as God has identified us, is to give us the highest possible rule of practice, but not merely that; it is to give us also the power which we seek. Christ becomes in it the object before us. We live not to glorify ourselves, but to glorify Him. Here, therefore, we are in full accord with the Spirit, and the result is absolutely sure.
(4) This is explained directly. It was impossible for the law to help us. It was weak through the unconquerable flesh. It required from us that which we could never furnish, and the end in this direction, as we have seen, is simply and rightly the despair of self altogether, but God has effaced self for Another; He has sent His own Son in “the likeness of sinful flesh” as the cross manifests Him, but there for sin, our sin, putting it completely away, while, at the same time condemning it utterly. Sin in the flesh is condemned, -I myself, with all that is in me, my own thoughts, my will, my wisdom, my ways, -in the cross,
I see the end of it all, but the end of it in the love which has come in fully for me and which now fulfils in me the righteous requirement of the law when it is no longer simply requirement, but the Spirit of God has filled my heart with the joy of Christ. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” I am free to give myself up to drink in this love which God has shown me and which rests upon me in Christ, in all the fulness of God’s delight in Him. I have no cause now to ask: Must not God condemn the evil in me? He has condemned it, and I read the condemnation there where I find also Himself for me in a grace which knows no conditions, and which holds me fast, therefore, forever. The Christian walk is not according to the flesh, therefore, but according to the Spirit. Self-occupation is of necessity fleshly. The Spirit of God ignores even Himself to glorify Christ. Thus, we may speak of the Spirit even, in a way which is not spiritual. We may seek in ourselves the fruit of the Spirit, when, after all, we are not in the line of the Spirit’s testimony, and therefore not in the path of the Spirit at all. The righteousness which the law required cannot be forgotten in the presence of Christ. I am to walk in His company now, and never part. Self-judgment is, in fact, only possible in His presence; and in His presence it is impossible not to exercise it. We have only to remember the scene which has been given us by the apostle in which we find the Lord girded for service, and the water and the towel in His hands. Has He not said: “Except I wash thee, thou hast no part with Me?” “With Me,” of course, not “in Me.” If we are to have part with Him, we must be cleansed indeed, not according to our own thoughts of what cleanness is, but according to His thoughts, and He alone can cleanse us after that fashion. If, on the other hand, the need of cleansing is discovered, I find in it the assurance of my having been thus far not with Him as I should have been. If my eyes are off Him still, other things may attract me. I must get back to Him in order to find deliverance from the power of all else, in the presence of a love which has purchased me for itself and which has the fullest title over me.
As if the apostle had said, “You Jews, who study the law and are well acquainted with it, cannot but know that the law of God hath power over a man to require of him exact, perfect, and perpetual obedience, and to accuse, condemn, and bind him over to the curse for the least breach and violation of it; and all this a long as he liveth under the law, and is not freed from the malediction of it by faith in Christ”
Learn hence, 2. That the law of God, in the force and strength of it, and as considered in itself, is a very hard lord and master, exacting perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience to its commands and binding sinners over to the curse for the least transgression and violation of it.
Learn, 2. That Jesus Christ has freed all believers from the rigour of the law, from the curse of the law, and from the irritation of the law: that is, from the power which is in the law, to stir them up in sin through the corruption of their own hearts and natures.
Blessed be God! we are by Christ freed from, and dead to the law, as a covenant of life; but we are under it, and may we all our days sit under the shadow of it with great delight, as an eternal rule of holy living.
Rom 7:1-3. Know ye not, brethren The apostle, having shown that justified and regenerated persons are free from the dominion of sin, shows here that they are also free from the yoke of the Mosaic law, it being dead to them, Rom 7:6; and they to it, Rom 7:4 : for I speak to them that know the law To the Jews or proselytes chiefly here; that the law The Mosaic dispensation in general, to which you were espoused by Moses; hath dominion over a man Over a Jew married to it, and engaged to observe it; as long as he Rather, as long as it liveth; that is, abideth in force, and no longer. For it would be contrary to the apostles design, to suppose the sense of this to be as our translation renders it, as long as he, that is, the man in question, liveth; for he professedly endeavours to prove that they had outlived their obligations to the law. But the rendering here proposed is natural, and suits the connection with the following verses, in which the law is represented as their first husband, whose decease left them free to be married to Christ. The law is here spoken of, by a common figure, as a person to which, as to a husband, life and death are ascribed. It is as if he had said, The dominion of the law over particular persons can, at the utmost, last no longer than till it is itself abrogated; for that is, as it were, its death; since the divine authority going along with it was the very life and soul of it. Suppose that to cease, and the letter of the precept becomes but a dead thing, and with respect to its obligations, as if it had never been. But he speaks indifferently of the law being dead to us, or us to it, the sense being the same. For the woman, &c. Just as it is, according to the law itself, with respect to the power of a husband over his wife, who is bound by the law to be subject to her husband so long as he liveth
The law here referred to is not merely that particular branch of the law of Moses which respected marriage, but also and especially the law of marriage promulgated in paradise, Gen 2:24; whereby our Lord declared marriages were appointed to continue for life, except in the case of adultery, Mat 19:6. This argument was peculiarly adapted to the Jews, whose connection with God, as their king, was represented by God himself under the idea of a marriage, solemnized with them at Sinai. But if the husband To whom she was bound, be dead, she is loosed
From that law, which gave him a peculiar property in her. So then, if while her husband liveth, , she become the property of another man, &c. The apostle, says Theodoret, does not consider here the permission given by the law of Moses to the woman divorced to be married to another, as being taught by Christ not to approve of such divorces; but he seems only to intimate that she had no power to dissolve this bond by putting away her husband, or that this divorce rendered her husband dead in law to her, she being not to return to him again. Deu 24:4. Perhaps we ought rather to say, he speaks in the general, not entering exactly into every excepted case that might be imagined. To infer, therefore, hence, as some have done, that adultery is not a sufficient foundation for divorce, is very unreasonable. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law Which bound her to be in subjection, and yield conjugal affection to her husband only; so that she is no more an adulteress Subject to the shame and punishment of one; though she be married, , becoming the property of another man; for death, having interposed between them, hath dissolved the former relation. He is dead to her, and she to him.
Fifteenth Passage (7:1-6). The Believer is set free from the Law at the same Time that he is set free from Sin.
AGREEABLY to the proposition stated Rom 6:14 : Sin shall no more have dominion over you: for ye are under grace, the apostle had just expounded emancipation from sin by subjection to grace. But he had said: For ye are not under the law, but under grace. And the words underlined required a special explanation. It is this demonstration which is furnished by the following passage. In his view the two emancipations, that from sin and that from the law, are two closely connected facts, so that the one is the complement of the other. Also between the descriptions of the two deliverances there is to be remarked a parallelism of figures which extends to the slightest details of the two descriptions. It is easy to see how exactly Rom 7:1-4 corresponds to Rom 6:16-19, and Rom 7:5-6, to Rom 6:21-23. Only the general figure in the two cases is borrowed from different domains of social life. The law being a nobler master than sin, the apostle in speaking of it substitutes for the degrading relation of servitude, the more exalted one of marriage; and hence also in Rom 7:5-6 for the figure of fruits (of labor) he puts that of children (the issue of marriage).
To prove the believer’s emancipation from legal bondage, Paul supports his argument by an article of the law itself, which he applies spiritually, Rom 7:1-4; then he shows that the believer makes use of this right, not to yield himself more freely to sin, but to serve God better than he would have done under the law (Rom 7:5-6). His emancipation in relation to the law is therefore legitimatemore than that, it is morally beneficial and necessary.
The first three verses adduce the example cited from the law, and the fourth applies it.
[In Rom 6:14 Paul laid down the principle that sin does not have dominion over Christians, because they are not under law, but under grace. The section which we have just closed discusses the first clause of this proposition under the figure of slavery, and shows that sin does not have dominion over us, for we have changed masters. This section discusses the second half of the proposition under the figure of marriage, and shows that we are not under the law, but under grace, for in Christ we have died as to our former husband (law), and been married to our new husband (grace).] Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth?
Romans Chapter 7
We have considered the effect of the death and resurrection of Christ with reference to justification and to practical life. In the early part of the epistle (to Rom 5:11) He has died for our sins. From chapter 5:12, He having died, we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God through Him. Our state as under the two heads, Adam and Christ, has been discussed. Another point remained to be treated of by the apostle-the effect of this last doctrine upon the question of the law. The Christian, or, to say better, the believer, has part in Christ as a Christ who has died, and lives to God, Christ being raised from the dead through Him. What is the force of this truth with regard to the law (for the law has only power over a man so long as he lives)? Being then dead, it has no longer any hold upon him. This is our position with regard to the law. Does that weaken its authority? No. For we say that Christ has died, and so have we therefore; but the law no longer applies to one that is dead.
In bringing out the effect of this truth, the apostle uses the example of the law of marriage. The woman would be an adulteress if she were to be to another while her husband was alive; but when her husband is dead she is free. The application of this rule changes the form of the truth. It is certain that one cannot be under the authority of two husbands at once. One excludes the other. The law, and Christ risen, cannot be associated in their authority over the soul. But in our case the law does not lose its force (that is, its rights over us) by its dying, but by our dying. It reigns over us only while we live. It is with this destruction of the bond by death the apostle began. The husband died, but in application it is annulled by our dying. We are then dead to the law by the body of Christ (for we have to do with a Christ risen after His death), that we should be to Him who is raised from the dead, in order that we should bear fruit for God; but we cannot belong to the two at once.
When we were in the flesh-when, as man, any one was held to be walking in the responsibility of a man living in the life of nature, as a child of Adam, the law to him was the rule and perfect measure of that responsibility, and the representative of the authority of God. The passions which impelled to sin acted in that nature, and, meeting with this barrier of the law, found in it that which, by resisting it, excited the will, and suggested, even by the prohibition itself, the evil which the flesh loved and which the law forbade; and thus these passions acted in the members to produce fruit which brought in death. But now he was outside its authority, he had disappeared from its pursuit, [35] being dead in that law to the authority of which we had been subjected. Now to have died under the law would have been also condemnation; but it is Christ who went through this and took the condemnation, while we have the deliverance from the old man which is in death. Our old man is crucified with Him, so that it is our deliverance to die to the law. It did but condemn us, but its authority ends with the life of him who was under that authority. And being dead in Christ, the law can no longer reach those who had been under it: we belong to the new husband, to Christ risen, in order that we should serve in newness of spirit, the goodwill of grace in our new life, and-as the apostle will afterwards explain, by the Holy Ghost [36] -not in the bondage of the letter.
