Gospel Freedom from the Law-Romans 7

The main point of Romans 7 is very similar to the central thrust of Romans 6. In ch. 6 Christians, through union with Christ, “die to sin” and become “slaves of God,” repeaping holiness as a benefit. In ch. 7, Christians, through the body of Christ, die to the law and become related to Christ so that they bear fruit to God (Rom 7:4). To Paul, the law, like sin, is a “power” of the old regime from which Christians must be freed if they are to enjoy the ew regime of righteousness and life inaugurated by Christ. Romans 7 is a continuation of Rom 6:14-15.

1. The Principle: Delivered/released from the law (1-6). The law can’t condemn us if we’re in Christ.
2. The (Paul’s) Past: Doomed by the law (7-13). The law convicts us of sin.
3. The (Paul’s) Present: Defeated by the law (14-25). The law can’t deliver us from sin.

Married to someone. The basic thought of 7:1-6 is that death cancels all contracts. It is Paul’s 2nd answer to the question of Rom 6:15. Does the gospel leave you free to live in any way you choose? No! says Paul. You can be either married to the law, or married to Christ, but you cannot be unmarried. When we marry, not the law, but Christ, Christian obedience becomes, not an externally imposed obedience to some written code of laws, but an inner allegiance of the spirit to Christ.

In 7:1-3, Paul gives an illustration of a basic fact: the law only binds those who are alive! Death breaks the law’s power. Marriage is a binding legal relationship, but it is only binding if both husband and wife are alive (Rom 7:1). If either dies, both are freed from the law of marriage—they are no longer “bound” (Rom 7:2). With the wife, her husband’s death is what makes the difference between another relationship she has being adulterous or a legitimate marriage (Rom 7:3); and vice versa.

Death frees you to remarry. In 7:4-6, Paul applies this to us. While it is the husband’s death that frees the wife to remarry, in our case it is our death (in Christ) that frees us to “remarry.” The analogy is not completely parallel, but the principle is the same. Becoming a Christian is a complete change in relationship and allegiance. What an incredible metaphor—we are married to Christ! To be a Christian is to fall in love with Jesus and to enter into a legal, yet personal, relationship as comprehensive as marriage.

In love with Christ. When you get married, no part of your life goes unaffected. So though Christians are now not “under law,” they have every aspect of their lives changed by the coming of Jesus Christ. No area is untouched. Being “married to Christ” is the final answer to the question: Can a Christian live as he or she chooses? No, because we are in love with Christ!

Marriage entails a significant loss of freedom and independence. You cannot simply live as you choose. A single person can make decisions unilaterally but a married person cannot. There is duty and obligation. But, on the other hand, there is now the possibility of an experience of love, intimacy, acceptance and security that you could not have as a single person. Because of this love and intimacy, our loss of freedom is a joy, not a burden. In a good marriage, your whole life is affected and changed by the wishes and desires of the person you love. You get pleasure from giving pleasure. You seek to discover the wishes of your beloved and are happy to make changes in accord with those wishes. So now Paul has given us the ultimate answer to how Christians live. We are not “under law,” in that we don’t obey the law out of fear of rejection. In other words, we aren’t using the law as a system of salvation, a way of acceptance or access to God, a ladder up to him. No! Jesus’ perfect life and death are the ladder up to God, and we are accepted in him.

Pleasing Christ. 7:5-6 are the parallel verses in Paul’s marriage imagery to 6:19-22 in his slavery metaphor. Married to the law and dominated by our old sinful nature, our sinfulness was “aroused by the law” (7:5—an idea which we will see Paul expanding on later in Romans 7). And so, with our sinful desires inflamed we “bore fruit” which (as we have already seen) led to (both a present and an eternal) “death.” Conversely—”but now”—we have been released from our old marriage, through our own death in Christ (Rom 7:6). Married to Christ and indwelled by his Spirit, we “serve in [his] new way” (a theme Paul focuses on in Romans 8). So does the Christian ignore the moral law of God? Not at all. We now look at it as an expression of God’s desires. He loves honesty, purity, generosity, truth, integrity, kindness, and so on. We now use the law to please the One who saved us. So we are not “under the law.” We are not married to it. We are married to Christ; we are seeking to please him, and so the law’s precepts are ways to honor the One we love. They are now not a burden—we have a new motivation (love for our Husband) and obey in a new framework (acceptance on the basis of Christ, not us, fulfilling the law). 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.

