In Newness of the Holy Spirit

Sermon transcript

open our Bibles to Romans chapter 7, I’ll begin reading at verse 1. Hear the word of the Lord. Or do you not know brethren, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives. For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living, she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man.

Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ. so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. 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. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet.

But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind, for apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Therefore, did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be. Rather, it was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin by affecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.

Thus far, the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray together. Holy Father, we do ask your blessing upon our hearing of your word today as it is read. And in turn, as it is preached, may we devote ourselves to your word with heart and mind and soul and strength. And may the spirit who moved the apostle to write these words of ages ago now be that same spirit who illumines and enlightens our hearts, our minds, our spirits to know and understand the truth and to act upon it. May you bless the one who preaches and those who receive the preaching that together we might grow in grace and the knowledge of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray together, giving thanks. Amen.

Scholar F.F. Bruce comments, quote, we can well understand the need of freedom from sin, but why should Paul be so concerned about freedom from the law? After the law, after all, the law is God’s law, isn’t it? The law forbids sin, doesn’t it? And the law prescribes righteousness, doesn’t it?

More than that, we think of what men of God in Israel in earlier days had found the law To be a safeguard against sin, for example, in Psalm 119, verse 165, we read, those who love your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble. Likewise, we read in Psalm 19, verse 7, quote, the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.

So the law is good, and men of old found the law to be a safeguard against sin and an encouragement to righteousness. But Paul appears now to speak differently, speaking out of his own experience. With the law of God, with the law of God in itself, he has found no fault. He has no fault to find. For in Romans 7, 12, he says, the law is holy and righteous and good. What is really at issue is the conception of religion as law-keeping, the idea that by painstaking conformity to some law code, one might acquire merit in God’s sight.

When the Apostle Peter at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15 described the law as, quote, a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear, Acts 15 verse 10, He speaks there as a typical Jew, and he is thinking probably not only of the written law, but of its oral amplification, that oral amplification handed down through generations of scribes.

Of this oral law, tradition had said that Moses received it on Mount Sinai and that he delivered it to Joshua. Joshua delivered that law to the elders. and the elders in turn delivered the law to the prophets. And the prophets finally in turn to the men of the great synagogue and on down to the teachers of the great rabbinical schools which were dominant even at the time of Christ and the apostles.

Only those who dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to the keeping of the law interpreted according to the tradition of the elders, had any hope of success. But for them it was considered a real hope that they could do it on the basis of law. Consider, for example, the rich young ruler who told Jesus that he had kept all the commandments from his earliest days.

Or remember Paul himself in his career as a Pharisee, of which he says he was, quote, as to the righteousness which is in the law found blameless. Philippians three, verse six. Humanly speaking, Paul was about as devoted to the law as anyone could hope to be. Yet he, Paul, found in Christ a new life and a new power, a new joy and a new peace, such as he had never known before, together with a new righteousness, as he would say in Philippians 3, verse 9, not a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, Philippians 3, 9. But it is here in this section of the epistle to the Romans, chapter seven, that Paul tells us more clearly than anywhere else, just how he found the law so inadequate as a way to secure a righteous standing before God.

Our text today, beginning with Romans chapter 7, verses 1 through 6, is to be connected with what the apostle had already stated back in chapter 6 and verse 14 when Paul wrote, You are not under law, but under grace. In this earlier context of chapter 6, the statement gives the reason or ground of the assurance that sin will not have dominion over the believer. You are not under law, but under grace. There is, however, at that point in chapter six, no expansion or validation of that proposition that the believer is not under law. For immediately, the apostle back in chapter six, you must remember, turned his attention to refute the false inference that the phrase not under law means license to sin. Paul’s answer to that false inference is an emphatic, may it never be. But now here in chapter seven, beginning with verse one, he returns to the question of release from the law and show shows how this discharge from the law has come to be the opening question of verse one. Or do you not know, brethren, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives is ask in regard to the affirmation. You are not under law, but under grace.

And this question is an appeal to what the apostle assumes his readers to know, as is evident from the parenthesis that you see in your text there, the parenthesis which follows saying, for I am speaking to those who know the law. And we note that all are credited with this knowledge. as Paul writes to the Romans. What is this law, then, with the knowledge of which Paul credits his readers? The law assumed to be known here is surely the written law of the Old Testament, particularly the Mosaic law. Gentiles as well as Jews in the church at Rome could be credited with the knowledge of the Old Testament.

