Romans 7:1-13

 Romans 7:1-13

At the end of Romans 6, Paul describes the slavery to sin that can potentially wrap us up. Here he talks about how that relationship ended. This is one of Paul’s deepest thinking passages as he looks for ways to explain the relationship between sin, law, and our life in Christ. First, he uses the covenant of marriage as an example. So long as a woman is married, she cannot legitimately have another man. But if her husband dies, she is no longer bound by that marriage covenant. She is, in a word, set free because the husband she was bound to has died. The application here is twofold. First, when we are baptized, our relationship with both sin and the law dies. We were once married to them but are no longer because of the death we experience in our baptism. Second, we are now free to marry another, that is, Christ.

Before someone would try to equate law and sin as the same thing, Paul clearly defends law as being good, holy, and righteous. Law is not the problem. In a perfect universe, the law would be clearly seen as the wonderful and beautiful thing that it is. But ours is not a perfect universe. Sin has corrupted us and the way we understand the law. While the prohibitions of the law protect us, our defiant nature sees the law as something to be broken so we can gain an advantage. Perhaps this illustration will help. Playing a board game with a toddler, the rules are meaningless. But as a child learns to play the game, they learn the rules. Before long they will learn to cheat. The rules give order to the game. But the child wanting to win will see every rule as something to be broken in order to gain an advantage. The rules or law are not the problem, but we see in them where we can try to get ahead by cheating.

When we think that cheating, breaking the law, will give us an advantage, we are always deceived. First, we are deceived in how much satisfaction we will achieve. Sin makes grandiose promises but never delivers. Second, we are deceived and how good our justification for our sin is. The reason, excuse, or lie we tell ourselves as we try to legitimize our sin may seem solid to us, but from a proper perspective, it is clearly flimsy. Finally, we are deceived and how we can secretly sin. We think there will be no consequences. Not at all! We are often caught. But even if not, God knows, and our conscience knows. This will compel us to either repent or move toward greater darkness and become more evil and monstrous.

“Lord, help me to grasp Your intended purpose for the Law.  AMEN”