WWUTT 1252 Now You Are Released from the Law? (Romans 7:4-6)

We have such a rebellious way in us, having been born with a sin nature, that whenever we hear the law presented to us, we want to do the opposite of what it says.

But in Christ, we want to do what it says when we understand the text. This is

When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We're back in our study in Romans chapter 7, and as with yesterday,

I'm going to start out here reading the first six verses of this chapter, Romans 7 verses 1 through 6.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. Or do you not know, brothers? For I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.

For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.

Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.

But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we may serve in the new way of the

Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. So yesterday we spent most of our time in those first three verses, and Paul begins with the statement that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.

As long as we're alive in this body, then the law is binding upon us.

But when you die and you go to be with the Lord in glory, there's no more law. There's nothing that you are living by or abiding by.

There's just the glory of God that you will dwell in forever. It will be the perfectness of his righteousness.

Now as you are right now, a Christian walking in this world, if you've repented of sin, you believe in Jesus Christ, you wear his righteousness now.

Like Jesus said to the church in Laodicea in Revelation chapter 3, I tell you to buy from me garments that are washed in white.

That's a reference to his righteousness. And we who are in Christ wear his righteousness as a garment.

And when God looks upon us, he doesn't see the sinful person that is worthy of the judgment of God, but he sees the righteousness of Christ.

And we are justified in his presence, washed clean and declared innocent.

We are received by God because we have gained access into the holy of holies through Jesus Christ, our savior.

So as a Christian, you have the righteousness of Christ now, and you must walk in it.

You must demonstrate the righteousness of God in your life. But the righteousness you have is not perfect for you have not been completely sanctified.

So it's not perfect in that sense. Your righteousness, your demonstration of that righteousness is not perfect.

We are aspiring toward holiness. We are pursuing holiness. Paul also in Philippians chapter 3,

I desire to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. And so we want that righteousness, and that's the way we live our lives, desiring the perfection of God in our lives.

So that righteousness isn't perfect, but we're being made perfect. When you are with God forever in glory, you are in the perfect.

You dwell in the perfect forever. There is no more growth and sanctification. You've reached the end of it.

It's just the glory of God forever and ever. Amen. There will be no more need for the law of God when we are in the glory of God.

But for now, you must be sanctified and you are sanctified by the word of God. Remember what

Jesus said to the father, his request in his high priestly prayer in John 17, verse 17, he says, sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. What word would that be? The Bible and all of it from Genesis one to Revelation 22, all of it is the word of God and our keeping of that word, our listening to the word, our obedience to the word.

This is our sanctification. Before we came to Christ, we were unable to follow that law in a way that was pleasing unto

God. As a matter of fact, as Paul says here in Romans seven, that the law just stirred us to rebellion was what it did because of the sinful self that we were.

But once we were transformed in Christ and we wear his righteousness, now we keep the law in such a way that is pleasing unto

God. And it is the hearing of his word and the doing of his word that is our sanctification.

This is still not a work of ours. It is the work of God in our lives from beginning to end, the work of justification, the work of sanctification, and ultimately the work of glorification.

All of this is the work of God in the life of a believer.

The word continues to guide us and train us as we are growing in that holiness, being shaped more like Christ.

Paul will say a little bit later on in Romans 15, four, whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the

God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

This is all in obedience to his word. It's an instruction. It's a command. It's the law of God. And by the hearing of the law and the doing of his word, we are sanctified.

We're being made holy. All of it's still the work of God. The presence of the

Holy Spirit in our hearts that makes us able to hear the law, understand it and do what it says, pleasing unto

God whom we serve to the praise of his glorious grace. So we're walking in that sanctification.

Now we get to heaven. We don't need the law anymore here on this earth. It's for our benefit.

Just consider the illustration that we looked at yesterday in Romans chapter seven, verses two and three, where Paul gives the illustration of marriage.

The law of marriage is binding on a person just as long as he lives. If a wife's husband dies, then she can go get remarried because she's no longer bound to the marriage obligations she had to her husband.

The law is no longer binding on them. That marriage is over. The husband has died. So she can get remarried to another man and that's not considered adultery.

But if she divorces the first husband and then goes and marries another man, and then she's committed adultery, goes and lives with another man, specifically the way

Paul puts it, because she wouldn't actually be married to the second guy. She would still be married to the first guy in the eyes of God, according to the law, but committing adultery with this second dude.

So the law is binding on a person only as long as they live. Consider that in our marriages as Christians, in our marriages, we're being sanctified.

If you're a Christian husband married to a Christian wife, then the two of you are encouraging one another in the word of God, praying together.