To know the law means considerably more than merely to know the ordinances of the law or the specifics even of the Ten Commandments. Remember what Paul writes in second Corinthians chapter three, verse 14, that Paul does not concede that the rabbis who were considered to be experts in the law actually knew the law. Rather, they read the law with a darkened veil lying over them. Despite their eager reading and their diligent study of the law, those who regard the law as eternal and expect righteousness from it in a word do not know it. Hence the parenthetical clause, I am speaking to those who know the law, verse one of our text, does not divulge anything about the ethnic origin of the Romans.

It is easily possible for a Jew to belong to those who do not know the law. so that what Paul tells him now will be spoken in vain. Conversely, it is possible for a Gentile to know the law if through the message of Jesus he has learned that Christ, who was made subject to the law, died in order to set believers free from the law.

Concerning sin, Paul said that its hold on the person ends in his death. Romans chapter six and verse seven. Now he argues, argues the same concerning the law. As long as he lives, the individual remains under its dominion. His death, however, terminates all obligations that the law had imposed upon him. Paul demonstrates this and then in the text with the marriage law.

It is at verse four that the apostle begins to apply the analogy of ordinary marriage to the spiritual sphere of our relations to the law and to Christ. John Murray says verses two and three of Romans seven are illustration that there is nothing in the text to suggest allegorical intent here. In other words, this use of the marriage as an illustration is not an allegory.

The facts stated here need no exposition, for they are simply to the effect that a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. That if while he lives she is married to another, she thereby commits adultery and will be called an adulteress. but that when the husband dies, the marriage with him is dissolved, matter of fact, and she is then free to marry another man. The main point of the illustration is that the death of the husband releases the woman from the bond of that particular marriage. Death breaks the marriage bond. Likewise, death breaks a man’s relation to the law, Paul says.

Remember again, in using the marriage as an illustration, this is not strictly an allegory with a one-to-one correlation from the wife to the believer and from the husband to the law. It is more so an analogy than it is an allegory. Thus, in the application, it is not the law that has died, But the believer who has died, no longer bound to the law, but is now free to be united to Christ. Put more simply, as death breaks the bond between a husband and wife, so death, the believer’s death with Christ, breaks the bond which formerly yoked him or her to the law. So now the believer is freed from the bond of the law to enter into union with the resurrected Christ. Remember, your former association with the law did not help you to produce the fruits of righteousness. But these fruits are produced in abundance now that the believer is united with Christ.

Sin and death were the result of our association with the law. Righteousness and life are the produce of our new association with Christ Jesus raised from the dead. For as Paul puts it in second Corinthians chapter three, verse six, the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Or again, he says here in Romans chapter seven, verse six, 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. Being joined to Christ by grace through faith means being joined with him in his death. When Christ died, we died. We died with him. But union with Christ in his death must never be severed from union with him also in his resurrection.

Here, however, then, in Romans 7, verse 4 and following, the stress falls not merely on union with Christ in His resurrection on Resurrection Day, but upon union with Him as the One who has been raised from the dead. It is union with him, therefore, not only in the virtue and power of that historical event of Resurrection Day, but it is union with him now and forever in that identity that belongs to him as the resurrected Lord. as life-giving spirit, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45.

I cannot underscore that text enough. Christ, by His resurrection and ascension, has become life-giving spirit. And this is permanent. And this, beloved, is the marital bond that can never be broken, having been joined to the resurrected Jesus, that one who is alive and alive forevermore. That bond we have with Him can never be broken. Romans chapter 6, verses 8 and 9 says, Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

Death no longer is master over him. That is the Christ who can say, as he does to his disciples in the Gospel of John, chapter 11, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Being joined to him and abiding in him, that is the resurrected Jesus, by faith ensures a glorious end.

Namely, that we may bring forth fruit to God. Fruit that is acceptable to God. Fruit that redounds to His eternal glory. Fruit that is the very antithesis of the licentious abuse of the glorious doctrine that we are not under law but under grace. Union with Christ must necessarily be a fruitful marriage between Christ and His beloved Church.

It is the very substance of the new covenant which God long ago had promised. where he said of old in Ezekiel 36, for example, verses 26 and 27, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. Moreover, also Jeremiah 31, 31 to 33, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. I will put my law within them and on their heart. I will write it and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

That is the new covenant that has come to pass in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the spirit. The Holy Spirit has been given to you, given to you who believe. as a down payment and as a guarantee of your eternal inheritance until you acquire consummate possession of it. And be reminded that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law, Paul writes. Praise the Lord that we serve our Savior then in newness of the Holy Spirit given to us according to new covenant grace. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.