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I invite you to turn with me
to the seventh chapter of Romans on page 943. Romans chapter seven,
I'll be reading just verses one through six. Romans chapter seven. This is God's word. Or do you
not know, brothers, for I am speaking to those who know the
law, that the law is binding on a person as long as he lives. Thus, 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, 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 may serve not under the old written code, but in
the new life of the spirit. Pray with me briefly. Spirit
of God, sanctifier of the people of God, open our eyes, unplug
our ears, soften our hearts to marvel at Jesus. Amen. Some weeks ago, I was having
a cup of coffee with a friend that I actually hadn't seen for
40 years. We were getting back together.
And in the course of our conversation, I was waxing eloquent about the
beauties and the glories of Romans chapter 6, having been encouraged
so much by that in recent years. And he sat there, and after a
little while, he said, I'm a Roman 7 kind of guy. And I think what
he meant by that was the words from 718 were in his mind and
experience, for I have the desire to do what is right, but not
the ability to carry it out. I want to obey. That would be
nice. But I can't. I'm defeated by
sin, I'm in bondage, I belong to the law, I have, I am in bondage
to sin. This is a form of legalism and
it reminds me of a story that my mother would read to me when
I was a little guy and it was about, it was a Brer Rabbit,
do you remember? And Brer Fox. And Br'er Fox was
trying to get a hold of, trying to capture Br'er Rabbit. And he constructed a figure of
a child, Tar Baby he called it. And as Br'er Rabbit would come
up to it, he pushed it with one hand that became stuck. And then
he kicked out a foot and he became another hand and he was sticking
to that tar figure, unable to be released. You see, the Bible says that
we are new people, a new creation, but experience declares something
else. our experiences along the lines
of Romans 7 19 for I do not do the good I want but the evil
I do not want is what I keep on doing or we see in chapter
7 verse 23 for I see in my members another war
is waging against the law of my mind, making me captive to
the law of sin that dwells in my members, kind of like a tar
baby. Now, how about you today? Do
you have a sense of being defeated? Does sin stick to you like super
glue? And the same old cycles of anger,
of irritation, of resentment, you can recall what someone said
to you 10 years ago like it was yesterday, or lust, or gossip. Are you a Romans 7 kind of person? Now, Romans 6 is telling a very
different story and is dealing with a separate problem, and
that is the problem of antinomianism. That is, those who simply had
no use for the law, they were saved by grace, so felt that
they could sin freely with impunity. And Paul's answer in chapter
six is a medicine for every believer. It's a medicine for you and me
today. It gives us a buoyant reminder of the hope that we
have in Christ in whom we were co-crucified and co-resurrected. Sin's mastery has in fact been
broken. We see in chapter six, verse
six, you may follow along with me there, that we know that our
old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin
might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved
by it. I loved what Martin Lloyd-Jones, how he handles that phrase brought
to nothing, that our body of sin might be rendered ineffective. rendered ineffective, no longer
with an ability to control. Verse seven goes on to say, for
one who has died has been set free from sin. Sin's mastery
is broken. Your anger is no longer inevitable. Your gossiping tongue is no longer
inevitable. You read all the way up to Romans
6 before you hear one command from God. There are five chapters,
149 verses, and not one command issues from God's mouth. until you get to chapter six,
and that is verse 11. Look at that with me. So, on
account of the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, so you also
must, here's the command, you must consider yourselves dead
to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. With Christ, dead on the
cross, with Christ, a spear that pierced his belly, and with Christ
in that cold tomb, and then risen on the third day, united to him,
you must also consider yourselves dead to sin. are two of the most famous passages
in all of the Book of Romans. The last part of Romans 7, which
