Romans 7
7
An Example From Marriage
1Brothers and sisters, you all understand the Law of Moses. So surely you know that the law rules over people only while they are alive. 2It’s like what the law says about marriage: A woman must stay married to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is made free from the law of marriage. 3But if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, the law says she is guilty of adultery. But if her husband dies, she is made free from the law of marriage. So if she marries another man after her husband dies, she is not guilty of adultery.
4In the same way, my brothers and sisters, your old selves died and you became free from the law through the body of Christ. Now you belong to someone else. You belong to the one who was raised from death. We belong to Christ so that we can be used in service to God. 5In the past we were ruled by our sinful selves. The law made us want to do sinful things. And those sinful desires controlled our bodies, so that what we did only brought us spiritual death. 6In the past the law held us as prisoners, but our old selves died, and we were made free from the law. So now we serve God in a new way, not in the old way, with the written rules. Now we serve God in the new way, with the Spirit.
Our Fight Against Sin
7You might think I am saying that sin and the law are the same. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin means. I would never have known it is wrong to want something that is not mine. But the law said, “You must not want what belongs to someone else.”#Quote from Ex. 20:17; Deut. 5:21. 8And sin found a way to use that command and make me want all kinds of things that weren’t mine. So sin came to me because of the command. But without the law, sin has no power. 9Before I knew the law, I was alive. But when I heard the law’s command, sin began to live, 10and I died spiritually. The command was meant to bring life, but for me it brought death. 11Sin found a way to fool me by using the command to make me die.
12Now the law is holy, and the command is holy and right and good. 13Does this mean that something that is good brought death to me? No, it was sin that used the good command to bring me death. This shows how terrible sin really is. It can use a good command to produce a result that shows sin at its very worst.
The War Inside Us
14We know that the law is spiritual, but I am not. I am so human. Sin rules me as if I were its slave. 15I don’t understand why I act the way I do. I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the evil I hate. 16And if I don’t want to do what I do, that means I agree that the law is good. 17But I am not really the one doing the evil. It is sin living in me that does it. 18Yes, I know that nothing good lives in me—I mean nothing good lives in the part of me that is not spiritual. I want to do what is good, but I don’t do it. 19I don’t do the good that I want to do. I do the evil that I don’t want to do. 20So if I do what I don’t want to do, then I am not really the one doing it. It is the sin living in me that does it.
21So I have learned this rule: When I want to do good, evil is there with me. 22In my mind I am happy with God’s law. 23But I see another law working in my body. That law makes war against the law that my mind accepts. That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and that law makes me its prisoner. 24What a miserable person I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death? 25I thank God for his salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So in my mind I am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful self I am a slave to the law of sin.
Currently Selected:
Romans 7: ERV
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
© 1987, 2004 Bible League International
Romans 7
7
Freedom from the Law.#Paul reflects on the fact that Christians have a different understanding of the law because of their faith in Christ. Law binds the living, not the dead, as exemplified in marriage, which binds in life but is dissolved through death. Similarly, Christians who through baptism have died with Christ to sin (cf. Rom 6:2–4) are freed from the law that occasioned transgressions, which in turn were productive of death. Now that Christians are joined to Christ, the power of Christ’s resurrection makes it possible for them to bear the fruit of newness of life for God. 1Are you unaware, brothers (for I am speaking to people who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over one as long as one lives? 2Thus a married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law in respect to her husband.#1 Cor 7:39. 3Consequently, while her husband is alive she will be called an adulteress if she consorts with another man. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and she is not an adulteress if she consorts with another man.
4In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to the one who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5For when we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, awakened by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death.#6:21; 8:6, 13. 6But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.#8:2; 2 Cor 3:6.
Acquaintance with Sin Through the Law. 7#In this passage Paul uses the first person singular in the style of diatribe for the sake of argument. He aims to depict the disastrous consequences when a Christian reintroduces the law as a means to attain the objective of holiness pronounced in Rom 6:22. What then can we say? That the law is sin? Of course not!#The apostle defends himself against the charge of identifying the law with sin. Sin does not exist in law but in human beings, whose sinful inclinations are not overcome by the proclamation of law. Yet I did not know sin except through the law, and I did not know what it is to covet except that the law said, “You shall not covet.”#3:20; Ex 20:17; Dt 5:21. 8But sin, finding an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetousness. Apart from the law sin is dead.#5:13, 20; 1 Cor 15:56 / Rom 4:15. 9I once lived outside the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive; 10then I died, and the commandment that was for life turned out to be death for me.#Lv 18:5. 11For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it put me to death.#Gn 3:13; Heb 3:13. 12So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.#1 Tm 1:8.
Sin and Death.#Far from improving the sinner, law encourages sin to expose itself in transgressions or violations of specific commandments (see Rom 1:24; 5:20). Thus persons who do not experience the justifying grace of God, and Christians who revert to dependence on law as the criterion for their relationship with God, will recognize a rift between their reasoned desire for the goodness of the law and their actual performance that is contrary to the law. Unable to free themselves from the slavery of sin and the power of death, they can only be rescued from defeat in the conflict by the power of God’s grace working through Jesus Christ. 13Did the good, then, become death for me? Of course not! Sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin, worked death in me through the good, so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment.#4:15; 5:20. 14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold into slavery to sin.#8:7–8; Ps 51:7. 15What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good. 17So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.#Gn 6:5; 8:21; Phil 2:13. 19For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. 20Now if [I] do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 21So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. 22For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, 23#Gal 5:17; 1 Pt 2:11. but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.#As in Rom 3:27, Paul plays on the term law, which in Greek can connote custom, system, or principle. 24Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.#1 Cor 15:57.
Currently Selected:
:
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc