Romans 7:1-6

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But we're in chapter 7. We'll be going through verses 1 through 6, but I'm going to start reading all the way back in Romans 6, verses 15 through 23, because as wonderful as our chapter and chapter breaks, verse numbering is, they're not originally in the text.
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This is one long letter with no chapters, so we have to remember to read it that way.
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They're wonderful to have for study, but often we forget that Paul is reiterating something from the previous chapter, and that is what he's doing here at the beginning of chapter 7.
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Starting in chapter 6, starting in verse 15, what then?
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Are we to sin because we are not under the law? We are not under law but under grace by no means.
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Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, either sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness.
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But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
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I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.
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For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.
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For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you now are ashamed?
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For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification, and it's in eternal life.
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For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. Paul continues his analogies, or in human terms because of our natural limitations, he continues at the beginning of chapter 7 with a different analogy, starting in verse 1.
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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.
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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.
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Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.
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But if her husband dies, she is free from the law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.
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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.
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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.
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But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the
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Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. As I said, in chapter 6,
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Paul uses the analogy of slavery, slave to master, so that we can further understand our relationship with Christ, our justification, who we were before and who we are now, and now in this section, he has come to a new analogy, that of a woman in marriage.
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Why a woman in marriage? Because the church is the bride of Christ, not the husband.
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It would be a different analogy if we were to be the husband. That would be heresy.
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Try as a lot of false churches might, the church is the bride, not the husband.
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Verse 1, to repeat it, Where 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.
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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.
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When a man and a woman come together in marriage, they enter into a covenant with each other and with God.
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Just as a reminder, marriage is created by God.
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It's not a human concept. It's not even congruent with our natural tendencies and our natural sinful flesh.
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This is apparent in our culture. The first marriage looked like this,
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Genesis chapter 2, verses 21 through 25. So the
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Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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Then the man said, This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
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And the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. Now earlier in chapter 2,
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God creates the animals and everything that God has created up until that point
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God has said is good, which means perfect. Biblically, God's standard of good is his perfection.
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So when he says something is good, he means it's perfect. Until he comes to Adam and he says,
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It is not good for the man to be alone. So he gives him a wife.
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Notice, and he creates the woman from the rib of the man, not from the dust.
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Every other living thing on the face of the planet is made from dust, comes from the earth, except for her.
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She comes from a rib or a side taken from the man, and she is given to the man as a helper, as a gift, as a blessing, but not given as property, given to Adam as his responsibility.
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He's a helper so that she can help him, but also under his leadership.
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He's to lead her and protect her. But this is the establishment of marriage.
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This is the first marriage, and since God created it, he gets to define it. So all of those other things that our culture wants to say is marriage aren't, because they're not what
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God says they are. It is another attempt of sinful man to try and redefine what
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God says is the truth. We're given a plethora of information in Scripture about marriage, what marriage is, what marriage looks like, what it actually is.
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One of the other places in Scripture that we're given this information is
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Ephesians 5, and this may sound ridiculous, why I'm going through all of these things, because we're in chapter 7 of Romans, and why am
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I talking about marriage, but I'm talking about it so that you know exactly what that thing is, because how am
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I supposed to explain an analogy of marriage in regards to salvation if I don't first explain what marriage is?
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So it's a bit of a long aside here to explain this, but bear with me. In Ephesians 5, chapter 22, or I'm sorry,
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Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 through 23, which is where it actually talks about marriage, it says,
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Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. This sounds familiar, like we read it just a little bit ago from Peter.
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For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its
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Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
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Husbands, don't forget to read that part. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
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In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
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He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
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This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
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However, let each of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
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So it is a husband's responsibility to love his wife as Christ loved the church. I want to point out for a moment, while I have the opportunity, that the leadership that Scripture calls us to in marriage as husbands, as potential husbands, is called servant leadership.
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Not passive aggressiveness, not laziness, not authoritarianism, but the same servant leadership that Christ displayed for his bride, the church.
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The reason that a woman should submit to her husband is because she can trust him with both her spiritual and physical well -being.