Someone might say: If I thought I was saved totally by grace and could not be rejected, I’d lose all incentive to lead a holy life. The answer is: Well then, all the incentive you have now is fear of rejection. You are under the law. If you understand that you are accepted, the new incentive is grateful joy and love. That is the right incentive.

We live to please who we are married to. We obey who we offer our service to. We were once slaves to sin—we obeyed it. We were once married to the law; controlled by our sinful natures—whether pursuing self-righteous religion or self-centered license—we lived to please it. But our death in “the body of Christ” (Rom 7:4) changed everything. We are slaves to God—how could we, and why would we, sin?! We belong to Christ as his bride, knowing he died for us—how could we, and why would we, not live to please him, out of loving gratitude toward him? It is the Christian’s identity—the Christian’s relationship to God—that is ultimately the answer to Paul’s question in Rom 6:15. It is knowing who you are in Christ that causes you to say, deep in your heart: Will I live in this moment as though I’m a slave to sin, married to the law? By no means!

7:7-13 is one of the greatest and most moving of all passages in the NT, because Paul is giving us his own spiritual autobiography and laying bare his very heart and soul.

Romans 7:7 introduces another question: “Is the law sin?” Paul is anticipating that his argument in 7:1-6—that we were “married” to the law, but now have been freed from it by our death in Christ, and are now married to him—will lead his readers to wonder if the law, from which we needed to be “released” and which is now “the old way” (Rom 7:6), is in itself a bad thing. Again, there is a (very) short answer, followed by a (much!) longer one. The short answer is: “Certainly not!” (Rom 7:7). There is nothing wrong with the law of God. But we need to understand what the law is for.

The main purpose of the law is to show us the character of sin. That is the only way to understand many of the statements Paul makes in these verses; for example: “I would not have known what sin was except through the law” (Rom 7:7). But how does it do this?

1. the law defines sin for us. “For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet’” (Rom 7:7). This means that the very concept of envy/coveting is outlined by the law. Without that standard, Paul would not have understood that this is sin.
2. the law reveals sin in us. “For apart from law, sin is dead” (Rom 8:8). This statement indicates that when the commandment of God comes to us, it actually aggravates and stirs sin up in our hearts, showing us not just what sin is in general, but how sin resides within us. Paul states this idea again: “In order that sin might be recognized as sin … through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful” (Rom 7:13). Paul is describing a situation in which he found that the more he tried to avoid coveting and envy, the more the coveting and envy grew! As he read the law, sin in his life got utterly sinful, i.e. much worse, and totally inexcusable. Then he could see his sinfulness and his need.

The law cannot save us. More than once Paul says 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. Paul’s point is that the law cannot save us sinners—that was never, and could never be; but it can and must show us that we need to be saved—that we are sinners. Unless the law does its work, we won’t look to Christ. We will be in denial about the depth and nature of our sin. In other words, we need the law to “convict” us of sin before we can see our need for, or have a desire for, the grace of God in Christ.

How the law makes sin worse. Paul is saying something more than that the law shows us our sin. The law actually aggravates or provokes sin in us. “Sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me … [sinful] desire … when the commandment came, sin sprang to life” (Rom 7:8-9). How does it do this? The basic answer is that there is a “perversity” about our hearts. “Perversity” is a desire to do something for no other reason than because it is forbidden. It is a joy in wrongdoing for its own sake. Paul’s point is that until the command against an evil thing comes to us, we may feel little urge to do it. But when we hear the command, our native “perversity” is stirred up and may take over.