This is the doctrine. Now for the conclusions that may be deduced from it. Is the law, then, sin, that we are withdrawn from its authority? By no means. But it gave the knowledge of sin, and imputed it. For the apostle says, that he would not have understood that the mere impulse of his nature was sin, if the law had not said, Thou shalt not covet. But the commandment gave sin occasion to attack the soul. Sin, that evil principle of our nature,[37] making use of the commandment to provoke the soul to the sin that is forbidden (but which it took occasion to suggest by the interdiction itself, acting also on the will which resisted the interdiction), produced all manner of concupiscence. For, without the law, sin could not plunge the soul into this conflict, and give the sentence of death in it, by making it responsible in conscience for the sin which, without this law, it would not have known. Under the law lust acted, with the conscience of sin in the heart; and the result was death in the conscience, without any deliverance for the heart from the power of concupiscence.
Without the law, sin did not thus agitate a will which refused submission to that which checked it. For a barrier to the will awakens and excites the will: and the conscience of sin, in the presence of Gods prohibition, is a conscience under sentence of death. Thus the commandment, which in itself was unto life, became in fact unto death. Do this and live became death, by shewing the exigencies of God to a sinful nature whose will rejected them, and to a conscience which could not but accept the just condemnation.
A man walks in quiet indifference, doing his own will, without knowledge of God, or consequently any sense of sin or rebellion. The law comes, and he dies under its just judgment, which forbids everything that he desires. Lust was an evil thing, but it did not reveal the judgment of God; on the contrary, it forgot it. But when the law was come, sin (it is looked at here as an enemy that attacks some person or place), knowing that the will would persist and the conscience condemn, seized the opportunity of the law, impelled the man in the direction contrary to the law, and slew him, in the conscience of sin which the law forbade on the part of God. Death to the man, on Gods part in judgment, was the result. The law then was good and holy, since it forbade the sin, but in condemning the sinner.
Was death then brought in by that which was good? [38] No. But sin, in order that it might be seen in its true light, employed that which was good to bring death upon the soul; and thus, by the commandment, became exceedingly sinful. In all this, sin is personified as some one who seeks to kill the soul.
Such then was the effect of the law, that first husband, seeing sin existed in man. To bring this out more plainly, the apostle communicates his spiritual apprehension of the experience of a soul under the law.
We must remark here, that the subject treated of is not the fact of the conflict between the two natures, but the effect of the law, supposing the will to be renewed, and the law to have obtained the suffrage of the conscience and to be the object of the hearts affections-a heart which recognises the spirituality of the law. This is neither the knowledge of grace, nor of the Saviour Christ, nor of the Spirit. [39] The chief point here is not condemnation (although the law does indeed leave the soul under judgment), but the entire want of strength to fulfil it, that it may not condemn us. The law is spiritual; but I, as man, am carnal, the slave of sin, whatever the judgment of my inward man may be: for I allow not that which I do. That which I would I do not; and that which I hate I practise. Thus loving and thus hating, I consent to the law that it is good. It is not that I do the evil as to moral intent of the will, for I would not the evil which I do; on the contrary I hate it. It is the sin then that dwells in me, for in fact in me (that is, in my flesh-the whole natural man as he is) there exists no good, for even where there is the will, I do not find the way to perform any good. Power is totally wanting.
InRomans 7:20 the apostle, having this explanation, lays stress upon the I and me. If that which I myself would (we should read), and It is no longer myself that does it, but the sin that dwelleth in me. I find then evil present with the myself which would do good; for, as to the inward man, I delight in the law of God. But there is in me another constant principle which wars against the law of my mind, which brings me into captivity to this law of sin in my members. So that, whatever my desires may be, the better even that they are, I am myself a miserable man. Being man, and such a man, I cannot but be miserable. But, having come to this, an immense step has been taken.
The evil here spoken of is the evil that is in our nature, and the want of power to get rid of it. The forgiveness of sins hadbeen fully taught. What distresses here is the present working of sin which we cannot get rid of The sense of this is often a more painful thing than past sins, which the believer can understand as put away by the blood of Christ. But here we have the conscience of sin still in us, though we may hate it, and the question of deliverance is mixed up with our experience, at least till we have learned what is taught us in this part of the epistle, to judge the old man as sin in us, not ourselves, and reckon ourselves dead. Christ, through whom we now live, having died, and being a sacrifice for sin, our condemnation is impossible, while sin is condemned and we free through the law of the Spirit of life in him. It is not forgiveness, but deliverance, sin in the flesh being condemned in the cross.
Under divine grace the renewed man learned three things. First, he has come to the discovery that in him, that is, in his flesh, there is no good thing; but, secondly, he has learned to distinguish between himself, who wills good, and sin which dwells in him; but, further, that when he wills good, sin is too strong for him. Having thus acquired knowledge of himself, he does not seek to be better in the flesh, but deliverance, and he has it in Christ. Power comes after. He is come to the discovery and to the confession that he has no power. He throws himself upon another. He does not say, How can I? or, How shall I? but, Who shall deliver me? Now it was when we were devoid of all strength that Christ died for the ungodly. This want of strength is discovered; and we find grace at the end, when with regard to what we are, and to all hope of amelioration in ourselves, grace is our only resource.
But happily, when we cast ourselves upon grace, there is nothing but grace before us. Deliverance is accomplished by our not being alive in the flesh at all: we have died away from it, and from under the law, which held us in bondage and condemnation, and we are married to another, Christ raised from the dead; and as soon as the distressed soul has said, Who shall deliver me? the answer is ready, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The answer is not, He will deliver. Deliverance is already accomplished: he gives thanks.
The man was wretched in conflict under law, without knowledge of redemption. But he has died in the death of Christ out of the nature which made him so; he has quite done with himself. The deliverance of God is complete. The two natures are still opposed to each other, but the deliverance is not imperfect. This deliverance wrought of God, and the progress of its manifestation, are developed in the next chapter.
We may here remark that the apostle does not say, We know that the law is spiritual, and we are carnal. Had he done so, it would have been to speak of Christians, as such, in their proper and normal condition. It is the personal experience of what the flesh is under law, when the man is quickened, and not the state of a Christian as such before God. Observe, also, that the law is looked at from the point of view of Christian knowledge-we know-when we are no longer under it, and when we are capable of judging concerning its whole import, according to the spirituality of him who judges: and who sees also, being spiritual, what the flesh is; because he is now not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. [40] Literally, this passage is not the condition of anyone at all; but principles opposed to each other, the result of which is laid open by supposing a man under the law: the will always right, but good never done, evil always. Nevertheless to the conscience this is the practical condition of every renewed man under the law. We may remark one other important principle. Man in this condition is entirely taken up with himself; he desires good, he does not perform it, he does that which he would not. Neither Christ nor the Holy Ghost is named. In the normal condition of a Christian, he is occupied with Christ. But what is expressed in this seventh chapter is the natural and necessary result of the law, when the conscience is awakened and the will renewed. For to will is present with him. But he is under law, sees its spirituality, consents to it, delights in it after the inner man, and cannot perform what is good. Sin has dominion over him. The sense of unanswered responsibility, and the absence of peace, cause the soul necessarily to turn in upon itself. It is taken up entirely with self, which is spoken of nearly forty times fromRomans 7:14. It is well to be so, rather than to be insensible. It is not peace.
This peace is found elsewhere, and it is in this; when reduced to the consciousness of ones own inability to do good towards God, one finds that God has done for us the good which we need. We are not only forgiven but delivered, and are in Christ, not in the flesh at all.
The conflict goes on, the opposition between the two natures continues, but we give thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. [41] Remark here that deliverance is only found when there is the full conviction of our incapacity and want of power, as well as of our sins. It is much more difficult to arrive at this conviction of incapacity than at that of having sinned. But the sin of our nature-its irremediable perversity, its resistance to good, the law of sin in our members-is only known in its legal gravity by experience of the uselessness of our efforts to do well. Under the law the uselessness of these efforts leaves the conscience in distress and bondage, and produces the sense of its being impossible to be with God. Under grace the efforts are not useless, and the evil nature shews itself to us (either in communion with God, or by downfalls if we neglect communion) in all its deformity in presence of that grace. But in this chapter the experience of sin in the nature is presented as acquired under the law, in order that man may know himself in this position-may know what he is as regards his flesh, and that in fact he cannot succeed in this way in coming before God with a good conscience. He is under the first husband; death had not yet severed the bond as to the state of the soul.
We must now remember that this experience of the soul under the law is introduced parenthetically, to shew the sinful condition to which grace applies and the effect of the law. Our subject is that the believer has part in the death of Christ and has died, and is alive through Him who is risen; that Christ, having by grace gone under death, having been made sin, has for ever done with that state in which He had to do with sin and death in the likeness of sinful flesh; and having for ever done with all that was connected with it, has entered by resurrection into a new order of things-a new condition before God, totally beyond the reach of all that to which He had subjected Himself for us, which in us was connected with our natural life, and beyond reach of the law which bound sin upon the conscience on Gods part. In Christ we are in this new order of things.
Footnotes for Romans Chapter 7
35: It is thus, I doubt not, that this passage should be read. My reader may perhaps find the law being dead. The expression, dead to that wherein we were held, alludes toRomans 7:4, where it is said, ye died to the law. Christ under the law died under its curse. To be in the flesh is to live under the responsibility of a man in his natural life-a child of fallen Adam. In that life (unless it is lawless) the law is the rule of human righteousness. We must not confound the flesh being in the Christian with a man being in the flesh. The principle of the old life is still there, but it is in no way the principle of his relationship to God. When I am in the flesh, it is the principle of my relationship with God; but, its will being sinful, it is impossible that I should please God. I may seek for righteousness in it-it will be on the ground of law. But the Christian is dead by Christ to all that state of things-does not live of that life; his life is in Christ, and he has received the Holy Ghost. The flesh is no longer the principle of his relationship with God; on that ground he has owned himself lost. Elsewhere we learn that he is in Christ on the ground upon which Christ is before God. The Holy Ghost, as we shall see, places him there in power by faith, Christ being his life.
