Rom 7:2-3 | KingComments | STEP | You’re free from guilt. This was made clear to you in the sections which cover Romans 3:21 to Romans 5:11. You have been liberated from the power of sin. This was made clear in the last part of Romans 5 through Romans 6. Now something else needs to be learned – that you also have been freed from the law. This is what Romans 7 is about. The most difficult thing to accept in faith is freedom from the law because our experience may tell a different story. Romans 7 shows how difficult it is. You meet someone who has the new life and who, as a result, wants to do good, but all the time he is doing wrong. It is no surprise that he feels miserable. I had a time like this in my life. You’d like to live for the Lord Jesus and yet you go wrong again and again. This is because consciously or unconsciously, you oblige yourself to do something. You want to serve God and you feel the best way is to keep certain rules, to keep the law. After all, God gave the law. But the effect of such trying to keep it is you feel terribly inadequate. The joy of faith rapidly fades away. Witnessing is out of the question. You’re completely self-centered. The words ‘I’ and ‘me’ occur some forty times in this chapter. The release from this miserable situation comes only at the end, in . Therefore you have to let the whole of this chapter speak to you. . are an introduction. Concerning the application of the law, it is clear to everyone that the law reigns over a man as long as he is alive. Nothing is more absurd than to fine someone who has died in a traffic accident he caused. Someone is fined if he is accountable for an offense and if he is alive to pay for it. With a dead person, this is impossible. . Paul illustrates this with the example of a marriage. He wants to teach you that a connection between two parties is valid only as long as both parties are alive. But this connection is broken when one of the parties dies. Only then, in marriage, the woman is free to marry someone else. Otherwise she is an adulteress if she becomes the wife of another man while her first husband is still alive. . Paul applies this to the believer and the law. He says that according to the law the sinner had to be put to death. But you have already died to the law through the body of Christ. When Christ died, you died. So you are no longer connected with the law, but with the risen Christ Who has nothing to do with the law either. Has not the law been fully applied to Him? You’re now connected with the risen Christ instead of the law. You can now bear fruit for God. . When you were in the flesh, that is, when you were an unbeliever and doing your own will, you gave in to “the sinful passions”. The more the law prohibited something, the more you enjoyed doing it. You know how this goes; forbidden things are thrilling. But this was only fruit for death and not for God. . You were living as a prisoner of the law. The law told you what you ought to do and it exercised authority over you. You were its slave. Now that you have died, the law has nothing to say about you. You now are serving in an altogether new way. You no longer serve “in the oldness of the letter”, that is, in a way that is exactly prescribed. You’re now serving “in newness of the spirit”, that is, in a way that you let the new spiritual life work in you, the life focused on the Lord Jesus. Now read Romans 7:1-6 again. Reflection: Ask yourself this question: Do I live my life in connection with the Lord Jesus or in connection with the law?

‏ Romans 7:2-3

Released From the Law

You’re free from guilt. This was made clear to you in the sections which cover Romans 3:21 to Romans 5:11. You have been liberated from the power of sin. This was made clear in the last part of Romans 5 through Romans 6. Now something else needs to be learned – that you also have been freed from the law. This is what Romans 7 is about. The most difficult thing to accept in faith is freedom from the law because our experience may tell a different story.

Romans 7 shows how difficult it is. You meet someone who has the new life and who, as a result, wants to do good, but all the time he is doing wrong. It is no surprise that he feels miserable. I had a time like this in my life. You’d like to live for the Lord Jesus and yet you go wrong again and again.

This is because consciously or unconsciously, you oblige yourself to do something. You want to serve God and you feel the best way is to keep certain rules, to keep the law. After all, God gave the law. But the effect of such trying to keep it is you feel terribly inadequate. The joy of faith rapidly fades away. Witnessing is out of the question. You’re completely self-centered. The words ‘I’ and ‘me’ occur some forty times in this chapter. The release from this miserable situation comes only at the end, in Rom 7:25a. Therefore you have to let the whole of this chapter speak to you.

Rom 7:1. Rom 7:1-6 are an introduction. Concerning the application of the law, it is clear to everyone that the law reigns over a man as long as he is alive. Nothing is more absurd than to fine someone who has died in a traffic accident he caused. Someone is fined if he is accountable for an offense and if he is alive to pay for it. With a dead person, this is impossible.

Rom 7:2-3. Paul illustrates this with the example of a marriage. He wants to teach you that a connection between two parties is valid only as long as both parties are alive. But this connection is broken when one of the parties dies. Only then, in marriage, the woman is free to marry someone else. Otherwise she is an adulteress if she becomes the wife of another man while her first husband is still alive.

Rom 7:4. Paul applies this to the believer and the law. He says that according to the law the sinner had to be put to death. But you have already died to the law through the body of Christ. When Christ died, you died. So you are no longer connected with the law, but with the risen Christ Who has nothing to do with the law either. Has not the law been fully applied to Him? You’re now connected with the risen Christ instead of the law. You can now bear fruit for God.

Rom 7:5. When you were in the flesh, that is, when you were an unbeliever and doing your own will, you gave in to “the sinful passions”. The more the law prohibited something, the more you enjoyed doing it. You know how this goes; forbidden things are thrilling. But this was only fruit for death and not for God.

Rom 7:6. You were living as a prisoner of the law. The law told you what you ought to do and it exercised authority over you. You were its slave. Now that you have died, the law has nothing to say about you. You now are serving in an altogether new way. You no longer serve “in the oldness of the letter”, that is, in a way that is exactly prescribed. You’re now serving “in newness of the spirit”, that is, in a way that you let the new spiritual life work in you, the life focused on the Lord Jesus.

Now read Romans 7:1-6 again.

Reflection: Ask yourself this question: Do I live my life in connection with the Lord Jesus or in connection with the law?