This insight is a door to understanding the very anatomy of sin—what it is in its essence. Augustine has a classic analysis of this point in his Confessions. He describes a time when he stole some pears as a boy, and then draws some profound insights from his experience: “Near our vineyard there was a pear tree, loaded with fruit, though the fruit was not particularly attractive either in color or taste. I and some other … youths conceived the idea of shaking the pears off this tree and carrying them away. We set out late at night … and stole all the fruit that we could carry. And this was not to feed ourselves; we may have tasted a few, but then we threw the rest to the pigs. Our real pleasure was simply in doing something that was not allowed. I had plenty of better pears of my own; I only took these ones in order that I might be a thief. Once I had taken them I threw them away, and all I tasted in them was my own iniquity, which I enjoyed very much. The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing.” (Confessions, Book II, chapter 4)

The sin underlying the sin. Augustine is saying that there is always a “depth motive” for every sin. When a person lies or steals or is impure or cruel, there is always a superficial motive. There is greed or anger and so on. But Augustine’s experience of the pear tree (and his study of Scripture!) showed him that the underlying, ultimate motive of sin is to play God. Imagining himself speaking to God, he continues: “In a perverse way, all men imitate you who put themselves far from you … What then was it that I loved in that theft of mine? In what way, awkwardly and perversely, did I imitate my Lord? Did I find it pleasant to break your law … unpunished … and so producing a darkened shadow of omnipotence? What a sight! A servant running away from his master and following a shadow! … Could I enjoy what was forbidden for no other reason except that it was forbidden?” (Confessions, Book II, chapter 6)

The terrible nature of sin. 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 takes the loveliness of love and turns it into lust. It takes the honourable desire for independence and turns it into the obsession for money and for power. It takes the beauty of friendship and uses it for one’s own gain. Carlyle calls this “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 utter pollution.

We have a deep desire to be in charge (in control) of the world and of our lives. We want to be sovereign. Every law God that lays down is an infringement on our absolute sovereignty. It reminds us that we are not God, and prevents us from being sovereign to live as we wish. In its essence, sin is a force that hates any such infringement. It desires to be God. The first temptation from the serpent in the Garden of Eden was “You will be like God” (Gen 3:4). That was the essence of the first sin, and it is the essence of all of ours, too. Therefore, since the essence of sin is the desire to play God—to have no infringements on our sovereignty—every law will stir sin up in its original force and power. The more we are exposed to the law of God, the more that sinful force will be aggravated into reaction.

Alive apart from law. Paul says that there was a time, “once,” that he was “alive apart from law” (Rom 7:9). He seems to be referring to a past experience, but there has been a lot of discussion about his meaning here. It is impossible for a Jewish boy from a devout family to have been “apart from law” in the sense that he did not know it or try to obey it. There would have been no time in Paul’s unconverted life in which he would have been unrelated to the law. So almost certainly, “apart from law” meant he had never seen the law’s real and essential demands. He had not realized what the law really required. He saw a plethora of rules, but not the basic force or thrust of the law as a whole. He had no understanding of holiness, of what it meant to love God supremely, of what it meant to love his neighbor as himself. Thus he was “apart” from the law.

I thought I’m doing OK, until I realized I was actually dead. What does it mean though, that he was “alive”? Paul probably is referring to his own self-perception. He felt he was spiritually alive—pleasing to God, satisfying to God. He is telling us that this perception of being “alive” was due to his ignorance of what the law really asks for. And so, “when the commandment came … I died.” That would mean that subsequently something happened to show him that he wasn’t pleasing to God at all, but that he was under condemnation. In very graphic language, he says: I realized I was dead! I thought I was doing quite well spiritually. I felt good or better than most—but then I was overwhelmed with a sense of failure and condemnation.