captured the heart of my friend, and the first part of Romans
6, which is a bit more hopeful. What is often overlooked, in
fact, I've heard few messages on it, is chapter 7, verses 1
through 6. Our text, you could say, is kind
of overlooked. seldom preached, but it is a
bridge between these two chapters, between the Romans 7 power of
sin with its soul-crushing reality of bondage that is felt by the
writer, and Romans 6, that glorious freedom that at times seems even
unreal, but the power of God, both to save and to sanctify,
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we want to look today at verses 1 through 6 of Romans
7 with a glance to the end of the chapter and a glance to the
prior, the previous chapter. My theme then is this. You belong
to Christ, so serve in the new way of the Spirit. You belong
to Christ. So serve in the new way of the
spirit. One captivating thing about this
passage is that there are there is one Greek word that is a root
word that is used in chapter in verse three. If an adulterous
lives with another man or belongs to another man, At the end of
that verse then, if she marries or belongs to another man after
the first husband has died, she is not an adulteress. And then
in verse four, that you may belong to another. Each of those words
could be described or translated belong to, and we'll think of
that as marriage. We'll think of that as marriage
today. You belong to Christ, so serve in the new way of the
spirit. First of all, first principle
we see in this passage is that you died to the law. The law
isn't binding on a dead person. Chapter 1, or chapter 7, verse
1, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives. You are now therefore dead to
the law. You are dead to the law, so you
are free from it. Likewise, my brother, this is
verses 4 and 6. Likewise, my brothers, you also
have died to the law through the body of Christ. Verse 6,
now we are released from the law, having died to that which
held us captive. Now, of course, we understand
that the law is not dead to you. The law instead is holy and righteous
and good. Chapter 7, verse 12, holy and
righteous and good. But Paul's illustration from
marriage describes a new relationship with that law. When a spouse
dies, the other is free for marriage, Paul is saying, and she is free
to marry again and will not be an adulteress. Look with me at
verses two and three. Thus, 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 or belongs
to or is married to another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she
is free from that law. And if she marries another, she
is not an adulteress. This is a very simple principle. It's not speaking about some
of the complex matters of marriage, when is divorce permitted, for
example, it is simply saying, is your husband alive? Well,
then you're bound to him. But when he dies, you are free.
So in what senses are we or were we once bound to the law? Three senses in which we are
bound to the law. First is that condemnation. Of course, the wages of sin is
death. End of chapter six. The problem that we experience
there is even now as believers, we can sense something of that
same condemnation. We may be disturbed with our
own slow progress as a Christian. And we're kind of sure that God
is equally disturbed. We can often go through life
with sort of a low level of anxiety because we're not matching up
to God's law. There is condemnation, there
is also a sense of condemnation. There's another aspect of being
bound to the law and that is the law as law has no power to
change you. The law as law reminds you of
your failures, and you will never measure up. I know there have
been times when I have awakened in the morning, and I get out
of bed, and the first thought that comes to my mind is, I'm
already behind. And I'm going to be more behind
her as the day goes by. We have a sense of that. We're
not being changed by the law, we are instead always behind. And the third thing is the law
incites us to sin. The sinful passions, verse five,
are aroused in you. And Paul, this was Paul's experience
as an unbeliever. The law came and said to him,
don't covet. So the very first thing that he does is covets
and we do too. We covet someone else's house, someone else's
wife or husband. We may covet the amount of money
they have. We may covet their looks or their gifts or whatever
it might be. The law, even for believers,
can incite disobedience. Kids, your mom says to you, don't
harass your siblings. Don't disturb your siblings. And then she turns her back.
