“Do you not know, brethren–for I am speaking to those who know the law– that the law is binding on a person only during his life? Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 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 brethren, you 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. 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 discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in [newness of] spirit.” – Romans 7:1-6
Previously we discussed this text briefly as part of a series of lessons designed to unpacked Church on the Square’s mission statement: Revive the Church. Reach the City. Renew the Culture. The reason to return to it this morning is so that we might place it within its broader theological context, within the doctrine of salvation, which is our present focus.
The main thrust of this passage – its climatic moment – comes at the end, in verse 6, when Paul writes:
“But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in [newness of] spirit.”
(KJV in brackets. More literal. Opens up different interpretative possibilities, one of which I will be presenting.)
Our goal this morning is to bring to light just a glimpse of the freedom that Paul is promising here. A liberation of one’s obedience which is a blessing of the New Covenant.
Now, as we dive in, the first thing we must do is clarify the immediate context. These six verses at the beginning of Romans 7 are Paul's answer to the question of why our being under grace and not under law (Romans 6:14) produces love rather than lawlessness.
In other words, he is explaining his answer to the question asked back in Romans 6:15, "Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?" To which he immediately responds, "May it never be!" Which is to say, definitely not shall we continue to sin now that we have been set free from law (law as the grounds of justification).
But the question still left hanging is, "Well, why not?"
In other words, why does freedom from law not give license to lawlessness?
For if the keeping of the law is not the grounds of our justification (i.e. our right standing before God), nor the means for receiving it, then why keep it? Why not just sin with reckless abandon so that grace may abound?
Now, the reason why Paul is raising these questions himself (using the rhetoric of diatribe— “the guy went off on a diatribe”— which is to essentially ask and answer one’s own questions, as an interlocutor, a hypothetical Jewish objector) is because these are the kinds of objections he typically got to his gospel. He is writing to Christians he doesn’t personally know, reminding them of the good news that we are justified by grace, through faith, apart from works of law—that the grounds of our justification for both Jew and Gentile are the same, and he is addressing objections that they would typically run into when proclaiming that message.
It seems reasonable to assume that we also will face similar questions when we share the gospel today without compromise. Which means that if your evangelism (if your giving a reason for the hope that is within you) brings charges of lawlessness from your listeners it may be a sign that you are doing something right.
And the reason why (this is a common response—lawlessness objection) is because any message which promises salvation as a free gift (as an act of celestial charity, of divine welfare—that it comes purely by grace— especially given the enormity of what is to be received—not just basic food and shelter, but an inheritance of the entire earth) that is a promise which is hard to believe, especially in a world which is enslaved to various forms of autonomous redemption, self-salvation. Where people are trying to justify themselves.
If your evangelism brings charges of lawlessness from your listeners, it may be a sign that you are doing something right.
HYPERLEGALISTIC RELIGION
The most pressing example of which is the Critical Social Justice movement which is, as we have noted, a pseudo religious ideology—really a Christian heresy, that is hyper-legalistic. For while it offers, on the one hand, a very robust concept of original sin (a guilt inherited from your forefathers), it provides no lasting atonement, just the blood of bulls and goats which only pushes your guilt forward.
As a result, in this system no one’s conscience is ever cleansed from the stain of sin. No matter how much self-flagellation you undergo, or scapegoating you engage in (no matter how many people you offer up as a sacrifice in your place, no matter how many you cancel), it will never be enough. For you are just pushing your guilt off for a day, or a week, or a month.
The spot of your whiteness, or maleness, or able-bodiedness, etc. can never be removed. And the consciousness of sin persists. Thus, it is a system which requires perpetual sacrifice. Indeed, increasing sacrifice as the goal posts of ritualistic perfection are constantly moving.
As scholar Richard Day argues, our responsibility for racial injustice is “infinite”: Thus “we can never allow ourselves to think that we are ‘done,’ that we have identified all of the sites, structures, and processes of oppression ‘out there’ or ‘in here’,’ inside our own individual and group identities.”
And as “Christian” Professor Chanequa Walker-Barnes has said, “[our] salvation depends on the obliteration of racial division in the body of Christ.”
