No Believer Is Under Law Anymore
Romans 7:4-6 · Mike Doyle · Nov 26, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 051
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261933252193

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, really interesting verses we're in right now. I agree with Jim. There are those who don't understand that we're free from the law. So, maybe to set this up a little bit. By the way, on my overheads, usually on the bottom somewhere, there's a little number. They don't mean anything to anybody but me, because sometimes I'm up here and I've got my notes and I've got these little markers of a slide one, two, three and four. And sometimes what I'm reading and what's up there isn't the same. So I put the numbers there so I could at least go back to where I thought I should be. So. But you have to have great vision to see them because they're an eight point type.

Anyway, back in chapter two of Romans, it speaks of those who rested in the law and boasted who had the form of knowledge of the truth of the law, but who dishonored God by breaking it. Who is he talking about then? He's talking about the Jews, but really he was using that example as a religious person who has spiritual rules and regulations that he should follow. And he's talking about those who would boast about it, obviously would be the Jews.

And then when we got to chapter 3, we find out there's a little phrase there that says, by the law is the knowledge of sin. So it helps us understand what's the purpose of the law. Is it to keep us all in line? Or is it to give definition to what sins are? The coming in of the law was a great event. One of the greatest events in the history of the world. For it brought out a divine standard of what man ought to be to please God.

So in this first slide we have verse 14 from chapter 6, For sin shall not be master over you, because you are not under law, but you are under grace. And we spent a couple of Sundays talking about that. And then the question is asked, What then? Shall we sin because we're not under law but under grace?

And the answer is obviously, no way. May it never be. But Paul has a purpose here to press home to the point that the believer is not under law anymore. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, boy, if I don't have any rules, what am I going to do? I don't know. How to gauge?

The problem is that, like Jim said, we all died in Christ. And part of that death is that I'm dead to something. I'm dead to a lost system, which is just terrific, terrific news. So when we come to chapter 7, verse 1 through 3, and I'm going to read them again. Do you not know, brethren, I'm speaking to those who have I'm speaking to those who have the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives. Critical point, critical point.

I went to a funeral on Tuesday afternoon. The person that the funeral was about, did they have to obey the speed limit getting to the church? Were they under any sort of worldly obligation to comply? No. Why not? They were dead. They weren't even here anymore. So maybe the hearse was breaking the speed limit, but they weren't.

For the married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he's living, but if the husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, well, if the husband is living and she's joined to another man, She's called an adulteress, but if her husband dies, she's free from the law. Free. So that she is not an adulteress, though she's joined to another man.

So what is Paul doing here? He's saying he uses this fundamental law, fundamental principle of domestic relationships to illustrate the fact that only death breaks a legal bond. Only death breaks a legal bond. So it's evident that the simple meaning in this passage, the husband and wife illustration was really a smart choice of just to sort of lay out to whoever's reading what really being dead to the law means. It has worldwide application. Almost every society that an anthropologist deals with There's laws like that. If you want to break a bond, like a marriage bond, you have to die. Somebody has to die. And so it's understood and it sets forth perfectly what Paul was saying. It describes the dissolution of a relationship only by death, thus making a new relationship possible, as William Newell says.

The principle is stated in verse 2 and 3 that we talked a lot about last week. This week, though, Paul now proceeds to apply the principle in the case of those believers who have been openly placed by God under the law, that is, Jewish believers. In the example of the woman and her husband, there's no real intention of Paul's part to set forth the fact that he was only speaking to Jews. He's speaking to everybody about the principle of law.

And again, the principle is that death ends a relationship and sets one free to enter on a new relationship. We've all died to the old man, so why? So we can enter into a new relationship with the risen Christ. That's why it happened. So in verse 4, we're told, Therefore, brethren, you were also made dead to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might, why? So that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that you might bear fruit unto God.

We're going to spend a little time talking about what do you do? Does it bear fruit to God? And where do you have to be in order to have fruit be compensated for? Does God look at what you're doing and says, oh, yeah, that's really great. I'll accept that. Or is there a prerequisite?

