Published: January 7, 2024 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Romans - Part 32 | Scripture: Romans 7:1-6
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7 so we find ourselves back in Paul's letter to the
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Romans we find ourselves both in perhaps the most difficult Passage in the book Romans 7 but also the climax of Paul's argument Romans 8 so uh let us begin Romans 7:
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1-6 Paul writes or do you not know brethren for I speaking to those who know the know the law that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives for the married woman woman is
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bound by law to her husband while he is living but if her husband dies she is released from the law concerning the husband so then if while her husband is
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living she is joined to another man she shall be called an adulteress but if her husband dies she is free from the law so she is not an adulteress though she is
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joined to another man therefore my brethren you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ that you might be joined to another to him
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who was raised from the dead that we might bear fruit for God for while we were in the flesh the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at
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work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death but now we have been released from the law having died to that by which we were bound so that we
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serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter let us
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pray father again we ask that you would open your word to our understanding you have promised to give us the spirit of Truth who would guide us into all truth we ask that that be the case but
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also that the Holy Spirit within us would keep us from error and that we would not bring to these passages preconceived ideas what
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we have read what we have heard but rather we would be as the bereans searching the scriptures to understand these things and know their truth guide us we ask shed light upon
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your word we ask in Jesus name
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amen we pick off we pick up here in Romans 7 really where we left off in Romans 6 he starts out in verse one saying do you not you not know this is a rhetorical question that
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he has peppered his letter with especially these chapters Romans 6 and 7:3 of Romans 6 he says do you not know that all of us who have been baptized
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into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death verse 16 do you do you not know that when you present yourselves as someone to someone as slaves for obedience you are slaves of
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the one whom you obey either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in resulting in righteousness so when we come to verse one of chapter 7 and he asks do you not
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know first of all he is assuming that we do know but he's actually going to tell us something that that ought to make sense and he uses the example and it is
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just an example of the married woman who is bound to her husband so long as he is alive but when he dies she is free to remarry without being accused of being
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an adulteress and we'll get into that Lord willing in more detail next week but as we look at the return to Romans and especially this very difficult passage
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Romans chapter 7 I think it's important that we see that Paul's line of reasoning remains reasoning remains Unbroken as he develops his
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theme and his theme has to do with the ramifications of our faith of our being united with Jesus Christ his theme
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continues to be death and the implications of that death but there is a development there is a difference that would have been shocking
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to any Jewish ears and unfortunately is not so shocking to our ears today in Romans 6 we we don't really have a problem with this idea of dying to
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sin but in Romans 7 we're dying to the law and in doing what Paul does he is actually putting sin and the
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law in the same category and and that's something that is very important for us to try to grasp because the Christian church has
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done pretty well in its Orthodox phases at least with its relationship to sin not that it hasn't sinned but it understands that sin is a bad thing okay
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there there are very few fathers of the church or reformers or even modern evangelicals who will come out and say sin is good so we got that one we
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understand that understand that one we don't have a clue about the law if you look at the last 2,000 years in the church we don't know what to do do with the
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law half the church wants to go back to it half the church wants to throw it out the church the church window and we look at Paul and we say well Paul didn't know what to do with it either well no actually he
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did and if we follow Paul we will come to an understanding of what to do with the law and an understanding that having
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died to the law is parallel to having died to died to sin and really the understanding that Paul is not really focusing on the death here he's FOC focusing on the life after
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that death so that's where we get hung up in Romans especially since Luther we look at Romans as constantly teaching justification by faith how we get saved it's by faith it's not works
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everything's faith faith faith faith we look at the actual conversion and never bothered to talk about the rising to walk in newness of life never bother to hear Paul as as he
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teaches you have died now this is your life don't focus on the death praise God
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for that death in Christ but now listen to Paul through the Holy Spirit as he tells us what it means to walk in newness of life it's
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freedom because he also sets a parallel between law sin and law in that before Christ we were slaves to both to each we
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were in bondage to sin we were in bondage to the law in death we are freed from sin in death we are free from the
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law therefore in the life that is in Christ we live as free men and women with respect both to sin and the
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law this is his reasoning here and is important I think that we see that the powers from which the dead man is
