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Articles 2014-2017
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?
Clearly, law will not affect a dead man. How many corpses do you know who recently got a speeding ticket? Not too many, I would think.
In Romans Chapter 6 we saw that God’s judgment for the plague of sin among men was death. And because that was what we deserved, Heaven’s solution was for Christ to take the death that was our due. But now Paul gives more insight on what God accomplished through the cross. He changed forever the way that we would relate to His law.
To make his case, the apostle references marriage and the effects of a husband’s death. A believing widow need not fear God’s judgment if she remarries. The death of her husband has released her. So also, because of our death in Christ at Calvary (Romans 6:8), we are no longer joined to God’s law but now to its Author, so that we may bear the fruit on earth that He longs to see (Romans 7:2 - 4). Here is the hope of the nations – a people bearing the spiritual fruit of God’s kingdom – both revealing His likeness and manifesting His presence.
When He sent prophets to Old Testament Israel, God was looking for spiritual fruit (Matthew 21:33 - 43). Would He find love, mercy, patience, and kindness? Or would He find idolatry and/or religious formalism reflecting hardened hearts? The answer would be revealed in how they treated those He sent. Too often, they rejected the prophets.
So, what was the answer? Would His law have the power to change the hearts of the people?
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.
Paul’s own testimony was that when he was living in the flesh, the law awakened in him passions that bore fruit not for God but for death. Surely, it would be so much better to bear fruit revealing the nature of God than to bear the characteristics of death in the name of God. And too often, even in Christianity, we have many times displayed the characteristics of spiritual death (e.g., pride, divisiveness, self-promotion) all the while we were talking about the God we served.
Truly, nothing on earth – even God’s law, can change the human heart. But now because of Calvary, we have been set free to relate to it in a new way.
But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
(Romans 7:6 NASB)
To be clear, we are to still serve God and to love His law. But now we do so in the way of Spirit filled newness – the constantly original intimacy of relationship that brings fresh insight into His word, His motives, and His priorities. What a privilege it is to have access to the Creator of the heavens and the earth – to know Him and to walk in relationship with Him.
So what was the problem? Why was the fruit that God longed for among men so sparse? Was His law at fault?
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
Clearly, the problem was not with the Law but with the sinful condition of the human heart. Prior to hearing the commandment, Paul could feel like he was doing quite well in the sight of God. He was alive and expectant concerning his future. But the commandment to not covet (Greek, EPITHUMEO – to set the heart upon, to long for, whether rightfully or otherwise) which could very well have been the decree to not even want to break the other laws, caused him to see within himself that very desire in ways he had not previously considered. And what had been lying dormant in his heart was suddenly exposed. Here, in part, was God’s purpose in writing the Law – to reveal to man the sinful condition of his heart. Only in facing such truth could anyone begin to accurately see God’s kingdom.
For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
The Lord wanted to expose to Paul the horrific evil of sin. It was not just something a little bit off or somewhat crooked in him; sin was sickeningly appalling, evil beyond calculation. For anyone to relate properly to the Lord, to fear Him, that individual would have to come to hate evil – not just dislike it (Proverbs 8:13).
So also today, as the word of the Lord is going forth to the nations, we see a growing revelation of the grievous destructiveness of sin. The gospel is now sounding out across the earth more than ever in human history. And the result is that while many are turning to the Lord, so also at the same time, our God is unveiling the depravity of the human condition. If we do not understand His plan, we will only see the great darkness around us as an expression of Satan’s work. And we will either be discouraged or simply start hoping that the Lord will quickly come and get us out of here. But in fact, it is the Lord God of heaven who is exposing the hearts of men. See Him reigning. See Him confronting the whole earth with the brokenness of the human condition. And just like in Paul’s life, such revelation of sin will be a precursor to a confrontation with Heaven. In light of this present darkness, the coming visitation(s) of the Holy Spirit will be dramatic.
Then Paul goes on to give insight into his struggle to live the life of obedience to the Lord. Whereas Romans Chapter 7:7 - 13 reveal his difficulties with sin and the Law before he met the Lord, starting in verse 14, he humbly opens his heart to the brethren at Rome about his ongoing struggles since meeting Christ. He would sometimes do what he should not; and other times he would not do what he should. And God was exposing sin in him (Romans 7:14 - 20).
Notice what the apostle discovered.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand (Greek, PARAKEIMAI – to be present).
How could evil be present in one who loved the Lord and was cleansed by Christ’s blood?
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
The Lord showed Paul a law, a principle that sin was operative in his members. Amazingly, God had put an incalculably glorious treasure into a Jewish “clay pot”. God had poured His very presence into a humbled and repentant man. But the law that Paul discovered was that the flesh would always want to sin, and that the wages of that sin would always be death. “Wow! What a wretch I am. How can I get free of this body of death?” The good news is that at the resurrection, God will transform our flesh from bodies of death into glorious bodies of life.
By the way, if you do not believe that at present your physical body is a body of death, just neglect to bathe it for a few weeks. Your close friends will quickly confirm Paul’s diagnosis.
The law of sin and death in our members dictate that our flesh simply does not want to do the will of God. It never has. But we look forward to the day when our bodies will be redeemed (Romans 8:23). Until then, we are experiencing a war within ourselves. And that conflict is a parable of the greater war for the soul of the nations. God had promised Abraham and his seed that he would be the heir of the world. And the inheritance would be realized not by keeping laws but through the righteousness that comes by faith (Romans 4:13). Thus, the war would be fought in the era of faith – this present Church age. Here in part, was Paul’s motive for writing his epistle to the Roman believers. “Gird up your loins, present your bodies a living sacrifice, and embrace the fray.”
I always thought that it would have been better if the Lord had saved our bodies when we were born again. Why not just give us our glorified bodies now? I believe that the answer is that the world needs hope. It needs the parable of the war of good versus evil being lived out in front of them in the lives of the redeemed. When they see people such as you and me (with all our various histories of grievous and sometimes even blatant sin and rebellion) praying, forgiving others, and rejoicing with hope concerning our future, they are confronted with a realm where good is actually triumphing over evil. This is not to imply that we win every skirmish. In fact, we all fail badly. Like Paul, we too often do what should not and then do not do what we should. But we have discovered the route to victory. And we have received the enabling power of the Holy Spirit to abide in the One who went before us and triumphed flawlessly even to the point of death. As a result, eternal fruit is actually growing in the camp of the saints. God’s plan is good, acceptable, and perfect. And He will succeed in bringing forth before the eyes of the whole world the truth that He is a good farmer – that what He plants, He will nurture into a glorious harvest. Many will see that He indeed knows how to both prepare an eternally beautiful bride for His Son as well as how to design and build a glorious house in which to dwell forever. And all this will be to the praise of the glory of His grace. Amen.
Donald Rumble – December 2017
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