Christ Life In Us Romans 7:4-6 Freed From the Bondage of Law

Good morning. Let's open with prayer this morning. Our Heavenly Father, we are gathered here today to learn from you. We're here to spend time in your Word. You've given it to us so that we might know you by it. And that's our goal and our desire this morning. And so I pray that you would Just open our eyes to behold you and the wonderful truth about all that you've done. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, as I was preparing this message, the word untethered came to mind. And so a little bit more on that as we go, but we're really talking about being freed from law's bondage. And I thought of this illustration, and then as I thought about it more, I thought, you know, I really actually don't have a clue. This is sort of one of those irrational fears that's never probably going to matter for me.

But I don't know if you've ever considered what it would be like to be an astronaut. It's probably not something any of us really has to worry about, right? But have you ever wondered, you talk about going on a spacewalk, you know what a spacewalk is, right? You go outside the space station or outside the shuttle or whatever. And that thought is kind of a terrifying thought, if you were to imagine it.

But now I don't know if this is a real picture or AI, you never know these days, it just came up. And I didn't even check or research this at all, so like I said, this may be totally false information, but the point is still applied. I feel like they often are tethered to the space station, right?

But if you look at this guy, he's got nothing. He's out there. Now, I imagine whoever took the photo was probably, you know, in the space station in the shuttle or whatever. How is he supposed to get back? I don't know if that little backpack has those little jet pack things on it. I know some of them have those little things they can shuttle around in space. But if you ever imagine being outside, maybe you're working, fixing something on the outside of the spacecraft and you let go. Whoops. There's nothing to push off of. There's no way to get back. Anyway, you can ask an astronaut how it really works. What an awful feeling that would be if you're like drifting away from your spacecraft. You're completely untethered. You're separated from the security and the safety of the spacecraft.

And this whole visual came to mind because I was thinking that a lot of us as Christians, I don't know about you, but I know about myself, that's kind of how we feel when it comes to being separated from the law. It causes us to feel sort of untethered. Well, what now? I just, I feel lost. I feel very unsafe. That kind of a thing. Right? But we have in these verses here this morning in Romans 7 very clearly stated that we have been severed from the law, separated from it. And, you know, this is a very interesting question that we're dealing with this morning.

I think if you were to talk to most Christians, you know, in my experience, and, you know, depending how you ask the question, depending on their context, but if you were to ask them, you know, as a Christian, am I under the law? Or maybe you'd ask a question, As a Christian, what does the Lord expect of me? What is it that he desires for me? What is it that he wants from me? almost always you're going to get a response along the lines of something to do with law, though they may not use that word, right?

You know, you could heat up the conversation a little bit by asking, well, as a Christian, are you under the Ten Commandments? Does God expect you to keep the Ten Commandments? That will usually make it a lot more personal and direct, because if you grow up in Sunday school, the answer is, oh, yes, absolutely. You know, I must keep the Ten Commandments.

Right? Which is, of course, just a summary of the law. I mean, that's, you know, this is law. So, you know, the answer that you're going to get from most believers is yes. Yes, we are. Some way, shape, or form, we're under law. You know, and honestly, even many of our own kind of camp, or whatever you want to call us, you know, grace-oriented, true grace, whatever, dispensationalists, though They will often be very clear that we are not under the law of Moses. They will often turn around and put the church right back under a principle of law. And if you haven't had a conversation with someone along these lines, give it a try, and you'll feel how tense it can get. Because if you come to a fellow believer and try to explain to them that we're not under law, the Lord doesn't have you under the Ten Commandments or the 613 Commandments for you to keep.

They're probably going to be fairly bothered by that. They're separated from that. They're untethered. You've just severed them from the safety of their law. And really, Romans 7 settles this whole issue very, very clearly. However, I don't know if you've experienced this or not, but taking a fellow believer who understands themselves as being under law, taking them to Romans 7 probably isn't going to settle it for them, probably isn't going to win them over. Because they're not yet prepared for it, is generally the problem. Romans 7, what Paul is teaching here and in the following verses, is very, very helpful when we've been prepared by failure, is really what it is.