36: He does not say here by the Spirit, because he has not yet spoken of the gift of the Holy Ghost in virtue of the work of Christ. He only speaks of the manner, the character, of the service rendered.
37: It will be remembered that all through this part of the epistle (that is, from chapter 5: 12) we have to do with sin, not with sins.
38: Sin and death are correlative. The law is introduced in order to make manifest through the offence what they both are. The apostle first asks, Is the law sin? since its result was death to man. God forbid! but it gave the knowledge of sin, and wrote death upon the soul through judgment, man being a sinner. The second question is, The law being thus good in itself, has it become death to me? No. It is sin which (in order that it might appear in all its enormity) has slain me, using the law as a means, in my conscience. It found in mans condition the means of perverting this good thing, and making it death to him.
39: There is also conflict, when the Holy Ghost dwells in us. Gal 5:1-26 speaks of this. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, etc. But then we are not under the law, as the apostle goes on to say, If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Here the person spoken of is under the law: everything is in connection with the law. The law is spiritual; we consent to the law, we delight in the law. Neither Christ nor the Spirit is mentioned until the question of deliverance comes in.
40: This gives the key to this-alas! because souls are not free-much spoken-of passage. It is not the present experience of any one, but a delivered person describing the state of an undelivered one. An undelivered person could not speak exactly thus, because he is uneasy as to the result for himself. A man in a morass does not quietly describe how a man sinks into it, because he fears to sink and stay there; when he is out, he describes how a man sinks there. The end of Rom 7:1-25 is a man out of the morass shewing in peace the principle and manner in which one sinks in it. All this part of the epistle is more complicated than what precedes chapter 5: 12, because our own experience is in conflict with what faith teaches us to say. If through grace I am forgiven and justified, there is no contradiction in my experience. It is what God has done for me outside myself. My debt is paid. But if I am to say, I am dead to sin, my experience contradicts it. Hence we have no rest in this respect, till we give up self or flesh as wholly bad and irremediable, and learn that, consequent on redemption, we are not in the flesh at all. Compare chapters 7 and 8.
41: The last verse of chapter 7 speaks of the abstract mind and character of the opposed natures; one the mind, however, and purpose of heart in the renewed man; the other, the fact of flesh being there, one I myself, the other my flesh. So the I is right; only it is not considered under the law or the contrary.
MATRIMONIAL ILLUSTRATION OF SANCTIFICATION
1-4. While the Bible contains but one great compound fact, i. e., sin and its remedy, accommodatory to our feeble and finite senses, while locked up in these houses of clay, it utilizes an infinite diversity of imagery, beautifully and variantly expository of the wonderful redemptive scheme. Since God is the Author of both nature and grace, there is perfect harmony throughout His works in both departments. Consequently the deep and otherwise incomprehensible spiritual truths revealed in the Bible are constantly elucidated with an infinite diversity of imagery, deduced from the most common affairs and events of every-day life. The church of God throughout the Bible is symbolized by a holy woman, and that of Satan, i. e., the fallen church, by a harlot. In these four verses we have a grand metaphoric truth revealed under the figure of a woman becoming enamored of a most lovable man, and while exceedingly anxious to become his bride, still encumbered with an old husband, for whose death she must patiently wait before the much-desired nuptials can be legally celebrated. This woman is the human soul betrothed to Christ in regeneration, gladly receiving His periodical visits in revival times, bringing her nice presents and talking more and more about the projected wedding, which is only postponed with great reluctance, awaiting the death of the loathsome old, tobacconized, drunken, wife-beating husband, who is none other than Adam the First, here antithesized by the law, and must get out of the way before the long-anticipated matrimonial solemnization with her new lover, Adam the Second, can take place. Meanwhile the courtship is progressing, and it seems the old husband will never die, her delectable lover drops a hint: If thats all your trouble, you have nothing to do but turn him over to me, and I will dispatch him in the twinkling of an eye. At this suggestion, she leaps and shouts uproariously. Behold, the old husband is dead and the long-anticipated wedding celebrated on the spot, involving the double interest of old Adams funeral and the festal joys of holy wedlock with her Divine Spouse.
Rom 7:1. I speak to them that know the law, with a view more fully to illustrate the liberation from the condemnation of the law, that the law has dominion over a man, and over a woman, as long as they live. The dissolution of marriage by death was a new and striking argument, that Christ by his death had taken away sin, and therefore put the new covenant in full force, that they might now embrace the promises, and bring forth all the fruits of the Spirit: and whom the Son makes free, he shall be free indeed.
Rom 7:5. When we were in the flesh, in a judaical state, the motions of sin excited by the law, gained the ascendancy over the mind, and hurried us on to bring forth fruit unto death.
Rom 7:6. But now we are delivered from the curse and condemnation of the law, to love God with all our heart, according to the new spirit or covenant of the gospel. Here therefore grace abounds more than sin.
Rom 7:7. Is the law sin? God forbid. The law is a reflection of the moral glory of God, shining out in all its purity. It shines into the heart, discovering the turpitude of sin, and all its enmity against the light.
Rom 7:9-10. I was alive once without the law. St. Paul, under the figure of his own person, comprises the whole jewish nation, who lived in Egypt without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, which had lain as dead, slumbering in the heart, and I died. Such is the state of carnal men at ease in their sins, and thoughtless of divine things. The filth of a prison is scarcely seen in the dark, but when the sun shines, all the defilement appears. Just so, the commandment which was ordained to life in paradise, and from which the jews expected life, as is apparent from the question of the young ruler, Mat 19:16, I found to be unto death, it being a law demonstrating sin, and denouncing condemnation. What a discovery; what a change of views induced by awakening grace.
Rom 7:14. I am carnal, sold under sin. The apostle, from indwelling sin, now proceeds to the habits of sin. The old man, the usurper, now acts openly as a tyrant. He catches men by their reigning passions, and holds them under the yoke of servitude, as Ahab, who sold himself to work wickedness. All this is exemplified in the words which follow.
Rom 7:15. But what I hate, that do I. Here is the conflict between the two natures in man, the one drawing the mind to good, the other to evil, and evil which cannot be conquered by human efforts; it is by the aids of grace alone that sin can be subdued. If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. A very impressive instance of these conflicts occurs in the Trojan mythology. When Medea put her two illicit children to death, the Roman poet makes her say, My mind persuades me to one thing, but my new, my wicked will, impels me, against my will, to another. I see the better, and approve; nevertheless I follow the worse.
Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido, Mens aliud suadet; video meliora, proboque, Deteriora sequor. Ovid. Metam. lib. Rom 7:20.
Rom 7:22. I delight in the law of God after the inward man. , the prefix augments the sense, equivalent to, I delight with all my soul in the law of God, which is an emanation of his glory shining on the mind. My judgment approves, and all the oppressed emotions of grace, working within, love it, as holy, just, and good.
Rom 7:24. Oh wretched man, to serve the law of sin and death in the full beam of legal light, and be devoid of power to break the chain. The cry follows, seeing I cannot liberate myself, who shall deliver me from the body of this death. By this emphatic expression we are to understand the inward conflict, the law in the members, the body obnoxious to the excitements of sin, which being the body of fallen man, is subject to depraved and inordinate affections. St. Paul evidently assumes the person of another, the better to describe the progress of evangelical illumination, and the interior conflicts with sin. For Erasmus adds, that the ancients will not admit that those conflicts belong to the person of Paul himself. Vestustiores nolent ad apostoli personam pertinere.
The grand question here is, what is this deliverance, or glorious liberty of the children of God? If christians can be agreed on any point, assuredly they ought to be agreed on this. Origen is warmly rebutted here by John Calvin, who contends that St. Paul himself, as regards the flesh, was carnal, sold under sin. His words are, St. Paul confesse quil est tellement adon Dieu que rampant cependent ici en terre, il ne laisse pas detre entach de beaucoup dordure. Voici un passage singulier pour rembarre la maudite et malheureuse doctrine des Cathares, laquelle certains esprits fantastiques tacheur encore aujourdhui de resussciter, et mettre derechef en avant. Com. on Rom 7:24 : ed. anno 1639.
In his institutes of the christian religion, a work of his younger years, he is often warm on this subject. The substance of what he says is, that our old man, the man of sin, goes down to the grave with the body, but does not rise with it in the resurrection. How far it is delicate to say of the apostle, that while groveling here on earth, he never ceased to be loaded with much of the dung of sin, I leave to mens opinions. By the modern Catharians he means the mystic writers, chiefly Catholics; and certainly few will agree that Kempis, Fenelon, and Molino were men of weak minds.
If it be true that the grave purifies the deceased from the old man, then sin has its seat in the body; whereas the scriptures place it in the mind. If the Father, and the Son, with the Comforter, make his abode with us, how can we be carnal, and like Ahab, sold under sin! Assuredly the martyrs and confessors were perfect in love; and how few soever enjoy this glorious liberty, yet we must preach it, and preach it as obtained in an instantaneous manner, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Rom 7:25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Was ever praise more justly due to Him who is able to save to the uttermost? The conclusion then is just, that every jew and legal christian extols the law with his mind, but with the flesh he serves the law of sin and death.
REFLECTIONS.
In this chapter St. Paul still keeps to his grand point of gaining the jews from the hopeless bondage of the law, to the glorious liberty of Christ. By the law of God, and the law of the mind, he means the moral law, connected with the political code of the Hebrews; and by the law in his members, and the law of sin and death, he means the carnal mind, which acts with the force of law. The former he says is spiritual, reaching the thoughts and intents of the heart, and requiring perfect love to God. This law is holy, just, and good, the law of love which God will write on the heart. Hence by manumission from this good law, he means a deliverance from its curse in consequence of sin.
