Romans lecture Part 21

Lecture: by Dr. Robert A. Morey

Notes: by Danny Pelichowski

Romans part 21

Opening prayer

Lecture update:

• Romans chapter 7 was written so that you might not draw the wrong inferences from chapter 6.
• In Romans 6 Paul proclaims that the Christian has died to the legal bondage and slavery to sin and in Romans 7 Paul reminds the Christian that sin has not yet died to them.
  
• Paul is dealing with the significance and implications of justification in chapter 6.
• Many false teachings have arisen due to the lack of understanding about Romans 6.

Romans 7:1-3

• Paul is addressing people who have an awareness of the law.
• Paul gives a perfect example using marriage to illustrate his point.
• When the wife’s husband dies she is no longer bound to him legally and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
• In the same way Romans 6 is not dealing with how a person is made righteous before God through works. And it definitely isn’t teaching that Christians can attain sinless perfection. Rather, in Romans 6 Paul is showing how after a person is saved or justified they are free from the power and bondage to sin as their legal master the same way a wife is released from her legal union with her husband if he dies.

Romans 7:4

• Through the body of Christ we died to the legal requirements to the dominion and rule of Moses’ law. We died to the Law so that we might be joined to another to him who was raised from the dead that we might bear fruit for God.
• We are no longer under Moses following the kosher food laws and rigorous Sabbath keeping found in the Old Covenant, we are under the New Covenant and Christ is our master and we follow his commandments.
• In the Sermon on the Mount we see Christ saying that “Moses said this but I say….”

Romans 7:5-6

• Paul is saying that the Mosaic Law abiding Jews have been released from the Law of Moses which once aroused all kinds of sinful passions so that they can serve in the newness of the Spirit and not the oldness of the letter.
• Jesus teaches that it is not what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean but what comes out of your heart that makes you unclean. And Mark adds that Christ has made all foods kosher. We were released from the old Mosaic Law having died to that from which we were bound.
• Under the Old Covenant there was no guarantee that you were a true believer with a regenerate heart. People kept the Law because of threats, fear, and punishment. “If you do this you will live.”
• Under the New Covenant our obedience should be motivated by the Spirit of God because we love the Lord Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit moves us to obey Him. This is the difference between legal obedience and evangelical obedience and the difference between being motivated by the letter of the Law to live a holy life or by the Spirit of the law to live a holy life.

Romans 7:7

• The apostle Paul is always having to think ahead to protect misunderstandings that may arise from his teaching.
• Since we used to be bound by the Law, irritated by the Law, and now we have been set free from that Law people might come to the false conclusion that the Law was evil.
• Was the Law evil? May it never be!
• The problem is not the Law but the person that you see in the mirror.
• Paul says that the Law has a good function and a good purpose. We would not have come to know sin accept through the law. Paul would never have known about coveting if the Law had not said “you shall not covet.”
• This is dealing with the subject of epistemology.
• Epistemology is the science of discovering how you know what you know or how can you know anything.
• Paul is saying that if God had not revealed in Scripture certain Laws he would not have any idea what they were and he would continue breaking them never knowing what he was doing was wrong.

Romans 7:8

• As Paul looked into his heart he thought he was a pretty good fellow, then when he looked into the mirror of the law (thou shall not covet) he realized that he was not a good person. The more that Paul understood the Law the more profoundly he understood how he has breaking that law.
• Apart from the Law sin is legally dead meaning that we do not know that it exists and it is not there bothering you.

Romans 7:9-13

• Paul was once alive apart from the Law and in the same way people who are apart from the Law can easily think they are good people who help their neighbor, who are not drug addicts or prostitutes. When the commandment came sin became alive and he died in his own estimation of himself. After the Law reveals sin we look at ourselves differently knowing that we are not spiritually alive but spiritually dead.
• The commandment which as to its goal had life in mind proved to result in death. We have broken in principle all the commandments when we have violated one of them.
• The law is holy, righteous, and good and reveals our sin to us, therefore we are the problem and our sin is the issue and not the law.
• We broke the law and continue breaking it and cannot be saved through the law.
• The only way we will ever get eternal life is as a gift of God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.