You are sanctifying each other as you do these things as, as you do your Christian walk together.

So in this way, the law of marriage, which God has given and is binding us together is sanctifying us.

It's for our benefit. But then when one of you dies, well, then for the person who has died, that law is over as far as the sanctification is concerned.

They're now with God in glory. The one who was left on this earth can get married again to another.

And now there is a new law, a new contract that is binding upon that person.

And even through this law, they are continuing that process of sanctification in their obedience and love and admiration for each other.

Anyway, I hope that that illustration is making sense there, how the law therefore sanctifies us or God sanctifies us through our obedience to the law.

Let's put it that way. It's not the law itself sanctifies, but it's rather the Holy Spirit working through us that we may live in accordance with God's word in a way that is pleasing and worshipful unto him.

And he receives our worship when we live our lives in such a way. That's Romans 12, 1 and 2 to present your bodies unto

God as holy and pleasing sacrifices living unto him. And this is your spiritual act of worship.

So then Paul gets to verse 4 here, Romans 7, 4, where he says, likewise, my brothers, you have also died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

That's all one verse there. That's verse 4. So remember what we were talking about back in chapter 6, where it says, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

Verse 11, you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

So we're no longer walking in sin, we're walking in Christ, therefore, we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ.

So using that very same thing that he said there in chapter 6, he says here in 7, 4, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another to him who has been raised from the dead.

So we're dead to sin and alive to Christ, but we're also dead to the law. You have died to the law through the body of Christ who kept the law perfectly.

And when he died as an atoning sacrifice for us, he was paying the penalty that we owed because we had transgressed the law.

So our transgressions, our sin against God has been covered in the death and blood of Jesus Christ.

So we are dead to sin and alive to Christ that we may commit our members to righteousness instead of unrighteousness, the argument that Paul made back in chapter 6.

But we've also died to the law. Why have we died to the law? Because our sinful passions were aroused by the law to bear fruit for death.

So you are dead to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another.

Now understand what we're saying here. We're not saying that the law has no application. That's not what Paul is saying either.

And he's going to clarify this argument a little bit later on when he's going to talk about how the law is good.

Romans 7, 12, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Verse 14, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin.

So when you were trying to keep the law in your flesh, that didn't work out.

In fact, it did not bring your sanctification, didn't bring your justification or your sanctification.

You did not gain salvation by attempting to obey the law in your flesh.

Instead, what happened there is you rebelled against it when you were trying in and of yourself to keep the law by your flesh and not by the spirit of God.

All that led to was disobedience. But now in Christ, you've been given his spirit that you may be awakened unto obedience.

And now you live to obey rather than living to disobey, right?

So you have died to the law. You've died to all of your attempts to try to keep the law by your flesh or even try to do good by your flesh.

It couldn't be done. It led you to rebellion. You just wanted to disobey it. You were also just extremely burdened by it.

You knew that there was nothing that you could do to ever be good enough. You would aspire to that. You would try and try for the rest of your life and never actually get there.

So all the law was going to lead you to was your death. You were going to be judged by this thing that you could not even keep.

But the law was something cold. It was outside of you. It was over there. It was this list of rules and regulations that you didn't even care for.

You had no affection for. But when you came to Christ and he poured his spirit within you, then the law became something spiritual.

It wasn't something outside of you. It became something that was written upon your heart and your desire to keep it is your desire to worship the

Lord. And this is one of our acts of worship to commit ourselves unto him and walk in his ways as he has commanded in his word.

It's not a burden for us. It is our joy to do these things that now you can read

Psalm 119, which we just recently finished going through. And you can love the law of God where previously you didn't.

You didn't want to keep it. But now you do because of what the spirit has put within you. We belong to another.

We don't belong to ourselves anymore. You're not trying to do this by yourself. You're not trying to attain a righteousness of your own, which was really no righteousness at all.

Now you belong to Christ and everything that you do is in honor and worship to him.

It's in his righteousness. It's in his spirit. So you've died to the law.

You've died to all of your fleshly attempts to keep this external thing that you didn't really have any affection for anyway.

And now through the body of Christ who has died for you, you belong to another.

You belong to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Remember, last week we were talking about righteousness and unrighteousness. I even referenced from Jesus in the

Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7, where he talks there about a good tree bearing good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit, right?

So when you're trying to keep the law by your flesh, when you're trying to do good by your flesh, trying to be a good person by your flesh, what you produce is rotten fruit.

It's just bad fruit. You're obviously producing something, but it isn't anything good. But when we come to Christ and we have his spirit dwelling within us, the demonstration of that, the proof that you may see and that others may see is that your actions, your behavior, your words, your speech, your commitments, your ambitions, your conduct, all of these things are now in submission to Christ.