But why does St. Paul change the persons four times in this discourse? Ye, Rom 7:1; we, Rom 7:7; I and me, Rom 7:7-8; Rom 7:14; me, us, they, and ye, Rom 8:2; Rom 8:4-5; Rom 8:9. Answer: addressing both jews and christians, he does it solely to accommodate his discourse to the several parties with the greater propriety and ease. But when he personates the miserable bondage of the jewish nation, vainly striving to keep a holy law with an unholy heart, he imitates the holy Daniel, who classed himself with the wicked. He says, I am carnal, sold under sin. Origen is decided here, and he is followed by Basil, Jerome, and others, that St. Paul speaks not of himself. A cloud of modern critics, as Locke, Doddridge, &c., coincide with them. What a pity then that any commentator should wish to apply this lamentable portrait to St. Paul at the time he wrote, for it makes him contradict himself. In Rom 8:2 he says, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. He also affirms, I know nothing by myself. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.
The misery of the carnal man is augmented by superior light. The moment divine truth discloses her celestial beauty, the work of the law written on the sinners heart claims kindred with her, and would fain follow her in the paths of perfect purity. He says, I delight in the law of God; but ah, these chains of sin which cannot be broken. Ah, these habits which cannot be conquered; others may be saved, but to me salvation seems impossible.
The state of the carnal man is a state of impotency and idle wishes. To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find neither resolution nor power. With regard to carnal pleasure, it is otherwise. He runs to riot and enjoyment with all his might; he is all alive to sin, but in regard of religion, idle wishes are the extent of his efforts.
The daily accession of light makes his bondage more and more intolerable. What I do, I disallow; and what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do. Oh sinner, how long wilt thou remain in this most degrading servitude, seeing Christ is come to make thee free. He now stands in every attitude of love, and every form of grace, inviting thee to change masters, and bear his yoke of perfect liberty.
Rom 7:1-6. Espousal to Christ.Paul returns to his paradox about Law and Grace (Rom 6:14 f.) and illustrates it by marriage, Christ now standing for Grace.
Rom 7:1-3. Wedlock binds while the husband lives; on his death the wife is free for another union.
Rom 7:4 a. You are the wife in this case; the law the first husband, the risen Christ the second; the new marriage presupposes a discharge from the old (Rom 7:6). In the expression that she should not be an adulteress, Paul tacitly repudiates the charge of apostasy brought against Jewish Christians (cf. Jas 4:4 RV, Jer 2:2, Hos 2:2 ff., etc.).
Rom 7:4 b Rom 7:6. The difference in the offspring shows how much happier and better the second marriage is than the first: wedded to the law, our carnal nature bore fruit for death; now, we bear fruit to God (cf. Gal 5:22 f.), with the result that we serve (cf. Rom 6:18-22) in newness of spirit (cf. Rom 6:4), not in the oldness of the letter. The old system worked by external rule; the new by internal principle. Paul takes liberties with his simile: in the figure, the husband dies; in the application, the wifeyou were put to death as regards the law through the (dying) body of Christ (Rom 7:4); so again in Rom 7:6, where the AV, mistakenly, removes the incongruity. For the Christian believer dies with his Redeemer, to share His heavenly life (Rom 6:2-11). The death of either partner dissolves the prior union (cf. Gal 6:14).
Change of “Husbands” But a Struggle for Freedom
In Rom 7:1-25 we are faced with the case of a renewed conscience recognizing the claims of righteousness – or more correctly, holiness – hating evil and desiring good – while his utter powerlessness to do the good fills him with dismay and wretchedness. His is plainly the case of a soul born of God, for no unbeliever actually hates evil. The new nature in the believer, however, being the very nature of God (2Pe 1:4) is that which gives him an abhorrence of evil. Still, here the soul must learn that abhorring evil and loving good is not in itself the power for doing good.
Now the most common, yet most destructive mistake when the soul is so burdened, is the assumption that the law is to be the rule or standard of a life lived for the Lord – that which must govern the soul in order to bring forth fruit. Or if not the law as given by Moses, yet a certain standard of conduct (perhaps largely self-conceived) which requires obedience as an exaction. The first few verses of our chapter are a plain declaration that it is not God who imposes such exactions upon the redeemed soul – nor merely a declaration of this, but an explanation of the believer’s thorough deliverance from the law, not merely in regard to justification, but in regard to bearing fruit unto God. Justification has been thoroughly entered into and fully settled in chapters 3, 4,and 5, and this question is not raised again. Hence, let us be clear that our question now is that of a justified person bringing forth fruit unto God (v. 4).
And at the outset may we remark that “legality” is not to be confined to that attitude that seeks to gain or maintain a standing before God by means of obedience to law; but as in our present chapter, it is the attitude of a justified saint who seeks to bring forth fruit unto God by obedience to law. This latter attitude is as harmful to growth as the former is to peace.
In verse 1 those who know the law are addressed, for the better a soul knows the law, the clearer will be his conviction that it does not assert any authority over a dead man. For it regards man as alive in the flesh and addresses him on that ground, claiming dominion over him only “as long as he liveth.”
Verses 2 & 3 adduce the illustration of marriage, the law binding a woman to her husband as long as he is alive, but when he is dead, that law has no more to say to her: she may marry another without the slightest suggestion of infringing the law which, while her husband was living, would call her an adulteress for such a thing. The point of the illustration is simply that death, while it does not destroy or change the law, does away with the authority of law in that case.
Verse 4 applies this principle pointedly to believers, to show that the law, in their case, makes absolutely no claim. “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.”
Rom 6:2 has declared that believers are “dead to sin”; Rom 7:4 goes a step farther, to declare them “dead to the law.” Who can deny therefore that the saints of God are delivered as fully from the authority of the law as from the authority of sin? “Dead” means dead in any case, and law can have no more to say to a dead man than sin can. The doctrine is simple: we are “dead to the law by the body of Christ” – not by physical death, nor by an experience of self-denial or self-mortification. Identification with the death of Christ delivers me as fully from the law’s claims as He by His death is free from them. Every believer is identified with Him in His death. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you” (Joh 6:53). Thus a believer becomes partaker with Him in His death.
It is plain that the verse contemplates two distinct masters (or husbands) – “the law,” and “Him who is raised from the dead.” There can be no such thing as identification with both at once. This the figure makes clear. It must be clean free from the one if joined to the other. Death alone can procure this freedom, and Christ’s death is my death, so that my connection with law is absolutely broken, in order that Christ may be fully and singly my possessor and Master. This is the only basis of bringing forth fruit unto God. Law demanded, no doubt, but it did not, could not, bring forth fruit. It could go as far as death, but could have nothing to do with resurrection. Christ is raised from the dead: this is fruit: indeed “He is the firstfruits.” Law then is but a “thing”; Christ a Living Person, and the very life of the saints. Compare Col 3:4. Blessed deliverance from an irksome bondage into a joyous freedom! It changes our motive entirely – no longer to be harassed by the feeling that we ought to do what is right, or good; but strengthened and comforted by the motive of delight in pleasing the Lord. This is liberty, for which there is no substitute, and no imitation that can remotely compare with it.
The bolder relief is given to the picture by the retrospect of verse 5. “When we were in the flesh” is of course the reminder of our unsaved state (compare Rom 8:8-9). The result of that former state, as experience has taught us, was bringing forth fruit unto death. But it is solemnly instructive to notice the means of this – “the motions of sins which were by the law.” Has not every awakened conscience verified this in experience? Law laid imperatively upon the soul has not restrained sin: it has stirred up the motions of sins in self-will and rebellion. Man revolts, and sins more when he is sternly commanded to do this, or to not do that. And we also, while in the flesh, thoroughly resented an imposition laid peremptorily upon us, and were embolded to rebel.
Verse 6 gives the present contrast – “delivered from the law, having died in that in which we were held” (JND). It is not that the law had died, of course, but we have died as regards the law. The deliverance (as easily understood) is to the end “that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” As verse 5 has reminded us of our former experience, so verse 6 gives us what is to be our new and proper experience as believers.
Verse 7 refers back to verse 5, which had said the motions of sins were by the law. Does this infer that the law is sin? Far be the thought. It is “the strength of sin” (1Co 15:56), that is, its stern prohibitions only stirred man’s evil nature to more determined sin and rebellion, and sin became the stronger in its defiance of God. Is the law to blame for this? Certainly not: man’s evil nature is to blame. But, as Paul says, “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, “Thou shalt not covet.” Thus the law exposes sin in all its horror. Law commands me not to covet, and I see my evil nature assert itself because of the very prohibition. Can I then deny that I am a sinner?
Thus the commandment gave sin a point of attack (v. 8). Sin rose up against the prohibition, only to work in me every lust. The law was a whip for the slave (in a sense), who uses it as a cause for rebellion: it brings out the sin and evil of the heart. No scourging or treatment of the most harsh kind could ever draw from our blessed Lord the bitter enmity that similar treatment would from the natural heart of man. Why? Because “in Him was no sin.” Nothing could come out but what was in. Law could only confirm His purity, while it draws out and exposes the evil of our own natural hearts.
“For without the law sin was dead.” This refers to our experience, of course. As long as no imposition was placed upon me, sin’s power meant nothing. “For I was alive without the law once.” Alive in the flesh, without the law, I felt no burden of sin with its solemn sentence of death. As long as I may indulge my own will, with no prohibition, sin as to me appears to have no power – I am alive, sin is dead. But let law forbid my self-will, and I see sin revive in its bold and bitter rebellion, and I find in myself no power to control it after all. “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” The sin in my flesh, which I had so little suspected, when the commandment came, sprung into a strong activity, and I could not but feel in its determined working the sentence of death upon myself. “I died.” This is of course a vivid description of the apostle’s experience, an experience necessarily preceding proper deliverance. It is not the truth of “death with Christ” here, which is a judicial fact for all believers, but a matter of the soul’s experience.