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released are set here in exact parallel listen to what he says in chapter 7:4 therefore my brethren you also were made
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to die to the law through the body of Christ that you may be joined to another to him who was raised from the dead that we might bear fruit to God listen to
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chapter 6 verse 11 even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus chapter 7:6 but now we have been
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released from the law having died to that by which we were bound so that we serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter chapter
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6 verse 6 knowing this that our old self was crucified with him that our body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves to sin and
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there are many other parallels as we read chapter 7 if you have time go back and read chapter 6 they read very very similarly but where in Chapter 6 we read
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sin in chapter 7 we read law and understanding what Paul is doing here and his teaching on the law will I think help us to understand
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our relationship as Believers to the law as well as to sin and so what he's doing here as I said would have been shocking to any
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Jewish audience especially an unbelieving jewish unbelieving jewish audience because it sounds like what he's saying is the law is sin but what he's doing is more subtle
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and more marvelous than that somehow he is linking the law which is good to sin which is bad and he's doing so in a way that
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helps us to understand what Jesus Christ did for us in his death it's as if he's referring
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though writing later than what he said to the Corinthians in chapter 15 verse 56 of 1 Corinthians he says the sting of death is sin well he's just
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said that at the end of chapter 6 he says for the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our lord so the sting of death is sin but it's that second half
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of that phrase that really gets to the heart of Paul's teaching the power of sin is the law and so that's where we are in
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chapter 7 that's where we will be for for a number of weeks the title of the sermon if you noticed is a Shameless parody of a World War II
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War II movie Torah Torah Torah the a movie about the attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor the Battle Cry of the Japanese soldiers or at least
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those who fought for Hollywood I don't know whether Japanese soldiers actually said that before they got in their airplanes but that's what all Americans who watch that movie now believe you add an h and we now have the Battle Cry of
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the SE second temple Pharisees Torah Torah Torah and Paul was the Admiral Yamamoto of the Pharisees he says so
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himself in Philippians chapter 3 that he was ahead of the rest of his countrymen as to the law of Pharisee and so here we have this former
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Pharisee writing to a church that he had not founded basically as we have talked about before giving his credentials to the Roman Church
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so that as his intention was to shift his region of operation to the west of Europe eventually to Spain he might transfer his base of operation from
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Antioch to Rome and so he's writing to them about my gospel this is what I preach and some of them were of course Jews we know that from chapter 16 his
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his greetings we know that many of them like Priscilla and Aquilla had been cast out of Rome by the Edict of Clodius and now we're back in Rome and these are Jewish
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Believers and they may have heard of Saul of Tarsus who once was a persecutor of the way now becoming a Believer and a preacher of the Gospel that he once
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persecuted and he was a Pharisee now the other apostles were not Pharisees as far as we know they were fishermen not Pharisees a Pharisee as we'll see as we
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we look at second Temple Israel the setting of this letter the Pharisee was devoted to Torah to the
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law so what of it Paul were you wrong all those years you spent studying at the feet of gel studying the Scrolls becoming an expert in Torah were you
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wrong what do you do with Torah now we just throw it out we burn the Scrolls because Jesus has come Paul would say may it never be and it was especially
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incumbent upon Paul who was once Saul the tarian the leader of the Phar the Pharisees it was especially incumbent upon him to deal with the law in Christ
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and I think this is one of the reasons God gave him such excellent Revelation because God had already prepared him through through the law to
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understand the meaning of the law now historically we look back through the lands of the Protestant Reformation and primarily through the
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lands of Martin Luther Luther came to the conclusion that Judaism was a Works religion wherein Jews sought to attain
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salvation through the works of the law Luther didn't read any of the relevant documents of the Old Testament I'm
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afraid certainly of the inner testamental period or of the second temple period otherwise he would have realized as we will'll see in Deuteronomy as we
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saw today whenever God gave them statutes he would give a nice long prologue telling the Israelites all that he had done for them in Redemption
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they were already the people of God by God's grace and his election they were not trying to earn that status through the works of the law they received the law because of that
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status and so Paul who did not look back to his own time through Luther's eyes understood that Judaism was not a Works religion the law wasn't given to them in
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order to earn salvation they were the people of God the law was given to to them to govern their behavior as the
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people of God and to manifest to the world around them that they were the people of people of God Paul knew this but in the second temple period that which had one time
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been the house of God and we'll be looking at this in Thursday evenings the Tabernacle where God's presence dwelt later the Temple of Solomon where God's
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shakina came and dwelt as he did in the Tabernacle Le this really nice building that Herod started this temple in Jerusalem that