For while we were in the flesh of sinful passions, which were aroused by the law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit unto death. The entire rest of chapter seven, except for the last couple of verses, will deal with that one issue. What does the law do? It stimulates your sin nature to sin more.

And there's a thousand examples, you know. You put the glass of water in front of a two-year-old and say, don't touch it. What do they do? Once you've said, don't touch it, now the focus is on that. And they can't stop. They can't stop. All of you probably had kids around over the holidays. And there were a lot of times you said, don't do that. And that's exactly what they were doing. Or you said to them, it's OK to do this. and they're doing something else.

But we have been released from the law having died to that wherein we were bound. So why? We may serve in newness of spirit rather than the oldness of the law. So here's a hint that serving God is a spiritual event, not a letter event. It's not reading the rules and following them. It's a spiritual event, so we'll spend some more time on that.

So in five, slide five, if you try to apply verse four and six directly to Jewish believers, you have a little bit of difficulty. What I tried to do here was to put side by side the Gentiles, which is most of us, were totally without law. The Jews were under a law that God gave them and put them under it. So we can't say that realistically, unless he says, like he says, therefore my brethren, who are the brethren? They're his Jewish brothers. So they're under the law system. But I, as a Gentile, was given a conscience. And my conscience is this little mechanism within me that says, well, it's okay to do that, but it's probably not okay to do that. It corrects me when I'm wrong and compliments me when I'm right.

Where the Jews, their whole thing was 620 or so do's and don'ts. I don't know how, I mean, How old does a Jew have to be before he's got all those 600 things down? I live in this, as you know, I live in a neighborhood that has a bunch of Hasidic Jews that live there and they dress different.

And they're amazing to watch because there are certain things that they're adamant about. But mowing their grass isn't one of them. Taking care of their houses isn't one of them. But wearing the black suit and the macrame and the yarmulke, and then on the Sabbath, you know, it's amazing to watch them operate. They can't drive a car on the Sabbath, but they all have about five kids, so they have these strollers that are three kids wide, and they push them two miles up a hill to get to the synagogue. That sounds like work to me. The really smart ones drive to the two-mile limit, park their car there and walk the rest of the way.

We never had the law, never had the Mosaic law. But the Jew had the law. He had a conscience that that law directed. And you know what's interesting? Based on this verse, the power of sin controlled Judaism. Do you see that? The law through the body of Christ, so that we might be joined to Him who raised. The verse that we're going to talk about later is, if the law is the thing that stimulates sin, and God puts the Jews under a law system, what is going to happen to the Jews? They're going to sin. They're going to sin. So they have this whole elaborate system that God gave them to cover their sins. To cover their sins. I can't think of anything that would be more difficult than being Jewish and living under that system.

So the gospel comes and it tells a person that in 7.3, but if her husband dies, she's free from the law and that she is not an adulteress, though she'd be joined to another man. As touching the Gentile believers, this fact that was reckoned on her for putting out the business of chapter 6, the body of sin, relieving them from sin's bondage. You remember that back when we were studying verse 6, We talked about the body of sin and being separated from it for the purpose of putting it out of business. You know, Romans 6 says, my old man was crucified.

Was it or not? God says, yes, it was. For what purpose? So that the body of sin might be annulled, put out of business. If you're an electrical engineer, taken offline. that it would stop functioning as a sinning entity. That was the whole purpose. And the whole purpose, we found out, the whole purpose of grace was to stop somebody from sinning, not the law. It was grace that was to do that.

So the Jewish believer then, the announcement is now directly made so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that you might bear fruit unto God." So what Paul is telling the Jewish believers who are listening, and obviously a lot of non-believers probably were listening to this too, that you Jews have been made dead to the law through the body of Christ, for the purpose that you could be joined to somebody else or something else, another. Joined to the risen Christ in order that he might bring forth fruit to God. So here's a new equation. Am I under the law to bring forth fruit unto God? Do I decide to follow the rules and does that bring fruit unto God?

