What is the Law? (Romans 7)

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Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, well, welcome back to another episode of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, joined by my friend in sunny Florida, Bud.

How are you, Bud? I'm great, man. How are you doing? Good. I'm coming your way soon. Yeah.

I know. Thanks for the warning. I'm looking forward to the mask -free environment. Well, there's a prevalence of masks in certain quarters because not everyone is liberated from that in their own conscience.

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Ah, liberty. You know, on Apologetics Live, it's fun because Anthony Silvestro is saying how my spiritual transition game that I do where I take any conversation, transition it to the gospel.

He's like, you know, Andrew's gotten so good at that, he's now doing that with sponsorships and plugs. Oh, my.

That is true. Yeah, I guess. I guess if you have to be good at something, I guess that is not a bad thing, maybe.

No, no. So, all right. So today we want to talk, and this was provided, today's topic was provided by a listener.

So, for listeners, if you want something discussed, you could email us at info at striving for eternity dot org and get a hold of us there.

Let us know a topic. But the topic we were asked to discuss today is what exactly is the law in Romans 7?

That's the question. And so we're going to dig into this. Now, I will say for the audience, you have to understand something.

Bud and I have just been sitting before recording for about an hour or so discussing all the different things that are involved with the law here just in Romans 7.

And after an hour, we still haven't even touched the surface. So, this is something that we're going to say right up front.

We're not going to cover in complete depth because this is something that throughout the centuries people have been discussing, people have been looking at, trying to answer.

There are different uses of the law in the scriptures, okay? And this is something to recognize.

The law is used to refer to the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses.

That's called the law. So, you'll see sometimes even New Testament referred to as the law and the prophets or the law and the prophets and the writings.

That is how people would refer. So, sometimes the law could refer to the first five books.

The law could refer to all of scripture or just the Old Testament. But then there, we talk about things like the

Mosaic law, the commandments that were given, the 613 commandments that were given to Moses up in Sinai.

And now, here you start to see some different ways of breaking that down in covenant theology, covenantal circles, reformed theology.

You're going to see that law broken down, the Mosaic law, in three categories called the tripartite division.

And there you're going to have, it's going to be viewing it from the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law.

And so there, what they're going to do is take those 613 commands and say that they fit into one of those three categories.

Excuse me. Now, what you end up seeing as we look at that, there's, now,

I will say that I don't hold to the tripartite division, but would,

I wouldn't. I would say that I do, so. I see the distinction a little differently, and I don't know that I've seen this division laid out elsewhere, so maybe it's original me, but as I have found when

I read through the Puritans, I think something's original with me, and I read the Puritans and go, oh, yeah, they had that idea hundreds of years before me.

I'm not original. But I look at the law when it comes to those, the laws given throughout the

Bible, because we have more than just the laws given to Moses. And so I look at laws as universal, those laws that are true for every man, woman, child, all over the world, all throughout time.

Every human being, these laws apply to. Things like thou shalt not lie, right?

Lying, murder, things like that are universal for all people.

Then I think there's laws that were given specifically to individuals like the nation of Israel, or to Adam, or to Noah.

So I typically break the law down to the laws to Israel and the law to the church, but there were laws given before Israel, as I said,

Adam and Noah. And so you end up seeing that there's gonna be some distinctions there.

In fact, before we get to Romans 7, Bud and I were looking at this, and I wanted to go back to Genesis.

Anthony Svestro would be so happy to hear that. He loves the book of Genesis. When you look at Genesis, the very first command, and I've taught through Genesis, and I never picked up on this till Bud and I were talking beforehand.

The first command that we see, the first imperative that we see in the

Bible is Genesis 1 .22. And this is after God has created, in verse 21.

I'll start in 21 and then read 22 so that we have context. God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was good.

God blessed them saying, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth.

So there's three commands that we have. Be fruitful, multiply, and fill.

Those are the first commands, and they were given to sea creatures. And birds.

Well, the birds, it's interesting because it says, and let the birds multiply on earth, but it's not a command.

It's not an imperative. So it's an interesting note there. So, but the point is, this is before there were human beings.

This is day five. Yeah, yeah. So there was a law that was given by God before man.

That's an interesting thought that I hadn't thought of, but then I noticed this. The first command given to mankind is in verse 28.

So verse 27, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them. God blessed them. God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over everything that moves on the earth.

So again, we see that same three commands, fruitful, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.

But then for humans, we have this extra one to subdue and to rule. So that's the very first commandment that we have for mankind is be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and rule over it.