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the disciples marveled at the beauty of it and the Majesty of it many of the Jews of Paul's day of Saul's day looked at it and said this
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ain't it number one the glory of the Lord had never come down upon the second temple read through the post exilic prophets and you will not find find the shikina
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coming God did not come to dwell in that building no matter how beautiful Herod made it number two Herod was involved that weren't a good thing Herod
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was a half breed her Herod was half Edomite which means his ancestors were Esau okay he was the Fulfillment of the
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prophecy that was given concerning the twins that eventually the older would throw off the Yoke of the younger and rule over the younger that's Herod Herod was also a
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brute it is reportedly said that Emperor Augustus said that he would rather be herod's Pig than his son because he wouldn't kill his Pig sweet man but he's making a name for
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himself he's called Herod the Great because of his building program he built wonderful palaces Masada in the South he built amphitheaters that rivaled the ones in Rome and he built this temple in
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order to Eng gratiate himself with the Jewish people but also make a name for himself but the righteous Jew looked at it and said no it is now
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defiled and so many of the Jews also recognized that the priesthood was messed up you see the priesthood was supposed to descend from Aaron not only just
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Levites but one particular family of Levites the
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Veil into the holy place and only one of them the ironic high priest was allowed to go past the second Veil into the holy of holies and then only once a year but the rulers of the priest cast
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now were not even Levites the Sadducees were a political organization and the priesthood had been
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politicized we should thank God that we live in a time when religion can no longer be longer be politicized but it was heavily politicized and so many Jews left the
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temple in Paul's day see this is the historical setting that I think we need to understand when we read Paul especially when he talks about in 1
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Corinthians us being the temple because the temple at that time was not the house of God the ases they left the temple some of them went
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South into the caves of Kuman fortunately they took their scrolls with them and wrote some new ones and then sometime in the 1940s a little boy found them and we have the Dead Sea Scrolls
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they were a group of second temple Jews who had abandoned the temple the zealots well they had pretty much congregated up in Galilee blamed
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all the problem on the Romans and any of the Jews who collaborated with them and they spent their time buring their swords waiting for the Rebellion which was coming pretty
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soon the Pharisees did something different they continued to go to the temple but they replaced the temple with
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Torah and the study of Torah was to them the worship of Yahweh it was not a means by which they would earn their salvation it was a means by which they
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came into the presence of their God because they could no longer do that in the temple they didn't abandon Jerusalem they didn't sharpen their
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swords but they did sharpen their Scrolls and that's the people that Paul was a part of so Torah was to him the temple and what the temple was
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meant to be Jesus himself said during his ministry my house shall be called a house of prayer for All Peoples you have made it a den of
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robbers and so the setting is one of a defiled temple being replaced by the law itself now that raises the law up in the
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eyes of the Pharisees as the place where God's spirit dwells and for the Pharisee to unroll the scroll was like the levite going into
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the holy place he was coming before his God that's a very Noble thought a very Noble concept when we go to the word of God do we consider ourselves coming into
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his presence to some extent I think we should imitate the Pharisees in that so this is where Paul is before his encounter with the Risen Messiah Jesus
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again as he says as to the law he's a Pharisee as to the righteousness which is in the law he was found blameless but Jesus's resurrection and
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the gift of the Holy Spirit taught Paul what maybe he should have known all along law cannot redeem it can only
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condemn think of it this way does the highway patrol hand out certificates of Merit for people who are not
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speeding does anybody come to your house from the government in the evening and give you a medal for not having killed someone that day some days they
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should where where does the law praise okay think about it where does the law go out of its way to honor those who keep who keep it that's not what the law does right
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the law only condemns those who break it that's that's law in general that's not Torah that's any law law cannot
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redeem law cannot give you the power when you're driving down the highway and you see that sign that says 65 and it's not the highway
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number does some power come over you pulling your foot back no like probably don't even notice a sign okay the law doesn't have any power
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to bring about what it demands it doesn't give any honor to those who obey its demands it only condemns those who break the commands
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the law cannot redeem it can only condemn Paul came to understand what the law truly does not because there was anything wrong with
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the law and this is the key but because of sin and this presents an in escapable dilemma if there is
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sin the law cannot help if there is no sin there's no need for law so sin is what brings about
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law in fact Paul says that in Galatians that's why the law came about because of the transgression so sin brings about the law and then what does the law do it
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empowers sin what a mess this is the intractable M that Fallen humanity is in and it's not the Law's
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fault the fault is sin and Paul knows that there is only one Escape for a man in this