God has a solution for the problem of failure that we experience. And so if you're a failure, as a Christian, if you've felt, ever felt like a failure, if you feel like a failure right now, take heart. Because the Lord has prepared your heart to understand what he has, what he intends for you. And if you have learned these truths, And the Lord has done that work in your heart, and through your own failure, seeing your need to be under something other than the law, then the Lord will send you those who are prepared, and you have something to share with them about the freedom that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we need to ask a very important question here, you know, dealt with a little bit, but what law am I freed from? What law is this? Is it the Old Testament law? Is it the whole 613 commands? Is it the commands of the New Testament as something different from the Old Testament law? What is it?

What are we dead to? And what we really need to understand is that we're not just dead to or separated from one specific set of laws or rules. But we are dead to the entire principle of law. And we have to understand this, because otherwise, what we'll do is we'll just shift from one set of rules to another set of rules.

If you tell me that I'm not under the law of Moses as a Christian, I may accept that, but it leaves me with this law void that I wanna fill. I need something to tell me how to live, and I'll very quickly fill that void with another set of rules. If you've got Romans open still, and I encourage you to keep it open, we're going to be looking at a few verses. We're going to flip around a little bit, as I tend to do. If you've noticed, I kind of like to pick up all the contextual pieces and fit things together in our thinking. We take like three, four years to go through a letter like this. Paul wrote it in one sit down, maybe a few, but it was meant to be read together, and so we sometimes lose some of the overall But if you turn back to chapter 2, verses 14 to 15, there's something very important that Paul has set up way back there.

Chapter 2, 14 through 15, for when Gentiles who do not have the law, what law would that be? That would be the law of Moses, the scripture law, because Gentiles weren't given that, right? For when Gentiles who do not have the law do instinctively the things of the law, these not having the law are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. What's Paul saying there?

What he's saying is that everybody, every person in this world operates under a principle of law, even if they don't have a Bible, right? The fact that every person has a moral right and wrong, a moral standard in their heart proves that they operate under a principle of law.

And that's very, very important to understand. We need to begin to see and understand that we're not just freed from certain rules so that we can follow a new set of rules, right? We are freed from operating under the principle of law in order that we might operate according to an entirely different kind of principle, and that's the principle of grace. So, this raises a couple of important questions, I think.

One, how is it that all men came to be under law in the first place? Did God create us that way? Is that the way it was designed? Is this, you know, what's going on? Question number two, why would we want to be freed from the law anyway, right? Why would we want to, Why would we want to be separated or dead to the law? Let's deal with those in order.

So, if you go back to Genesis chapters 1 through 3, right, particularly in chapter 2, the Lord told us something very, very important. Those few chapters of scripture summarize one of the most significant events of all eternity that God created and that he created man very specifically and purposefully. And then we read through chapter two and three and we think, oh, this is kind of trivial, a fruit and tree and a snake and it just, this is no big deal. This is very, very, very important material or God would not have put it in these chapters here. In Genesis chapter 2, God, in verse 9, tells us very clearly about two trees. What do they call them? We have the tree of life. We have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And we know what Adam chose. He chose to eat of the knowledge of good and evil. Which I believe is to say that Adam opted for a principle of law rather than the principle of life. I'm not saying it wasn't a literal tree that he chose from. He did. He literally ate the fruit that God had said not to. But there is something going on in this that God has explained to him.

Because if we think about this, the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of right and wrong is exactly what Paul was talking about there in Romans chapter two. Just the knowledge or the awareness that there is right and there is wrong, that is the basis for all law, is it not? And that's where it began, right there in chapter three, where our first father chose to eat of that fruit against God's clear instructions. And so we have this principle of law that came, that Adam placed himself under and his entire race.