That's before Moses. In fact, we have a command that's given to Adam with eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We see that the tree's created and there's a command not to touch that.

I was waiting for Bud to pick up on that, but that's not what it says. I was pausing there, waiting.

I was flipping pages, no, it's 2 .16, yeah. Don't even touch it. Don't look at it.

Stop touching me. It's like kids in the backseat, you know. Get me by the window. And that's the thing,

Eve is the one who said we shouldn't even touch it. We don't know where that came from. Did it come from Adam, from herself, where?

But the command that we have from God to Adam was that he should not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Okay, and so it - But don't finish that, because for in the day that you eat, you will surely die.

Yes, and this is chapter two, verse 17. So what you have there is a command that was given.

Now, does that command apply to you and I? Well, we don't have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so it's not in our presence.

So in a sense, I guess we could argue, does that law apply to us? And this is one of the questions we're gonna ask.

The question, ultimately, that we're gonna have is does the law of God apply to Christians today?

And if so, how? We're gonna see there's plenty more commands, though, than what we call the

Mosaic law. Because I just gave you six commands in Genesis one and two that are not in the 613 commandments, okay?

We're familiar with the 10 commandments, but there's more than that. And so there's lots of debate on this subject.

So let's look at Romans chapter seven, but would you do us a favor?

Would you read all of Romans chapter seven for us? Yeah, let me switch books here so I can see better.

What translation are you gonna read out of? What would you prefer? I have a variety of options, but I normally go to NASB.

Oh, I was expecting that you were gonna read out of the Legacy Standard Bible. I would do that, but I've got my copy of it downstairs.

Ah, okay, I thought you had it right there. I was expecting that. I don't have my copy yet.

I'm waiting for the whole Bible to be. I could pull it up on the iPad, but let's just go with the NASB.

Okay, that sounds good. That's what I have in front of me. Yeah, that's a good one. So you want the whole chapter? Let's do the whole chapter. Are there any tough words in here that I'm gonna mispronounce?

I hope not. There's that three -letter word, L -A -W. It shows up a lot. Yeah, and it shows up a lot, which you and I didn't discuss before.

Sometimes it's lowercase, sometimes it's uppercase. There is some distinction there, so you can elucidate that later.

Okay, Romans chapter seven, starting verse one. Or do you not know, brethren, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives.

For the married woman is 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 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 that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man.

Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

While for while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at 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 serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting if the law had said, you shall not covet.

But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.

For apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died.

And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me.

For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Therefore, did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be.

Rather, it was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin by affecting my death through that which is good so that through the commandment, sin would become utterly sinful.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold into bondage to sin.

For what I am doing, I do not understand. For I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing

I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not wanna do, I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good.

So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh, for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

For the good that I want, I do not, but I practice the very evil I do not want.

But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

For I joyfully concur with the law of God in my inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, on the one hand, I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh, the law of sin.

All right, so there's a lot here. As you see, the law shows up several times.

So, Bud, you already alluded to the fact that there is sometimes it's the law and it's capitalized or sometimes it's law and it's not capitalized.

The writers of the NASB are making a distinction there. What do you see as that significance there, my friend?

I think that is significant because I think that you're talking about something maybe perhaps that we discussed earlier, which was the prevalence of the law that began in the garden with regards to its final codification at Sinai in the two tablets.

So, Paul is sort of bringing both of those things together. There is this universal law and then certainly there is what we call the 10

Commandments codified that represent that in just enormous ways, tons of implications really for all of life and godliness as Peter would tell us.

And one thing that we talked about to bring up now is the fact that people sometimes refer to the law and we've already discussed there's lots of different meanings for it.

But when we talk about the law, sometimes people think of individual instances.

In other words, adultery, right? An act of adultery.

That's an individual instance. And yet, there's something behind that.

There's the pride that brought about that sin. This is the difference. And for some, this may be new to hear, but when people are sharing the gospel, they'll say, you need to turn from your sins.

Don't say that, that's actually heresy. It's turn from your sin, singular.

Why? What's the difference there? Turning from sins is a work. That's a workspace thing.

Stop doing these sins, stop doing adultery, stop lying, stop stealing, then do something else, right?

If that's what we repent of, sins, then what ends up happening is we're doing works.

We're gonna stop doing certain things and do other things. Where really what's behind it is the idea that we turn from sin, we repent of sin, trusting ourself, that pride of selfishness.