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trap death that's it so long as we live we are in sin therefore so long as we live we are in bondage to law and in that condition law only empowers sin to bring
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about our about our condemnation and the only thing that will Deliver Us from this mess is mess is death now there's something that goes
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beyond that the writer of Hebrews reminds us that it is appointed to man once to die and then what comes judgment so it's not like death redeems death doesn't redeem death simply locks
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in place the situation of life in relationship to the law but the dead man is not subject to the law anymore and the dead man is not in bondage to sin
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anymore but the dead man also has no hope so there's a real gordian knot here and this is something that I think Christianity has lost sight of
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especially in the modern Western psyche and and therapy world that we live in Christianity is supposed to make you feel better Christianity is supposed to make you love yourself Christianity is
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supposed to help you get through all your problems no Christianity the Gospel of Jesus Christ is dealing with something much deeper than any of that it's dealing with the
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root of all of that and that is your sin and Rebellion against God which has necess necessitated the law which has brought about greater sin and and
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condemnation that's what the gospel touches that's what my gospel as Paul puts it that's what his gospel the Gospel of Jesus Christ deals with we
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often hear the phrase when something is extremely important this is a matter of life and death okay well what Paul is saying here in Romans especially 567 and
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8 567 and8 are the core the theological core of Romans and what he is saying here is extremely important to him but he would rephrase it he would say no
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this is a matter of death and life because that's the order of things and we have to understand that unless there be a death there can be no life
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this is what Jesus said when he talked about the seed that had to fall to the ground and die in order for it to bear fruit Paul is not at odds with Jesus here there must be a death if there is
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to be any freedom from the bondage of sin end of the law but again if that death is yours that doesn't really help any cuz you're
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dead and so there must be death of another there's the gospel that that one thing that would free us from the trap the bondage the
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slavery of both sin and the law is itself death which is the wages of law but because it's death of a vicarious sacrifice perfect in all his ways a am
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unblemished and let's add the Son of God that death now stands for you and you in him Romans 6 have died to
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sin and you in him Romans 7 have died to the law that is the essence of the Gospel as
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Paul preaches Paul preaches it see no one can escape the B bondage of sin and the bondage of the law in any
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way the church in our day needs to remember and return to that reality we need to give up ecumenicism tolerance not to be intolerant people or
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hateful people for all men have the right to believe what they wish to believe especially in our country but also not to give in to the thought that there are other ways
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to God and that all Rel religions all have a grain of Truth within them no there is the truth and there is the lie and that which is not the truth as it is in Jesus Christ is the
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lie and the more subtle the worse it is so what Paul is teaching us here is essential to our understanding in our own time because Paul is not again
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emphasizing the death that we share in Christ he is saying this is critical without this there's nothing if you don't die in Christ through
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baptism then there is no life for you there is no hope as he's going to get into in Romans 8 that's all very important but what he's really emphasizing is the life of freedom from
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sin the life of freedom from the law the life of the Holy Spirit by which we can now bear fruit FR for God that is the life that he is
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emphasizing when he says in Romans 6 that we have died with Christ in baptism baptism that we might rise to walk in newness of life we are alive to God in
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Jesus Christ because we are dead to sin we bear fruit for God because we have been made to die to the law eternal life as the gift that Paul
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mentions at the end of Romans comes through comes through death which is a concept that should convince us that only God could come up with this plan we would not this is not
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a human religion we're dealing with here and we can extend the parallel and we're going to as we move through this chapter Paul says in in chapter 6 shall we
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continue in continue in sin and we can say in chapter 7 shall we continue under the law no to both
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questions we neither continue in sin nor do we continue in the
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law we continue in the life of the Holy Spirit one author says one cannot continue under the law without continuing under the old bondage he who stands under the law also stands under
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sin now many of you know that that teaching came into our church for a number of years not from the pulpit but the idea that we are to to
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reopt the law and to live according to its statutes and its precepts its dietary its chronological all of those statutes we're to bring ourselves back
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under the law because God will be pleased with no he won't because if we bring bring ourselves back under the law Paul says to the Galatians you are no longer in
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Grace if you will bring yourself back under the law then you have brought yourself back under sin and James tells us if anyone would keep the law and break even
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one he is a violator of the whole so even James in agreement with Paul says you don't want to go there and what we're going to see as
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Paul brings us into the Glorious climax of the entire letter chapter8 is that what God did in Jesus Christ you know we like to think that
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that that God put our personal sins on Jesus and in a sense he did but as I've pointed out in this study before Paul rarely uses the plural