You bear good fruit. You're growing in holiness. You're growing in love for one another. You're growing in love for God and his word in sound doctrine.

You are bearing fruit for righteousness. You're bearing fruit for God. It's not this rotten fruit that expires and is good to just be trampled upon or tossed into the heap, but rather you're bearing fruit for God, which leads to righteousness.

Verse five, for while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

So here we have the contrast of fruit. Now in Christ, we are bearing fruit for God, but when we were in our flesh, we were bearing fruit for death.

And notice again here, I've made this point earlier, but here's where we get to it in the text. When we're living in the flesh, our sinful passions are aroused by the law.

When you hear the law because of your sinful nature, which you received from Adam before the

Holy Spirit convicts your heart and transforms you into somebody else, takes out your heart of stone and gives you a soft heart.

As we read about in Ezekiel 36, before that happens, you, when you hear the law, you want to rebel against it.

You want to do the opposite of what the law says to you. I'll give you an example of this. You're walking through a park.

You see a park bench. There's a sign on the park bench. It says wet paint, do not touch immediately.

What do you want to do? You want to touch that paint, right? Yeah. That's the first thing you want to do.

And maybe you'll, maybe you excuse it, right? I'm just want to see. I'm just going to see if the pain is wet.

You may even reason in your mind, surely that paint isn't wet anymore. It's now dry. So you're going to go over and touch it and prove to yourself.

This paint isn't even wet anymore, but you're still rebelling. You're rebelling against the sign that says to you, don't touch.

When you see the commandment, you want to disobey it. Have you ever felt this way? Whenever you see a sign that says, keep off the grass, what do you want to do?

You want to go walk on that grass. You want to, you'll, you'll even like tiptoe up to it.

You'll walk on the side of the sidewalk that's closest to the grass. You kind of sweep your foot over.

See no one's stopping me. Oh, I didn't really touch the grass, so I'm not technically walking on it. I'm just showing you

I can stick my foot over there and not follow through with walking on the grass. Okay. That's your rebellious heart coming out, wanting to do that.

For me, it's pianos. Every time I see a piano that has a sign on it that says, do not play, what do

I want to do? I want to go over there and play it. I would not have even thought about going over there and playing on that piano until you put a sign on it that said, don't play it.

And now I want to go play it. So the law awakens sin in us. When we hear the law of God, when we hear commandments that are given to us, our rebellious way is saying,

Hey, I know better than this. I know what's good for me. That doesn't apply to me. That applies to somebody else.

You can't tell me what to do with any, uh, whatever kinds of reasoning or argumentation we may put against the command that is given to us.

And then we will go off and do the opposite. And so in our sinful nature, we, when we heard the law were awakened unto sin, the, the sinful passions that were in us were aroused by the law.

They were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. Another way that sin was awakened in us when we heard the law is that we became aware of it.

And Paul is going to make this point a little bit later on here in the chapter where he says, I didn't know that I was a covetor until I heard in the law, do not covet.

And then my sin became awakened to me and I was aware that I was a coveting person.

So that's another way that our sins become aroused by the law. These were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

The wages of sin is death, right? As we read there at the end of chapter six, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our

Lord. And Paul is putting that another way here. The sinful passions of our flesh were bearing fruit for death, but now we are released from the law.

We've died. We've died with Christ. I've crucified, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer

I who lives, but Christ who lives within me. So we've died being released from the law and having died to that which held us captive so that we may serve the new way of the spirit.

We've also died to that which held us captive, which was our sin, our sinful rebellion that was opposed to the law so that we may serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

So in the way of the spirit now, it's the law that has been written on our hearts. It's the passion and the desire to live in obedience unto

God. God tell me your ways so that I may worship you in obedience. That would be the attitude, the drive of your heart to live your life in such a way that you are obedient unto him, not ever falling into this antinomian idea, this greasy grace idea that I can just live however

I want and the grace of God covers me. If you're living in sinful rebellion, you're demonstrating that you're still enslaved to that sin and you haven't actually died to your sin and been made alive in Christ since you're still living in it.

But when you show your pursuit is righteousness and holiness, you show that you have been raised with Christ and it's no longer you who is alive, but Christ who lives within you.

The law no longer has binding on you. You will not be judged by it on the day of judgment, but now you want to live by it to the praise of his glorious grace.

Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and I pray that we would delight in reading your law and obeying your commandments.

For Jesus said to his disciples, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments.

And John wrote in first John, they will know that we are Christians by our love, the love that we have for one another because Christ has commanded us to love one another.

Let us love the law of God and desire to keep it day by day. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

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