Or here's something totally new that must have astonished them, that they've been discharged from the law, literally annulled in respect to the law, thus bringing out a new way to serve. It was a start If you think about it, how long were the Jews under the law? Well, up until the time of Paul, it was 1,500 years. We haven't even been in North America 1,500 years. And the Jews, at this point, they've been under it 2,500 years now if they chose to be there.

And here comes Paul and he says, you have died at all that. The law doesn't know you anymore. It doesn't recognize you as someone who has to be under it. So he's trying to establish back in 614 that sin won't have mastery over you. Why? Because you're not under law, you're under grace. It sounds pretty simple, isn't it? that sin isn't going to master me anymore and the reason it's not going to master me is because I live under grace and not a law system. It covers of course both the Gentile and Jewish believers who are not under law. We're not under the principle in any sense at all.

The Gentiles obviously had a moral obligation as responsible children of Adam. Though not under the law, we were said that we were without law, we didn't have any law. We were making it up as we went. We were a law unto ourself. And there is a work of the law in our hearts we call conscience, as we see in chapter two. which the conscience bore witness to us. Murder is one thing, adultery is another.

I mean, you can list what they are. The Gentiles, therefore, the announcement that in Christ that they are not at all under the principle law sets them free to do what? To delight in Christ and to surrender to the operation of the Holy Spirit within them. The additional announcement is made to those who were under the Mosaic Law, and they have the same liberty they died from which they were held. They died out of it. So both Jew and Gentile, the great lesson with each of us must rest on our own heart is that those in Christ, whether Jew or Gentile, are not under a principle of law, but under grace.

And I know we dance around in our heads about that, because we have this triggering mechanism that says, well, this is probably okay to do this, or probably not okay to do that. And really, does a dead person in a coffin at a funeral have to make a decision about how their behavior ought to be? When you're dead, you're dead. When you're dead to something, when a human being dies, what happens? They leave the world. So the world is left behind and none of the principles of the world apply to them anymore because they're not here. It's the same principle. The principle of law does not apply to us because we're not in it. We live under this incredible thing called grace. And grace, the full accomplished divine favor, that favor shown by God to Christ, the fact that the gospel message was given to us so that we might live differently under grace.

Maybe the best way is, and I use this example all the time, why do I, or why do any of you who are married, why do you Like Bob was saying at Sunday school this morning that when his wife is out of town, he looks forward to her coming back and he wants to make it a nice reception.

So he washes the dishes, cleans up the house. Why? So when she comes, she's pleased. There's nothing. Well, why does he do that? Because she left him a list on the refrigerator? No, he does it because he loves her. and He lives under grace and He knows.

We live under the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and we learn as we grow spiritually what's pleasing to Him and what isn't. That's kind of cool. It demonstrates a personal relationship that we didn't have before. And the relationship is not built on my adherence to do's and don'ts, it's based on Just communication and intimacy. I know what the Lord Jesus likes and doesn't like in most cases. I don't have to think about it or go look it up in a rule book. I know. Why? Because I know Him. So, the life of the believer, the new life of the believer is one of faith, not effort.

As Paul says in Galatians 2.20, the life which I now live in the flesh, this body, I live in faith, or by faith, the faith which is in the Son of God. I trust Him to live a life through me that's pleasing to Him. In the power of the indwelling Spirit. Oh, I can't do it myself, but the Holy Spirit indwells me. It's His power that makes that life activated in me. For walking by the Spirit has taken the place of walking by external commandments.

We all have a moral responsibility to produce righteousness and holiness before God, but we can't do it. It's impossible to do. So both the Jews and the Gentiles are included in the tremendous statement of 6.6. Our old man was crucified. through the body of Christ. We come to a point where we're very thankful about that. We're very thankful about that.