The commandment, which had said “This do and thou shalt live,” I found in my case to be “unto death,” not life. “For sin, getting a point of attack by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.” We shall notice here again that sin is personified as a monstrous, deceitful enemy, striking my death-blow by the commandment.
“Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” Holy, it fully repudiates evil: Just, it is a scourge only to the sinner, and hence unquestionable in justice: Good, it calls for love, which “is the fulfilling of the law.” Can that which is good then be the means of my death? But no. Sin cannot be ignored this way, and the law be blamed for what sin has done. But sin, that it might appear in its abhorrent character, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. The commandment then exposes sin for what it is – that we might perceive its exceeding sinfulness. This result in itself is good for us. Its prime object is personal self-judgment, and is only learned properly when this is the case. Thus in our chapter it is an intensely personal experience.
This is most strikingly seen in verse 14, where, speaking of a well-known fact, he says, “We know that the law is spiritual,” but looking, not at men generally, but himself, he adds “but I am carnal, sold under sin.” This he knew to be the truth as to himself. Not at all that this would be his state after deliverance was known, but it was the practical experience of his soul when he knew not the liberty of the Spirit of God. After the knowledge of deliverance (in Rom 8:1-39) there is not this self-occupation at all: there is neither self-denunciation nor self-exaltation. Of course there is no reason why a believer should be carnal, but the experience of this must always come before deliverance, in whatever measure, for we have been the slaves of sin, and of law in some sort. The opposite of carnal is spiritual which all believers ought to be, though never to claim to be such. Carnality is certainly not a normal Christian state but to honestly face it when there, is necessary if there is to be deliverance. This then is intensely personal experience, detailed a little more in the succeeding verses.
Notice in this that there is an “I” in bitter conflict with another “I.” For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” Now even an unbeliever often approves what is good, tries in a measure to do it, but more often weakly gives way to the evil – nay, in fact actually prefers it. Reality of desire is not there, and of course neither is power.
But the child of God hates evil because it is the character of his new life to do so: for the same reason he truly desires good. But despite the earnestness of desire, the power for good seems as far from him as in his unsaved state. This is his perplexity. The Spirit of God also dwells in him, the more stirring his desires after holiness, though the Spirit is not mentioned here at all, for the experience does not take His power into account. This in fact is the reason of misery. Also the bad mistake is made of mixing spiritual desires with fleshly energy, as if the flesh could produce the virtues of the Spirit.
It is then my conception of what I should be for God fighting against what I actually am. In other words it is (shall we say good?) flesh in conflict with confessedly bad flesh. But whether I think it good or bad, it is nevertheless “flesh.” It is “I” in either case. There is no power in flesh to put down the flesh. The first “I” will never triumph, however righteous. If it could be so, the first man (Adam) would never have had to give place to the second (Christ). He shall have the glory of conquering in the lives of His saints. Hence the only value in the conflict of flesh with flesh is to teach us the utter vanity of flesh, whether it is “grass” or “the flower of grass,” – its finest form.
Nevertheless, there is this much promise of deliverance, – that I consciously take sides with the law against myself. This at least is the spirit of repentance and self-judgment, in which state of confessed helplessness, the Lord delights to meet with and bless the soul. But it is still low ground. The soul taught of the Spirit takes sides with God against self – not with law against self. For law is but a thing and has no life to triumph over sin. When I see the power of God for me, as against sin, then I rest, for the triumph is sure.
However, reasoning from verse 16, there is the conclusion of verse 17. It is not I, as to will and intention, who do the evil, “but sin that dwelleth in me.” Involuntarily, despite my precautions and determination, the evil principle of my nature, like a fretting leprosy, breaks out again and again. Thus sin is at least distinguished as the terrible and powerful enemy of the soul. And this is good, for it were ruinous to fail to recognize an enemy or to underestimate his power. When it is plainly seen what is the true character of our souls’ enemies, it may stagger us to compare with it the poverty of our own forces, but it would drive us to seek other refuge – in Him who only is stronger than all enemies.
So that there is no doubt progress in this learning by experience: indeed in verse 18 it comes to the deeply-felt conviction that “in me, (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.” This is truth and deeply important truth, but it is not yet deliverance, of course. There is still occupation with self, and a sort of review of the thoughts and feelings of the soul when the sense of its poverty lies heavily upon it. There seems the still lingering hope that the will may be able to triumph over sin in the flesh. How often this is the case with souls even who utterly condemn themselves and see nothing good whatever in their flesh. It is inconsistent, of course, but which of us will easily give up self, whatever its proven worthlessness? This in fact but illustrates more vividly the thorough perversity of the heart and magnifies the need of another Deliverer. We must learn that strength of will-power is of no value in such a case: sin is too much for it.
Struggling with self as the soul is, he comes to distinguish sin from himself (vv. 19, 20) and to attribute the evil he does to the sin that dwells in him. This quietens the struggle somewhat (when he almost repeats what he had said in v. 17, and is evidently considering the significance of it), for he sees that at every point his defense gives way to the superior power and subtlety of sin. What use is fighting if there is defeat at every turn? Yet capitulation would be treachery against the truth, and his very nature would cry out against it.
From verses 21-23 we have the deduction from these experiences that a law of sin binds the soul, whatever its desires. Thus occupation with doing good results only in bringing out the evil of our hearts. It is occupation with Christ that keeps us from evil – not merely with doing good. This awaits Rom 8:1-39 however, where the soul is lifted fully above its “doings.”
“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” This delight he speaks of is no doubt proper enough, but it is also plain that his occupation is more with “the law of God” than with God Himself, and his misery is not to be wondered at. He must learn that “the law of God” is neither to be his standard of conduct, nor his resource of strength, but must find these in the Son of God. In these verses (22 & 23) he sees two distinct laws – that is, governing principles – in conflict, each claiming him, but the “law of sin” consistently vanquishing “the law of God,” so that he, despite his own will, is carried captive. It is a profound perplexity to him, and he is thus no doubt learning that “the law of God” is not “the power of God” (compare Rom 1:16; 1Co 1:24). “The law of God” is not to be the governing principle of the redeemed child: this must be the prerogative of the indwelling Spirit of God – as in fact Rom 8:2 will give us.
Finally, in verse 24 his soul cries out in the utter misery of confessed helplessness – “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Can he surrender himself to sin, which has such power? Never! How could he ever make peace with that which is so horrible an enemy of God? But does he now say “How shall I deliver myself?” No: he has given up hope in this direction, but looks for another to deliver him – “Who shall deliver me?” Is there any wonder, when this thought breaks in upon his soul, that there is the brightly awakened hope of v. 25? – “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Thus, looking outside of himself, he thanks God. He realizes his impotence, and that he must trust another deliverer. This gives calmness to consider the deliverance itself, which is described in the first four verses of Rom 8:1-39.
For verse 25 (Rom 7:1-25) is not the language of a delivered soul, but of one who has recognized the impossibility of self-deliverance, and that he must look out from himself to Christ. It is an honest confession he makes, “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin,” – but he is still the sufferer, only now as it were bringing his illness to the divine Physician, with a frank explanation of the symptoms. A delivered soul does not with the mind “serve the law of God,” nor find himself still given over to the law of sin which the flesh would serve. The proper state of the soul is, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:2-3). The mind is to be on Christ, not on law, though it be “the law of God.” The point of importance then is that he here puts himself, in his wretched state, into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pride would seek a good state first, before presenting ourselves into His hand, but this would not do. He must have the glory of being the only Deliverer.
Verse 1
The law hath dominion over a man. He is under its power, and exposed to its penalties.–As long as he liveth; that is, as long as his life of sin and impenitence continues–the life referred to in the early part of the Romans 6:1-14, as terminated by union with Christ.
SECTION 20 THROUGH CHRIST WE DIED TO THE LAW
CH. 7:1-6
Or, are ye ignorant, brethren, (for to men who know law, I speak,) that the Law is lord of the man for so long time as he lives? For the woman with a husband, to the living husband, is bound by law: but if the husband die, she is made of no effect from the law of the husband. Therefore, while the husband lives, an adulteress she will be called if she become another mans: but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so as not to be can adulteress, though she have become another mans. So that, my brethren, also ye were made dead to the Law through the body of Christ that ye might become anothers, His who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
For when we were in the flesh, the emotions of sins, aroused through the Law, were at work in the members of our body, in order to bear fruit for death. But now we have been made of no effect from the Law, having died to that in which we were held down, so that we may serve in newness of Spirit, and not in oldness of letter.
The argument of Romans 6, might to some appear invalid because it left out of sight the Law and the curse therein pronounced against all who commit sin. Our surrender to the bondage of sin was a just punishment of our disobedience. Does not God, by breaking off fetters imposed by the Law, dishonour the Law? This question Paul will answer by discussing in Romans 7, the teaching of Romans 6, in its bearing on the Law. It was suggested by the words not under law in Rom 6:14. He will prove in Rom 7:1-6 that by a strictly legal process we have been set free from the Law which formerly bound us to the service of sin and forbad our union with Christ; in 10:7-12, that, though freedom from the Law gives us life, yet the Law is not bad; and in 10:13-25 he will show us the purpose and working of the death-bringing Law, and thus prove its excellence.
Rom 7:1. To men who know law: to Jews and others familiar with the Law of Moses, and to Gentiles familiar with the universal principles underlying all law. This is the new and important feature of Romans 7, as of Rom 2:12-29.
The Law: the divinely given and authoritative Law of Moses, ever present in the religious thought of Jews. But the principle here asserted applies to every authoritative prescription of conduct. We therefore cannot infer from this verse that Pauls readers were chiefly Jews.
Is-lord of: as in Rom 6:9.
So long time as he lives: conceding to the Law all it can claim, the concession suggesting a limitation.
Rom 7:2. The woman with a husband: a case in point involving the whole principle of law. The emphatic word living suggests a limitation valid in all law, and expressly stated in the rest of the verse.
Bound: a feature of all law: it limits our action.
Made-of-no-effect from: as in Rom 3:3; Rom 3:31; Rom 4:14; Rom 6:6 : made practically non-existent in the eyes of the Law. It is equivalent to free from in Rom 7:3.