And it's the principle of, you know, just tell me what's right and wrong and I'll take care of the rest. You know, tell me what to do and I'll do it. And that one transgression on Adam's part brought the entire human race under the principle of law. flip back one more chapter in Romans to Romans chapter 1, verses 28 through 32. Now, it's a little bit lengthy, but I think to get to what we want to see in verse 32, I just want to read 28 through 32.

And Paul writes, And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to those things which are not proper. You see right and wrong here? Things which are not proper. Being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slanders, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents. That's interesting that that's included. without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, verse 32, and though they know, what?

They know the ordinance of God. This is not talking about the Jewish nation here, this is talking about all men. They know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death. They not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. So all men know. All men know. They know the ordinance of God, or we could say, translate that, the righteous judgment of God. In other words, all men know right from wrong.

And they even know that it's not sourced in them. They know that it is from outside of them. It is from this God. Paul tells us in chapter one, they suppress that knowledge of God in their hearts. They do know of his existence. And one of the things that testifies to their knowledge of his existence is that they have this embedded knowledge of right and wrong. And they know that that's sourced in the creator God. And because they have this knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, all men, operate under a principle of law. And it says there that they even know that they are accountable to God, right? They know that those who practice such things are worthy of death.

So we all got to be under law because of Adam's transgression. Not a conscious decision on our part, right? If we see in chapter 5, Romans 5 verse 14, It says, nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offensive Adam. In other words, we didn't commit the same sin as Adam, but we were participants with him in his sin.

So we entered into that same state. And that may not seem fair to you, but It's not a question of fair. It's a question of reality. This is the way things work. And if things didn't work this way, by the way, then we would never have any hope of being joined to another man, the Lord Jesus Christ. But God has set things up on this principle. And so don't think in terms of fair or unfair. Think in terms of reality. This is the way it is.

We, through Adam's decision and action, entered in upon this existence under the principle of law. And by the way, if you don't think it's fair, just understand that we all would have chosen the same thing. We love the law principle. We all do. From the time you're conscious, take a toy away from a baby. They know what's wrong. You can't take my thing.

So we love to operate under this principle of law, this principle of right and wrong. And we also, as we grow older and we operate under this longer, we love seeking to prove our own righteousness. We love seeking to operate under law to prove our own merit and our own righteousness.

So, all men are under a principle of law. But what about that other question? Why would we want to be freed from the law? Why would we want that? As we just said, we love law. And we also said that law is the knowledge of good and evil. Well, isn't that a good thing, to know the difference between right and wrong?

Why would we want to be freed from that? This is exactly what Paul is explaining here. This really gets at the heart of his thrust in these verses. You know, because frankly, we don't. We don't want to be free from law, right? As we talked about, look how agitated most of us get as Christians when you tell us that we're not under law, right? But the Bible says that this is a good thing. This is a good thing to be freed from the law. So why is it good to be freed from the law? Look at chapter seven, now we're into today's verses, okay? Chapter seven, beginning in verse four, therefore, my brethren, you, which is plural.

And of course, he's speaking to the church at Rome, but when he uses this term, my brethren, and if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you are a brother or sister in Christ, so this includes you. If this is addressed to the brethren, then this includes you. So this is all believers. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law." And that is the indicative eris, that's a fact. And it's a fact that you as a believer were made to die to the law.

And then Paul begins to unfold the purpose for this. And he does that in several layers. He doesn't just give you one little thing. He gives you a progression, a logical progression he builds. He says, so that, okay, so here's the purpose. So that what? So that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead. And this is really important to understand.

You could not be joined to Christ while you were still bound to the law. That's the principle that Paul was teaching in verses 2 and 3, which Mike covered for us last week. And it's really important, actually, to understand that Paul's not teaching on marriage there. You'll kind of wander off into some weird thinking and stuff about marriage.

I mean, it's true principle. But just understand that what Paul is doing is he's illustrating a principle by marriage. Marriage is a relationship that can only be severed by death. And that's a good thing, right? Marriage places you in union, two people in union, a man and a woman in union, one man and one woman for life until death do us part. And that is a good thing.