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Christ is our teacher, our protector, and husbands must endeavor to emulate him in every aspect regarding how we treat our wives.
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And while we're on this subject, please, if you know of any place in Scripture where it says that a husband is to allow the church to take over the responsibility, please let me know that the responsibility of a wife's spiritual well -being is the woman's group at the church.
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We don't have one of those. Or where it says that wives should be viewed as property to be domineered.
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While it is the purpose of the church to help all grow in Christ, for us to come together as saints,
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Scripture makes it very clear that it is a husband's responsibility to lead and protect his wife.
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There's a large portion of the church that says that they shouldn't. This is the church's job, and we'll provide you with every opportunity to shirk that responsibility.
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And because the husbands are lazy, the wives run the church. There's another large portion that is growing today that teaches that women should be subjugated, that they should have no opinion, they should not think anything other than what their husbands tell them to.
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Neither of these views is congruent with Scripture. As I said before, it is a husband's sole responsibility to protect his wife physically and spiritually, and assure that physically and spiritually he is taken care of.
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He is to teach her, take care of her in all manner of things, and should that mean that someday he is to die for that, for her, then that is what you're supposed to do.
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Love her as Christ loved the church. Not domineer her.
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Christ never once has domineered the church. The servant leadership.
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Marriage is also given to us as a glimpse, a type, a fuzzy image of the church's relationship with Christ, the
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Bride of Christ. One of the reasons I wanted to take a many among us who want to get married, and we also know that a lot of people today didn't have biblical marriage modeled for them just in general across the culture.
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It is a difficult thing to come by because we are so bad, even as believers, at doing it.
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So I would like to add a quote to this, Joel Beakey, as an example of what it looked like in a
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Puritan home. In his book, Parenting by God's Promises, he takes a minute to address marriage in a
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Puritan setting. If a husband and wife disagree on a matter, they would talk over the issue until they came to a mutually acceptable solution.
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In the rare case when a settlement to an argument could not be reached, it was the wife's duty to submit to her husband's authority in the matter.
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Of course, at times a Puritan husband might defer to his wife's opinion, especially if he was persuaded by her reasoning, or if she felt more strongly about a particular matter than he did.
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As long as her solution was biblical, a husband could, with good conscience, lead according to her desire rather than his own.
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In other words, the fact that the Puritans advocated strong male leadership did not mean a
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Puritan husband could simply have it his way. A wise husband, out of respect for his wife's intelligence, good sense, and practical experience, frequently deferred to her.
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Husbands and wives work together as a team as they should even today.
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Now that we have this out of the way, once married, the man promises to be a husband.
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The woman promises to be a wife. This is the covenant, and it is binding until death.
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Paul is using the analogy of marriage here to, again, stress our relationship to sin and to Christ.
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What we were versus what we are now, or rather again, to whom we belong.
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Paul uses the woman specifically, as I said before, because it is a unique relationship that is different from being a husband.
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In verse 3, he says, accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is still alive.
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But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another, she is an adulteress, or she is not an adulteress.
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Paul says accordingly here at the beginning of this verse, as in obviously. It is apparent.
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If a wife leaves her husband and lives with another man, that's adultery.
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So she is called an adulteress. As someone who lies is called a liar.
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Someone who steals is called a thief. Just as if a husband who abandons his wife for another woman is called an adulterer.
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This applies in civil divorce as well, to clarify for everyone.
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Like in most things in Scripture, just because it is permitted by our laws does not mean that it is permitted by Scripture.
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Scripture allows for divorce under specific circumstances, and yes, it does allow for it, though it is not preferred.
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The preference in Scripture is that none would divorce. Rather, they would be reconciled to each other.
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That is the preference. It is what ought to happen, but we understand that we are sinful beings, and that that is not always what can happen.
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However, if a spouse dies, the widow or the widower is released from the marriage, and is free to marry another.
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Notice, marry another, not fornicate with another.
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That is a very common thing nowadays. Not married anymore. I can go do whatever
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I want for a little while. No, you are allowed to get married again.
