The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee

Freedom from Sin's Grasp - 3

Note: See the Answer Key at the bottom of this page to fill in the blanks.

This portion of Paul’s letter deals with the ____________   _______________   ___________ of the Gospel:  Because of what Jesus has done in shedding His Blood to ______________ our sins and dying on the Cross that we may be ________________ in our old, sinful nature, we have the opportunity to live in freedom from sin’s grasp!

Overview:

 

Romans 7:1-6    No Longer Bound To The Law

Here Paul moves to a new illustration concerning our freedom from the law—that of a wife married to an unwanted husband.  Since the woman is legally obligated to the husband as long as both of them are alive, the only solution for the woman is for one of them to die.  (If you watch a lot of television, you will probably be assuming that the one who is going to die is the husband!) Being consistent with the images used in Romans 6, Paul points out that it is the woman who must die (to herself!), and thus be freed from her obligation to her “first husband”—the Law of Moses.  Then she is free to choose a new mate—Jesus!

Let’s now turn to Paul’s illustration of our freedom from sin AND the law as found in Romans 7:1-6

1Now, dear brothers and sisters—you who are familiar with the law—don’t you know that the law applies only to a person who is still living?

Once again Paul starts out with an obvious point:  the law applies in our lives only so long as we are ___________.  Once we die, the law is no longer binding on us. Paul used the image in chapter 6 to point out that when a slave dies he or she is free to obey a new master, because there is no longer any legal obligation to the original master.  Now we turn to a new image:

 2Let me illustrate. When a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her.

At first, Paul points out that a woman is only legally bound to her husband as long as HE is alive.  He also points out that if the husband dies, the “laws of marriage no longer apply to her.”  This is logical, common sense truth.  Paul is not arguing the relative merits of marriage, or discussing whether folks ever marry the wrong person.  He is simply using an illustration that points out another legal relationship between people—this time the relationship of husband and wife.

 3So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries. 

Paul also points out that to break one’s marriage vows while one’s husband is living is to commit adultery.  The only way a woman can get out of a bad marriage is for the husband to die.  Then she can remarry without any repercussions from the law.  (NOTE:  Paul obviously took the covenant of marriage extremely seriously, as did Jesus.  Although this illustration is not about marriage per se, it is important for us to recognize that the illustration is only valid among those who take the permanence of marriage seriously.)

4So this is the point: The law no longer holds you in its power, because you died to its power when you died with Christ on the cross. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, you can produce good fruit, that is, good deeds for God.

Here Paul makes an adjustment in His analogy.  It is not the HUSBAND (who is actually the Law of Moses) who dies, but the WIFE.  She is the one who “died with Christ on the cross.”  She actually represents _________  _______  _____  _______.  When Paul tells us that we are now united with “the one who was raised from the dead”—Jesus.  HE is saying that we (the wife) have been relieved of being “married” to the first husband (the law of Moses), and that we are now “married” to a new husband (Jesus).  The result of our new relationship is that we can produce _________  __________ or ____________  _______________ for God.

APPLICATION POINT:  Paul’s new illustration drives home the same point:  God’s action in crucifying us with Jesus on the cross, is the action necessary to transform our lives.  Paul uses a vivid image to demonstrate that as a result of our being freed from a “bad marriage”—our relationship with the law of Moses, we are now free to produce good fruit.  Notice the order:  God sets us free—through our death on the cross with Jesus; then we are free to be in relationship with Jesus, which means the bearing of good fruit or good deeds for God!   God’s action is always FIRST in our lives, but there must always be a response from us.  God does His part and we do our part.  We can’t do God’s part and God won’t do our part.   We must give up control and let God initiate transformation in our lives by the Holy Spirit (which we will talk about in Romans 8!), then we must participate in the transformation by using the gifts, abilities, disciplines, etc.. that God has given us to His glory.  While God’s part is absolutely crucial, and nothing can be done without it, God loves us too much not to expect a response from us as well.

 5When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced sinful deeds, resulting in death.

We must follow Paul’s reasoning carefully here.  He is transitioning into the next section of his letter (vss. 7-13) where he will point out that it is God’s law that reveals our sin, and he is setting up that reality.  When we were in our first marriage—to the law, we were also living with a fallen sinful nature.  That sinful nature brought forth desires that were also sinful, so what did our first husband do?  He told us that we shouldn’t think about “those things” or do “those things,”  which only made them seem more enticing.

6But now we have been released from the law, for we died with Christ, and we are no longer captive to its power. Now we can really serve God, not in the old way by obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way, by the Spirit.

