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AS we commence chapter 7 of Romans we need to see this chapter in the context of the whole epistle. Preachers and commentators have spent a great deal of time in categorizing sections in this letter of the apostle Paul, and I have always felt confused by the many different ways of dividing up the letter. I have come to the conclusion that all this is a mistake. It seems clear to me now that up to the end of chapter 8 of this letter, Paul is simply expanding teaching concerning Christian salvation, looking at it from different angles and also from the stand point of our experience, so that we may truly be able to apply it and live in the joy of it in our daily lives. In chapter 7 he is still speaking about salvation by faith in Christ, and seeking to make sure we see how it applies to every part of our life and experience. In this chapter Paul is concerned to help us understand our salvation in the light of God’s law.

The law of God is continually a source of trouble for us all through our Christian lives, and this is largely because we imperfectly understand the nature of our salvation, and so Satan is able to use the law of God against us. We need to have a right attitude to the law of God, and understand properly its place in the Christian life. This is what this seventh chapter of Romans is all about.

I am looking only at the first three verses, and the first part of verses 4, of this chapter in this sermon, and have given it the title ‘Dying to the Law’. The three verses are preparatory, and so what will be said in this sermon needs to be completed in the next one. I hope you will bear this in mind as you read this meditation. Paul is setting the stage in these opening verses.

Immediately we come to this chapter there are things which have caused confusion and perhaps still gives confusion in our minds. The first problem is understanding what Paul is referring to here by the ‘law’, specially as he uses the word law in a different sense in verse 21. Without going into a long discussion we can not come to any other conclusion than that Paul means the moral law of God written into the fabric of the world and human consciousness from the very beginning. This law was codified in the 10 commandments given to Moses on mount Sinai, but was written into the heart of humanity from the earliest time. Paul makes this clear in chapter 2 of this letter.

Then there is the confusion over the illustration Paul uses in verses 2 and 3 concerning marriage law. In the first verse Paul speaks of death freeing us from the law. In the illustration concerning marriage Paul talks of the woman being freed from the bonds of marriage law by the husband dying. In verse 1 Paul speaks of having to die to be free from the law, and then in the illustration he speaks of us remaining alive, but being freed from the law by the death of another.

How are we to lift this confusion. Verse 1 is where Paul gives us the principle he seeking to establish, and so that he will be able to draw out a conclusion for our understanding. The principle is that when we die the law can not touch us any more, and has no more authority over us to condemn or rule. Then in the illustration he just seeks to show one issue that will illustrate this principle. The important thing is that death frees from the law, and that is all that is needed for our understanding.

But why does Paul use this illustration concerning marriage which holds this confusion. I believe the answer is in the fact that in the Bible, and God’s law, marriage is binding, and the woman is under the authority of the law concerning marriage, and can’t be free from it by law, that is unless the authority of the law is broken by death. Salvation is never seen in the Bible as freeing us to live apart from authority, but rather that we are freed from the authority of the law, to be married to another, even Christ, and be under his authority. This is what Paul has in mind, as is clear from verse 4.

The problem of the law of God in our lives, as naturally born into this world, is that because we are fallen sinful beings, the law has a negative role in our lives. Positively the law tells us how God wants us to live, and promises that we shall live if we live completely, without any failure, according to these rules and principles, but we are not able to live according to these principles in any way approaching the perfection required.

The law also has binding authority over us. We can’t escape its rule. We are bound to the law like a wife is bound to her husband, and under the authority of the law. So the law exercises its authority which we can’t escape. Because we fall short of the standards of the law of God, the law accuses us of sin; judges us for the wrong doing we commit; condemns us as guilty; and then sentences us to the punishment set by God for transgressing the law. This sentence is death in the fullest Biblical sense.

When the sentence of death is passed on our sins, we die and go to hell, and we are then freed from the law, but are condemned to suffer for all eternity. This is no good to us whatsoever. What we need is some other way of dying, which frees us from the authority of the law of God, with all its accusation, judging, condemnation and sentence to punishment, which comes before, and is different to, the final punishment of death and hell. Paul has been telling us that there is such a dying, and he is again telling us in this chapter that this dying is found in the Gospel of our Salvation. This is what Paul is concerned to explain and make us understand.

