Living out the law by dying to the law

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? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 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. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. 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. 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. - Romans 7:1‭-‬12 ESV

Rev. Charles Han

The topic in our passage is the law or commandments of God. What is our relationship with God's law? We need to die to it in order to live it

Dead under the law

The law of God cannot save us. The Jews loved the commandments given through Moses. It was their life. The commandments of God are holy and just. If a man is sent to man to life in prison, is the law wrong? No, it is the man's sin, his breaking of the law that is the problem

The law exposes our sinfulness. Paul brings up the tenth commandment. Why? Because it is a sin that everyone commits. It shows how sinful we all are. Everyone covets. The law exposes us for who we are.

The law doesn't just reveal sin. It provokes us to sin more. When we are told not to do something, we are incited to do it. If we are told to do something, we wish to rebel even more. We find pleasure in the illicit, the illegal. It is our very nature to be defiant.

The law condemns our sin. It does not bring life to us but rather sentences us to death. The law gives nothing to the sinner but death.

Dead to the law, married to Christ

Those who are believers have died to the law. They have died through the body of Christ. How? We are in union to Christ. We find life and salvation through our union with Jesus. So we are free from self-reliant law-keeping. This is futile. Change is not true, not lasting. This change will be outward conformity. Trying to change based on our own willpower is unsustainable and insufficient.

It is only through reliance on Jesus that we can truly change. Change from the inside out. Not behavioral modification, but true lasting change.

Married to Christ, obeying the law

Our union with Christ is like marriage. But what kind of husband is he? We can figure this out by contrasting Jesus with the law.

We were married to Mr. Law.  He was a good man, in his way, but he did not understand our weakness.  He came home every evening and asked, “So, how was your day?  Did you do what I told you to?  Did you make the kids behave?  Did you waste any time?  Did you complete everything I put on your To Do list?”  So many demands and expectations.  And hard as we tried, we couldn’t be perfect.  We could never satisfy him.  We forgot things that were important to him.  We let the children misbehave.  We failed in other ways.  It was a miserable marriage, because Mr. Law always pointed out our failings.  And the worst of it was, he was always right!  But his remedy was always the same: Do better tomorrow.  We didn’t, because we couldn’t.

Then Mr. Law died.  And we remarried, this time to Mr. Grace.  Our new husband, Jesus, comes home every evening and the house is a mess, the children are being naughty, dinner is burning on the stove, and we have even had other men in the house during the day.  Still, he sweeps us into his arms and says, “I love you, I chose you, I died for you, I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  And our hearts melt.  We don’t understand such love.  We expect him to despise us and reject us and humiliate us, but he treats us so well.  We are so glad to belong to him now and forever, and we long to be “fully pleasing to him”!

Being married to Mr. Law never changed us.  But being married to Mr. Grace is changing us deep within, and it shows.

Being married to the law is difficult and feels like condemnation. Being married to Jesus is encouraging, merciful, loving, and forgiving. What is the dominant voice in our life? Is it Jesus or the law? We listen not to tablets of stone from ages part, but the Holy Spirit speaks to us through our new hearts of flesh.

You grow in obedience to God's law not by impersonally following a list of rules but by intimately following a Person (Jesus), not by law keeping but by Christ loving. Sanctification happens not by the law, but by marriage, by grace.

Application

When we read Ephesians 4:32 and we see the command to be kind and forgiving, how do we approach it? Do we push ourselves harder? Do we ignore it? No, we look at what Christ has done. We soak in the forgiveness of God that we have through Christ. We are humbled and our hearts are softened towards our enemies and those around us. As we read though the Bible, make sure we focus on the indicative that powers the imperatives. What we have though Christ indirectly powers our internal change so that we can obey the commands. Never can we obey the law of God to such an extent so that we will be acceptable before God...