Romans - The Gospel of God
Chapter 7 Free from the Law

An Introduction

A Difficult Chapter
Discussion and debate over Romans chapter seven has perhaps often ‘generated more heat than light’! It’s a difficult chapter to interpret and the long history of diverse interpretations associated with it are testimony to this fact. Anyone therefore attempting to explain Romans chapter seven will do so with humility and an awareness of the various interpretations that have been put forward. That said, it obviously is an essential part of Paul’s exposition of the gospel of God and therefore we must try by the Holy Spirit’s enablement to grasp its teaching and relevance to the fullness of gospel truth. 
If Paul has explained in the first five chapters of his epistle to the Romans how the gospel gives a sinner who believes in Christ a righteous standing before God, his fundamental concern in chapters six to eight is to show why a justified believer must and can live a righteous life for God. In these three chapters he explains how the believer in Christ has been set free from the power of sin (chapter 6) and the condemnation of the law (chapter 7) to experience the assurance of a Spirit led life (chapter 8). 

Particularly then, Paul explains in chapter seven how we have been set free from being ‘under the law’ and brought into a new relationship with Christ ‘under grace’. He then demonstrates why this has been absolutely necessary with the knowledge and experience of one who had a particular relationship with the law being a Pharisee from the ‘fold’ of Judaism.   

The Law and Sin  
As much as Paul has from chapter one verse eighteen through to chapter three verse twenty clearly demonstrated that man is a sinner and under condemnation because of what he does, it’s not until this pivotal section of chapter five verses twelve to nineteen that he identifies for us the first cause of sin in the world and the reason why man is fallen (v 12). In other words, what man does shows what he is, a guilty sinner, but why he is a sinner is now traced to its ultimate source. So, after comparing and contrasting the disobedience of Adam and its consequences with the obedience of Christ and its outcome (Rom 5 vs 12-19), Paul reminds us that ‘the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom 5 vs 20-21). This statement is particularly significant. Paul has to this point spoken about the fact of the law in relation to the Jew and the gospel, but having stated how sin ‘entered’ into the world, he now states why the law ‘entered’ as well. This statement about the law, sin and grace forms the basis of what he will explain in chapters six and seven. 

According to Paul, all humanity has morally, spiritually and physically fallen in Adam and death therefore reigns over all (Rom 5 vs 12-14), so the law was given or came in alongside to amplify and quantify both the fact and nature of sin. The law provided a ‘legal’ basis for condemnation by revealing the standard of God which men violated by trespass and transgression for as Paul points out at chapter four verse fifteen, ‘the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression’. Through the law, God made man aware of his sin in order to hold him accountable for it. As Paul said previously: ‘Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God’ (Rom 3 v 19 NASB). The law with its commandments, though given to prevent sin and establish righteousness, multiplied the opportunity on the part of man for the demonstration of disobedience and rebellion against God and His will. 

It's worth reminding ourselves again that in Romans to this point, Paul has been dealing in the context of human sinfulness, particularly showing to those, who in their pride, arrogance and privilege misused the law as a means of righteousness and misunderstood the law with regards to its purpose and the response it was intended to produce. Those who went only by the ‘letter’ of the law failed to let its truth reach them inwardly and therefore never learnt their inability to fulfil its righteousness. But it must be recognized, even with all the limitations of the Dispensation of Law, the godly in Israel and beyond who lived by faith held God’s moral law in its right perspective.  

Also, we must remember that the law was given to Israel. They were God’s redeemed and covenant people who had firsthand experience of the law and were directly under its authority. Yet, if the moral law of God is a revelation of God’s righteous requirements, then by extension it is the divine standard of judgment for all peoples. Certainly, unlike the Gentile nations, Israel, as the covenant people, were under the accompanying consequences of breaking God’s law and were judged for their covenant unfaithfulness, but it certainly is equally true that all peoples ‘have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom 3 v 23). Moreover, though it is the case that, ‘as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law’ (Rom 2 v 11), the Gentiles, according to Paul, ‘show the work of the law written in their hearts’ (Rom 2 v 15) and God in His impartial justice will without exception, ‘judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ’ (Rom 2 v 16) and “will render to each one according to his deeds” (Rom 2 v 6). So, while people will be held accountable according to the light of truth which they have known, this does not negate and cannot diminish the righteous standard of God’s justice revealed by His law that all the world has, and continues to violate. 