But if the husband die, the woman goes beyond the operation of the law of the husband: i.e. the statute which forbids her to marry another. For the phrase law of, see Lev 6:9; Lev 6:14, etc.
Rom 7:3. Fuller statement of the case of a married woman, as an inference from the principle stated in Rom 7:1 : therefore etc. The husband may be a tyrant and murderer: another, kind and good, may wish to make her his wife. Yet, while the husband lives, the Law steps in and brands her as an adulteress if she attempts to escape from the tyrant by giving herself to another man.
But if the husband die: same words as in Rom 7:2. By his death she ceases to be a wife; and passes, according to an essential principle of law, from under control of the law which forbad her second marriage. Death, without setting aside the law, has made her free from it. The case of the wife is specially suitable to the matter before us. For, in other cases, e.g. a man condemned to imprisonment for a term of years, the person set free by death is by death removed from our observation. But the widow is before our eyes, living and free. Moreover, her case suggests an important and beautiful metaphor: cp. 2Co 11:2; Eph 5:25-27.
Rom 7:4. Application of the foregoing case to ourselves: so that also ye etc. Made-dead to the Law: placed beyond its control, as though we were dead: cp. Gal 2:19, a close parallel.
Through the body of Christ: nailed to the cross. Through Christs death, we were set free from the divine law which condemned us, for our sins, to be slaves of sin.
That ye might become anothers: Gods purpose in saving us from bondage to sin, viz. that we might be united to Christ. Inasmuch as we are saved by the death of Him to whom God designs us to be united, it is needful to add that He was raised from the dead: cp. Rom 6:4-5; Rom 6:9. Had He not died, we had not been released: had He not risen, he would not have become our husband.
Bear-fruit for God: practically the same as fruit for sanctification in Rom 6:22. We were united to Christ that we may live a life producing good results, such as will advance the purposes of God.
To fill up the comparison, we must consider ourselves to have been, not merely the servant, but the wife, of sin. Our husband was a murderer. But we had chosen him for our lord: and the Law recognised the marriage. Gods original purpose was that we should be the bride of His Son. But we gave ourselves to Sin; and the Law then forbad our union with Christ. In Romans 6, however, we have learnt that through Christs death we ourselves are dead. Therefore, according to Rom 7:1-3, we are legally free from the Law which forbad our marriage with Christ. We are made free by the death of One to whom we are so closely related that in the eyes of the Law His death is our death.
Translated into the language of common life, this verse teaches that through the death of Christ is removed a barrier to our restoration to normal and blessed relation to Christ and to God having its foundation in the Law of God.
Rom 7:5. Reason why, in order to bear fruit for God, we must needs be made dead to the Law; and a restatement of the contrast of past and present.
In the flesh: the material of our body as the environment in which the spirit lives, moves, and acts, an environment controlling at that time our entire action and thought. It is not so now. The flesh is (see Gal 2:20; 2Co 10:3) the physical, but no longer the moral, element of our life. For although we ever feel its influence, it no longer controls us.
The emotions of sins: emotions of desire evoked by forbidden objects in those who yield to their influence, and tending to produce sinful acts. They were evoked by means of the Law: strange words designed to awaken surprise and to prompt the objection in Rom 7:7. They will be explained in Rom 7:7-11.
When we were in the flesh, these emotions were at work (cp. 2Co 4:12; Eph 2:2; 2Th 2:7)
in our members, the various parts of our bodies, moving our lips, hands, and feet, to words, deeds, and ways, of sin. When the body with its appetites was the controlling element of our life, it was the seat of emotions prompting sin.
In order to bear fruit etc: tendency and purpose of these emotions. They made us fruitful; but the fruit was poison. Of this, Pauls own earlier history was a literal and sad example.
For death: as in Rom 6:16; Rom 6:21; Rom 6:23.
Fruit for death: in awful contrast to fruit for God, in Rom 7:4. Since these emotions, evoked by means of the Law, were at work with such deadly intent, we must needs die to the Law in order that we may bear fruit for God.
Rom 7:6. But now: introducing, as in Rom 6:22, the joyful contrast ever present to Pauls thought.
Made-of-no-effect from the Law: as in Rom 7:2, which it recalls.
Having died to that in which etc.: event which released us from the Law in which we were held-down, or held-fast: same word in Rom 1:18.
So that we may serve: happy result of our liberation. [The infinitive with states not objective fact, as does the indicative, but a subjective view of cause and effect.]
Serve: same word as in Rom 7:25; Rom 6:6; cognate to servants in Rom 6:16-17; Rom 6:19-20, and to made-servants in Rom 7:18; Rom 7:22. This family of words is a conspicuous feature of Rom 6:6 -Rom 7:6. Notice that we are still servants or slaves, but (Rom 6:22) to different masters and in a new environment.
Newness of Spirit: a new order of things of which the characterizing feature is the animating presence of the Spirit of God, in contrast to an old environment characterized by possession of a written letter. Same contrast of Spirit and letter in Rom 2:29; and, more fully developed, in 2Co 3:3; 2Co 3:6, where the Spirit of God is contrasted with the letters written on the tables of stone. And this is probably the reference of the word Spirit here and in Rom 2:29 : for it is evidently a forerunner of the Spirit of God in Rom 8:9; Rom 8:11; Rom 8:14. If so, the letter must be the written Law of Moses, in possession of which the Jews (Rom 2:23) boasted. The new feature of our present service is that our Master has given us, not a mere written word bidding us do this or that, but an animating Spirit, who opens our minds to understand and approve the will of God, and enables us to do it. This gift of the Spirit makes our present service altogether new, and our former service altogether old.
The above argument has less force for us than for Pauls readers. To any who objected that the teaching of Romans 6, would set aside the Law of Moses, it was a complete reply to say that the Law claims jurisdiction only over the living, and that believers are practically dead. But to us God has given a more tremendous and far-reaching law. To those who reject it, the Gospel is itself a condemning law: for they who disbelieve its promises are compelled to believe its threatenings. And from this law death is no deliverance: for its threatenings control the world to come. Hence the argument, in the form in which it stands here, does not meet our case.
But, underneath the Jewish form of this argument, lie great and abiding principles of immense importance. It is a reassertion, in another form, of Pauls exposition, in Rom 3:26, of the purpose for which God gave Christ to die, viz. to harmonize with His own justice the justification of believers. For, that we are in Rom 7:4 said to be dead to the Law through the body of Christ can only mean that through His death is removed a barrier to salvation having its foundation in the Law of God. Now the Law is a literary embodiment of the justice of God. Consequently, to say that the Law forbad our rescue, is to say that the justice of God forbad it. But Paul has taught that God set forth Christ as a propitiation in His blood, in order that God may be Himself just and a justifier of Him that believes in Jesus. If so, through the death of Christ we are set free, in harmony with the principle of law, from the law which condemned us to be slaves of the master we had so perversely chosen. This important coincidence of thought, under totally different phraseology, confirms our interpretation of Rom 3:26; is confirmed by Gal 2:19; Gal 3:13; Col 2:14, and by an interesting illustration in Heb 9:16-17, in all which passages the death of Christ is placed in relation to the Law; and sheds important light on the necessity and purpose of the death of Christ. This coincidence is the more important because no other N.T. writer connects the death of Christ with the justice or the law of God.
This teaching has also experimental value. Many conscientious men feel that for God to pardon their sins and to smile upon sinners would be to set aside the eternal principles which underlie morality. And, because they know that God will not do this, they dare not believe His proclamation of pardon. They are in the position of a woman who has made a ruinous marriage from which now there is no escape. But in these verses we are reminded that the death of Christ, by revealing the inevitable connection of sin and death, has satisfied the external moral principles which forbad our pardon; and that now, without infringing them, God may and will set us free.
Rom 6:1 to Rom 7:6 describe the new life in its relation to sin, to the Law, to Christ, and to God. It is complete deliverance from sin, removes us legally from the domain of the Law which condemned us, unites us to Christ in His death and burial and in His resurrection life, a life of fruitful devotion to God. Notice the complete confidence with which Paul accepts the death and resurrection of Christ as historic facts, and as essential factors in Gods purpose of salvation, a confidence moulding his thought and creating new modes of thought and new phraseology peculiar to him. In his theology, the events which closed the life of Christ on earth are reproduced in His servants. This confidence, in (Gal 1:13) a former persecutor, can be explained only by the reality of that which he believed: and no account of Pauls teaching which does not explain this remarkable element in it can be tolerated for a moment.
Certain strange assertions in Rom 7:5, needing explanation and defence, will next claim the apostles attention.
7:1 Know {1} ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
(1) By expounding the similitude of marriage, he compares together the state of man both before and after regeneration. The law of matrimony, he says, is this, that as long as the husband lives, the marriage remains binding, but if he is dead, the woman may marry again.
1. The law’s authority 7:1-6
"Those who know law"-the article "the" before "law" is absent in the Greek text-were Paul’s Roman readers. They lived in the capital of the empire where officials debated, enacted, and enforced laws. They of all people were very familiar with law and legal matters. But it is the acquaintance of these Roman believers with Old Testament law that is probably Paul’s point. [Note: Cranfield, 1:333.]
The Romans would not have argued with Paul that law has authority only over living people. We can anticipate where Paul would go with his argument since he earlier explained the believer’s death with Christ. Since we have died with Christ law has no authority over us (cf. Rom 6:14).
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Chapter 15
JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HUMAN LIFE
Rom 6:14-23 – Rom 7:1-6
AT the point we have now reached, the Apostles thought pauses for a moment, to resume. He has brought us to self-surrender. We have seen the sacred obligations of our divine and wonderful liberty. We have had the miserable question, “Shall we cling to sin?” answered by an explanation of the rightness and the bliss of giving over our accepted persons, in the fullest liberty of will, to God, in Christ. Now he pauses, to illustrate and enforce. And two human relations present themselves for the purpose; the one to show the absoluteness of the surrender, the other its living results. The first is Slavery, the second is Wedlock.
