Dead to the Law through Christ (Rom. 7:1-6)

 

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What if the gospel was the news that Jesus Christ died for our sins, so that we can be forgiven, but that now it’s totally up to us to obey God and keep his commandments?  Or, to put it another way, what if the gospel said that we can be justified by grace but that we are sanctified by works?  What if salvation from the guilt of sin is totally up to God but salvation from the grip of sin is totally up to us?  

If that were the truth, the gospel would be half good news and half bad news.  For we all know that, left to ourselves, we are not going to grow in holiness.  All of us can say with the apostle, “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” (Rom. 7:18).  We don’t just need God’s grace for legal righteousness that justifies; we need his grace for personal righteousness that sanctifies.

Thank God, it’s not true that we are left to ourselves to be sanctified.  We’ve already noted that the point of Romans 6 is not only that the grace of God does not give us an excuse to sin, but rather that the grace of God delivers us from the power of sin.  It is because we are under grace that we are no longer under the dominion of sin (6:14). As we look back over what the apostle has already said in chapter 6, we could say that one of the great themes of that chapter is that the grace of God sanctifies.  

But Paul is not willing to leave it at that.  He wants to show both the necessity of grace and the impossibility of the law as respects our becoming holy people.  The role of grace for sanctification is chapter 6; the impossibility of the law for sanctification is chapter 7.  In some sense, these are mutually reinforcing themes, two sides of the same coin, so to speak, because to be under the law is the opposite of being under grace.  We are under grace (chapter 6); we are not under the law (chapter 7).

This is where we are at.  Last time, we looked at developing a theological vocabulary of the law so that we can follow the apostle’s argument in these verses.  In particular, we looked at what Paul means by the law of God, and what he means by being under the law.  We saw that the law of God is the moral law, the abiding moral code that governs us and condemns us when we do not comply with its demands.  Then we argued that to be under the law means trying to relate to God apart from grace; it means relating to God in the power of the flesh and on the basis of works.  That’s impossible; in fact, being saved means to be delivered from the law.

Now let’s come more particularly to look at the argument of the apostle in the first six verses.  The main point of these verses is that we must die to the law in order to bring forth fruit unto God.  The necessity of dying to the law stems from two realities: first, because the law must be satisfied, and second, because the law cannot sanctify.  On the other hand, Jesus Christ does what the law cannot do (cf. 8:3): he satisfies the law’s demands, and he enables us to bring forth fruit unto God.  As we consider these realities, my prayer for all of us is that this will show us afresh our need for Jesus Christ as well as to inspire hope in all of us as we fight the sins in our lives.

We must die to the law through Christ

 First, I want you to see that we must die to the law through Christ.  In making his argument, Paul assumes that the law has power over all of us until we die to it.  What that means is that God’s law is condemning us, holding us captive until the coming judgment unless we are saved from it.  Notice how Paul opens: “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 he may be speaking of the law generically here, but he is going to apply this to God’s law, especially in verses 4-6.  There is a principle enunciated in verse 1, and that is that death is the only thing that can release us from the law’s dominion over us.  From a human perspective, you can bring a charge against the living, but you can’t against the dead!  That’s the principle.

Paul then illustrates that principle in verses 2-3 in light of the legals bonds of marriage, and again the point is that a death must occur for there to be a change in relation to the law.  He goes on, “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.”  This is then applied in verse 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.”  So we see the principle: verse 1 – the principle illustrated: verses 2-3 – and the principle applied: verses 4-6.

Here you see that the believer in verses 4-6 is said to be in a role analogous to that of the wife in verses 2-3.  Now there is not an exact application of the illustration because the believer is said to die and remarry, which of course is quite impossible in the realm of human affairs.  However, the point of connection is that in order for the first marriage to end and a remarriage to happen, a death has to occur first.  It is clear that in the illustration, the law is the first husband, the wife represents the believer, and Christ the second husband.  The believer dies to the law in order to be married to Christ.

The point the apostle is emphasizing here is that we are all under the law of God and remain so until we die to it.  Like a wife to her husband, we are bound by the law to the law.  We are under the dominion of the law.  Of course we are; the law is God’s law, and we are God’s creatures.  He is our Creator and our Lawgiver.  He is our King and our Judge.  And what that means, as we have seen, is that we are obligated to meet its demands, which is perfect and complete and universal obedience, and under a curse if we don’t.  But that also means that we are all under a curse since none of us actually meets its demands.  We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).  

So the second thing that Paul is emphasizing here is that we must die to the law in order to be freed from its dominion.  We are like the wife who is bound by the law to her husband.  A death must occur for there to be a change in the relationship.  In our case, we must die to the law in order to be united to Christ (4).  This death to the law is absolutely necessary.  