The law came home to him. What caused this change in consciousness? “The commandment came” (Rom 7:9). It is obvious that God’s law had “come” into the world centuries ago, so Paul could not be talking about the commandment “coming” into the world in some way. Instead he must mean: The commandment came home to me. Although Paul already had a conscience, now the demands of the moral law really hit him hard. He came under what is often called conviction of sin. This doesn’t mean Paul had never before seen that he sinned, nor that he hadn’t seen the commandment before. Rather, he finally realized he was “dead,” condemned—lost because of his complete failure and inability to keep the law of God. He had been a proud Pharisee, sure of his standing before God (Acts 26:4-5; Phil 3:4b-6)—until he read the law, and realized that he was a sinner, in serious trouble. To “die” in this sense means to see that you are a moral failure, that you are lost, and that you cannot save yourself.

Internals, not externals. Romans 7:8 suggests that the commandment that “killed” Paul was: “You shall not covet.” This is not surprising, because Paul was a Pharisee. The Pharisees thought of sin only in terms of external actions. They felt that as long as you didn’t perform an evil act, you were not guilty of sin. This made it far easier to think of yourself as an obedient, law-abiding person. But Jesus showed that all the Ten Commandments refer not only to behavior, but to inward attitudes and motives. The Lord said, in effect: You have heard it said, “Do not murder,” but that means we shouldn’t be bitter or hate our neighbor either! (see Matthew 5:21-22). However, when you read the Ten Commandments as they are written (Exo 20:1-17), you could easily look at them only in terms of externals and overt behavior. So you could easily tick them off and feel that you are “alive” spiritually. You could say: I haven’t worshiped an idol, haven’t disobeyed my parents, haven’t killed, lied, stolen, or committed adultery. I’m doing fine! In other words, you can interpret the law superficially, seeing it only as behavioral rules that are not that hard to keep. But in fact, you can only read the commandments like that until you reach the 10th. The last commandment is the one that cannot be reduced to an external. “You shall not covet” has everything to do with inward attitudes and heart issues. To “covet” is to be discontent with what God has given you. “Coveting” includes envy, self-pity, grumbling, and murmuring. Coveting is not simply “wanting,” it is an idolatrous longing for more beauty, wealth, approval and popularity than you have. It is not wrong to want such things, but if you are bitter and downcast when you don’t achieve them, it is because your desire for them has become idolatrous coveting. Paul had never understood sin as a matter of inward longings and idolatrous drives and desires. He had never seen sin as essentially “coveting” against God, failing to love God enough to be content. He had thought of sin only in terms of violating rules. So what happened when he really read, and truly understood, the 10th commandment? He realized that these commandments, given to show God’s people how to live in his world, “actually brought death” (Romans 7:10). Why? Because sin, using the commandment, “deceived me” (Rom 7:11) by stirring up “every kind of covetous desire” (Rom 7:8)¬—and so he broke the commandment; he was “put … to death” (Rom 7:11). The flaw was not in the law—quite the reverse (Rom 7:12): the flaw was in Paul, the sinner. Externally, he may be very good; internally, he could not be anything other than a sinner.

All this leads Paul to pose another question: “Did that which is good, then, become death to me?” (Rom 7:13). That is: Is the law a killer? “By no means!” he answers; it was sin that killed him, working through “what was good” (ie: the law). Sin is the killer; the law, which is good, is its weapon.

In 7:14-25, Paul bares his very soul. He tells us of an experience which is of the very essence of the human situation. 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.” The Jewish conviction is that God had made men like that with a good impulse and an evil impulse inside them.

Paul the Unbeliever or Paul the Believer?  In the rest of chapter 7, Paul talks of his experience of struggling with sin. Is he talking about himself as an unbeliever, or as a believer? This is a difficult question, and plenty of thoughtful people have been on both sides of this issue. Some believe that a believer could not talk as Paul does when he says: “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” (Rom 7:14). He also virtually confesses that he sins regularly, even compulsively: “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom 7:15); “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Rom 7:18). Therefore, over the ages, many people have concluded that Paul is talking of himself as he was before conversion. I want to make the case that Paul is talking of his own present experience—his Christian life. The evidence:

1. Paul admits that he is a lost sinner: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature” (Rom 7:18). Unbelievers are unaware of being lost and so sinful that they can’t save themselves. In fact, even immature believers tend to be over-confident, unaware of the depths of the depravity of their own hearts.
2. There is a change in verb tenses. The verbs of 7:7-13 are in the past tense, but from Rom 7:14 on all the tenses are present. A natural reading would tell us Paul is speaking of his own “now.”
3. There is a change in situation. 7:7-13 talk about sin “killing” him. He’s dead. But from 7:14 on Paul describes an ongoing struggle with sin, in which he struggles but refuses to surrender.
4. Paul delights in God’s law: “In my inner being I delight in God’s law” (Rom 7:22), even though sin is nevertheless at work within him. Unbelievers cannot delight in God’s law in their heart of hearts: “The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Rom 8:7). This categorically denies that any unbeliever can delight in God’s law, so is a strong argument that 7:22 can’t be the words of an unbeliever.

So the evidence in the text points to the speaker being “present Paul”—a mature believer—though this is an issue on which wise, godly people have respectfully disagreed.

Law, Law and Law. So if Paul is talking about the experience of living as a follower of Jesus, what does he teach us? His meaning is made clearer if we realize that Paul uses the word “law” in three distinct ways in these verses:

1. In Rom 7:21, Paul uses the word “law” to denote a principle: “I find this law at work.” Paul means: I find this to be a general principle—the more I try to do good, the more evil comes at me.
2. Sometimes “law” means the law of God (Rom 7:14, 16, 22, 25).
3. In Rom 7:23, 25, Paul uses the word “law” to mean a force or power. “But I see another law at work in [my] members … the law of sin.” Paul is saying: In my heart of hearts —my inner being (Rom 7:22), my mind (Rom 7:23)—I delight in God’s law. God’s law is now the main power in my heart and mind. But there is another power within me—the power of sin. It is not the ruling influence of my heart, but it is still within me and makes war against my deepest desires for holiness.

The real me. Paul lays out his inner struggle—experienced by every converted person—in 7:14-17, and then recapitulates it in 7:18-20, before summarizing it in 7:22-23. On the one hand, we Christians can now see God’s law as “spiritual” (Rom 7:14); can desire to keep it (Rom 7:15, 18); can “agree that the law is good” (Rom 7:16). None of this was possible before we were converted. Further, Paul says that it is in “my inner being” that he rejoices in the law. This is like saying “my heart of hearts” or “my true self.” (Some translations render it “my inmost self.”) Paul here is recognizing that we all are aware of conflicting desires. We have, in some sense, “multiple selves.” Sometimes we want to be this; sometimes we want to be that. Morally, most people feel “torn” between diverse selves as well. Freud went so far as to talk about an inner “libido” (filled with primal desires) and a “superego” (the conscience filled with social and familial standards). The great question we all face is: I have divergent desires, different “selves.”

Which is my true self? What do I most want? For a Christian, that question is settled, even though the conflict isn’t. The law of God is our “inmost” delight, “the law of my mind” (Rom 7:23). Of course, Paul sees that there is still a powerful force of sin and rebellion within, but those desires are not truly “him.” “It is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me” (Rom 7:20). A Christian has had an identity transformation. As we saw in chapter 6, a Christian—the true “I”—really seeks God and loves his law and holiness. Although sin remains in me with a lot of strength, it no longer controls my personality and life. It can still lead us to disobey God, but now, sinful behavior goes against our deepest self-understanding. Even in defeat, the Christian has a change of consciousness: the “I,” the real me, loves the law of God. Sin, on the other hand, is “it.” Yet though the Christian loves God’s law, they still have a powerful center of sin remaining within. It seeks “what I hate” (Rom 7:15). The unbeliever cannot keep the law (7:7-13); but neither can the believer! Many people are puzzled that Paul seems not only to characterize his present condition as one of struggle, but almost of defeat: “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” (Rom 7:14). But the reason Paul tends to cast things this way is because he is looking at his struggle from a particular perspective. Paul is emphasizing that in yourself, even as a Christian, you are incapable of keeping the law. Notice that he uses the word “I” numerous times. Thus he is saying: In myself, I am still unable to live as I should. Even though there is a new identification, love, and delight in the law of God, a Christian is still completely incapable of keeping the law.