That's what we turn. We turn from that, from self to Christ. And we have the same thing here with the law, because there's a law that's the individual acts that we do, and then there's what's behind the law.

Now, you have, I think Steve Lawson commenting on Calvin, several uses of the law.

What does Steve Lawson say as far as he gives three things, how Calvin refers to the uses of the law, and then he added a fourth.

Yeah, so, and this is from the series, the long going series that Lawson has been doing,

I think on Thursday mornings, but I printed out the transcript from the particular one on Romans 7, and he says, coming out of the

Reformation, John Calvin articulated three specific uses of the law. The first, quote, the first was to give the knowledge of sin.

The second use of the law was to establish law and order in society. The third use of the law was to guide believers in Christian living.

So those are the three that he cited, that Calvin articulated, give the knowledge of sin, establish law and order in society, and as a guide for believers in Christian living.

And Lawson, as I told you, added a fourth use, which he calls giving the knowledge of God. Now, and the thing

I struggle with was we look at Romans chapter seven is, I could see all four of those in play here.

Well, I think you do. Yeah, I would agree. I think you do. And I think this is where we do see something that why

I think there's so much struggle is because sometimes I think we try to create these categories and divisions that may not necessarily always be there in Scripture.

And so we're trying to be maybe more precise than God's word allows.

Because remember, when we're talking, Calvin came up with his three, Lawson added another, we come up with those uses of the law.

Some of that we see in Scripture, some of it we're gonna see here, because the Scriptures are gonna say that specifically.

Verse seven of chapter seven, he says, "'I would not have come to know sin except through the law.'"

Well, that gives us a use of the law, right? That shows us the purpose. Sometimes this is humans trying to come up with a way to understand things, not saying it's not biblical, just saying that it's not in the

Bible. There's a distinction there, right? The Trinity is biblical, but the word

Trinity isn't in the Bible. The definition of the Trinity is not in the Bible, but the principle is.

And so there's principles of the law that we kind of struggle with. And that's why sometimes there's lots of discussion and debate on some of these things, because it's not crystal clear.

We think about the tripart division of the law, ceremonial, civil, moral.

Well, I've yet to see, maybe someone's done this, but I haven't seen it, but I've yet to see anyone take the 613 commandments and break them up that way.

Now, one thing you'd say is, well, which ones do these all fit under? Well, that's a human invention.

To explain those doesn't mean it's unbiblical, not necessarily. The struggle that we have, though, in Romans 7, trying to figure out the laws, the fact that when

Paul wrote this, he did not add chapter seven. In other words, this was all one thing, no verse breaks.

A continuous document. Yeah, there were no breaks here. So really, the argument of this starts previously in chapter six.

Right. He starts in verse six. He says, in verse 14, for sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

What then? Shall we sin because we're not under law, but under grace?

May it never be. So there's the start of it. The start of it is he's making an argument to them, and he's basically saying that we're not under law, but under grace.

So he's making the distinction. There's law and there's grace. There's those two things.

And we're not under one, but we're under the other. Chapter seven is all explaining this, okay?

Because chapter seven, he's gonna go to explain what we're under, right?

So that's why he gets into, and I'd encourage you to just take a look, read chapter seven, and just, you know, just underline all the times the word law shows up, and you're gonna see it's flooded throughout this chapter.

Everywhere. It's everywhere. But I think you're right. I think you gotta go to six and understand he's making an argument, and he's going deeper and deeper with the argument, but 614, for sin shall not be master over you.

You're not under law, but under grace. This is the premise statement, and he's arguing from that, and that's what you see exposed in seven, and I think by the time you get to actually eight, one,

I think you see his summary. Here's the effect. Yeah, and when we say master, right?

Sin shall not be master over you. Even that, you have to go back to chapter five.

Five, right. Because in chapter five, he makes the argument that we're enslaved to sin.

Yeah. So that's the idea. We were, sin was our master, but now

Christ is our master. There was a change of allegiance, and with the change of allegiance comes the change of law to grace.

Okay. Well, I would say, yeah, I would just augment what you said or maybe amplify what you said.

The change in the law is actually not in the law, in the corpus of the law.

It's in the effect of the law. It has two different implications, one for the regenerate, and one for the new man in Christ, the regenerate.

Because the law doesn't go away. Right. Well, let's dig into that, right? He illustrates this in chapter seven with an illustration of a married woman, right?

In verse two, for the married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he is living.

But if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then while her husband is living, she is joined to another man.

She can be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law so that it is not adulterous.