As I mentioned previously, I came to faith in a denomination which was steeped in legalism, and yet, I must confess that I have never seen anything like this. The god of Critical Social Justice is a god of technicalities unlike I have ever known. And the shrewdness of its high priests to maintain the coherence (of what is an essentially incoherent system) is chilling.
But, because repentance does not lead to true forgiveness (in this system), there is no joy and therefore no gratitude extended to this god and therefore eventually obedience will cease. At least internal obedience. People will eventually grow disenchanted with this domineering deity. And this cessation will take one of three forms (although this is not a perfect taxonomy).
First, the more self-righteous (and self-assertive) of the group will use the system as a vehicle for gaining and maintaining power. In other words, they will abandon the idol of social justice and adopt a new idol, power. Switching from Momus (the god of evil-spirited blame and unfair criticism—perhaps it is more accurate to say the idol of social acceptance) to Kratos (the god of power).
We see this, for example, in the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day, the religious elites who wielded the power of false piety. These are the Robin De Angelo types and the leaders of the BLM movement who gain enormous power and wealth off a system that is meant to evenly distribute both.
The second form the cessation-of-obedience takes is the Nicodemus option. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council and who came to Jesus secretly (at night—because he feared reprisal) but he came to Jesus because he knew that there was something wrong with the present religious system, and that Jesus must be a prophet sent from God given the miracles he was performing. These are people who see the flaw in woke religion, but are afraid to speak up and push back against it.
Then there are the open “sinners”, the prostitutes and tax collectors (the white supremacists and homophobes and those who make an idol out of their whiteness) whom the system has failed to rehabilitate, whose short comings everyone sees and ridicules. Those who have been cancelled (who have become social outcasts). Like those who once dressed in black face in the 1990s at that Halloween party or attended an Old South antebellum party. Those who are trying desperately to earn their way back into social acceptance. But whose sins are ever before them. (Drew Brees last year being forced to wear the name of a supposed victim of police violence on his helmet like the scarlet letter.). “Doing the work.” Doing penance. This group often seeks escape from their guilt in a myriad of alternative realities like drugs and alcohol, the virtual world of video games, or various hedonistic endeavors.
LET MY PEOPLE GO
Lately, I have been watching (again) what are called “caucusing” videos. Videos of struggle sessions, where white, heterosexual, able-bodied people (the oppressors) are working out their anti-racism through fear and trembling. Doing the “white work” as they call it.
One particularly illuminating example was sponsored by the Christian Reformed Church and Calvin University which is called the “White Work Seminar”. And one of the questions the facilitator asked was: “How are you feeling as a white person doing anti-racism work?”
The responses were revealing: “Depleted,” said more than one participant. “Weary,” said another. But quickly added that she didn’t have a right to feel weary because she is white and any sacrifices she has made is nothing compared to what people of color have made. “Cautiously-convicted,” added a third. Cautious because the work is never done.
If you are feeling good about where you are, if you are feeling relief from the burden, then it’s a sign that you are beginning to delude yourself. That you are becoming enslaved to your biases again.
I mentioned previously that seven years of my ministry was spent pointing people to Hebrews 10 so that they might experience the confidence justification in Christ commends. 7 years which confirmed for me the truth and importance of Reformational soteriology. That our law works are not directly tied to our justification. But rather are the fruit of it.
Honestly, I thought that all that experience would find little application once I left that denomination. Boy was I wrong!
The reformation distinction between justification and sanctification has never been more relevant. For the woke gospel conflates the two just like every other legalistic religion. Just like some Jews did in the first century. Which means that Jesus’ appeal to come to him those who are heavy laden to find rest, will resonate with many today.
This church (I think) for many reasons is uniquely fitted to share this message of rest with those who are striving under the “new” written code of wokeism. And our response to those wearied by this religion should be to offer liberty from such enslavement. And to the taskmasters of the Critical Social Justice Movement the message of the Lord Jesus is “Let my people go!”
The metaphor of the exodus, in other words, should be the focus of our message. As Thaddeus Williams points out, the rise of this Christian heresy may very well be a blessing to the church. Activist Post Modernism has done what the church had failed to do, which is convict late-moderns of their sin.
Back to my point, in a world where many are trying to relate to God through law, grace is often viewed with incredulity. As too good to be true. So, they put forth various objections. This apparently has always been the case. It’s an objection we need to be able to answer.