and what is the first thing you want to do? Poke, prod. Now again, it's not that the
law died, but you died to it, and you don't belong to it anymore. You don't belong to it now. You belong instead to Christ. Now, Luther uses a marriage to
illustrate Christ rescuing his people. In the day when Luther was doing
his battles for the gospel, Roman Catholicism was in the air, it
was all over, and he was seeking to convey the truth of the gospel
in that context, and let me explain. Something about the word justification,
and we understand that to mean that we have the imputed righteousness
of Christ, it is reckoned to us, reckoned to our account,
and we are therefore reckoned in God's sight as one who is
as righteous and may I even say as sweet-smelling as Jesus. Different
world, different world, the mindset of a Roman Catholic, and listen
to where you might pick up some of this too. There was a picture
of justification being inside the center point of a very large
circle. And you were on the outside of
that circle and you were working your way into the center of that
circle so that you could be declared just, you could be justified. So it was a working of the sacraments. There was an effort to obey the
Lord, and faith had a role in that too, so that you could become
justified, you could become righteous and acceptable before the Lord. And as Luther was undermining
this and attacking this, he described what we call the imputed righteousness
of Christ. He had another name for it, and
one that is captivating in my mind, and that was the passive
righteousness of Christ. In other words, we get it by
faith and we simply rest in it. We get it by faith and don't
do anything else that we need to in order to secure that righteousness. So back to Luther's story about
the gospel, this is what he pictured. To help people get this, he described
a prince who was looking for a wife. And he found a woman,
not a woman of title, not a woman who was fancy and had royal blood
in her, but instead a poor and destitute young woman who was
ground down by poverty. She was in debt. She was exhausted. She was hopeless. Her spirit
was crushed by her shame. And the prince came along and
chose her and married her and committed himself to her and
took all of her shame and her guilt away from her and gave
her his riches, the riches of his grace, the status of being
a brother or sister in Christ. and a new position in heaven.
This is the sheer wonder of what we call double imputation. Jesus takes all our guilt, our
shame, and our despair, and he gives us unimaginable wealth. It's like he gives us a huge
check, and often we fold it, we say thank you very much, and
we put it in our pocket. You see, we often live like we
are still married to the law. We still live sometimes like
we belong to the law in a way that we are instead of that we
belong to Jesus. What do we mean by that? Performing
for grace sometimes seems so normal to us. We hear about the
forgiveness of sins, but we want to top it off just a little bit
by our duties and our devotions. As Thomas Boston put it, we are
as prone to the covenant of works as fish are to swim and birds
are to fly. Our conscience becomes as burdened
by our failures as good Protestants, as those of a Roman Catholic
in medieval times. What's it like to be married
to an abusive husband? Well, there's always a sense
of threat. I can't please him. I can't do
enough. And I'm reminded of my failures. And what is the fruit of that?
It is living before God with an inappropriate fear. It is
living with insecurity. It is struggling to satisfy. there's a sense of never being
able to do enough or be good enough. Sinclair Ferguson puts
it this way, the psychology of old life can take much longer
to change than its theology. The psychology, putting aside
the old man, can be much more difficult, can take much longer
to change than getting our thoughts right. Christians may often live
with fear of the first husband. So dear brothers and sisters,
do you belong to Jesus? Do you know that you belong to
Jesus? And no longer to the law and
its judgment, no longer to the law and its prompting you even
to more sin, no longer the law which is incapable of bringing
about change. Do you know him as your husband?
Has the Holy Spirit broken the shackles of legalism so you are
no longer daily carrying around that debt? Are you resting daily
in his, Jesus, passive righteousness as a gift. When you get up in the morning,
and even before your feet hit the floor, can you say in your
heart, I know the Father is delighted in me. I know my husband, my
Jesus, is delighted in me. As this gospel works in our lives
and works in our heart, we then are able to live by the Spirit.
Look with me at verse 6, but now we are released from the
law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we may
serve not under the old written code, but in the new life of
the Spirit. Serve in the new life of the
Spirit. Well, the first thing as we grasp
this is the call to practice living with our gracious husband,
and it is a fight of faith for all of us. Practice living with
your gracious new husband. You shake off the memories of
your first husband. You don't indulge in negative
Self-talk, oh, I can't change, or oh, she can't change. You don't brood over your failures
as if Romans 7, the latter half, has the last word. Your new husband abounds more
in grace than the abusive one did in condemnation. You belong to Jesus and he wins
you over more and more as you grasp his love. Our master, who is our husband,
is not repulsed by our failures. but instead is drawn to you in
them. He is drawn to you in your weakness. His mercy is just as powerful
and clean after the 100th time you've blown it than it was at
the very beginning. Your only hope is the nail scars
of your second husband. So fix your eyes on your new
husband's love. Drink it in. And what is at stake?