So God's Word is not speaking here of propitiation or justification. For you who aren't here every Sunday, propitiation is one of those Greek words that means satisfaction. He's not here talking about satisfying God, about my sinfulness. That's something that Christ took care of. He propitiated God to the point that I don't have to do it anymore. He totally took care of everything that was pleasing to God and everything that was displeasing. And He declared me justified because of His work on the cross, not because of what I did. His work. So, and how did that all happen? Through the blood of Christ.

The blood of Christ, Romans 3.25. But God speaks here of what we call identification with Christ in which, in God's view, all believers were brought to the end of their history at the cross. I'll read that again. In God's view, all believers were brought to the end of their own history at the cross so that the former relationship to sin, the law, and the world all ended from God's perspective. It should be noted that both concerning Christ's death for us and our death with Christ, it was done in Christ's body.

As for the first, we remember in 1 Peter 2.24, it says, who is his own self bore our sins in his body on the tree. That's propitiation. And as the second, the present verse, made dead through the body of Christ. You know, when he says in his word, Paul says that we died with Christ, he means it.

And it's important for us, I think, to think about we didn't die a little bit or 40 percent. or we're not trying to die more as the days go on. We're not doing any of that. He says we're dead. Eris tense. Fact. We died. That means the world, sin, the law, we're separated from that. We live in an entirely new environment, which is grace and the resurrected Christ.

Anyone who has examined their writings, there is an inseparable, I'm talking about Reformed theology now, inseparable conclusion that the Reformed theologians, Newell says they're truly godly men, have kept the vision of believers confined generally to propitiatory work of Christ, not seeing at least not setting forth clearly the ending of our history in identification with Christ, thus freeing us from sin, the law, the old creation, and setting us wholly on a resurrection ground in Christ Jesus. I don't know why they don't do that. I don't know why they can't. Like Jim says, you read these verses and How can you turn around and say, well, God saved you and indwelt you with the Holy Spirit so you can keep the law?

He just said I'm dead to it. Which is it? I'm either dead or I'm not. God's identifying us with Christ and His death was just as sovereign an act as God transferring our sins to Christ. It did not proceed from the incarnation or from the birth of Christ, for He was holy and He was separated from sinners from birth to the cross. There was absolutely no union with sinful humanity except when He went to the cross. We would be horrified at the teaching that Christ was burying our sins from the Incarnation. Listen, it's taught. It's taught in a lot of places that that's what God did.

If you move the word death into my relationship to everything I was from Adam to the time I'm saved, then if I don't understand that death is complete and permanent, then I'm always sneaking over there trying to grab some of what I think are the good things about death. There is nothing good about death. Nothing. The great lesson to learn in this whole passage is pretty simple.

There is the body of Christ, of Christ's made sin, and our old man crucified with Him. Our history in Adam thus ended before God. You ever think about that when you talk to God, when you pray, that your frame of reference is, I'm sitting here praying and talking to God, and he's looking at me as a new man in Christ, not an Adam in any sense. Oh, help me. The only God that yells help is Adam. The new man in Christ doesn't say help.

Why wouldn't he? because he's resurrected in the God of the universe and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Christ raised from the dead. It is this latter Christ to whom we are now vitally united, the resurrected Christ. to him only that we might bring forth fruit unto God in this risen Christ. As we see in 622, you have your fruit unto sanctification.

Philippians 1.11, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Christ Jesus, through the indwelling Spirit, or Galatians 5.22, the fruit of the Spirit is.

That's who you really are. I can remember as a young believer, I knew a man that knew about identification. And he used to say, I want you to read your Bible and wherever it says you or the body of Christ, just put your name in there because you're talking about you. It's who you are. And I know he would say, I don't care what What goes on around you, what the Word of God says you are, is who you are.

So put your name in there. Mike, Bob, whoever. We're there. And the interesting thing is, before we're crucified with Christ, not a single act that we do bears fruit to God. Not one. And why is that? Because the source of the act God has rejected. He doesn't deal with us in Adam anymore. He deals with us in Christ. So you can do all the spiritual push-ups you want. You can, you know, walk down the aisle 55 times. You can spend all your money helping whatever. If you're not in Christ, it's useless before God. Every act.