God’s covenant people, to whom the law was given, certainly violated His law in every point as the Biblical record of their history of idolatry and rebellion demonstrates. Yet they never totally abandoned the worship of the Lord. Rather they practiced syncretization foolishly believing they were free to worship other ‘gods’ as long as they still sacrificed to, and acknowledged the Lord. After all they were His covenant people with His Temple in Jerusalem. This was the folly of self-deception and the Lord addressed this false thinking through His prophet Jeremiah (Jer 7 vs 1-12). God finally purged idolatry from the nation by His judgment and their exile to Babylon. However, after their return from exile spiritual departure soon set in again, as the book of Malachi shows, and by the time of Christ a new error was alive and well in the form of the Pharisaical self-righteousness based upon the works of the law as interpreted by the scribes. The Pharisee’s prayer in the parable told by the Lord Jesus highlights and exposes the arrogant pride of these deluded souls (Luke 18 vs 9-14). 

Paul has already dealt with the issue of righteousness and the law ‘head on’ having this message for his fellow countrymen: ‘What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin… Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin’ (Rom 3 vs 9, 20).

But just as the law does not and cannot justify neither does the law itself effect sanctification or enable righteous living. As Paul points out in this chapter, ‘the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good’ (Rom 7 v 12), but it does not make people holy. Instead, it convicts and condemns the transgressor. Any effort by Jew, Gentile or even Christian to become holy by keeping the law through their own effort and strength in order to please God is doomed to failure as Paul will particularly show in verses fourteen to twenty-five. A new relationship based on a new covenant was needed for a new life of sanctification to be realized and this is precisely what this chapter is demonstrating. Whatever way we view Paul’s first-person style, his teaching is abundantly clear, the law is not sinful, it’s the opposite, but we are most certainly sinful and that is what the law truly exposes to us. But the law can neither save or sanctify us. We need Christ for both.

So, it seems clear at least, that while Paul writes, we would naturally assume, from the clarity of his Jewish experience and perspective, the lesson that he is teaching is universally applicable. All people need more than the law. Thus, his conclusive statement in chapter eight verses three and four brings the matter into sharp focus: 
‘For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’.

To repeat again, the clear message of chapter seven is, that just as the believer in Christ has died to sin, so they have died to the law and have been set free from its condemnation. Paul shows that as the law cannot justify neither can it sanctify. It instead exposes and convicts me of my sin (vs 7-13) while offering me no enabling power to conquer my sinfulness and obey its commands (vs 14-25). Moreover, Paul shows that sin, when exposed by means of the law, rather than being suppressed by the law, actually uses the opportunity of the law to assert its power over me! Thus, while the law has power to expose and convict, it has no power to convert and sanctify. I need its truth to understand God’s standard for a sanctified life, but I absolutely need the enablement of divine power to realize a life of sanctification. As chapter seven shows, the problem with sinful humanity is that not only do we do wrong, we are also unable to do what’s right. 

Questions of Division 
Chapter seven begins with Paul addressing the believers as ‘brethren’ and asking a question. This is the first time he addresses them as ‘brethren’ since chapter one verse thirteen and the answer to his question, he evidently expects his audience to know since he is speaking ‘to those who know the law’ (v 1). You can’t read this epistle without seeing how throughout it Paul advances his arguments by questions. Among all the questions Paul asks, those he answers with a ‘Certainly not!’ or ‘May it never be!’ (NASB) or ‘God forbid’ (KJV) are particularly significant. We find this negative answer some ten times. Six of them answer a question which is, expect in one case (3 v 3), first preceded with a shorter question introduced with an interrogative pronoun – ‘what’. In the exception of chapter three verse three the main question itself begins with interrogative as in, ‘what if…?’, while the others are prefaced with a terse: ‘what shall we say?’ (3 v 5); ‘what shall we say then?’ (6 v 1), ‘What then?’ (6 v 15); ‘What shall we say then?’ (7:7); ‘What shall we say then?’ (9 v 14). Chapter three verse three the ‘what’ carries the idea of, should it be the case? While the others suggest the idea, how shall we respond? Or, what should we conclude? Then the other four times we find this answer, ‘Certainly not!’ it is given in response to questions which begin: ‘Do we then…?’ (3 v 31); ‘Has then…?’ (7 v 13); ‘I say then…?’ (11 vs 1, 11). Again, Paul’s framing of questions in this way suggests the possibility of something being inferred from his teaching which is ‘certainly not’ the case. All the questions that receive this emphatic negative answer are questions that anticipate a possible implication someone may infer or conclude from Paul’s arguments. For Paul, such reasonings must be refuted. So, by this method, he is anticipating and representing wrong assumptions or conclusions to his arguments, particularly from his opponents, and, to borrow a phrase, ‘blowing them out of the water!’

At any rate then, the divisions of chapters six and seven are based upon four of these questions answered by ‘certainly not!’ These mark off the sections of the two chapters, which are chapter six verse one to fourteen, followed by verse fifteen through to chapter seven verse six, then verse seven to thirteen with the last section being verse fourteen to twenty-five.

AJC