Here is the key:  while the law entices us to evil (or at the very least, doesn’t keep us from committing evil), we are no longer captive to its power.   Sin and law are inextricably tied together as we shall see in verses 7-13).  Thus, when we died to sin, we also died to the law.  What is the result?   “Now, we can really serve God.”  We can only truly serve God, when we are under no obligation to do so from any external source, such as the law.  If I must serve God in order to obey the law, then the result is merely servitude.  If I choose to serve God, out of my love for Him, then I serve out of sonship (daughtership?)!  This is only accomplished by the Spirit.    NOTE: it is “by” or by means of the Holy Spirit that this true service takes place.  It is not our own doing.

APPLICATION POINT:  While sin and law seem to be opposites—and they are from a perfectly semantic standpoint—both sin and the law ___________ us before we receive Jesus’ gift of salvation.  The law binds us to a sense of guilt and  failure, because we can never fully observe it.  Sin binds us to a sense of guilt and failure because once we have fallen into it, we are separated from God, and our relationship with Him is broken.  Jesus overcame both sin and the law through his death on the cross.  He defeated sin, and he paid the legal penalty for our sins on the cross.

Romans 7:7-13  God’s Law Reveals Our Sin

Here Paul moves to a discussion of the relationship between sin and the law and how they work together to leave us in a situation of brokenness before God.

7Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is evil? Of course not! The law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”

Paul’s point here is somewhat difficult to follow.  He is simply saying that the law of God cannot be evil or sinful, since it came directly from God.  The law is good in every way.  What is “bad” about the law from our human perspective is that it points out our sin.  Paul uses a specific example:  “I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”   Perhaps this is the origin of the saying, “Ignorance is bliss.”  Without a knowledge of the law, we would be unaware of our sin, but since Paul established back in Romans 1, that even those without the written law of God, still have an innate understanding of the law, we are all without excuse when we break the law!

 8But sin took advantage of this law and aroused all kinds of forbidden desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power.

Paul points out that it is the law which “arouses” all kinds of forbidden desires within us.  It isn’t until mom says, “Don’t eat any of the cookies on the kitchen table,” that we notice how good they look, and how much we want one.  The law of God has that same effect in all of us—it draws to our conscious minds, the hidden evil desires that are there.

9I felt fine when I did not understand what the law demanded. But when I learned the truth, I realized I had broken the law and was a sinner, doomed to die.

In this case ignorance seemed to be bliss, for once Paul understood what the law demanded, and how far short he had fallen of the demands, he knew that he was condemned to die.

APPLICATION POINT:  Many folks who claim to be Christians live in this point continuously.  They are always moaning about what terrible sinners they are, or about how God couldn’t love them, because of their many sins.  This IS the condition of humanity apart from Jesus Christ.  Non-Christians ought to be sad and miserable.  The reason many are not is they do not understand their true condition.  They are living in ignorance.  That’s why so many folks want modern preachers to return to the hell, fire and brimstone messages of the past.  They want preachers to scare the hell out of people-literally.  The challenge is that so few people have any fear of hell, or believe that it exists.  People have been convinced that if there is a God, in the end His love wins out and no one will be punished for eternity.  Thus, when we first find out the truth that sin has condemned us it overwhelms us with fear, guilt and sadness.  Thankfully, we don’t have to stay in that condition because of Jesus!

 10So the good law, which was supposed to show me the way of life, instead gave me the death penalty.

This is simply a reiteration of verse 9.

11Sin took advantage of the law and fooled me; it took the good law and used it to make me guilty of death.

Here we see again that Satan’s chief tool is deception.  With Satan, nothing is ever as it seems.  James tells us that the devil can appear as an angel of light.  While sin is often ugly and obvious, many times it is disguised as something __________ and ______________.  The reality is people sin because much sin is ________.

 12But still, the law itself is holy and right and good.

The bottom line is that the law is holy, right and good, because it is a reflection of God who gave it!

13But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my doom? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commandment for its own evil purposes.

Paul concludes this section with a summary statement that reiterates the relationship of sin and the law.

APPLICATION POINT:   If we want to live in the Spirit, if we want to see our lives transformed, we must first see ourselves for who we are, for what we’ve been, and recognize that at our best—apart from God--we are worthy of condemnation.  We must move from that point to recognizing that even though we are sinners from birth, God loves us so much that He DIED for us, so that we could be forgiven, and so we may be free from the death AND the deception of sin, and may live new lives!

ANSWER KEY:   really fantastic news, forgive, crucified, every one of us, good fruit, good deeds, bind, sweet and beautiful, fun.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from either the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, © 2006 (after Dec. 2, 2007) or the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, © 1996 (before Dec. 2 2007). Both are used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189, All rights reserved. New Life Christian Ministries, Inc. holds CCLI Number 1966192.   Individual copyright information is provided for words of praise songs and hymns used in the Daily Bible Studies.

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