And none of us desires to have our spouse die so that we can be separated from them. But what Paul is talking about is that the same principle applies with the law. If you are going to be separated from the law, it would take the same thing as it takes to be separated from your spouse, death. Death is the only thing, as God designed it, that should ever separate a man and a wife, and death is the only thing that will ever separate you from the law. We couldn't be joined to Christ until we were legally separated from the law through death. So that's the first reason in Paul's explanation. We died to the law, that's a fact, so that we could be joined to Jesus Christ. And then he builds on top of that. And the following phrase he says, in order that. Okay? In order that. That's the word Hina, that's a purpose clause. What's the purpose? In order that we might bear fruit for God. That's the purpose.

And so it really helps here, I think, to look at this backwards. Sometimes if you want to kind of see the logical progression, work it backwards in your mind. So why would we want to be freed from the law? Because We could never bear fruit for God unless we were first joined to Jesus as our life, but we could never be joined to Jesus Christ unless we were first separated from the power of the law through death. So that's the logical progression, kind of looking at it backwards.

We couldn't bear fruit for God without being joined to Jesus, and we couldn't be joined to Jesus without first being separated from the law. Okay, so that means that this bearing fruit for God is the end goal. And what is fruit for God? What is that? It's, what it is, is it's His kind of righteousness. It is what we could call godliness. It's, as we'll see, it's His kind of life. And it was absolutely necessary that we be dead to the law for that to happen.

And it's interesting, really, how opposite this is to the thinking of most Christians. What's the number one argument that believers will give you when you tell them that they are not under the commandments? The Ten Commandments are not for you. What are they gonna say? Well, that's just a license to sin. You tell me that, you just wanna sin. That's all you're teaching. But Romans says exactly the opposite. Okay?

Freedom from law is necessary in order to bear the fruit of righteousness. And that is a good reason to want to be free from the law. And it's really important that we understand that. Because, as I, you know, put those words in other people's mouths, but it's very easy to begin to think that way ourselves.

Well, if I'm not under the law, doesn't that just mean I do whatever I want? I mean, I'm not just going to live in sin? No. Being dead to the law, being separated from the law is the only means by which you will ever have righteousness, a godly life.

And then keep following down into verse 5, because Paul begins verse 5, I just put up the whole text here so we're going to kind of keep following through it, with the word for. which is, we can think of it as a logical word, logical connector. We can also think of it as a strengthening word, right? If I tell you something and I say, for, you know, we don't maybe tend to talk that way as much, but I'm strengthening what I just said. What does Paul say here about the effect of the law on us? In verse 5, he's contrasting the fruit of being bound to law with the fruit of being bound to Jesus. Let's just read it. So the law aroused the sinful desires of the flesh. We can see it awakened or stirred up the sinful desires of the flesh.

Just a side note, you know, is it any wonder why all of these legal Christian teachers and leaders keep getting caught up in scandal? It's what we should expect. The more you teach law, the more you think law, the more you activate the sin nature. And so, tragic as it is, it shouldn't be a surprise. But notice, and this is really important, it's not the law that bears fruit to death. It's the sinful desires of the flesh. Paul is actually very careful about the way he says this.

And this is what we're going to be dealing with next week more in depth because this question kind of becomes quite apparent. You know, if it's so good to be separated from the law, what's wrong with the law? Well, there's nothing wrong with the law. We'll deal with that next week.

But the key point for now is that being bound to the law had a very negative result or fruit, bearing fruit to death. And what that does, and Paul making this point clear, is that it strengthens what he said in verse four. Being dead to the law is what allows us to be joined to Christ so that righteous fruit can be produced. And at the same time, being dead to the law frees us from the very thing that stirs up our sin nature and activates our sin nature.

So it's a very good thing to be separated from the law. And here's the thing. It's your reality as a Christian. As we said there, brethren, you also were made to die to the law. This is a fact. This is true of you. If you put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, it is true that you've been separated from the law. It doesn't matter what you think about it. It doesn't matter how you feel about it. It's true. You have been separated from the law.