For sin shall not have dominion over you; sin shall not put in its claim upon you, the claim which the Lord has met in your Justification; for you are not brought under law, but under grace. The whole previous argument explains this sentence. He refers to our acceptance. He goes back to the justification of the guilty, “without the deeds of law,” by the act of free grace; and briefly restates it thus, that he may take up afresh the position that this glorious liberation means not license but divine order. Sin shall be no more your tyrant creditor, holding up the broken law in evidence that it has right to lead you off to a pestilential prison, and to death. Your dying Saviour has met your creditor in full for you, and in Him you have entire discharge in that eternal court where the terrible plea once stood against you. Your dealings as debtors are now not with the enemy who cried for your death, but with the Friend who has bought you out of his power.
What then? are we to sin, because we are not brought under law, but under grace? Shall our life be a life of license, because we are thus wonderfully free? The question assuredly is one which, like that of ver. 1, and like those suggested in Rom 3:8; Rom 3:31, had often been asked of St. Paul, by the bitter opponent, or by the false follower. And again it illustrates and defines, by the direction of its error, the line of truth from which it flew off. It helps to do what we remarked above, to assure us that when St. Paul taught “Justification by faith, without deeds of law,” he meant what he said, without reserve; he taught that great side of truth wholly, and without a compromise. He called the sinner, “just as he was, and waiting not to rid his soul of one dark blot,” to receive at once, and without fee, the acceptance of God for Anothers blessed sake. Bitter must have been the moral pain of seeing, from the first, this holy freedom distorted into an unhallowed leave to sin. But he will not meet it by an impatient compromise, or untimely confusion. It shall be answered by a fresh collocation; the liberty shall be seen in its relation to the Liberator; and behold, the perfect freedom is a perfect service, willing but. absolute, a slavery joyfully accepted, with open eyes and open heart, and then lived out as the most real of obligations by a being who has entirely seen that he is not his own.
Away with the thought. Do you not know that the party to whom you present, surrender, yourselves bondservants, slaves, so as to obey him, -bondservants you are, not the less for the freewill of the surrender, of the party whom you obey; no longer merely contractors with him, who may bargain, or retire, but his bondservants out and out; whether of sin, to death, or of obedience, to righteousness? (As if their assent to Christ, their Amen to His terms of peace, acceptance, righteousness, were personified; they were now the bondsmen of this their own act and deed, which had put them, as it were, into Christs hands for all things.) Now thanks be to our God, that you were bondmen of sin, in legal claim, and under moral sway; yes, every one of you was this, whatever forms the bondage took upon its surface; but you obeyed from the heart the mould of teaching to which you were handed over. They had been sins slaves. Verbally, not really, he “thanks God” for that fact of the past. Really, not verbally, he “thanks God” for the pastness of the fact, and for the bright contrast to it in the regenerated present. They had now been “handed over,” by their Lords transaction about them, to another ownership, and they had accepted the transfer, “from the heart.” It was done by Another for them, but they had said their humble, thankful that as He did it. And what was the new ownership thus accepted? We shall find soon (Rom 6:22), as we might expect, that it is the mastery of God. But the bold, vivid introductory imagery has already called it (Rom 6:16) the slavery of “Obedience.” Just below (Rom 6:19-20) it is the slavery of “Righteousness,” that is, if we read the word aright in its whole context, of “the Righteousness of God,” His acceptance of the sinner as His own in Christ. And here, in a phrase most unlikely of all, whose personification strikes life into the most abstract aspects of the message of the grace of God, the believer is one who has been transferred to the possession of “a mould of Teaching.” The Apostolic Doctrine, the mighty Message, the living Creed of life, the Teaching of the acceptance of the guilty for the sake of Him who was their Sacrifice, and is now their Peace and Life-this truth has, as it: were, grasped them as its vassals, to form them, to mould them for its issues. It is indeed their “tenet.” It “holds them”; a thought far different from what is too often meant when we say of a doctrine that “we hold it.” Justification by their Lords merit, union with their Lords life; this was a doctrine, reasoned, ordered, verified. But it was a doctrine warm and tenacious with the love of the Father and of the Son. And it had laid hold of them with a mastery which swayed thought, affection, and will; ruling their whole view of self and of God. Now, liberated from your sin, you were enslaved to the Righteousness of God. Here is the point of the argument. It is a point of steel, for all is fact; but the steel is steeped in love, and carries life and joy into the hearts it penetrates. They are not for one moment their own. Their acceptance has magnificently emancipated them from their tyrant enemy. But it has absolutely bound them to their Friend and King. Their glad consent to be accepted has carried with it a consent to belong. And if that consent was at the moment rather implied than explicit, virtual rather than articulately conscious, they have now only to understand their blessed slavery better to give the more joyful thanksgivings to Him who has thus claimed them altogether as His own.
The Apostles aim in this whole passage is to awaken them, with the strong, tender touch of his holy reasoning, to articulate their position to themselves. They have trusted Christ, and are in Him. Then, they have entrusted themselves altogether to Him. Then, they have, in effect, surrendered. They have consented to be His property. They are the bondservants, they are the slaves, of His truth, that is, of Him robed and revealed in His Truth, and shining through it on them in the glory at once of His grace and of His claim. Nothing less than such an obligation is the fact for them. Let them feel, let them weigh, and then let them embrace, the chain which after all will only prove their pledge of rest and freedom.
What St. Paul thus did for our elder brethren at Rome, let him do for us of this later time. For us, who read this page, all the facts are true in Christ today. Today let us define and affirm their issues to ourselves, and recollect our holy bondage, and realise it, and live it out with joy.
Now he follows up the thought. Conscious of the superficial repulsiveness of the metaphor-quite as repulsive in itself to the Pharisee as to the Englishman-he as it were apologises for it; not the less carefully, in his noble considerateness, because so many of his first readers were actually slaves. He does not lightly go for his picture of our Masters hold of us, to the market of Corinth, or of Rome, where men and women were sold and bought to belong as absolutely to their buyers as cattle, or as furniture. Yet he does go there, to shake slow perceptions into consciousness, and bring the will face to face with the claim of God. So he proceeds. I speak humanly, I use the terms of this utterly not-divine bond of man to man, to illustrate mans glorious bond to God, because of the weakness of your flesh, because your yet imperfect state enfeebles your spiritual perception, and demands a harsh paradox to direct and fix it., For-here is what he means by “humanly”-just as you surrendered your limbs, your functions and faculties in human life, slaves to your impurity and to your lawlessness, unto that lawlessness, so that the bad principle did indeed come out in bad practice, so now, with as little reserve of liberty, surrender your limbs slaves to righteousness, to Gods Righteousness, to your justifying God, unto sanctification-so that the surrender shall come out in your Masters sovereign separation of His purchased property from sin.
He has appealed to the moral reason of the regenerate soul. Now he speaks straight to the will. You are, with infinite rightfulness, the bondmen of your God. You see your deed of purchase; it is the other side of your warrant of emancipation. Take it, and write your own unworthy names with joy upon it, consenting and assenting to your Owners perfect rights. And then live out your life, keeping the autograph of your own surrender before your eyes. Live, suffer, conquer, labour, serve, as men who have themselves walked to their Masters door, and presented the ear to the awl which pins it to the doorway, each in his turn saying, “I will not go out free.”
To such an act of the soul the Apostle calls these saints, whether they had done the like before or no. They were to sum up the perpetual fact, then and there, into a definite and critical act (, aorist) of thankful will. And he calls us to do the same today. By the grace of God, it shall be done. With eyes open, and fixed upon the face of the Master who claims us, and with hands placed helpless and willing within His hands, we will, we do, present ourselves bondservants to Him; for discipline, for servitude, for all His will.
For when you were slaves of your sin, you were freemen as to righteousness, Gods Righteousness. It had nothing to do with you, whether to give you peace or to receive your tribute of love and loyalty in reply. Practically, Christ was not your Atonement, and so not your Master; you stood, in a dismal independence, outside His claims. To you, your lips were your own; your time was your own; your will was your own. You belonged to self; that is to say, you were the slaves of your sin. Will you go back? Will the word “freedom” (he plays with it, as it were, to prove them) make you wish yourselves back where you were before you had endorsed by faith your purchase by the blood of Christ? Nay, for what was that “freedom,” seen in its results, its results upon yourselves? What fruit, therefore, (the “therefore” of the logic of facts,) used you to have then, in those old days, from things over which you are ashamed now? Ashamed indeed; for the end, the issue, as the fruit is the trees “end,” the end of those things is-death; perdition of all true life here and hereafter too. But now, in the blessed actual state of your case, as by faith you have entered into Christ, into His work and into His life, now liberated from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit, you possess indeed, at last, the true issues of being for which you were made, all contributing to sanctification, to that separation to Gods will in practice which is the development of your separation to that will in critical fact, when you met your Redeemer in self-renouncing faith. Yes, this fruit you have indeed; and as its end, as that for which it is produced, to which it always and forever tends, you have life eternal. For the pay of sin, sins military stipend (), punctually given to the being which has joined its war against the will of God, is death; but the free gift of God is life eternal, in Jesus Christ our Lord.
“Is life worth living?” Yes, infinitely well worth, for the living man who has surrendered to “the Lord that bought him.” Outside that ennobling captivity, that invigorating while most genuine bond service, the life of man is at best complicated and tired with a bewildered quest, and gives results at best abortive, matched with the ideal purposes of such a being. We “present ourselves to God,” for His ends, as implements, vassals, willing bondmen; and lo, our own end is attained. Our life has settled, after its long friction, into gear. Our root, after hopeless explorations in the dust, has struck at last the stratum where the immortal water makes all things live, and grow, and put forth fruit for heaven. The heart, once dissipated between itself and the world, is now “united” to the will, to the love, of God; and understands itself, and the world, as never before; and is able to deny self and to serve others in a new and surprising freedom. The man, made willing to be nothing but the tool and bondman of God, “has his fruit” at last; bears the true product of his now recreated being, pleasant to the Masters eye, and fostered by His air and sun. And this “fruit” issues, as acts issue in habit, in the glad experience of a life really sanctified, really separated in ever deeper inward reality, to a holy will. And the “end” of the whole glad possession, is “life eternal.”