So she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man. Yeah. So here you have a case of this law that she was bound to while the husband was alive, she's freed from when he dies.

Now, is the law still in effect? Yes. Absolutely. But it applies differently for her because her circumstances ended up changing.

The law said it's adultery for her to be with another man while her husband's alive. But once he's dead, she's free from that.

Why? Not because the law changed, but because her status changed.

Yeah. The law is not abrogated because your condition changes. Correct. And so we end up seeing that the illustration helps us to understand what he's saying.

There was a change of allegiance from sin to Christ, from being under the law to being under grace.

So when we look at this law, it is not a bunch of rules. That's the thing

I want to make clear. People will often, when they see law, just think it's the 613 laws, the commandments that were given in the

Mosaic law, these rules to follow. But I think it's greater than that. You see that even with the translators of the

NASB that they've capitalized law in some of these places. I think you see it too with Christ and his confrontation with the

Pharisees. When he's explaining adultery, what do you think adultery is? Which fits with the context of what

Paul is giving as an example here. Well, adultery is not just the discreet act. It's actually more than that.

Christ took that commandment and expanded it to draw you to the sinfulness of your lusting in your heart.

So if you look on a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery. You may not have committed the discreet external act, but the sinfulness that you are in your inner man, unregenerate, causes you to commit adultery.

So Christ expands the law. He doesn't abrogate it. Now, one thing that we could end up seeing here, bud, is the case with the woman, whether she's married and with her husband.

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So, as we look at this, all right, we have this case with the law that it says, therefore my brethren, this is verse four, therefore my brethren, you were also made to die to the law.

That sounds interesting. We were made to die to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.

So, an interesting thing, there's so many people that talk about the law. Now, there are, let me give a category, if you ever hear this term used, folks, antinomian.

What is antinomian? It means against the law. Now, there are some people that profess the name of Christ that would say that they are, that with this passage, and specifically chapter 614 is teaching, is that we are no longer under the law.

The law has no obligation for us to bother with that, and therefore we're free to do whatever we want.

They're against the law. They don't believe that there's any law for the Christian. Yeah, anti -law.

And we would not see that. Now, they would use this to argue, but look here, we were made to be dead to the law.

We're under grace. Now, you could see how that can be an easy argument that's made.

However, if you keep reading through Romans 7, he's talking about that there is a law for the

Christian, and the law has a purpose. But I do find it interesting that it says that we were actually made to die to the law.

So we were not created to have the law as our master, but grace.

We were elect. I said that, the evil E word. I was thinking elect.

We were elect to grace, but we were under the law for a period.

But this says that we were made to die to that law through Christ to live to another.

Then we might join to another. So the idea here is not that we're free to do whatever. This isn't saying that we switch masters from sin to self.

That's not what it says. The allegiance went from law to grace. The master went from sin to Christ.

That's the change. So it's not that we'd be against the law.

We're without law. No, there is law. It's the law of Christ that reigns.

Right. The other side of that, the other end of that spectrum, you got antinomianism on one end, and the other is legalism, where it is all about obedience.

It is the sins. I don't do these discrete external acts, and therefore

I'm righteous by the fact I've worked and not done these things. So you've got the extreme legalism, and of course that's what is exemplified in the

Gospels, particularly with Christ and his interactions with the Pharisees. Yeah, and this is the thing that we have to see.

What people make the mistake, and this is, I guess, where sometimes having chapter breaks and verses in our

Bible can hurt us, because this was never meant to be read as just chapter seven by itself.

Wait, the number seven on my Bible here is not inspired? No. Oh, bummer.

You should get the Reader's Bible. What is it, the ESV Reader's Bible, I think that's what it's called, which

I encourage you to get that. It's basically a Bible without chapter breaks or verse numbers, and so you read it the way it was meant to be read, as a whole letter.

But then you need a bookmark. No, just finish the whole book. I lose my place.

Just sit for one extended period and read the whole book. So what we end up seeing is that there's a context here, and that context is what he's answering.

He's flowing through a way of arguing, and he's answering this allegiance we have from sin to Christ, being a change from obligation to the law to an obligation of grace.

And then he uses an illustration of a married woman. The law still exists, but her obligation to that law changed.

Why? Where if she does one act, the act doesn't change.

She is joined to another man. In one case, it's sin.

In another case, it's not. What was the difference? The death of her husband. Well, we have the same thing when we switch from the law to grace or from sin to Christ.

