Romans 7:1-25

Summary
In today’s passage, Paul goes ahead to address those who know the law pointing out that the law is made for and applies to the living, but that as Christians, we are dead to the world and therefore dead to the law.
He likens it to a marriage. A couple has to stay faithful to each other as long as they both live, but if the husband dies, the wife is free to be joined to another.
Christians are freed from the law at Jesus’ coming; hitherto, we were slaves to the law and sin, but now are free to serve in the newness of the spirit, how awesome!
Is Paul condemning the Jewish law? No. Paul points out that the law isn’t sinful, it only points out sin, for how would one recognise sin without it.
Sin however has taken opportunity of the law. It has a major pull over people, and no matter how hard we may try to follow the law and be good, we just keep getting drawn back to do what we ought not to do. That’s why we need to walk in the spirit.
Our inner man agrees to do as the spirit leads, however the members of our body wages war against our inner man. That’s sin at work.
Let’s be glad! Jesus Christ came to free us from this battle with sin.

Life Application
The knowledge of right and good does not have the power to keep us from doing the wrong; neither does the law.
Nothing but the spirit of life in Christ Jesus can free one from the law of sin and death. The day we accept the Lord as our saviour, we enter into a life of total dependence on him.
Have you been struggling with sin? Start to totally depend on God’s help to overcome by constantly declaring His word, start by declaring he has set me free from the law of sin and death, therefore I am free.

Personal Declaration
Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death; therefore I am free indeed.

Reading – Romans 7:1-25

Released From the Law, Bound to Christ

7 Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? ² For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. ³ So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴ So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were in the realm of the flesh,^[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. ⁶ But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

The Law and Sin

⁷ What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”^{[b] 8} But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. ⁹ Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. ¹⁰ I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. ¹¹ For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. ¹² So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

¹³ Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death,so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

²¹ So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging waragainst the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature^[d] a slave to the law of sin.

Footnotes:

1. Romans 7:5 In contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit.
2. Romans 7:7 Exodus 20:17; Deut. 5:21
3. Romans 7:18 Or my flesh
4. Romans 7:25 Or in the flesh