PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

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Verses 1-6: A picture from marriage

Here, ‘the law’ is not the Jewish law, but the common law of the Roman world. [7.1] (Verse 1) We know that in some parts of the world, a woman whose husband has died - ’a widow’ - has to remain a widow. She may not marry another man. This is not usual and Paul would probably not have known about such cases.

First, Paul tells us why this is the law in most parts of the world. Once a person is dead, human law no longer ’lords it’ over them. ’A person’ here is easier to understand [7.2] than the N.I.V. which has ’a man’, although this is not wrong. In verse 2 Paul gives us his example of what this means. Marriage lasts as long as both husband and wife live. If the husband dies first, the law does not change. The law is still the same, but now the woman is a widow. (Verse 3) She is free to marry another man. She promised to be faithful to her first husband. She has not broken the promise which she made to him.

Now when Paul speaks about ’the law’ in verse 4, he may not mean the laws which men make. God had said: ’The soul that sins, shall die’. God had joined together sin as the cause, and death as the effect. This may be what Paul means. Christ has not sinned, but he died. Death had no right to touch Christ. So Paul can now say: ’You died to the law through the body of Christ, which was crucified. He died to the law; and now you are one with him. Yet although we are dead to the law, we are not like the widow. She is free to marry any other man. We are free from the law and from the power of sin. But we are free only so that we may be one with him. To be one with a dead Christ would be sad indeed, so Paul tells us that we are one with Christ who lives. Paul mentions again the picture which we had in 6:21 and 22. God’s purpose is that our lives should bear a harvest of good fruit for his glory.

(Verse 5) Before we were Christians, the law woke up wrong desires ‘in the flesh’. Those desires worked themselves out in our bodies. We produced a harvest of fruit, but it was ‘for death’. Verses 7-25 really fill out what Paul says in this one verse. It may be that we do not understand this just because the law has never ‘woken us up’. Perhaps there are many more people than we think who feel like this.
(Verse 6) Go straight from verse 6 to 8:1 and you will see that this is the line of Paul’s

thought.. You can do it once or twice but do not do it always. The verses in between (7:7-25) are there because we need them [7.4]. At the very least, some people need them some of the time. Perhaps we all need them more than we think that we do!

First, in this verse Paul says:-
a) We are bound. We were tied up and we could not help ourselves. The law ties us up. Probably here ‘the law’ means the law that death follows on from sin. See 8:2.
b) Now with Christ, we have died to that law. The law still stands. It has not changed, but it has no power over us now. You will also see in 8:2 that God has given another law to us.

There is something in the Old Testament book of Esther which may help you with this. In Esther 3:12-15, a law is sent out all over the Empire of Persia that on a certain day, the enemies of the Jews could kill them. The king, Xerxes, had wasted all his wealth and the promise (3:9) to pay in a large sum of money to him kept him happy. Not for long though. When we come to Chapter 8, Esther is the queen. She is a Jew. She works to save the Jews. Xerxes is not fussy about the details or how it is done (8:8). The king cannot stop the first law, so there is a second law sent out. This gives the Jews the right to kill all their enemies, before their enemies can kill them. So there was a first law which meant death for the Jews. There was a second law, which meant life. For us there was a first law which meant death for us. But now there is another law, which gives us life instead before death can touch us.

Now we serve as slaves! - God our Master. But we do not do this in ‘the oldness of letter’. We do not try to keep every detail of the law with greater and greater care. We serve God ‘in newness of spirit’. Paul will have a lot to tell us about that from Chapter 8 onwards.

Verses 7-25: The Lonely Fight

We have already said one or two things about these verses. No one would say that they are easy. They are dark and sad, until we come to verse 25. Look at them before you read them!
a) The first thing to see is that Paul no longer speaks about ‘us’ and ‘you’ as he has done from 6:1. So this is Paul on his own. Here is a man who is alone. There were times in Paul’s life which were like that. See, for example, Galatians 1:17. There is here no joy in prayer with other Christians. Paul does not talk with other believers. He does not read God’s Word with them.
Now you may be a very lonely Christian. This may not be your choice. If you struggle as Paul does here, this may be the reason.

b) We can quickly see, too, that Paul is not quite alone. He has sin and the law with him. A fight is on! Paul the law and sin fight each other. Paul knows that sin is his enemy, but sin cheats. It is not easy to fight someone who does not keep to the rules! Then Paul at times is not quite sure which side the law is on in the fight. It is not always clear to him. And there are moments when Paul is not quite sure either that he really wants to fight sin.

c) Still look, and remember that Paul has just spoken about the new life which the Spirit of God gives. There is nothing about the Spirit of God in verses 7-24. There is nothing about the death of the Lord Jesus, or about his risen life. Indeed, God is not named except in verse 24. We cannot live our Christian life without God. When we come to Chapter 8, that will be quite different.

d) When we do more than look at these verses, we have to ask what ‘law’ means here. Once Paul calls it ‘God’s law’ in verse 22. In other places in these verses, it is clear that Paul means more than ‘Old Testament’ or ‘the Jewish religion’. [7.3] Paul also uses the word ‘commandment’ (entole). This means the Law of God, which he gave to Moses. Yet it was not easy for a Jew like Paul to follow Jesus. Jesus told his followers to keep God’s Law, but not to worry about all the things that the Jews had added to it.

