Rom 7:1 Brethren, do you not know—for I am writing to people acquainted with the Law—that it is during our lifetime that we are subject to the Law?
Paul begins his discussion on the “Law of Moses” by comparing it to a marriage of two people.
In the New Testament, the Law is symbolic of our attempts to please God, or serve Him, outside of the direct voice of the Holy Spirit.
Thus we come to serve the Lord through our own efforts, agendas, and strength. This is The Law.
The Law of Moses was comprised of 643 laws.
God knew that it was impossible for the Jews to keep them. Yet, look at what God tells us about keeping His laws. If we break one of His laws, we have broken them all.
Do you think that God expected us to follow these laws perfectly? Of course not.
God has another way.
Lev 19:37 Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the LORD.
James 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
In the voice of the Holy Spirit however, resides the law of faith, which enables us to believe and act upon the given promises of God through His voice to bring them into existence. This is the true meaning of grace.
Grace, is the supernatural power of God for us to obey Him, rather than a license for us to do as we feel.
Ro 3:27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
In the voice of God resides the rhema or living Word of God.
Heb 12:19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of rhemas which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:
Every rhema word, or every utterance of the voice of the Spirit, has resident and active within it the law of faith to make the specific rhema word come to pass.
Ro 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the rhema of God.
Rom 10:6 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:)
7 Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)
8 But what saith it? The rhema is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the rhema of faith, which we preach;
The rhema word reveals Christ.
Joh 17:8 For I have given unto them the rhemas which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
In the person of Christ resides grace. Grace is what sets us free from the bondage of sin. Grace is the superhuman labor of God revealed to us in proportion to how much we obey God. Grace is more abundantly given so that we can obey God to a greater measure.
Rom 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
Romans 7: 2 A wife, for instance, whose husband is living is bound to him by the Law; but if her husband dies the law that bound her to him has now no hold over her.
Paul compares the law to a marriage between a man and a woman.
Paul tells us that a wife is bound to the law of a marriage between her and her spouse. he law of marriage constrains both partners to remain with each other “till death do them part.”
Another bounding agreement of this marriage law is that it affords no provision for marital infidelity in between these two people.
However if the husband dies, the wife then becomes free from the marriage law and can re-marry again.
3 This accounts for the fact that if during her husband’s life she lives with another man, she will be stigmatized as an adulteress; but that if her husband is dead she is no longer under the old prohibition, and even though she marries again, she is not an adulteress.
4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
Verse four is of supreme importance to the victorious Christian life. Let us look at it carefully.
Ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ;
Through the death of Christ we have become dead to “the Law.”
As the wife became released from the law of marriage at the death of her husband, so we became released from “The Law” at the death of Christ. This means that we are released from serving the Lord by our own strength, out of condemnation, guilt, performance, our own agendas and programs, into a simple walk of attaining to all the promises and blessings of God through the voice of the Holy Spirit.
4 that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead.
Here lies the beauty of walking simply by the voice of the Spirit of God. Now that we have been released from serving God through “The Law” by the death of Christ, we are free to re- marry. Our remarriage is to no one else than Christ Himself.
In this remarriage, we are espoused even to him who is raised from the dead.
Christ now abiding in the power of resurrection life cannot be touched by sin or bondage of any kind. Our remarriage now to Christ means that we no longer serve God out of our strength, performance, or agendas. We now live our Christian lives simply out of the voice of the Spirit in the power of Christ’s resurrection life. This is the only way to bear lasting fruit unto the Lord.
That we should bring forth fruit unto God.
Is it any mystery that our lives and our churches are so powerless and caught in the web of dead programs and the yield of little fruit?
We continue to serve God under The Law, and our own agendas, though in fact we have been released from it. Why do we still live in this deception? It is because we have not allowed the Lord to take us through Romans Six.
5 For whilst we were under the thraldom of our earthly natures, sinful passions— made sinful by the Law—were always being aroused to action in our bodily faculties that they might yield fruit to death.
God’s purpose for giving us the more than 600 laws under Moses, (as I said called “The Law”), had nothing to do with us ever keeping them! This includes the Ten Commandments!