What is at stake is what Paul describes for us in Galatians
chapter five. You may turn with me there. Galatians
chapter five, verse one says this, for freedom, this is what's
at stake. For freedom, Christ has set us
free. Stand firm, therefore, and do
not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Slip up to verse 13,
for you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters. Only do
not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love,
serve one another for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Practice living with your gracious husband. Engage in the fight
of faith to resist the traces of the law that can pull you
back to a sense of condemnation and disturb your sense of freedom. Freedom is doing exactly what
you want to do. As renewed people, it is fulfilling
this command, love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Practice
living with your gracious husband, Secondly, as you practice living
with your gracious husband, you will bear Holy Spirit fruit. Belonging to the law arouses
sin in us. Belonging to Jesus arouses obedience. Belonging to Jesus arouses, incites,
excites, obedience. Not being under the law doesn't
produce lawless Christians, but people who love to serve Jesus
again at verse at verse four of Romans of Romans six. You
have died to the law through the body of Christ that you may
belong to another to him. who has been raised from the
dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. I have made it
my practice over the last month, a couple of months now, to recite a prayer, to meditate
on a prayer that I got from John Stott. Well, not directly, but
he wrote it. And it's a prayer that opens
up in this way. It says, good morning, Heavenly
Father. Good morning, Lord Jesus. Good morning, Holy Spirit. Jumping down to the part where
he then addresses the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, I worship you, sanctifier
of the people of God. And then as he prays directly
to the Holy Spirit, a little further on in that prayer, this
is his sentence, Holy Spirit, I pray that this day you will
fill me with yourself and that you will cause your fruit to
ripen in my life. Think it as I say it, love. That's first of all Jesus' love
for you. And because He loves you, He
grants you love for other sinners, even that obnoxious one who is
coming to your mind right now. He gives you joy because for
the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, scorned
its shame. to give you joy every day. He gives you peace because by
his stripes you are healed. You're brought into a peaceful
relationship with God and so forth. Every day you're thinking
of Jesus who loves Jesus, who has joy and he gives it to you. And Jesus who is at peace with
God and he underscores that in your own life, patience, his
patience, his kindness, his goodness. As you look at Jesus, the spirit
causes those things to grow in you. Faithfulness, giving you gentleness
and self-control. Seeing Jesus, you love him. You have joy in him. You have
peace with him. That's what it looks like when
I belong to Jesus. If you will, I realize I'm married
to Jesus. And that gives you completely
different motivation for how you conduct your Christian life.
John Piper put it this way some years ago. He said, must I kiss
my wife? Yes, but not that kind of must. Must I obey God's law? Yes, but
not that kind of must. Obedience, as was prayed even
earlier by the elder, obedience is not just a job, but it's a
joy. When you know His love, you want
you want to please him. Now, I've been married for 48
years, and I've been retired since December. And things changed
when I was retired. I stayed around the home more.
And some of you met Gail. She was here back in March. And
Gail will be in the kitchen, and she will be fixing something.
And I will I will imagine I know what is
the next thing. She needs this pan over here,
or she needs something from the refrigerator. I would anticipate
her moves and do it for her. She handled that for a few days,
and then she said, enough. Give me some space. She was gracious in allowing
me to shadow her for those days, and she was gracious also in
the way she spoke to me. But my point is this, I wanted
nothing more than to help her. Sometimes I don't do it very
well. I wanted to help her. And so when we are filled with
love for our Savior because he loves us, we want to do what
he calls us to do. Motivation changes. The third
thing, and this may be somewhat counterintuitive, the third thing
about growing in the Spirit, the third thing about serving
in the new life of the Spirit, is that we will be getting better,
as a Christian, we'll be getting better and repenting more. You could even put it this way,
the better you get, if you want to put it that way, the more
you will be repenting of your sins. Now, when you are married to
the law, it is very hard to be honest. It is very hard to admit
that you have done something wrong. It feels, in fact, like
death. It is like our first parents
in the garden. They hid from God after their
sin. They hid from, they covered themselves
up and they did absolutely everything they could to blame someone else.