Those great words here signify, surely, the coming bliss of the sons of the resurrection, when at last in their whole perfected being they will “live” all through, with a joy and energy as inexhaustible as its Fountain, and unencumbered at last and forever by the conditions of our mortality. To that vast future, vast in its scope yet all concentrated round the fact that “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,” the Apostle here looks onward. He will say more of it, and more largely, later, in the eighth chapter. But as with other themes so with this, he preludes with a few glorious chords the great strain soon to come. He takes the Lords slave by the hand, amidst his present tasks and burthens, (dear tasks and burthens, because the Masters, but still full of the conditions of earth,) and he points upward-not to a coming manumission in glory; the man would be dismayed to foresee that; he wants to “serve forever”; -but to a scene of service in which the last remainders of hindrance to its action will be gone, and a perfected being will forever, perfectly, be not its own, and so will perfectly live in God. And this, so he says to his fellow servant, to you and to me, is “the gift of God”; a grant as free, as generous, as ever King gave vassal here below. And it is to be enjoyed as such, by a being which, living wholly for Him, will freely and purely exult to live wholly on Him, in the heavenly places.
Yet surely the bearing of the sentences is not wholly upon heaven. Life eternal, so to be developed hereafter that Scripture speaks of it often as it began hereafter, really begins here, and develops here, and is already “more abundant” {Joh 10:10} here. It is, as to its secret and also its experience, to know and to enjoy God, to be possessed by Him, and used for His will. In this respect it is “the end,” the issue and the goal, now and perpetually, of the surrender of the soul. The Master meets that attitude with more and yet more of Himself, known, enjoyed, possessed, possessing. And so He gives, evermore gives, out of His sovereign bounty, life eternal to the bondservant who has embraced the fact that he is nothing, and has nothing, outside his Master. Not at the outset of the regenerate life only, and not only when it issues into the heavenly ocean, but all along the course, the life eternal is still “the free gift of God.” Let us now, today, tomorrow, and always, open the lips of surrendering and obedient faith, and drink it in, abundantly, and yet more abundantly. And let us use it for the Giver.
We are already, here on earth, at its very springs; so the Apostle reminds us. For it is “in Jesus Christ our Lord”; and we, believing, are in Him, “saved in His life.” It is in Him; nay, it is He. “I am the Life”; “He that hath the Son, hath the life.” Abiding in Christ, we live “because He liveth.” It is not to be “attained”; it is given, it is our own. In Christ, it is given, in its divine fulness, as to covenant provision, here, now, from the first, to every Christian. In Christ, it is supplied, as to its fulness and fitness for each arising need, as the Christian asks, receives, and uses for his Lord.
So from, or rather in, our holy bond service the Apostle has brought us to our inexhaustible life, and its resources for willing holiness. But he has more to say in explaining the beloved theme. He turns from slave to wife, from surrender to bridal, from the purchase to the vow, from the results of a holy bondage to the offspring of a heavenly union. Hear him as he proceeds:
Or do you not know, brethren, (for I am talking to those acquainted with law, whether Mosaic or Gentile,) that the law has claim on the man, the party in any given case, for his whole lifetime? For the woman with a husband is to her living husband bound by law, stands all along bound to him. “His life,” under normal conditions, is his adequate claim. Prove him living, and you prove her his. But if the husband should have died, she stands ipso facto cancelled from the husbands law, the marriage law as he could bring it to bear against her. So, therefore, while the husband lives, she will earn adulteress for her name if she weds another (“a second”) husband. But if the husband should have died, she is free from the law in question, so as to be no adulteress, if wedded to another, a second, husband. Accordingly, my brethren, you too, as a mystic bride, collectively and individually, were done to death as to the Law, so slain that its capital claim upon you is met “and done,” by means of the Body of the Christ, by the “doing to death” of His sacred Body for you, on His atoning Cross, to satisfy for you the aggrieved Law; in order to your wedding Another, a second Party, Him who rose from the dead; that we might bear fruit for God; “we,” Paul and his converts, in one happy “fellowship,” which he delights thus to remember and indicate by the way.
The parable is stated and explained with a clearness which leaves us at first the more surprised that in the application the illustration should be reversed. In the illustration, the husband dies, the woman lives, and weds again. In the application, the Law does not die, but we, its unfaithful bride, are “done to death to it,” and then, strange sequel, are wedded to the Risen Christ. We are taken by Him to be “one spirit” with Him. {1Co 6:17} We are made one in all His interests and wealth, and fruitful of a progeny of holy deeds in this vital union. Shall we call all this a simile confused? Not if we recognise the deliberate and explicit carefulness of the whole passage. St. Paul, we may be sure, was quite as quick as we are to see the inverted imagery. But he is dealing with a subject which would be distorted by a mechanical correspondence in the treatment. The Law cannot die, for it is the preceptive will of God. Its claim is, in its own awful forum domesticum, like the injured Roman husband, to sentence its own unfaithful wife to death. And so it does; so it has done. But behold, its Maker and Master steps upon the scene. He surrounds the guilty one with Himself, takes her whole burthen on Himself, and meets and exhausts her doom. He dies. He lives again, after death, because of death; and the Law acclaims His resurrection as infinitely just. He rises, clasping in His arms her for whom He died, and who thus died in Him, and now, rises in Him. Out of His sovereign love, while the Law attests the sure contract, and rejoices as “the Bridegrooms Friend,” He claims her-herself, yet in Him another-for His blessed Bride.
All is love, as if we walked through the lily gardens of the holy Song, and heard the call of the turtle in the vernal woods, and saw the King and His Beloved rest and rejoice in one another. All is law, as if we were admitted to watch some process of Roman matrimonial contract, stern and grave, in which every right is scrupulously considered, and every claim elaborately secured, without a smile, without an embrace, before the magisterial chair. The Church, the soul, is married to her Lord, who has died for her, and in whom now she lives. The transaction is infinitely happy. And it is absolutely right. All the old terrifying claims are amply and forever met. And now the mighty, tender claims which take their place instantly and of course begin to bind the Bride. The Law has “given her away”-not to herself, but to the Risen Lord.
For this, let us remember, is the point and bearing of the passage. It puts before us, with its imagery at once so grave and so benignant, not only the mystic Bridal, but the Bridal as it is concerned with holiness. The Apostles object is altogether this. From one side and from another he reminds us that “we belong.” He has shown us our redeemed selves in their blessed bond service; “free from sin, enslaved to God.” He now shows us to ourselves in our divine wedlock; “married to Another,” “bound to the law of” the heavenly Husband; clasped to His heart, but also to His rights, without which the very joys of marriage would be only sin. From either parable the inference is direct, powerful, and, when we have once seen the face of the Master and of the Husband, unutterably magnetic on the will. You are set free, into a liberty as supreme and as happy as possible. You are appropriated, into a possession, and into a union, more close and absolute than language can set forth. You are wedded to One who “has and holds from this time forward.” And the sacred bond is to be prolific of results. A life of willing and loving obedience, in the power of the risen Bridegrooms life, is to have as it were for its progeny the fair circle of active graces, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control.”
Alas, in the time of the old-abolished wedlock there was result, there was progeny. But that was the fruit not of the union but of its violation. For when we were in the flesh, in our unregenerate days, when our rebel self, the antithesis of “the Spirit,” ruled and denoted us, (a state, he implies, in which we all were once, whatever our outward differences were,) the passions, the strong but reasonless impulses, of our sins, which passions were by means of the Law, occasioned by the fact of its just but unloved claim, fretting the self-life into action, worked actively in our limbs, in our bodily life in its varied faculties and senses, so as to bear fruit for death. We wandered, restive, from our bridegroom, the Law, to Sin, our paramour. And behold, a manifold result of evil deeds and habits, born as it were into bondage in the house of Death. But now, now as the wonderful case stands in the grace of God, we are (it is the aorist, but our English fairly represents it) abrogated from the Law, divorced from our first injured Partner, nay, slain (in our crucified Head) in satisfaction of its righteous claim, as having died with regard to that in which we were held captive, even the Law and its violated bond, so that we do bond service in the Spirits newness, and not in the Letters oldness.
Thus he comes back, through the imagery of wedlock, to that other parable of slavery which has become so precious to his heart. So that we do bond service, “so that we live a slave life.” It is as if he must break in on the heavenly Marriage itself with that brand and bond, not to disturb the joy of the Bridegroom and the Bride, but to clasp to the Brides heart the vital fact that she is not her own; that fact so blissful, but so powerful also and so practical that it is “worth anything” to bring it home.
It is to be no dragging and dishonouring bondage, in which the poor toiler looks wistfully out for the sinking sun and the extended shadows. It is to be “not in the Letters oldness”; no longer on the old principle of the dread and unrelieved “Thou shalt,” cut with a pen of legal iron upon the stones of Sinai; bearing no provision of enabling power, but all possible provision of doom for the disloyal. It is to be “in the Spirits newness”; on the new, wonderful principle, new in its full manifestation and application in Christ, of the Holy Ghosts empowering presence. In that light and strength the new relations are discovered, accepted, and fulfilled. Joined by the Spirit to the Lord Christ, so as to have full benefit of His justifying merit; filled by the Spirit with the Lord Christ, so as to derive freely and always the blessed virtues of His life; the willing bondservant finds in his absolute obligations an inward liberty ever “new,” fresh as the dawn, pregnant as the spring. And the worshipping Bride finds in the holy call to “keep her only unto Him” who has died for her life, nothing but a perpetual surprise of love and gladness, “new every morning,” as the Spirit shows her the heart and the riches of her Lord.
Thus closes, in effect, the Apostles reasoned exposition of the self-surrender of the justified. Happy the man who can respond to it all with the “Amen” of a life which, reposing on the Righteousness of God, answers ever to His Will with the loyal gladness found in “the newness of the Spirit.” It is “perfect freedom” to understand, in experience, the bondage and the bridal of the saints.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
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Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
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Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: F. B. Hole’s Old and New Testaments Commentary
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Fuente: Grant’s Numerical Bible Notes and Commentary
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Fuente: John Darby’s Synopsis of the New Testament
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Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
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Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary