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.