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romans Chapters 6 - 8.
2.
THE POWER PLANT OF GRACE….
GOD’S WAY is revealed in depth. He will sanctify and preserve the
repentant, those who will receive His reconciliation.
romans
CHAPTER SEVEN.
This is the second floor – THE PAIN.
Romans seven is Imagesly about the pain of not being able to obey God and beat the dominion (lording it over the believer) of SIN. It is about utter FRUSTRATION! This tremendous chapter shows the struggle of those Christians who do not realize that they must walk by God’s Grace and enabling ONLY!
How important it is for YOU to enter into the FAITH-REST
walk of a saved person who will never again involve themselves in LAW-WORKS
in order to become “good.” There is much to learn, so we will
spend a lot of time on this chapter.
Romans 7:1-6 has been described as having no less than
THREE spiritual conditions described. These are:
1.
The spiritual man and the law (7:1-6);
2.
The natural man and the law (7:7-13);
3.
The carnal man and the law (7:14-25).
1. THE SPIRITUAL MAN AND
THE LAW.
1.
Sinners were bound to the law like a wife is bound to her husband.
2.
The marriage was unhappy, but she could not leave
morally. The only way she could be free was if the husband was dead, then
she was a widow and could remarry (7:3).
3.
Death was the only way the husband, too, could be free, in this his
own death (7:4,6).
The Greek word for death here is THANATOO. It means a violent deliberate death (passive voice).
It speaks of the Cross of the Lord Jesus! THANATOO
is used for reference to the change from bondage to the law to union with Christ
- in 8:13 to “mortify” (marg. “to make die”), of
the act of the believer in regard to the deeds of the body; in 8:36,
“are killed” also in 11 Cor. 6:9. It seems that Scripture wants us
to realize that it is necessary for both Christ and the believer to DIE in order
to get unified together.
LET’S THINK DEEPLY ABOUT THIS:
a)
In the Old Testament teaching we see that God is married to unfaithful
Israel
(compare the book of Hosea);
b)
In the New Testament, sinners are bound by the power of sin to the law;
Then, Christ died as God incarnate, freeing Himself of His O.T. relationship to
sinful Israel (only during this dispensation of the Church Age). At the
same time the believer died, thus freeing him from the law and sin;
This magnificent relationship will be consummated at the marriage of the Lamb,
see Revelation 19:7,8.
c)
What is the purpose here? That the spiritual man might be delivered from
the law, altogether. The purpose being “that we should bring forth fruit unto
God” (7:4).
Here Paul’s life is in view. The
uselessness of trying to keep the law is shown:
a) The law was used by sin to SLAY Paul (7:9-11). At his Bar Mitzvah, which is religious ceremony undertaken by all thirteen year old Jewish boys) he took on the responsibility to keep the law in a formal way. He was accountable then to God for his actions.
b) Then we see the law being used by SIN itself! It worked in him “all manner of concupiscence” or evil, forbidden desires (7:8). What happened here? The law revealed and revived Paul’s sin nature. Instead of making him righteous, the law was used by SIN as a weapon of war against Paul.
c) Is the law evil then? Most assuredly NOT! Then, what was its purpose?
The law is “holy, and
just, and good” (7:12);
The law came from a holy God so it must be holy (7;14);
The law does something immensely right and good – it CONDEMNS the
sinner, for he cannot keep it and is shown to be guilty and lost;
The law is right and good because it prepares the sinner for the
sacrifice of Christ. The sinner can see he needs a Saviour indeed! (Gal.3:24).
The natural man is DOOMED by the law. Far from
being able to bring merit for himself by keeping the law, the natural man only
brings condemnation and disaster upon himself if he tries to be saved by the
law. “The law” can mean any meritorious work of the sinner in an effort to
cover his sin, trying to work for salvation, or trying to be righteous as a
saved person should be (see Isaiah 64:6 and Ephesians 2:9).
The law DOOMS the sinner.
It is as though a swimming team should be made up of people with no arms. We
have the best coach in the world in swimming here in Australia, but he could
never win a single race with people with no arms! We, ourselves, cannot win a
single race against SIN, we have no arms. Jesus has to do the swimming for us.
3. THE CARNAL, SAVED, MAN AND THE LAW (7:14-25).
a)
Paul wanted above all to be righteous and not sin. Here it is not about
getting saved, Paul speaks as a saved man. He says “For I delight in the
law of God after the inward man”
(7:22 and compare also 11 Cor.4:16; Ephesians 3:16).
b)
He was utterly frustrated in his efforts after the righteous life to
please God! He found himself always doing BAD things and not achieving GOOD. He
had the will to do good, but he was unable to because his own nature was sinful!
(Rom.7: 11-25).