And verse 5 now is describing you and I as unbelievers. Before we were saved, entirely enslaved to self and bound to the law. And then verse 6 begins, but now. So verse 5 is about an unbeliever. Verse 6 is about you again, but now. We are no longer unbelievers. Born again, we are in Christ Jesus, and we have a brand new reality. We have been released from the law. And that is, again, an indicative eras. This is a fact. Okay, and it's also passive, which means you were acted upon by another. We have been freed. And this isn't something that we need to be freed from. This is what we have been freed from.

And how was it accomplished, as Jim said, when he read the verses, having died? As Christians, we have died. And when did we die? What did Paul say back in verse 4? He said, You also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ. And this is all building off of what Paul told us back in chapter 6, verse 3, where he said, Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? And we've said this many times.

This is not water baptism. This is a moment of your salvation when the Holy Spirit came and baptized you into union with Jesus Christ. At that moment, you were baptized into Christ Jesus' death, and it's that death that separated you from the law and the power of the law. So our death with Christ on the cross separated us from our previous existence in Adam as slaves to sin and the law and made it possible to have this brand new existence in Christ. So what? What does this mean for us? What does this mean for us?

If it's a fact that we're joined to Christ in order to bear fruit for God, does it just happen? Is it automatic? Is it a guarantee that every believer will have this good fruit flowing out of them? I say obviously not, or there'd be no need to even tell us about this. It would just happen, right?

Scripture tells us a lot about this, and so there's obviously some reason to tell us about this and teach us about this, because this good fruit doesn't just flow out, okay? But, and we really need to, I think, be clear on this, there are a lot of teachers in what we call the Lordship Salvation, folks such as John MacArthur and others, but he's always at the top of the list. This is where they go off the rails.

They teach that if you are truly saved, you will have good works guaranteed, or you must not have ever truly been saved. And what that does is that makes what you do the measure of your eternal salvation, and that's not the gospel. Assurance, biblically, is based on the Word of God alone. That whosoever believes has eternal life. We rest on the Word of God, not on our works. And you can never, never get onto a grace footing with that mindset. that lordship mindset.

So yes, it's a fact that we've been judicially separated from the power of the sin nature, we've been separated from the law which stimulated it, and we have been joined to Christ so that His righteous fruit can be produced in us, but that does not mean that the fruit is guaranteed or automatic. Lordship salvation makes our works the gauge of whether or not we're eternally saved, and that leads us to one of two places.

One is arrogance, I'm good enough, that mentality. The other place is despair, I'll never be good enough. Okay? And hopelessness, because there's no answer in their view, if you wind up in that point. Though it is a good thing to despair of ever achieving that righteousness if you come back to what the Lord says in His word right here, because there is an answer, and this is what we're dealing with right now.

So no. The production of this fruit, the righteous life of Christ, is not automatic. That's why Paul is taking the time to explain how it works. There is something necessary in order for believers to have this fruit in their lives. I want you to notice something very important in verse 4. It says that we might bear fruit for God. It's not our job to produce fruit. It's our job to bear it, okay? This should immediately remind us of John chapter 15. Jesus in the upper room, he's introducing the truths that will form the basis for the church, which is about to begin. And John 15 verse five, specifically, what does Jesus say? He says, I am the vine, you are the branches. You're just the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. That's the key here. As a believer, you are already in the vine. You are in Jesus.

That's true, that's a fact. But the bearing of the fruit depends on, as John calls it, abiding, or Jesus calls it, John records it, abiding in the vine. And what does abide mean? It means simply to rest, to depend on something or someone. It's really a great word for faith.

So the whole objective of the Christian life is that Jesus' fruit, his life, would be produced in us. as we depend on him to do it. We're the branches, he's the vine. We're not the producers of the fruit, we're the bearers of it. But it's not a guarantee that we will bear this fruit.

