TITLE: Free Grace Frees Us from the Law
INTRODUCTION: I heard a medical doctor this week explain how the medical world got it wrong on peanut allergies. For decades, the prevailing medical advice to parents was to avoid peanuts before age 3. But, now the research says early peanut avoidance did not prevent peanut allergies at all, it caused a surge in peanut allergies. So, bad medical advice actually increased the thing they were trying to prevent.
The same is true in Christian living. Sometimes, bad spiritual advice can actually increase the thing you are trying to prevent. Such is the case in Romans 7...
Romans 7:1 (NASB), “Or do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I am speaking to those who know the Law), that the Law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?”
Q - Who is Paul speaking to?
• A – “brothers and sisters”, -- these are fellow Christians in Rome – Jewish and Gentile.
Q – What do we know about them?
• A – We know that they know the law!
Q – What law is this?
• A - This is the law in general but the OT law of Moses in specific. Jewish Christians certainly knew the OT law, but also God-fearing Gentiles that made up the majority of the church in Rome.
Q – What do they need to know?
• A – They need to know about the law’s jurisdiction over them. Other translations say, the law’s dominion, power, rule, and authority, NLT, “the law’s application” What jurisdiction does Moses have now that we are Christian?
Q – Why is this an issue? A – For several reasons.
• Paul said in Romans 6:15, that believers are not under law, but under grace? What does that mean?
• The historical situation in Rome at this time, was difficult. There was anti-Semitism. The Jews had been kicked out of Rome and they are returning to Rome about the time this letter to the Romans arrives. The church in Rome is now predominantly Gentile. I am convinced that one of the reasons Paul wrote Romans was to heal the division between Jewish and Gentile Christians. What was the MOST DIVISIVE thing between Jew/Gentile Christians? The OT law!
• Whatever we believe is going on in Romans 7, and there are many opinions... this chapter is about law... the law of Moses in particular.
• In the first 14 verses of chapter 7, every verse talks about law.
• The big question in Romans 7 is this, “What is a Christian to do with the OT law?”
Q – One final question, “For how long is the law my Lord?”
• A – v1 says, the law is lord as long as you are alive!
Romans 7:2 (NASB), “For the married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he is alive; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. 3 So then, if while her husband is alive she gives herself to another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she gives herself to another man.”
• One commentator said this illustration sheds light on all of chapter 7. We will miss the boat if we forget what Paul is trying to illustrate here about the law and its jurisdiction.
• Marriage is binding by law on the wife and husband for life.
• If, the wife, goes with another man, while married, she sins and commits adultery. That’s the law.
• But, if her husband dies, she is free to give herself in marriage to another man.
Romans 7:4 (NASB), “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in regard to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were brought to light by the Law, were at work in the parts of our body to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”
• The application takes a turn, but the point is the same. Death releases the relationship.
• Before Christ, we were like the wife married to the law. The relationship was demandingly unhealthy. It was not holy matrimony. Being married to the law just aggravated us, frustrated us, like a husband always pointing out the wife’s faults. We thought the law would give us life, but it brought death. We thought the law would make us fruitful, but we were barren.
• V5 – we were under the lordship of the law.
• V6 - But now... we have been released from the law!
• How?
• V4 - We died though the body of Christ. That is, we are Christian.
• In Romans 6, death means SIN is no longer our MASTER.
• In Romans 7, death means the LAW is no longer our MASTER.
• Since we have died, we are no longer married to the law, we are released in a new marriage to Christ.
What does it mean that Christians are released from the law?
• It means we are not under the condemnation of the law.
• It means we do not look to the OT law for our hope of life, true identity, or Christian ethic. These things are found in Christ, in the New Covenant.
• It means we do not strive to keep the law as a means of justification. Paul has already said in 3:20, “...by the works of the law none are justified.”
• It means we do not look to the law as a means of sanctification. The law informs us about sin, it was never meant to transform us or reform us.
• It means we are released from the laws effect to agitate more sin and increase sin in us. Romans 5:20, “The law came in so that the offense would increase... but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”
• To be released from the law, means we can now bear fruit for God (holiness).
SUMMMARY: Paul is warning the Christians, not to seek to please God, or be holy, by keeping the law of Moses. Doing this will not help them, it will only make things worse.
• Holiness will come to us in a new relationship. When we are no longer bound by the “oldness of the letter” but bound by the “newness of the Spirit.” Romans 8 explains this further.
Douglas Moo, “We are warned that the Mosaic law, and, hence, all law, is unable to deliver us from the power of sin; the multiplication of “rules” and “commands,” so much a tendency in some Christian circles, will be more likely to drive us deeper into frustration than to improve the quality of our walk with Christ.”
Two closing illustrations:
A teenage boy in love for the first time.
Pilgrim’s Progress - When Christian arrives at the house of the interpreter, and the interpreter shows him the many rooms in the house, which teach him spiritual lessons for help in the Christian journey.
One room was a very large parlor full of dust because it was never swept. After looking around, the Interpreter instructed a man with a broom to begin sweeping. As he began to sweep, the dust became so thick that Christian nearly choked. Almost immediately, the Interpreter said to a young and gracious lady standing nearby, “Bring some water and sprinkle the room.” She did so, and the parlor was swept and cleaned.
“What does this mean?” Christian asked while coughing and clearing the dust out of his lungs.
The Interpreter answered, “The parlor is the heart of a man that was never declared holy by the sweet grace of the Gospel. The dust is his original sin and inward corruptions that have defiled the whole man. The man with the broom is the law, but the gracious young lady who brought water and sprinkled the room is the Gospel. “As the man with the broom began to sweep, the dust filled the room; it became more difficult to clean, and you almost choked to death. This is to show how the law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, revives sin, giving it strength to grow and develop in the soul.
The interpreter went on.... You can see that the law can both discover and condemn sin, but it has no power to control it. In contrast, the gracious young lady you saw sprinkle the room with water cleaned it easily. This is to show you that the Gospel comes with sweet and precious influences, cleansing the heart and making it livable. Just as you saw the woman settle the dust by sprinkling the floor with water, this is a picture of sin brought under control and the soul made clean through faith, making the heart fit for the King of Glory to inhabit.”
CONCLUSION
• Romans 7 teaches us that our lives are like a dusty old room. How will we clean up our lives?
• The dust is sin.
• The law is the broom that kicks up sin – even intensifies it.
• The Gospel is the water that cleanses sin and puts it to rest.
• The Holy Spirit is the power to be released from the dominion of sin altogether!