Those of us who are not Jews have a different problem. It is not easy for us to use God’s Law in the right way. We have Christ’s law which tells us to love one another. The old law of God can help to show us ways to do this. We know we are free from the Law. Yet this means that we are free to use it in love.

There is one more question which most people ask. Who is the ‘I’ in these verses? Some people think that Paul means a Jew. Some think that Paul means a Jew who is not a Christian. I hope that we can see that he really does mean himself. This is Paul at the time when he knew he must become a Christian. Yet he has not yet found the riches of God’s grace.

So in verse 7, Paul’s Jewish friend asks: ‘ The Law - sin? Are they the same thing? We have to leave the Law behind so that we may serve God in the Spirit (verse 6). That cannot mean that the Law is bad.’ Paul says:- ‘No!’. God’s law shows us what sin is. Paul uses the law: ‘Do not covet’ from Exodus 20:17 as an example. This law or ‘commandment’ (verse 8) became a starting point [7.5] for sin to stir up all sorts of desires. Some people think that Paul has in mind here Adam’s fall.

(Verse 9) First, Adam was alive. God gave him life. (Genesis 2:7). Then in Genesis 2:16, God gave his ‘commandment’ or law to Adam. In verse 17, God warns Adam that he must obey, or he will die. In Genesis 3:6, Eve desires the fruit of the tree. Adam is with her. As Paul says, (verse 10) sin then sprang into life. Death in different forms would now come to Adam and Eve. In Genesis 3:13, Eve tells God that the snake or ‘serpent’ cheated (or ‘deceived’) her. This is what Paul says (verse 11). Sin took hold of God’s ‘commandment’ and twisted it. Sin does not play by the rules. It does not fight fairly. Sin cheats us and death is the end. So in verse 12, Paul says that the whole body of God’s Law is holy. Any one of God’s commands is ‘holy, righteous and good’; but sin is not!

In verse 13, ‘that which is good’ is, of course, the Law of God. We see the goodness of the law and the badness of sin. Sin leads to death. Sin’s badness is that it makes bad use of God’s good law. (Verse 14) Paul leaves talk about Adam behind now. The law which is ‘of the Spirit’ here must be God’s law. I am not ‘of the Spirit’. I have sold myself as a slave to sin. (Verse 15) God is one, so we must love him with all that we are. Divided love is no love at all (Deuteronomy 6: 4-6; Psalm 86:11; James 1: 6-8). That is why Paul is so troubled. He knows that he is divided. (Verse 16) Notice that Paul can say:- ‘The Law is good’. When Paul says so much about himself which is bad, it may help us to gather the good things that he says about himself. (Verse 17) Sin is still alive in me. I wish it was dead. In glory sin will be dead. Yet at least I can say that sin is only a part of what I am now (Verse 18) We must be thankful that we know what is good, and that we want to do it. So often, though, ‘the flesh’ stops us when we want to do good. We feel tired. Or we are busy with other things. Or maybe we are not sure whether the good we do really does help anyone. There are all sorts of reasons. Verse 19 puts the same thought the other way round. (Verse 20) At least Paul can say:- ‘I am something more, something greater than my sin’. My sin is still alive. But it is not all that can be said about me!

Now we have to see that in verse 21 Paul uses the word ‘law’ in a new way. Here it does not mean the law of man or the law of God. In science we speak about ‘laws’. The ‘law of gravity’ is one of them. These are rules about the way things move. We call them ‘natural laws’. Paul means something like this here. The word ‘principle’ is a better one. There is a bad principle, ‘the law of sin’ (verse 23). This is at work. Paul calls it ‘another law’. There is also a good principle. This is ‘the law of my mind’. The bad principle fights against the good principle. It is sad to have this struggle which goes on inside you. Paul can see no end to the struggle. (Verse 24) If only there was someone else who could help him. No friend can do this.

(Verse 25) God can help and He will. Paul breaks out in praise to God because of this. It is through our Lord Jesus Christ that God will rescue us. Paul will fill out what this means in Chapter 8.

The second part of verse 25 says once again in a few words what Paul has said in verses 7-24.