There's a change in our obligation. And so the effect of the law for the

Christian changes. And I think that's strongest seen here in the verse I just read in verse four.

We were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, that we might be joined to another.

What does it mean to be joined to another? It's exactly what he just said in verse three with the woman, whether it's adultery or not.

And that you might be joined to another, to him who raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.

So this is providing the purpose as well. And elsewhere in Paul's writings, he describes the marriage as a mysterious kind of example of our union with Christ.

He uses that metaphor to point to who we are in Christ, our relationship and union with Christ.

So he's doing the same thing there. Yeah, and as we continue to look on, again, so he makes illustration, he makes a point, this is the way he does this.

And he makes another illustration. We have to recognize when he's using illustrations for things, here he's gonna do this again.

You see that he's gonna say in verse five, for while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which are aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit.

But now we have been released from the law, having died to that which we were bound so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

Now notice what he's saying here. He's still working off that illustration of the woman being bound.

She's bound to a husband, the husband dies, she's released to the husband. Here, we're released from the law because we became a

Christian, because at that point we become a Christian as Galatians two would say, we died to self.

That's the picture there. So he's saying here that we have been released from the law having died to that which we were bound.

What were we bound? We were bound to that old letter of the law, those rules that we had to keep and that we never could.

Now we serve the newness of spirit. So you're seeing that in each of these, I'm trying to point this out and maybe

I'm beating a dead horse, but if I am, I'm doing it on purpose so that you see the repetition that he is using throughout this from old to new.

That's this whole argument he's making. It's the old and new. Old was law, sin, new is grace and Christ.

Old was the oldness of the letter, new is the newness of the spirit. You see, it's a pattern that he's laying out over and over again.

All right. Now we get into some interesting things after this because, so I think we're going to take a little detour and then come back for a moment.

But because he says here, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be.

Now that's actually the strongest way he could say no. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting if the law had not told me you should not covet.

Now in verse seven, we have a change. Now he's using, I believe, another illustration here that starts in verse seven.

And this is where we're going to have some distinction because there's two different main views of Romans seven with what

Paul is going to say from basically verse seven, he starts, and he's going to continue down for most of the rest of this chapter.

Especially because what you see as we get down further, he's going to say that in verse 23, well, actually even before that, he's going to say in verse 20, but I am doing the very thing

I don't want. I no longer do the, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin dwells in me.

Oh, sorry, verse 19 is where I want to start. No wonder it didn't sound right. Verse 18,

I'll start it there. For I know nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.

And then later on, he talks about in verse 23, but I see a different law in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind.

So what a lot of people will look at is they will look at verse 19, for the good that I want,

I do not do, but the practice, the very evil that I do not want. This is what many of us experience in our sanctification.

In our sanctification, we experience this idea of doing things that we know are wrong, and yet we do them, we don't want to do them.

And doing things that we, the things we know we should do and want to do, we don't do. That's part of the sanctification process.

Now, you're gonna see that there are, this passage in Romans 7 is used this way by,

I'd say the majority, would that be fair, Bud? Say the majority of Christians, of Christian thinkers would say that this is to deal with, well, even the

New American Standard has the title above verse 14, at least in my

New American Standard 1995 update, it titles this part,

The Conflict of Two Natures. So right there, you have the idea that it is, at least they're gonna argue it's sanctification.

But there is another view that people hold to.

That is the view that this is regeneration. The fact that what

Paul is doing here is talking about how he got saved, about his own regeneration.

That is something that is another view. Now, Bud, I always think, whenever I think about this,

I always think there's a funny story. So you have two different views of Romans 7.

Sanctification, meaning it's the Christian's life, or regeneration, meaning this is

Paul's salvation. I remember a conference, but I don't know if you know the name

Fred Zaspel, maybe someone in the audience, you've heard him. He's written, he literally, we could say, wrote the book on New Covenant theology, because I think his was the first book on the subject.

So he's written a great masterpiece on B .B. Warfield, which is what his doctrinal dissertation was on.

But he was at a conference. Now, Fred Zaspel holds to the position that this is regeneration.

It's Paul's conversion story. And a friend of his, John Reisinger, if you're familiar with New Covenant theology, you know that name.

He had a friend who was coming to the conference, and someone that Fred Zaspel didn't know.

And so John Reisinger did a setup, and this guy was willing to play along.

So as Fred Zaspel got up to start preaching on Romans 7, this friend of John's stands up and says, the

Lord woke me up at 11 o 'clock last night to come to this conference and say that John Reisinger's view of Romans 7 is correct, that it's the sanctification.