It's not me, it was Eve. It's not Eve, it's the serpent. In church and in families, confession
is sometimes both painful and rare. But the new life in the
spirit brings the freedom of honest confession. One writer
puts it this way, the new life in the spirit brings freedom
of honest confession. I learned that repentance requires
greater intimacy with God than with our sin. Repentance requires
that we draw near to Jesus no matter what. For many of us,
intimacy with anything is a terrifying prospect. but joy grows as your repentance
grows. Dave Pallison put it like this,
we must have the right expectation as we grow in grace. It is a
lifelong struggle, you don't outgrow chapter seven, the end
of chapter seven, that sin as it's described there, it's not
gonna be going away, but you need to have a vision of ongoing
growth that is colored by ungrowing failure. You must have the expectation
that the Spirit is working in you to produce change, but at
the same time, become more aware of and take responsibility for
the Roman 7 and the chapter Roman 7 things that are still going
on. You'll see progress and change, but you will also be engaged
in that ongoing battle. You'll see encouraging growth
and embarrassing failure. but a growing Christian will
repent more quickly and easily and discovers that it will not
kill him. You become more self-aware. You
become more aware of how pride influences the way you speak
to other people, taking credit for things that is unnecessary
for you to inflate yourself. You become more aware of the
ways that you indulge yourself and how you spend your time,
your money, your energies. You become more self-aware and
therefore you will be confessing more and not less. And the consequence
of that is that you will wonder more and more at God's marvelous
grace. A friend of mine who was just
a couple of years before Ron and myself at Westminster Seminary
was in a class with Cornelius Van Til. I don't remember what
he described what class it was, But there was a comment that
Van Til made that was almost a throwaway. It wasn't in his
notes, it was just, he's opining, he's thinking, he's reflecting,
he's ruminating. And he said this, the older I
get, the more, this is Van Til speaking, the older I get, the
more I know I'm a sinner. And the more I know I need Jesus. So, as we conclude, yeah, we still live in some sense
in Romans 7, but it's not hopeless. We do not wallow. We do not engage
in self-talk that makes us just believe that we cannot make any
significant improvement. We don't brood about our failures,
as if that is the last word. But by faith, you have broken
off marriage to the law, and you belong to Jesus. And I want
to encourage two things, because you belong to Jesus. Two things. The first is rejoice. Rejoice. Every morning, God calls you
to wake up and rejoice. Every morning, God calls you
to wake up and to say along with the psalmist in Psalm 90 verse
14, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that
we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Start your day rejoicing
in the Lord and do that every day. so that we may rejoice and
be glad all our days. Rejoice in your husband because
he rejoices in you. He loves you. Rejoice in him. And secondly,
refresh that sense. That awareness of His goodness
in all your failures, in all your sins, those private ones
that you try to keep away from other people, the things that
just fly, flit across your mind. Take that to the Lord. Take that
to the Lord. Don't stew over it. Don't judge
yourself. Don't damn yourself. Don't brood
over it. But go to your husband. That's
why he came. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we give you adoration
and praise today. We love you. We know that you
first loved us. We pray that you would grant
us Holy Spirit-given presence of mind to walk through the complexities
of life, looking to you, finding mercy, finding grace to do what
seems like impossible things. We ask these things in the name
of Jesus. Amen.
Belonging to Another
| Sermon ID | 611231326384987 |
| Duration | 40:26 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Romans 7:1-14 |
| Language | English |
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