So what happened to that? It's completely asserted here that those under law could not bring forth fruit to God. They can't do it. So you've got to imagine Donna and I walking up to a guy in my neighborhood or a woman in my neighborhood dressed like they're dressed, with a black suit and a fedora and all that, and say, by the way, all that you're doing doesn't bring fruit to God. We'd be run out of them. Well, they wouldn't talk to us anyway. They don't talk to us anyway. Because in order to bring forth such fruit, They had to be made dead to the law. You can't do it on both sides. And the denominations that we deal with in Christianity don't teach this principle.

And they do all this, what they think is wonderful stuff. Well, in the estimation of Adam, it might be wonderful. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized for all about us, we find those who are earnestly seeking to bear fruit to God while entangled with the yoke of bondage. What's the yoke of bondage?

It's the law. Not knowing themselves dead to that legal principle. They don't know it, then they don't know what their behavior is about. Again, dealing with your grandkids who aren't old enough to be aware of anything, and they don't know what they're doing, if it's good, bad, or somewhere in the middle, until you tell them and show them, and they get old enough to understand.

So, it is only those who see themselves who have died with Christ and to have been joined to the risen Christ in glory that fully bring forth fruit unto God. They're the only ones. It's a magnificent day when a believer sees himself only in the risen Christ. It's a great day. Dead, buried, risen. He can say with another, I am crucified in the flesh.

I'm not in the flesh. I'm not in the place of the child of Adam at all, but delivered out of it all by redemption. This world in which the life of Adam develops itself, and of which the law is the moral rule, I do not belong to before God more than a man who died yesterday, or ten years ago, or fifteen minutes ago, or forty years ago, or four thousand years ago. I don't have anything to do with it. The Lord has me functioning in it, but I'm not of it. So I don't use their rules. I don't use their principles.

So verse five says, 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. Two, and I stopped there on purpose. Notice it doesn't say in the body, for we're all that. Being in the body is no moral significance, but the words are in the flesh. the condition of those not saved, as we see from Romans 8, 8, and 9. Those who are in the flesh can't please God, can't do it. However, you're not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you, but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to him. It's pretty simple, really. This does describe a moral state or condition, absence of life, absence of the Holy Spirit and control by the fallen sin nature. If you really understand law for what it is, it does not help you.

It causes you to sin. That's what it's designed to do. So the passions of sin, which were through the law, to those in the flesh controlled by evil nature through a body dead to God, legal restraint was intolerable. If they got honest, it was intolerable. As we shall see in the last part of the chapter, sin was there, it's always been there, but inactive until the law came, demanding obedience and holiness.

You know, one of the guys I read uses It's a metaphor of a sleeping lion. The lion's fine until you poke it with a stick. And when you poke it with a stick, you better be running really fast. But the stick and the poking is the law. The lion is the sin nature, sound asleep until the law comes along and pokes it. Then, you know, we use the term poking the bear. The bear isn't going to harm me as long as I don't poke him. That's what law is.

Thus came the arousings, the passions of sin, sins of all kinds. It's evident that the Jew who had the law is distinctly and especially before Paul's mind here. Like I say, from verse about 8 or 9 to the end of the chapter 23 of chapter 7, Paul's really going to lay out in really cool terms. He really tried hard out of the flesh, and he really tried to implement law in his life all the time.

But the results were always negative. And all they ever did was stimulate sin, and he couldn't control it. Boy, for a guy like him, a Jew and a Pharisee, and now a believer that understands in his mind what being dead to the law means, but not really knowing what it's like to live it day at a time. It's frustrating. You watch the frustration of Paul.

So, they were at work and the members of your body to bring fruit to death. You mean all that stuff I did before I was a believer is just dead works? You know, we believers think, well, we're going to go to the beam of judgment, and there'll be the pile of dead works over here, and then there'll be the good stuff over here. We're still operating on that principle. Do this and don't do that.