Now, you have to know Fred. Fred is really quick thinking, all right? Without missing a beat,

Fred just starts laughing. He says, that's really funny, because the Lord woke me at 11 .15 to say, I'm sending to you a false teacher.

It was just to see that, like how quick he was with that. It was just great. But this is the struggle that some have.

Now, why - That's a fruit of the spirit, I think, too. I think that's a spiritual gift, wittiness on the spur.

But can he transition that to a MyPillow commercial? Now, that - I don't know. I don't know about that. That takes skill.

All right, so what we end up seeing, though, is the reason that this is not talking about sanctification, but regeneration.

Oh, I wish you guys could see Bud's eyes right there. We've been talking about this for two days, and I've not given my position away yet.

Because starting in verse seven, the tense of this changes. It goes from present tense to past tense.

Now, you had something from Dr. Martyn Lloyd -Jones,

I believe, on this. Did, yeah, he says, yeah, he takes the point, he takes the position that it is speaking about regeneration.

I don't know that he necessarily ties it to Paul sort of giving a testimony of his own regeneration, but he is saying that it speaks to the unregenerate man.

And in fact, quoting him from his Romans commentary, Lloyd -Jones says, what sort of man is

Paul describing, therefore? He is describing a man who is experiencing an intense conviction of sin, a man who has been given to see by the

Spirit the holiness of the law, and he feels utterly condemned. He is aware of his weakness for the first time and his complete failure, but he does not know anymore.

He's trying to keep the law in his own strength, and he finds that he cannot. He therefore feels condemned.

He is under conviction. He does not know, he does not understand the truth about the gospel, about salvation in and through the

Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the reason that I think that he's accurate there, now, he's taking it because he's looking at the context,

I believe. The context, as we've seen, is about this change in obligation from law to grace, from sin to Christ, from the letter of the law to the spirit of the law.

You see that over and over and over. This is all dealing with the context of conversion.

So, I think that it's Paul speaking of his conversion as an illustration because the tense of the verbs change in verse seven, and they go to past tense.

I once was alive, right? So, he's talking about things that happened in the past, but the law, and I think he's using this as an illustration for us at conversion, this is what happens.

This is what you see him laying out throughout. It started in chapter six, verse 14, and he's been working it through, this change of allegiance.

And that change of allegiance doesn't fit with sanctification as much as it does regeneration.

Now, you say, wait a minute, Andrew, Andrew, are you telling me that what I experience isn't what this is speaking of?

Well, I'm gonna say this, what you experience in that struggle, this may sound like that, but we have to be, we wanna make sure that we're accurate to what scripture is actually saying in that text.

There is a better text to use for that struggle we have with the flesh in our sanctification, and that would be 1

Peter 2 .11, which says, beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

That describes it. The fleshly lust wars against the soul. That is the sanctification process.

That verse could be used for this, but the thing I would caution, and the thing

I think many do is they read a passage, and because this so, we so identify it with our experience, sometimes we allow our experience to influence our interpretation of scripture.

So when we look at this, when we break this down, I think what, how I see this,

I agree with Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones that this is dealing with regeneration because it fits with the context.

The immediate context is this idea of the, what's the law doing here? The law that he's using, and you'll see that in this, verses seven, okay, down to, let's see, verse 16, the law is capitalized in each one of these.

So this is not those individual laws. This is that greater law that I'm saying we repent from, that sin nature, that pride.

It's different than those individual sins. Well, this is the greater law, the law that's behind it.

And so this is the thing where the allegiance changes. We don't serve law anymore, we serve

Christ. That change occurs in regeneration. And so I think it fits with the context.

I think it's Paul giving an illustration from his personal life in his regeneration because he goes, he changes the tense to the past tense.

All right, so those would be the arguments why I would say that.

And I think that the reason it's a struggle for many is because, look, let's be honest, you read verse 17 and following there, that is, especially verse 19, that is what we experience.

We don't do the things we wanna do and we do the things we don't wanna do. We understand that experience, but we don't wanna take this passage and apply it to sanctification if that wasn't its purpose.

So we wanna make sure we apply it properly. I would argue that this is regeneration. Bud is probably scratching his head right now trying to figure it out.

I'm astounded to finally find a point on which you disagree with MacArthur. Oh, there's several, yes.

Yeah, and there are, and we need to back up and discuss this a little bit, I think.