The nature of Christian salvation is that it involves our death. When we believe on Jesus, or rather by God’s grace find we are able to believe in Jesus, it is because we have died actually and in reality, and have been freed from the law of God, with all its condemning and punishing. What Paul has been explaining in the previous chapter is that this dying is not on its own, but that it includes a resurrection to a new life where we cease to be under the authority of the law as a husband or a ruler, and are placed under a different and better authority.

This death is not a physical death because our bodies, at the time of this death, remain physically alive and the same in every way, but the person we were has died, with all its sin, guilt and condemnation, and a new person which is holy is raised up. This new person is raised to belong to another. We are not raised to be under no authority, but under a new authority. It is not the rule and authority of the law, because the law’s authority has been lost by our death, but it is the authority of belonging to another, and being under that authority.

This new authority is declared by Paul in the first part of verse 4. We are raised to belong to the one who was raised from the dead. This is Jesus Christ our Saviour. Paul has been telling us this all through chapter 6, but now is looking at this wonderful salvation from a different angle, just as we can look at the same mountain from a different angle. It is the same mountain, but the view of it is from a different perspective.

We must not run away with the idea that the law is simply passed by. This is not so at all. Our dying in Christ, as we have been seeing before in these studies, is because the sentence of the law against our sins, and the sentence of death we deserve, has been met to the full, but not by us but by our Saviour, who endured the cross, accepting the shame, and suffering the penalty to the full, so that the law of God might be fulfilled and satisfied with regard to our sin. We die because we belong to Christ. By the grace of God, and sovereign will of God, we are given to Christ, and Christ was sent into the world to satisfy the law of God on account of our sin in our place. So we are saved from eternal death, but truly die and are freed from the law, because we die with Christ, and so in the sight of God our sins are blotted out.

This dying, however, is not simply to free us from the law and its rule, but that being free, we may be married to another. We were, as it were, married to the law, but now we are married to the one who was raised from the dead. We are married to Christ and are under the authority of Christ.

The application we can enter into here is what we have been learning in Romans all along concerning salvation, but Paul leads us on to more, which he has been pointing to in Romans 6, and this we will come to when we look at the next part of verse 4 of this chapter onwards.

What is important for us to apply to our lives is the wonderful nature of the freedom we have from the law. We are freed from it rule and authority.

The Christian should never again allow the law to condemn him or her. The law is satisfied with regard to us by our Saviour. We have died in Christ to the Law because Christ died and took our punishment of death and hell in our place. The law has no more authority over us to rule us or condemn us. This is still true even when we sin again and again, and this fact of freedom from the law and its condemnation is not changed if the sin we commit is very bad. Still we are not under condemnation and never can be again, because we are freed from the law and its authority through death. However dangerous this may sound, it is in fact the truth, and we must never let this truth go.

The great reformer Martyn Luther, in a story concerning a dream he had, illustrates this fact. In his dream, the devil came to him with a long list of sins. Luther asks the devil whose sins these are, and the devil tells him that they are his. The devil produces further lists until the list of Luther’s sins grows to enormous proportions. At last the devil says that all Luther’s sins have been recorded. At that point Luther says to the devil, “Write at the bottom of the list, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanse from ALL my sins.” This is the eternal truth of all who have by grace been brought to believe on Christ. ALL sins, mean all, whenever and however they may have been committed throughout the whole of our lives. We have died in Christ. Christ’s death meets all the demands of the law against our sins. We are now freed from the authority of the law by death. We belong to Christ as his bride.

This seems a license to sin more and more, but it is not so, as Paul goes on to explain as we go on, and shows us how this is worked out in our lives. The law still tells us the sort of living we need to aim at, and tells us what true holiness is, but it can never any more condemn us, and this we must hold on to when we feel condemned for our many sins which we still commit. This fact that we still can feel condemned is an answer in itself to those who claim that to say we are freed from the law gives a license to sin. Those who have been freed from the law, now want more than ever to live by the law, but we can never any more be condemned by the law. Further because we are now under a new authority of belonging to Christ, we now have a strength to be holy which the law could never, and in fact never, did give to us.

We shall go on with this wonderful theme next time.