Warning and comfort. Paul’s words here are both a two-fold warning and a wonderful comfort to us.

1. they warn us that no one ever gets so advanced in the Christian life that they no longer see their sin. This is the apostle Paul talking! If we ever perceive ourselves to be “over” sin, if we ever feel ourselves to be pretty good Christians, we are deceived. For the more mature and spiritually discerning we get, the more we see of the sin in our hearts. The more holy we become, the less holy we will feel. This is not false modesty. Even when we know and see ourselves making progress against many bad habits and attitudes, we will grow more aware of the rebellious, selfish roots still within us. The holier we are, the more we cry about our unholiness.
2. we’re being warned that no one gets so advanced that they don’t struggle with sin. It is quite important to expect a fight with our sinful nature. In fact, just as a wounded bear is more dangerous than a healthy and happy one, our sinful nature might become more stirred up and active because the new birth has mortally wounded it. The 17th-century Puritan John Owen wrote:

“As a man nailed to the cross, he first struggles and strives and cries out with great strength and might [though] as his blood and [life energies] waste, his strivings are faint and seldom … [So] when a [Christian] first sets on a lust or [sin] to deal with it, it struggles with great violence to break loose; it cries with earnestness and impatience to be satisfied and relieved … It may have … a dying pang that makes an appearance of great vigor and strength, but it is quickly over, especially if it be kept from considerable success.” (On the Mortification of Sin in Believers, page 30) But this passage also greatly comforts us. It is typical, when we struggle with sin, to think that we must be terrible people, or very wicked or immature to have such wrestling. But Romans 7 encourages us that temptation and conflict with sin, even some relapses into sin, are consistent with being a growing Christian.

The cries of your heart. This means that the Christian heart cries two things at once, as Paul does.

1. First, there is the desperate cry of discouragement as we look at our own efforts and failings: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). When we read God’s law properly, and when we look at our own lives honestly, we can only conclude that we are “wretched.” Without accepting this, we will never grasp the glory of the gospel. We will never truly appreciate the gospel of received righteousness. Only if our hearts truly cry at our wretchedness can we then know the hope and liberation of looking away from ourselves and to what God has done. Who will rescue Paul, and us?
2. “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:25). By his own efforts, Paul knows that he will fail. He may “in my mind [be] a slave to God’s law;” but “in the sinful nature [he is] a slave to the law of sin” (Rom 7:25). And so in a sense, Rom 7:24-25 look both back to all that has gone before in Paul’s letter, and beyond to what will come. There is no hope in ourselves for our salvation, nor our obedience. All we are and all we have done merits only judgment. For our salvation, we can only ever look to God’s Son, dying on a cross for us, as Paul showed in chapters 1 to 4. For our hope, we can only ever rest in his righteousness, as we saw in chapters 5 and 6. And for our ongoing obedience, for any real change, we will need to rely not on our own efforts, as chapter 7 has established, but on the work of God’s Spirit, which will transform our lives and our relationships, as the rest of Romans will show. We are “wretched.” God is not. Through his Son he has rescued us, and through his Spirit he is changing us, so that we can enjoy him for ever. Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord.

[Romans 1-7 For You. Edited from the study by Timothy Keller.]

Questions:

1. How does the image of belonging to Christ in marriage motivate you to live in a way which pleases him?
2. What practical difference does this image need to make in your life today?
3. How, and why, is it helpful to be reminded that the commandments are about internal attitudes before they are about external behaviors? Are there ways you are tempted to have a pharisaical view of God’s law, and of the Christian life?
4. How does the reality of Paul’s Christian life encourage you in your own life? Why is it liberating to be able to be honest about your wretchedness, and certain about your forgiveness? What happens if we forget one or the other truth? How has the whole of Romans 1 – 7 changed your love for Christ? Your desire to serve him? Your view of yourself?