Romans 7: Part One

Romans 7

7:1-6 Analogy of marriage 

Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know law—that law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?  2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.  3 So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. 4  So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.  5 For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.  6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. 

Jesus was born a Jew. That is one of the few facts about him that even the most skeptical people today would agree with. His mother, Mary of Nazareth, was a Jewish woman. And his foster father, Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth, was also a Jew. Jesus was raised in a law-observant family. He attended synagogue. He went with his parents on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festivals. And during the three years of his public ministry, although he was often falsely criticized by opponents for violating the Sabbath, he always affirmed the supreme importance of believing and obey the laws of God given through Moses. 

How was it then that St. Paul received revelation from God to the effect that believers had “died to the law” (Romans 7:4)? First, let us be clear that Jesus as the Jewish Messiah was himself the very embodiment of God’s will, and that it is said often in the New Testament that he “fulfilled the law.” Fulfilling meant not just completely obeying it, but also bringing its task to completion. In a sense—and I wish to say this carefully, so that you will not misunderstand—Jesus superseded the law. Since his teachings were the only true interpretation of that law, they included all that needs to be binding and obligatory for his followers. 

Building on this basic observation, Paul uses here an analogy from marriage. Since he has explained in chapter 6 that all of us who believe in him have been united with him in his death and resurrection, it is clear that our Lord by his life of sinless obedience to the law was able to take our sins upon himself at the cross and die on our behalf to all of the law’s claims on us. And by rising triumphant from the dead, he brought us with him into a “post-law” life of perfect obedience to God through the Spirit. Following Paul’s metaphor, we died to one husband (the law of Moses) and have risen again alive to be married to a new husband, Jesus the Messiah. 

One of the interesting things about Paul’s assertions in this passage is that not only have we believers died to sin through our union with Christ, but we have also died to the law (v. 4), meaning here the law of Moses, presumably because of the powerlessness of the fallen human nature to fulfill the law. Using Paul’s analogy of the dissolution of marriage by the death of one of the spouses, through our union of Jesus in his death the “marriage” we had with the law has been dissolved, leaving us free to be married to the risen Christ, who has become our new “law”, as it were (again, v. 4). We now “serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code” (v. 6). 

It isn’t that there are not still ethical principles from the law of Moses that can be useful to us. But all of what was permanently relevant in the law of Moses has been subsumed in Christ and his teachings. And while “ the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death” (v. 5), the “law” of the indwelling Holy Spirit arouses no such sinful passions in us, but instead “bears fruit unto God” (v. 4).  

You and I can and should read the books of Moses, for they are “scripture” to us as well as the Gospel accounts and the Pauline letters. But the “way of the Spirit” involves allowing the indwelling Holy Spirit to reproduce in us the “fruits” of the Spirit, which are at the same time the very characteristics of Jesus: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness (Gal 5:22; Eph 5:9).  

A widowed person who remarries but then keeps a picture of the dead spouse on the bedside and moons over that dead spouse will ruin his new marriage. The new marriage remains valid so long as neither spouse decides on a divorce, but the happiness and “fruitfulness” of that new marriage can be spoiled. 

If Paul writes here primarily to gentile believers who were once associated as “God-fearers” with the Jewish synagogues in Rome, as I believe, he wants them to forget their once primary allegiance to the Torah and to focus on their marriage to the resurrected and exalted Jesus. They now have the Holy Spirit living in them, to do what the Torah alone could never accomplish. This should be their new focus. He will balance this exhortation in chapters 9-11 by an equally strong reminder that they must not despise the Jewish roots of their faith. 

Today’s believers in Jesus do not find themselves in the same situation as these gentile converts in Rome. But there are obvious applications to us in these words of Paul.

There are two extremes that we should be careful to observe: (1) Antinomianism, and (2) legalism. Legalism is the modern attempt to impose rules that go beyond the teachings of the New Testament in order to please God and to impose discipline upon ourselves and our fellow believers. This rarely accomplishes what its practitioners hope to accomplish when they adopt it. All too often adding rules only increases a spirit of judgmentalism in our midst: “I am better than you, because I do this or that,” or “because I don’t do this or that.” Furthermore, since these added rules were never given by God in scripture, he will not guarantee to us that by his Spirit we will be able to keep them. This is not to say, however, that we cannot learn from experience to avoid certain practices that we have found tend to lead us into sin. 

During the almost 50 years of being a believer, I went through several stages in my thinking in regard to the advisability of watching movies. As a new Christian in college—before TV existed—I was legalistic and told all my friends that going to movies was sinful. As I grew in Christ, I came to realize that this was legalistic and over-simplifying. I realized that there were movies that I could learn from and that did not lead me into unhealthy thinking or acting. The same was true of TV. 

Then in the last twenty-five years has come the Internet, with all its potentially helpful web sites as well as its dangerous ones and its time-wasting ones. Now the decisions have become much more complex. It is no longer just a question of what should be watched or read because it is helpful, as opposed to what is dangerous. Now it is a question of avoiding obsessive behavior. I know men even in their 60s and 70s, who just sit all day at the computer and surf the Internet. This has become an obsession which robs them of the needed human social contacts. 

This is merely one example of how a rigid legalism is not useful to us as believers in guiding our lives. We must learn by experience and by prayer what areas of living not explicitly regulated by the Bible are profitable to our spiritual growth and which are not. Which ones help us to get to know other people and witness to them through our love and generosity, and which ones shut us up in our own private world. Such decisions may be guided by principles from scripture, but no one legalistic framework will be the right one.

The second extreme to avoid is Antinomianism, which means the rejection of any form of law. In Christ we have been set free from the impossible feat of keeping God’s laws perfectly. But we live by a new “law” which is the fulfilled law in Jesus, which we can find fulfilled in us by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Paul will speak of this new “law” in chapter 8.

Neither you nor I want to live careless and undisciplined lives for God. But neither do we want to be entrapped in legalism. The solution is to live by the law of love. Everything we do or think should be an outgrowth of love for God and for our neighbor (Luke 10:26-28). And if that love leads us into cultivating good habits and consciously avoiding habits and practices that tend to lead us into unloving behavior, that is part of the law of the Spirit. Paul himself often gave such guidelines, as in:  

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Phil. 4:8).