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That is it. You can be single, and we will cover that part when we get to it about the blessing of singleness, but you are allowed to be single or marry again.
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That is it. Paul actually tells us in regards to women exactly what should happen in this situation when he talks about widows in 1
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Timothy chapter 5, 9 through 16. Let a widow be enrolled, talking about in the help from the church, if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works.
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If she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work, but refused to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry, and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith.
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Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they ought not.
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So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander, for some have already strayed after Satan.
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If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them.
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Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows, those who are truly alone.
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Now, his preference here is for older widows to be cared for, unless they have relatives that can take care of them, and younger widows to marry, as I said before.
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But now, get back to Romans. In verse 4, it says,
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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.
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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.
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But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the
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Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. Paul has talked about this before, if you remember, in chapter 6, verses 3 and 4.
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He says, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?
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We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the
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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Before, we lived in our flesh, and we did what the authority over us wanted us to do, and we ourselves wanted to do it, and we bore fruit from our labor, and its end was death.
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With everything that we did, every activity, every thought, it all bore rotten fruit.
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But now, we have died to sin, and are no longer under its authority.
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Just as when a slave dies, the master no longer has authority over him.
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Just as when a husband dies, he no longer has authority over his wife.
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That connection is severed in death. Paul, indeed, says that we are captive to the law.
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The law that he is referring to here isn't the law of Moses. Not necessarily.
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It's older than that. It's the law that Moses' law is an expansion of, an explanation of.
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What he's referring to is the law that has been with us since the beginning, that is part of our general or God's general revelation, the law that was placed on our hearts.
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This is why death reigned from Adam to Moses. You remember when we covered that section.
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It is a part of the creation covenant, that original covenant that God made with Adam and Eve to work and keep the garden and obey.
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They didn't, but their disobedience did not remove the requirement of obedience as being necessary for eternal life.
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That still stands. It has always stood, the original covenant of works.
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Let me clarify. Paul is saying that the law we have died to in Jesus Christ is this law, the requirement of it.
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Christ has literally removed the burden of obedience to it from us, the saints.
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Now, this doesn't mean that we do not keep it. We do not endeavor to keep it.
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Only now we endeavor to keep it out of love for him and his work.
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But he did what the law required. Because of his work and who he was in his humanity and in his divinity, he can cover us or give us his righteousness.
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We're covered with it. He shares it with us as he shares his reward with us as well.
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Eternal life. That is what Paul means when he says, in Christ.
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You'll hear that a lot in scripture, in Christ. Because nothing is done outside of him.
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No works, no prayer, no nothing.
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Nothing righteous is done outside of Christ. It is all done within him and that relationship that we have with him through faith.
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He is our new authority. More than that, he is our new master. More than that, he is a husband to his bride.
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We now serve in a new way, as Paul says, in the way of the Spirit. Not in the old way of having to be obedient to the law.
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As you go about the rest of the day, the rest of this week,
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I encourage you, saints, to look at the mirror of Christ.
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His work, his obedience, how he loves the church. This is the image of what a husband should look like.
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Everyone should endeavor to look at Christ and what he has done to define all of their relationships as well.
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What we have here, what we can glean to better understand our relationship with Christ, we can endeavor to put in practice always.
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If anyone is unbelieving, I encourage you to look at the mirror of the law, so that you can see yourself as God sees you, as a lawbreaker, and understand that Christ is indeed who he claimed to be.
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Just as when Adam and Eve sinned against God, he did not obliterate them and erase humanity from the face of the earth.
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Instead, he made a promise. A promise that one day he would send someone to save humanity.
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Christ is that salvation, and he already did it.
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There's nothing that has to be done. It's already been done. He provided a way for all of us to come out from underneath the burden of the law and be with him and to share in his victory over death.
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If you are indeed unbelieving, consider it.
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Contemplate it, because it is the most important decision. It's the most important contemplation that you can undertake in your entire life.
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It is the only thing that matters, but praise
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God for our deliverance, and praise God for our new hope in Christ Jesus.