Now, Paul gives the first part of his answer to this objection in Chapter 6 of Romans. There Paul teaches the doctrine of regeneration, the process by which a sinner is set free from his bondage to sin, by the Spirit. The process of being re-created for good works. A gift of grace that is depicted by water baptism.
Not just depicted, it is not just a sign but a sacrament, for this immersion is a participatory metaphor by which one experiences the resurrection of his spirit in a concrete way. This is what sacraments do. They take an abstract reality (what we might call a spiritual reality) and provide us a concrete experience of it.
Paul's point in this section is that, if you have been regenerated, if you have been set free from sin's enslavement then it would be totally incongruous for you to go on sinning. "How can we who died to sin still live in it," is Paul's response. That would be absurd, says the Apostle.
As theologian Jack Cottrell has noted, that would be like a caterpillar who, once transformed into a beautiful butterfly (having gone through this miracle of metamorphosis), who chooses to still crawl around in the dirt gnawing on the underside of plant leaves rather than soaring in the sunshine, spreading its new wings and drawing nectar from the plant's blossoms.
To such a scenario we would rightly respond “That is ridiculous!”. “How stupid!” By the very nature of the case, it is irrational for a ransomed slave to continue to serve his malevolent master. “What fool would do such a thing?” asks Paul.
A saint returning to sin is like a dog returning to his vomit. Once you are set free from prison, why would you willingly return to your cell? It should make us cringe. Screaming, “No, don’t do it. You have been washed, don’t return to the mud puddle.”
Like Mila, my daughter, when we get her all dolled up for church and we turn our backs for a second and she’s playing in the cat litter. “No!” “What have you done?!”
Thus, Paul’s first response reminds his audience that becoming a Christian involves not just forgiveness (not just justification) but also regeneration, a metamorphosis of our spirit in which we emerge from the cocoon of baptism ready to soar in newness of life. What a gift this is! The ability to partake of the divine nature. To become holy as God is holy. Not to be enslaved to our base desires but free to become fully human.
The reformation distinction between justification and sanctification has never been more relevant. For the woke gospel conflates the two just like every other legalistic religion.
A NEW SPIRIT
The second part of Paul's answer to the lawlessness objection comes (in our text) in chapter seven. And in this second response, Paul sets up a comparison between marriage and the law, on the one hand, and the believer and the law on the other. In verses 1-3 (speaking here about marriage and the law as an example) Paul says that if one of the partners in a marriage dies, then the law that makes a second marriage wrong is thus nullified. So, in other words, death sets one free from law (in this case, the laws governing marriage).
However, he is going to apply that principle to the law in general in the next set of verses. As verse 4 says:
"Therefore (Likewise – ESV), my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another."
Now, the first thing we need to clarify in this passage is what the Apostle means by the word "law" in this case. In this context, it seems to me (as I argued previously), that Paul does not mean just the Law of Moses (as many commentators have assumed), but rather the law in general.
That in the same way that Paul speaks generally about law in chapter 3 verses 19-20 of this same letter, when he states that everyone (Jew and Gentile alike ) are under law (that is to say under a law code, the Jews under the Mosaic law and the Gentiles under the law which was written on their hearts), that he uses the word "law" in the same way here in chapter 7 (or at least one can say that the principle being taught can be expanded to God’s law in general).
In other words, Paul is not limiting what he is saying to one particular manifestation of God's law code (like the law of Moses) but rather it would include God's law in general. The point, however, notice carefully, is not the cessation of law (we uphold the law!), but a change within the sinner himself, "We died to the law," in other words, this is speaking of the cessation of the sinner’s relationship to the law in some sense (in particular his wrong use of the law and his wrong attitude toward it).
So, let's now develop those two aspects of our dying to the law more fully. First, what does it mean to die to the wrong use of the law? Well as Paul makes clear in the first 4 chapters of this epistle, those of us who have been saved by grace are no longer under law as a system of salvation, which is to say that we no longer use obedience to our law code as a grounds of justification. That would be a wrong use of the law because it is a futile endeavor, due to the law's impotence to save on account of man's sin.
So, when we die to the law in this first sense, we are set free from the demands of the law system of salvation (which is perfection), and thus its condemnation and penalty. Discharged from it. Therefore, our objective relationship with the law has been changed by virtue of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice. Where we no longer look to law as our savior.