It's what the Lord wants, right? It's His design. It's what He's working towards. It's what He's working things out in your life towards, right? But it depends on something. It depends on our abiding, resting, depending on Him for that fruit. Our faith must rest in His fruitfulness. Our faith rests in His ability to produce what only he can produce, and we cannot. In Romans 6, Paul uses a different term. In Romans 6 verse 11, Paul calls this reckoning or counting, which is really another great word for faith. Abide means to rest. Reckon means to consider the facts and count it to be so. In both cases, we're just resting on the facts of what God has told us. And when it comes to the Christian life, it's not a question of whether you're joined to Christ as your life.

That's a fact. Whether you realize it or not, the question is, are you counting on that fact? Are you resting in that fact? And we have to believe that we are free from the law if we're going to trust that Jesus is our life. That's where this connects, where this is really important, because we can talk about abiding in Christ and resting in Him, depending on Him to work, but if we don't believe that we're free from law, then we are not depending on Christ to live His life. Think about this. Hopefully, I just want to try to clarify that a little bit.

If you're actively placing yourself under law as a Christian, do you really believe you're dead to it? No. Are you really trusting Christ to live his life in you, or are you seeking to do it yourself? Are you trusting Christ or are you trusting yourself? You can't be trusting the law to help you live the Christian life and at the same time believing that Jesus is the only source of a righteous life. You can't hold those two at the same time. So placing rules around the Christian life is really admitting that I don't trust Christ to be able to live his righteous life in me.

I need something more. I need law to keep me in line. Now, I don't know exactly where you're at this morning in learning these things and in your growth and in your journey. I know where I'm at. But I called this message Untethered, freed from law's bondage, and that makes it sound great, right?

As we said with our astronaut friend, most of us think of being free from rules as scary. That's why so many Christians retreat into law-based systems. There's a part of us that always resists this message, which is the old man, the old nature. If you're not prepared for this message, then you're going to reject it. You're going to push back against it. I know from experience.

And the best thing that can happen for you, quite honestly, is that you come to the end of your rope to realize that I will never live up to this righteous standard and to realize that the law is not helping me. The law will never help me to live the Christian life. We may keep up certain behaviors or certain appearances, but we will never become Christ-like through it all. We'll never be like Him. But when you've been prepared through failure, then you're ready to begin to accept what God says, that law can never produce the Christian life. that you've died to the law and you've been joined to Christ as the only source of your Christian life. You never have to go back to law to help you in your Christian life. But it's hard. It's hard to let go of legal ways of thinking. It's our security blanket. It's the security blanket of the old man. It just seems right.

Plus, it's the message that you get almost everywhere you turn in the church, right? just to compound all that. And so we often slide back and forth between legal thinking and depending on Christ. And what you'll find is that every time you slide back under law, you end up in misery and defeat. The Lord allows that very purposefully. But we're slow to learn it, right? Thankfully, God is very patient in all this.

You know, I've been reading a lot of things by T. Austin Sparks lately. And I was reading some things in the last week here that I would love to share, but I thought the best way to do it is just to summarize it. It's a wonderful thing to begin to see who the Lord Jesus is and to desire to be like him.

But it's an even better thing to despair of ever being like him. Why? Why would that be? because it's the truth. We will never be like Christ in ourselves. And we have to come to the realization of that before we can ever receive it from the Lord as a gift.

The life of Christ as our very own life by grace and totally apart from law, totally apart from self-effort. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you. that you've done all this by grace, when we would willingly keep ourselves under the bondage of legalism, seeking to produce our own righteousness, trying to please you, even seeing who Jesus is and trying to be like Him, trying to live a life like His, you knew what was needed. You crucified us with your son on the cross so that we could be separated from that whole principle, that whole way of operating, and so that we could be joined to Jesus in such a way that he is our life. He is the one who produces his righteous life through us as we simply rest, as we trust you to do what only you can do. Lord, we thank you for that wonderful wonderful gift of grace. I just pray that we would walk more and more in the joy of that provision. Thank you and praise you in Jesus' name, amen.