This is an orthodox position that you're proposing. It's certainly consistent with orthodox interpretation and hermeneutics, but also guys like MacArthur, Lawson, who is gonna take the opposite position, that this is talking about the spiritual struggle of a believer dealing with sin.

He's a new creation, but he's still fleshly. So you see implications of mortification of sin.

In this text, and it is consistent with our Christian experience.

It would be wrong to take my experience and read into it. Certainly that's wrong, but I think deducing from the text, this is consistent with what

I experienced and what you experienced. So there is that side of the argument. Both of these are orthodox understandings.

I don't know that, and I haven't really read anyone that says this, and I read a pretty good bit.

I don't know that both of these positions are antithetical.

I don't think it's erroneous to say, yeah, this definitely is the convicting work of the law in the life of an unregenerate person, but it is also the sanctifying effect of the law in a regenerate person.

You do have this struggle. So I don't know that they're competitive, but they're both orthodox, so we're not.

There are some who will say that both are in play. And I think what it is is really,

I think the reason people look at this with sanctification is because of verse 19 and what they experience.

But when I look at the text and try to ignore my own presuppositions and just look at the text in its context and the word usage, that's how we interpret,

I come to the conclusion that this is regeneration. So - No, and that's certainly orthodox, so don't, we're not at fist cups here on this position.

That's good, because I'd hate to be beaten up by you next week when I see you. But maybe if I had a pillow to block it, it would, from my pillow, it would.

All right, so now I will say this though, bud. If you were looking as I am in your

Logos Bible software and you just clicked on the word law, you'd be able to see that it appears very often because it would highlight all the usage of law.

In fact, one that you might have missed in the New American Standard, in verse 21, it says,

I find then the principle. And that word principle is the same word for law.

Huh. And so I just click on one word, and you know what? If you don't have Logos, you could get it.

And we would even give you five free books. And they sponsor this show.

And with that, and not only do you get right now, as of today, they are still running a 15 % off special on their packages.

So if you want to upgrade to a larger package, if you have an older version of Logos and you want to get

Logos 9, you can go to our link at bit .ly,

bit .ly slash S -F -E Logos. That's S -F -E Logos.

We'll have it in the show notes as well. But if you decide to get Logos, we will give you a choice of books you can choose from for five free books.

It not only gets you five free books and great Bible software, it also helps to support this show and ministry.

So if you enjoy studying the Bible, that is a good tool to have because you'd be able to see very quickly how many times this word appears, the word law in this chapter.

What are you laughing? That was really, I don't want to use the word slick because it might bring up connotations of other dudes.

Like a match slick? That was a slick maneuver. You know,

I'm just always working on the transition game. You know, I just. I am too, oh

Maranatha, please. So let's, yeah, and this is going to be a bad way to try to say that we'll conclude because this will have us going on for quite a while.

Uh -oh. Why don't, if you would, could you read, you had the 1689

Baptist Confession of Faith. If you could read chapter 19, it's just seven paragraphs there, but this is just to help people understand when we speak of the law, this will give an overview from one of the confessional statements.

And this, by the way, is not very different from what the Westminster Confession of Faith says as well on this subject.

They're very similar. Almost verbatim, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, this is a baptized version of the

Westminster Confession basically, you know, just they threw it in water and. They corrected some, you know.

I mean, we're always correcting, always reforming, right? Semper referenda, that's always what we do.

It's just, you guys stopped when it came to dispensationalism. You should have kept reforming. Oh, well, okay, we're not going there.

We're not going there. Yet again, two orthodox positions that can be vigorously and lovingly debated, nevertheless.

Yeah, so let's look at the law of God from the Baptist Confession of Faith. Okay, yeah, chapter 19.

Paragraph one, God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling and threatened death upon the breach of it and endued him with power and ability to keep it.

Paragraph two, the same law that was written, that was first written in the heart of man continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall and was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai in 10 commandments and written in two tables, the first four containing our duty towards God and the other six, our duty to man.

Paragraph three, besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel ceremonial laws containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring

Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits, and partly holding forth diverse instructions of moral duties, all which ceremonial laws being appointed only to the time of the

Reformation are by Jesus Christ, the true Messiah and only lawgiver who was furnished with power from the

Father for that end abrogated and taken away. Paragraph four, to them, he also gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any now by virtue of that institution, their general equity only being of moral use.

Paragraph five, the moral law doth forever bind all as well as justified persons as others to the obedience thereof.