But this is not the whole story, nor even the main point here in our text. The main point here for Paul concerns our response to these objective changes that have occurred. What the apostle is focusing on here is the new attitude we should have as a result of us no longer having to depend upon our moral performance or ritual perfection as the grounds or even means of salvation.
When we truly come to understand that our objective relationship to the law has changed, that we are no longer "saved" (doomed!) by law keeping, but instead that we are saved by grace through faith, that the curse of the law has now been shifted to someone else and that we are thus free from its condemnation, from its compelled perfection, the result of that Copernican Revolution in our thinking should be a subjective change in our attitude toward the law. A new spirit.
Now, what kind of attitudinal change are we talking about? Well, if you depend on the law for eternal life (like woke religion demands), something which the law cannot provide because of your sin, this of course will cause you to hold the law in very low esteem. If you are depending upon the law to save you and it can’t, then, in time, you will grow to despise the law and despise yourself. In the same way we come to despise every idol.
If you look to the law to save you, eventually you will view it as nothing but a curse. A heavy yoke which will eventually break your neck. And if you are not willing to make the authoritarian move (of leaving the idol of societal acceptance and embracing the idol of power as the scribes and Pharisees did, who then used the law as a weapon by which to oppress others—just as the woke high priests have done), then you will begin to view the law as a tyrannical taskmaster who is ruthless, cold, and indifferent.
As Paul says here in our text, you will be a wife who is bound only by duty to a mean and miserly husband. One who will eventually kill you. But such an attitude should undergo a radical transformation once we are no longer under law. Once we are free from looking to the law for salvation.
It is only then that we can even begin to see the law for the blessing that it is and serve God in "newness of spirit" as Paul says here in our text. We see, for the first time, the law’s ultimate purpose. To set us free to a higher level of being (the law of liberty). Conforming ourselves to Christ.
In other words, the objective reality of salvation should produce in us, if we will but surrender to it, a new spirit, that is a new heart, a new attitude toward God and his law. Upon which we will cry out with David, "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day." (Psalm 119:97)
This also represents a major change in our motivation for morality: in which we go from “have to” to “want to,” from “got to” to “get to.” Take a moment to test yourself on this. Is your attitude toward God's commands primarily a "got to” (reluctant conformity), or a "get to” (joyful conformity)? Is it a "have to", or a "want to"? Do you see it as a privilege and a blessing? Or a curse? Something you want to cast off?
The difference comes in your understanding and acceptance of the gospel. This kind of legalism lies behind the question, if I am no longer under law, but under grace, then why would I keep God’s law? If I don’t have to keep it to be guiltless, it serves no purpose. This view fails to see the ultimate purpose of law, as the instructions on how to become fully human.
When the gospel fully penetrates your heart you will no longer be bound only by duty to the mean and miserly husband of the law, but you will instead willingly and joyfully serve a new, loving, generous husband whom you desire to please.
Instead of producing dead works from a dead heart as driven by the law’s threats, we as Christians are now alive in our spirits so that we may bear fruit motivated primarily by a love for our Lord and a desire to please him. The point is, under law, under the law system of salvation, when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, we produced lots of bad fruit (Romans 6); even many of our works that looked good on the outside were like shiny apples filled with worms and rottenness within, since they sprang from a self-righteous heart, because we were a slave to this never ending project of self-justification. A system of law that could not save us.
But, Paul says, under grace the fruit we present to God is the “fruit of righteousness” that is the “obedience of faith” (1:5), motivated by love (John 14:15), which is sweet and pleasing to God's taste.
So many people have never experienced this newness of spirit (although their heart longs for it.) Their heart longs for a yoke which is easy and a burden which is light. Not a freedom from burden entirely as some would teach. But the yoke of a Master who will give rest to your weary soul. Who will not abuse you for his own gain.
It is time to cast off the yoke of the law.
To stop using it wrongly.
The law was given as a disciplinarian to lead you to Christ (and I know you have been disciplined by it!). Let it now lead you to lasting forgiveness and then you will experience the liberty of obedience.
Lay your burden down and come to Christ.
Take his yoke upon you for it is light and easy.
Video Link: The Liberation of Obedience - YouTube