Now why is this?  It is necessary because the demands of God’s law must be satisfied, and the law demands death as the penalty of sin.  “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). It is no coincidence that under the Mosaic law, the forgiveness of sins was granted by the death of a sacrifice.  A death had to occur; blood had to be shed.  “Without shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). Another way to put this is that death is not only an escape from the demands of the law.  Death is what meets the demands of the law for those who have broken its commandments – and that is all of us.  

But the problem is that we can’t pay the penalty, not really.  We all die, but our death is not redemptive.  Our dying is not going to release us from the demands of the law.  This is because none of us can atone for our sins by our lives or by our deaths.  Sin is cosmic treason against an infinitely holy God.  The guilt of our sin, being against God who is infinitely worthy, is infinite.  Finite creatures cannot pay such a debt.  

I believe this is one of the reasons why the Bible says that future judgment of the wicked is eternal: the wicked “shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Mt. 25:48).  Or, as the apostle Paul writes: “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:7-9).  Or as it is put in the last book of the Bible: “the wrath of God . . . is poured out [upon the wicked] without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name” (Rev. 14:10-11).  It is called the “Second Death,” a death from which there is no deliverance (Rev. 20:14)

There is no path from hell to heaven.  Our Lord himself taught this.  In the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, we read that Abraham, who is in heaven, says to the Rich Man who is in hell, “between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence” (Lk. 16:26).  

These are fearful realities.  But they are not revealed for us to ignore them.  They are revealed for us to take them seriously.  And I think one of the things we are to see is that we need someone else to die for us; we need someone else to take the punishment of our sins; we need someone else to satisfy the demands of the law.

And this is what our Lord Jesus Christ has done.  Notice again what Paul says in verse 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.”   The only way we can be delivered from the curse of the law because of our sin is through a death that satisfies the demands of the law.  How can that happen?  It happens by becoming dead to the law by the body of Christ.  To “become dead” is a Greek verb that means to kill someone; it refers to those who are sentenced to death and then executed.  This becoming dead is death by execution, and the fact that Paul links this with the body of Christ indicates that he is thinking, not only of our death, but of Christ’s death for us and our union with him in that death.  We die by dying with Christ, a point he has already made in the previous chapter.

In other words, verse 4 is all about the substitutionary atonement of Christ, which is at the heart of the gospel.  What is the gospel?  It is this: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3).  It is this: “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18).  Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, not only took our nature; he also took our sins.  He took his place under the law, not because he had to be, for he is the Lawgiver, but because he was taking our place and fulfilling the demands of the law for us.  As Paul put it to the Galatians, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4-5).

We die to the law, not by fulfilling it ourselves, not by satisfying the demands ourselves, not by good works or by making ourselves fit for God.  Are you doing that this morning?  But you can’t make yourself fit for God.  But here’s the good news: there is a Savior, God’s own Son, who has satisfied all the demands of God’s holy law by his perfect obedience and by his atoning sacrifice.  And the Bible says that all who turn from their sins and put their trust in him, who believe in his name, are received immediately into his family (Jn. 1:12-13).  We are not saved by works but by grace through faith.  Don’t try to die to God’s law by yourself; die to it through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you.

What happens when we die to the law

One of the consequences of dying to the law is to have all our sins forgiven.  That is the promise of the gospel.  And this is the apostle’s great point in the first four chapters of Romans.  But we will notice that here in Romans 7, the apostle has something else he wants to highlight.  And that is that our freedom from the law through union with Christ means that we now have the ability to obey the very law that once cursed us, and that this law, far from being a source of despair now becomes the delight of the believer.  Grace frees us from the guilt of sin by delivering us from the law.  But it also delivers us from the grip of sin.

Apart from Christ, we are in the situation of verse 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.”  When Paul says that “we were in the flesh,” he’s not referring to our physical embodiment.  The word “flesh” has a number of meanings in Scripture, and the physical body is one of them, but that’s not the meaning here.  The meaning here is the sinful nature of man.  This, for example, is clearly how Paul is using it in the very next chapter, when he writes, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. 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” (Rom. 8:7-9).  To be in the flesh is the opposite of being in the Spirit.  It is what we are before we are made spiritually new, before we are born again (cf. Jn. 3:1-8).

And in that situation, the law did not help us.  What does the law do?  Through the law, sin works “in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”  Sin is not passive in us.  It is working through “the motions of sins,” the passions of sins, lusts of sins.  The law shows us what is right and what is wrong, but far from encouraging us to do what is right, the law just stirs up the rebellious nature within us.  The law actually helps the sinful nature to bring forth fruit for death.  Not because the law is bad, but because we are bad.  We all know how this works.  It is why just telling people what to do is useless.  We need more than information.  We need more than education.  We need a new nature.