Here we will get further insight from Lewis Sherry Chafer:
“Thus the character and the
daily life of the Christian is wrought on the basis of pure grace. As God saved
and keeps in grace apart from every human assistance and merit, so, in like
manner, He proposes to produce the character and conduct of His child apart from
every assistance or intrusion of the flesh, “Are ye foolish? Having begun
in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh” (Gal. 3:3). In
harmony with the whole program of divine grace, no manner of life could be
imposed on the believer than the one in which God alone undertakes and
accomplishes His own purposes in grace, He must not only create the motive and
choice of the heart but He must provide the sufficient power for its
execution.” (“Grace” p.p.
250, 251).Paul had discovered a LAW at work. It is “a law that
when I would do good, evil is present with me” (7:21). This
law is that we have sinful natures, and can only be set free when we die with
Christ – and let Him be our righteousness – all worked by GRACE with no
effort of the sinful man, or “the
flesh.” We all are under this law; this is why we must receive by
GRACE alone the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. [End of Quote]
PAUL WRITES ABOUT FIVE “LAWS” in the book of
Romans.
But, when he talks about the law of works he means any law-works a person might
attempt – any “good works” to try to be righteous before a holy God. Here
are the five laws:
1. The law of Moses (Romans 3:19);
2.
The law of faith {Romans 8:2);
3. The law of sin (Romans 7:21, 23,25);
4. The law of the mind (Romans 7:16-18);
5.
The law of the spirit (Romans 8:2,4).
UTTER
DESPAIR!
If we try long enough and hard
enough to be righteous in our own ability as a Christian, we end up eventually
in utter despair, just as Paul did! We find we cannot Imagestain a righteous life,
we always sin. If this is not your experience it is because you do not yet have
the spiritual insight into what SIN is! Paul cries out,
“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?” (7:24).
Here I will quote Willmington in full. A great deal of these notes in general have been gleaned from Willmington’s Guide to the Bible:
“This may have been a spiritual
comparison to the Roman act of punishing a murderer by binding to him the corpse
of his victim, thus using its very rot and stench to execute the killer.”
Phillips
writes about this verse Romans 7:24
“Suppose a biologist were to
perform an experiment in grafting, at a given stage of development, a butterfly
to a spider and do so in such a way that the two creatures were fused into one
and thus grew to maturity. What a clash of instincts there would be in a
monstrosity like this! One part of the creature’s nature would long for the
clear vault of heaven, while the other part would crave a web in a dark corner
and a diet of blood. What could be done with such a creature? Nothing, except
put it to death. There is a sense in which, in the Garden of Eden, Satan
performed just such diabolical surgery on the human race.
(Phillip’s “Exploring Romans,
p.120).
PAUL HAD REALISED something
that that WE must totally, absolutely, grasp lest we keep ourselves in despair the entire course of our lives here on
earth:
Believers
who are saved people cannot 
· CONTROL,
·
CHANGE,
·
CLEANSE,
·
CONQUER,
·
COMMAND,
·
CORRECT or
·
CRUCIFY the flesh –
i.e. the old sinful nature within
a born-again person.
Then Paul explodes with the
VICTORY he, himself, has found in GRACE alone. PAUL concludes:
He ended chapter six with the statement that ETERNAL LIFE comes only through the
Lord Jesus Christ and His death for sin. He ends chapter seven by concluding
that the VICTORIOUS LIFE over sin can also only come through the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Lewis Sherry Chafer
enlightens us further:
“ Should it be objected that
this is an idealism which is effective only on a limited company of believers
who are so yielded to God as to be Spirit-filled, and that the great mass of
carnal Christians must be held by rules, the reply would be that carnal
Christians are no more subject to law than are spiritual Christians. God does
not countenance the attitude of the carnal Christian to the extent of providing
a rule of government for him. As He holds only one issue before the unsaved –
the acceptance of Christ as Saviour – likewise, He holds only one issue before
the carnal Christian. The issue is not “will you live in a way which is in
harmony with your carnality? [or not?]” it is rather, “Yield yourselves to
God, as those that are alive from the dead, and members as instruments of
righteousness unto God.” (Romans 6:13).
The carnal Christian is
abnormal. His position is perfect in Christ, but in character and conduct he
violates the most precious principles and provisions of grace. The divine ideal
for the believer’s life under grace reImagess unchangeable. When God is molding
the desires of the heart, there is liberty (Philippians 2:13). When He is
empowering the life, there is victory.
Thus it may be seen that grace
is not a way of escaping obedience to God; it is the only possible way in which
true obedience can be secured. The Spirit-filled believer is never abandoned to
self-will; he is “in-lawed to Christ.” God in grace does not lower
standards; He proposes and gloriously realizes the very character and conduct of
heaven.”
(“Grace” p.251).
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