And that not only in regard to the matter contained in it, but also in respect to the authority of God the creator who gave it, neither doth

Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.

Paragraph six, although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works to be thereby justified or condemned, yet it is of great use to them as well as to others in that as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly.

Discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature's hearts and lives, so as examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of humiliation for and hatred against sin, together with a clear sight of the need they have of Christ and the perfection of his obedience.

It is likewise of use to regenerate, to restrain their corruption, to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions in that it forbids sin.

And the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse and unalloyed rigor thereof.

The promises of it likewise show them God's approbation of obedience and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof, though not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works.

So as man's doing good and refraining from evil for the law encourages to the one and deter from the other is no evidence of his being under the law and not under grace.

And then concluding paragraph seven, neither are the aforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do sweetly comply with it, the spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully, which the will of God revealed in the law requireth to be done.

So it's a mouthful. That's a mouthful, and it's good to go back and look at this, folks, because it really does cover a lot of what we were saying is with the law.

And one of the things that you see is as we are looking through this specifically chapter seven with the law, we wanted to highlight the fact that here in the

Baptist Confession, it's good to have that overview. You see it covering really the overview of everything that we could go on for another several hours and discuss, but what you end up having here is

I believe that in Romans seven, this law being used, and it's being used a couple different ways, but it's specifically the focus of it goes back to chapter six, verse 14, in this idea that we have of where's our obligation?

Who are we serving? Are we under the master of law or under the master of grace?

That's the question. That's what he's trying to answer in all of chapter seven. So we see that the law helps us to see that it's no longer, well, it helps us to see our sin to come to Christ.

And that way, what we're doing is we're coming to Christ to live, right? Why? Because we died to the law, we live to Christ.

And that's what we end up seeing here. And that's precisely what he closes that chapter, well, it wasn't his chapter, but how it's been broken up.

That's how he closes in verse 24 and 25. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. On the one hand,

I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other with my flesh, the law of sin. So you see that the law is not abrogated.

It's what is the effect of the law and your condition either is unregenerate and it's condemnation or it's regenerate and it's obedience and fulfillment in life.

So this is, and we're really touching the surface. Will you agree there, Bud? Yeah, yeah.

Because there were topics we discussed before the show that we never even got to. We haven't even gotten to. Yeah, I mean, this is a large topic and you can spend a lot of time digging into the uses of the law, how it's meant.

Wow, in different passages, it's gonna mean different things. Within this chapter, Romans chapter seven, it has different purposes, different meanings.

And now it's signified different with the capital and lowercase in the New American Standard. But even within this chapter, we're seeing that it has different, the same word is used different ways.

Sometimes to refer to specific acts such as adultery, and then others as the overarching where obedience is to.

But the one thing to realize is, does the law of God apply to Christians? Yes, but it's the law of Christ now that we have.

We're not under the law in the same way because the question we asked at the beginning, does the law of God apply to Christians?

And if so, how? Well, the how is that we're not under the obligation of the law in obedience of the law.

We now obey Christ. And that is what you saw throughout this used several times.

As we saw, chapter six, verse 14, not under law, but under grace.

You saw that dichotomy there. Then you saw it again with the illustration of the wife, the husband's alive or dead, same thing.

You have the fact that we're either, she's free from the law.

Well, it says that we're free from the law, the letter of the law to the newness of the spirit.

You're seeing it over and over that what it's talking about is this concept that we are changed in our obligation.

So do we still obey law? Well, yes. Not the Old Testament law, the way some will do it.

Some will try to keep that Old Testament law still keeping kosher, keeping the

Sabbath, things like that. We're not under that law that was there for obligation for us to live perfectly under.

And then when we couldn't live perfectly, that's when it revealed in us that we needed a savior.

But now that we have that savior, now that we've been regenerated, we don't go and we're not obligated to that law, lowercase

L, but the law, capital L. We're obligated to the law of Christ, to grace.

And that's our obligation. We have a master. It's Christ or it's sin.

And so we as Christians have our master of Christ and we must serve that master. Anything else you wanna finish up on, bud?

No, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Paul says it right there. Yeah.

And by the way, that's when he gets back into the present tense right there. And all of that, you said this earlier, but let's conclude with this.

All of it, as you said, really is concluded in chapter eight, verse one. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

If you are in Christ, there is now, present tense, no more condemnation.

There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ. And that's a great way to end this episode.

And with that, bud? Yes, sir. That's a wrap. At Novavax, we wanna make sure you have all the facts.

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