Are the Ten Commandments then bad, or is the Law of Moses wrong, and they should not be followed? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!
All the laws of God are good! The answer lies in that were never supposed to obey The Law through our own strength! The Law was given by God to point out to us and expose our sinfulness!
Therefore the more that we try to obey God in our own strength, the more that we will end up sinning. The answer to our deliverance is found in the following scriptures.
Ro 8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Ro 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
Both of these scriptures are similar to each other. What is noteworthy about these scriptures is that The Law is good and that God expects it to be followed and fulfilled perfectly. However its fulfillment cannot and will not occur through our own efforts.
As we die to self through the operation of the cross of Christ, the person of Christ is revealed in us. As the person of Christ is revealed within us, the voice of the Spirit becomes more defined and clearer within us. It is the presence of the revealed Person of Christ who is the end of the law. The fulfillment of the law comes to those who walk in the Spirit after the Voice of the Lord.
The resurrection life of the Lord found in the revealed Person of Christ, is what purifies us and makes us holy so that we end up naturally birthing and fulfilling the Law within us without our trying, but through our dying!
Our only responsibility is to obey the voice of God as perfectly as we can. The Law will become naturally fulfilled in us through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the completed work of Jesus Christ.
Our lives will become an example of the accomplished law of God in the beauty of the presence of the revealed Person of Christ. Or the fulfillment of the law, is the fully revealed Person of Christ.
·Can you see now why our churches and our Christian lives lie in such shambles?
It is because we refuse to die with Christ on the cross so that the person of Christ may be revealed. We continue to operate by the Law in our efforts, plans, committees, and agendas. Little do we know that living and operating in this realm will only birth and activate more sin, more powerlessness, more frustration more dead programs, and much sowing and little reaping. We fulfill the law of God, not in perspiration, but in revelation.
Once again to reiterate; the purpose of the Law is to expose our sinfulness to us.
Ro 7:8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.
Without “The Law” we would never know our sinfulness and or be responsible for it.
The Speeding Ticket
Let us assume that you are speeding down an expressway through a country that you have never visited before. In your worry to obey the speeding laws, you habitually look at the sides of the highway trying to spot the speed signs. To your dismay however, nothing appears that will help you. Suddenly from your rear emerge the ominous flashing red and blue lights of the summoning you to pull over for speeding. You calmly protest to the officer that there were absolutely no speed signs visible to let you know what the speed ought to be. The police officer sees your point, kindly admonishes you with the needed information, and lets you go without a citation. With the absence of these signs, you had no concept of what the speed limit was, and were not held responsible to obey it, even though you had just finished breaking the law!
Ro 7:6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
The Law has now no hold over us, so that we render a service which, instead of being old and formal, is new and spiritual.
Our Christian lives should now work solely out of the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Our marriage to The Law has now once and for all been terminated. Yet most believers continue to live and die in this fantasy marriage!
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.For instance, I should not have known what covetousness is, if the Law had not repeatedly said, “Thou shalt not covet.”
This is exactly what we discussed in verse five! The purpose of the law is to expose, describe, and define sin in its utter sinfulness!
8 Sin took advantage of this, and by means of the Commandment stirred up within me every kind of coveting; for apart from Law sin would be dead.
As with the story of the speeding ticket; without speeding signs visible on an interstate highway, we are not responsible for breaking the speeding law, simply out of sheer ignorance.
In other words, without the visibility of these signs, our responsibility to keep the proper speed is dead or non-existent.
Without “The Law” likewise, we would never know sin, or what types of sins in the eyes of God.
God could no convict us of sin, because we were ignorant to the fact that we had sin or were even sinning!
9 Once, apart from Law, I was alive, but when the Commandment came, sin sprang into life, and I died;
Without The Law the knowledge of sin was non-existent. This made sin not to be apparent, so it was not sin! People could sin all that they wanted to! When The Law came, sin was suddenly exposed and became alive because we were made aware of it. At that moment were found guilty of being sinners and by all intent and purposes died!
10 and, as it turned out, the very Commandment which was to bring me life, brought me death.
So The Law, as good as it is, brings death to us by exposing our sinfulness.