Well, when Christ is able, through the Holy Spirit, to do something through you as a believer, you get rewarded for what He did. When you initiated it out of your flesh, you head to the bonfire. Some of you are going to have big fires. Paul's great struggle after he was saved, he finds a law of sin in his members.

He discovers it through experience, against which he's powerless. He can't do anything about it. And which would have engulfed him in everlasting hopelessness except for the revelation of the deliverance of Christ. What was the revelation of the deliverance of Christ? He was crucified. That's what delivered him.

Here at verse 5, when an unsaved man, a man in the flesh is in view, fruit unto death is brought forth by those arousings of sin which come through the law. Well, so far, I'm beginning to be convinced that I probably don't want to mess with the law. So, verse 6, But now we have been released from the law, having died to that which in wherein we were bound, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not the oldness of the letter. Now, you remember when we were talking about Romans 6, 6, that our old man was crucified with him in order the body of sin might be annulled to put on.

Well, this word here for released is exactly the same word as annulled. It's katorgeho. So what happens? The word rendered, released, Paul's old word, to put out of business. So I can say, but now we have been put out of business from the law. The store is closed. We're separated from it. Why? So that we can do something else. The law which was once held him now had nothing to do with him, for he had put it out, for he had been put out of law's domain, out of the place of business in which the law operated.

That is a natural child of Adam, a man in the flesh, and in this case, a Jew under the law. What a deliverance. What a deliverance. So let us, who are Gentile believers, most carefully note a couple of things. That the Jewish believer who was put under sanctions of death under the law by God at Sinai, has been declared by that same God that he died to that in which he was held, so that the law has no more business with him. And that, however deeply taught by tradition, that we Gentile believers are under law, we must throw that tradition all away. For if the Jew who was divinely placed under the law has been made dead to it and discharged from it, put out of the sphere and dominion of law, then what presumption for a Gentile to claim that he's under the law before God and that we can serve in there?

That's really presumptuous to do that. So, what does the whole passage? Chapter 512 onward plainly tell us. Remember 512 was the change from Christ dying for us to we dying with him. With whom we were first connected except Adam the first. All of our standing, all of our responsibility were in Adam the first. Our relation to him was such as nothing but death could break it. You don't get away from Adam except dying.

We were responsible to furnish God a perfect righteousness and holiness in the flesh. No matter if we could do it or not, we ought to do it. So our inability does not at all diminish our responsibility. You can't go to God and say, I'm sorry, I can't make it.

He says, I know. But what did God do about it? Our old man was crucified. The guy that was unacceptable, the old Adam, the man in Adam was crucified. We shared Christ's death to sin. We shared it. We died to the whole position in Adam and our obligations, all the obligations that we had in Adam and connected with him were crucified.

So I had one other thing I wrote down this morning I wanted to talk about. In the old days, the mentality was, I thought I ought to do this. Now it is, I would like to do so. As we say elsewhere, the instructed believer finds himself doing the will of God as it is done in heaven. That is in the very spirit of service and not by forms or obedient ordinances and not by earthly principles. So I was going to talk a little bit, but I think I'm running over time.

I was going to talk a little bit about the fact that When you read in verse 1 and 2 and 3 that the woman is married to the man and is under the law of the man until he dies, the man doesn't represent the law because they're both under that law. Does that make sense? So one of them dies and then the law connected with that person goes away. And that's what we have to understand, that we died. And that all of that principle that used to be ours is no more. And what does it do?

It makes us free. But we're never free to do what we please. We're free to do what God would have us do. We're free to serve him in a new spirit of life in Christ Jesus. So, let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you for what you've done, not only for us, but to us, that you have placed us in Christ. We live in an environment now of grace, of an unmerited favor, unlimited favor. And we're to live like that moment by moment, live as receivers, not causers. live serving you, and dependence on the Holy Spirit who we're all indwelt with. So we're so thankful for that. And we recognize it takes probably most of our life to learn from you how to just present ourselves to you as those that are alive from the dead. But we do learn that, and we're thankful. And we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.