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sins he uses the singular sin he might even capitalize it because what we're dealing with here is not padillos is not our own personal violations of the code
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it's a power that exists in the universe called sin and Romans 8 we read that in Jesus Christ God condemned sin in the flesh that's the point at which on the
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cross at golgatha all of the ages came down to one climactic moment where God distilled and concentrated sin into his son
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and killed and killed him killing sin with him now that sheds a new light to me at least on the
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resurrection because when he came back out of that grave he wasn't sin anymore he left sin in the grave and when he came forth he was his full Glory as man
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as God as sinless and as Victorious over Victorious over sin we in him share that Victory now we need to understand the
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more difficult concept what does that mean about the law Thomas Shriner writes that Romans 7 is one of the most disputed and complex chapters in the entire letter which is saying something
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because the letter is one of the most disputed and complex in all the Bible and so when we look at Romans 7 we got this we got this really interesting um concept that Paul pulls off here and
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nowhere else and that is he uses the first person singular and he talks about himself as once being alive apart from the law and then the law came and I died and is not me but
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it's the sin that dwells in me and what do I do about all this Wretched Man that I am and people ask what's he talking about is he talking about himself or is
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he using some rhetorical device where the first person personal pronoun stands for like the nation of Israel that's one of the theories and if he is talking about himself is he talking about
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himself before he was a Christian he's talking about himself after he was a Christian Martin Louis Jones says neither what neither where is
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neither I I haven't read into that dug into that much because that kind of confused me um the reason for all the debate and the concern is really not the desire to know the will of God but it's
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because what Paul says either scares us or Comforts or Comforts us because if it's Paul as a Christian then we think oh good Paul sinned too
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and he was okay with it and it's not me sinning it's the sin that dwells in me but if Paul was saying all of this before he was a Christian then we'd look at this and say well maybe I'm not even
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a Christian because I still look into my members and see that they do there is a will within me that is contrary to the will of God and I look at the end of Romans 7 where he says oh Wretched Man
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that I am who will free me and we sayh that still describes me so we got to tread lightly and carefully as we go through Romans 7 but but I
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think what's important is to realize where we're where we're headed we need a road map and I know many of you don't even know what that is but we need to plug this into our
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GPS you know get our phones out and find out where we're going because where we're going is Romans 8 but before we get there I want to point out you can't get there without going through Romans
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56 and 7 okay is very very popular in modern evangelicalism to start in Romans 8 because what do we get we start Romans 8 there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
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Hallelujah let's just stop there in fact let's start there but you can't even get there until you go back to chapter 5 and realize that all men died in
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Adam and here you go to chapter six and realize that if you have not died in Jesus Christ you are still dead in Adam and then you go through chapter 7 and realize if you have died in Jesus Christ
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to sin you've died to the law and that is no longer your master there's a new master the law of life in the holy spirit that there's there's a transition
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that he's moving to he introduces the holy spirit for the first time here in chapter S he's going to pick that theme up in power in chapter 8 but you can't
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get there unless you go through five six and seven you can't get to that glorious life where the righteous requirements of
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the law Romans 8:4 are fulfilled in us if you have not died to Christ with Christ in baptism if you have not died to the law if you still bring yourself
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under the bondage of the law and you're trying to get to Romans 8 you can't get there the furthest you can get is chapter 7 verse 24 Wretched Man that I
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death to sin and death to the law are the essential and you might even consider them the veils the two veils by which we enter the holy place and then the most holy Place death to
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sin death to the law are necessary for life through the holy spirit let us pray father this this is a
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glorious truth that that you have burdened your Apostle Paul
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with it is the mystery of the ages and therefore we should not expect it to it to be perfectly clear and understandable and beyond that it goes
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against our own dim understanding of justice and retribution and also of works and
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salvation so we pray father that you by your Holy Spirit would open up these words to us to understand what you have done for us in Jesus Christ to praise you for that Redemption but also to walk
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in it to emphasize the walking in newness of Life by the holy spirit that we might not succumb once again to the bondage of the law but
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rather that by the power power of the Holy Spirit the righteous requirements of the law might indeed be fulfilled in us who walk not by the flesh but by the
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spirit we ask that you would do this for your glory and for our good and for the exaltation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for it is in his name we pray
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amen this morning or this afternoon as we consider what God has done for us in Christ we are going to partake together of the Lord's Supper I'd like to ask um
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Tim can you help and John Luke can you help with the elements and also I think when we do the um the wine Josiah if you wouldn't mind taking the third tray and
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starting from the back reminder the outer ring is wine the inner ring