Once again; if we try to obey God in our own strength, without having our plans and visions initiated by the voice of the Spirit, our plans will yield either more sinfulness or bear little fruit. For obeying God by our own efforts cause us to fail and exposes even more of our sin.
11 For sin seized the advantage, and by means of the Commandment it completely deceived me, and also put me to death.
The exposure of sin by the knowledge of the Law puts us to continual death.
12 So that the Law itself is holy, and the Commandment is holy, just and good.
As we earlier stated, The Law is absolutely good!
13 Did then a thing which is good become death to me? No, indeed, but sin did; so that through its bringing about death by means of what was good, it might be seen in its true light as sin, in order that by means of the Commandment the unspeakable sinfulness of sin might be plainly shown.
The Law was given to make “sin exceedingly sinful.”
14 For we know that the Law is a spiritual thing; but I am unspiritual—the slave, bought and sold, of sin.
15 For what I do, I do not recognize as my own action. What I desire to do is not what I do, but what I am averse to is what I do.
These verses are so crucial to us! As long as we as believers attempt to continue to serve God by The Law, without the leading of the Holy Spirit we will continue to do what we do not want to do. The reason is that the law of sin and death in the bodily members of every human being is activated every time that we obey God outside of the leading of the Holy Spirit!
In the Christian, the law of sin and death lies dormant in the human body parts.
The Christian has been set free from the sinful nature, but not the law of sin and death. We are dead to sin, but sin is not dead to us.
Do you remember? The Law revives sin in us! Therefore the activated law of sin and death which is dormant in the Christian, but activated when we try to please God outside the voice of the Holy Spirit causes us to fail every time that we attempt to serve God, overcome sin, or promote the agendas of our churches through our own means.
God allows us to be in this very, very painful catch 22 situation until we come to realize that only in the revealed presence of the Person of Christ, through our death to self, by the operation of the cross, are we set free from the law of sin and death, and it remains inactive in us.
Within the revealed person of Christ resides the law of the Spirit of life. As you can see, it is not about us doing, but about us becoming! It is not about us living, but about us dying. It’s not about perspiration but about revelation.
Ro 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
16 But if I do that which I do not desire to do, I admit the excellence of the Law,
17 and now it is no longer I that do these things, but the sin which has its home within me does them.
Once again the law of sin and death will be activated, and will remain in activity within us as believers, if we do not learn to walk in the Spirit by the death of our self-life, through the operation of the cross of Christ. We will never attain to a total victory over sin and deliverance from the oppression of the devil. Our victory lies in the revealed Person of Christ within us.
18 For I know that in me, that is, in my lower self, nothing good has its home; for while the will to do right is present with me, the power to carry it out is not.
19 For what I do is not the good thing that I desire to do; but the evil thing that I desire not to do, is what I constantly do.
20 But if I do that which I desire not to do, it can no longer be said that it is I who do it, but the sin which has its home within me does it.
21 I find therefore the law of my nature to be that when I desire to do what is right, evil is lying in ambush for me.
22 For in my inmost self all my sympathy is with the Law of God;
23 but I discover within me a different Law at war with the Law of my understanding, and leading me captive to the Law which is everywhere at work in my body—the Law of sin.
24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? {the body…: or, this body of death}
25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Our final deliverance comes through the absolute death of the self-life as discussed in our study of Romans six and the full revelation of the Person of Christ Jesus in us.
I want to leave you with the true meaning of the body of this death found in verse 24. Paul chose this expression and shows his understanding of the diseased self-life that must be put to total death so that we stop doing the things that we do not want to. God Bless you!
In verse twenty-four Paul gives a perfect description of the self-life. He calls it the body of this death. In the days of Paul one of the most horrible types of punishments inflicted on criminals was the following. A corpse was bound and tied to the body of the condemned fellow. The villain was forced to live out his existence as to his time of punishment with this corpse rotting, and decaying, bound, and on top of him.
24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? {the body…: or, this body of death}
This is called “the body of this death” and describes the depths and utter sickness of our sinful self-life, which keeps us in bondage at every point
Jose and Mary Alvarez 