Jesus Christ is the only one who can give that to us.  It is by being united to him, “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. 7:4).  If you have been born again, then you are united to Christ, which the apostle describes in terms of marriage.  The church is married to Christ.  And just as a wife has her husband’s name, enjoys his love, and shares his possessions, even so the believer is not on his or her own to live a life that pleases God.  We have all the resources of heaven through Christ.  We are definitely not on our own.  We are not left to wage war against the sins of our life in the strength of the flesh but through the Spirit who mediates the presence of the risen Christ.  

I mention the Spirit as the one who mediates the presence and power of the risen Christ because of  what Paul says in verse 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.”  We die to the law and are delivered from it so that we should serve in newness of the Spirit as opposed to the oldness of the letter.  Remember that the distinction there is the distinction between the old and new covenants (2 Cor. 3:6).  The old covenant spoke God’s law to people but didn’t give them the power to obey it.  But the new covenant mediated by Christ (Heb. 8:6-11) guarantees to all who are its members the Holy Spirit who writes God’s law on our hearts so that we love it and want to obey it.  all who belong to Christ are in the new covenant, made spiritually alive through the Holy Spirit so that they can serve God, not in their own power, but in the power that God gives.

As an aside, I think the reading which the KJV translators put in the center column reference is actually better here for two reasons.  The note that they attach to verse 6 reads, “Or, being dead to that.” In other words, they are saying that this verse could read, instead of “that being dead,” it should read, “But now we are delivered from the law, being dead to that wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”  The difference is that saying, “that being dead” means the law died, whereas saying “being dead to that” means that we died.  And that is surely correct.  Because in the context (verse 4), it’s not the law that dies, it we who die in Christ.  Furthermore, the entire mass of Greek manuscripts of the NT read “being dead to that.”  So the external evidence of the manuscripts and the internal evidence of the context unite to support the reading that we died, not the law.

So we are delivered from the law by dying to the law through Christ so that we can serve in newness of Spirit, so that we can bring forth fruit to God.  The point is that the source of our fruitfulness is not ourselves: it’s the power of Christ through the Spirit.  Every believer, as a member of the church, is married to Christ and being married and united to him is united to the one who has all power in heaven and on earth.  We are not on our own when it comes to growing in holiness.

This is exactly the point that Paul makes, for example, in Ephesians 5.  David reminded us of this last Sunday, and how Christ is the model husband.  Paul writes, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).  Who sanctifies the church?  It’s the Lord.  How did he do it?  By loving the church and giving himself for it, by dying for the church.  And then he sanctifies and cleanses it “with the washing of water by the word.”  We serve in newness of the Holy Spirit, which means that we must also remember that the Spirit of God uses the word of God.  Paul will say just a few verses down in Ephesians that we are to “take . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17).  Our Lord prayed for us in his high priestly prayer thus, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (Jn. 17:17).  

Now, as we’ve seen in chapter 6 of Romans, this doesn’t mean,  “Let go and let God.”  The Bible doesn’t teach that kind of mystical, hands-off kind of holiness.  The Bible uses words like “strive,” “mortify,” “fight,” “work” to describe the war we are to wage against the sin in our lives.  In fact, as the apostle Paul puts it here, we are to serve in newness of the Spirit (6). We are the bring forth fruit to God (4).

But it does mean that as we fight, labor, strive, serve, we are not alone, and we are not without all the help and strength and wisdom we need.  Consider the following verses:

“I . . . labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:29).

“Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:1).

“[T]hat ye may know . . . what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power” (Eph. 1:18-19).

“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Eph. 3:20).

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might” (Eph. 6:10).

We could multiply such references which remind us that the power with which we bring forth fruit for God is not our own power but the power of God in Christ.  Though this doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to the Chrisitan life, it does mean that we can do what God calls us to do.  We need to stop making excuses for ourselves when we say we can’t obey and we need to stop wallowing in despair when we think we can’t obey.  

So brothers and sisters, let’s bring forth fruit therefore to God.  What fruit is this?  It is the fruit of holiness.  Do you remember what Paul said in the previous chapter? “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” (Rom. 6:21-22).  Because we are united to Christ, we don’t bring forth fruit for death (7:5) but fruit for God (4).  

And let’s bring forth all the fruit of holiness, all the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22-23).  And to do so in their proper proportions.  Let’s grow in them, and increase the talents God has given us.  Let’s bring forth thirty-fold, sixty-fold, a hundred-fold.  May the Lord make it so with every one of us.