Romans 7:1-6 "Set Free to Serve"

1:04Now technically, black people living in America were set free by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, which was ratified in the 1860s. But for the next 100 years in our country, many black people didn't get to enjoy the freedom that they were supposed to have. That's because there were all sorts of laws, some written And some unwritten that kept them from enjoying those freedoms until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s secured most of those freedoms.

1:43Technically free, but not enjoying their freedom. That is a great description of the way many professing Christians are living their lives. Technically free, but not enjoying their freedom. Well, for the past three weeks, we've been preaching through Romans chapter 6, where Paul answered the question: Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? In other words, does God's grace set us free to sin? Does it give us license to sin? Paul says, certainly not. We have died to sin, and we cannot live in it any longer. We must consider ourselves dead to sin, and we cannot allow sin to reign in our mortal bodies.

2:32So, grace does not set us free to sin, it doesn't give us license to sin. But if that's the case, it feels like we need some guardrails in our lives. It feels like we need some rules that tell us this is sin, this isn't sin. Don't do this, do this instead. You know, like the Mosaic law. So, do we just go back to the Mosaic law. Let me remind you of what Paul said in Romans 6:14. Look on the screen.

3:07For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. Not under law. We take that for granted, don't we? Offer sacrifices? Yeah, right. Don't eat bacon? Get real. Don't wear clothing made of mixed fabrics? The tag on your $5 sheen sweater is longer than the scroll of Isaiah. We take it for granted that we are not under the law. But Paul's Jewish readers did not take that for granted. For 1,500 years, they lived under the law and its requirements.

3:58You could say that they were married to the law. And as a result, they really struggled to understand how they were supposed to relate to the Mosaic law now that Jesus Christ had come. And if you are a follower of Christ, you have probably struggled with that same question. How do I relate to the law now that Jesus Christ has come? Well, friends, that's what Romans 7 is all about. Paul is answering questions about how Christians should relate to the Mosaic law.

4:30He's already taught us that license is not the answer. Christ did not set us free so that we could live in sin. But on the other hand, legalism is not the answer either. Legalism is the wrong belief that we will be justified or declared righteous by seeking to obey God's law or by seeking to obey man's interpretation and application of God's law. Well, friends, Jesus did not live and die and rise again to send us right back to the law. If the answer is obey the Mosaic law, Jesus did not need to come at all.

5:11Legalism is not the answer. But many professing Christians live this way. Maybe you've been living that way, as though obeying the law, obeying the rules, is the point of the Christian life. The point of the Christian life being to try to figure out the rules as best you can and try to keep them. Well, friends, if that's the Christian life, we have not been set free from anything. That's the parallel with black Americans living between the ratification of the 13th Amendment and the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. According to the Constitution, they were free. But in practice, there were all sorts of written and unwritten rules about what they could and couldn't do. They weren't. Really living in freedom.

6:03And so, in the same way, we've been set free in Christ. But many believers are not living this way. We are living as though we're still held captive by the law, as though we're still married to it. And so, this morning, here's what we're going to learn from Romans chapter 7. We've been set free from the law to serve God in the Spirit. We've been set free from the law to serve God in the Spirit. So, let's look now at Romans 7:1, where we're going to see that we've been set free from the law.

6:45Paul writes in Romans 7.1, Or do you not know, brothers, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For 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 man, she is not an adulteress.

7:18So, Paul says that he is writing in this section to those who know the law. That would include Jews, obviously, but also any Gentiles who are familiar with the Mosaic law. Now, when Paul talks about the law, About the Mosaic law, he's not just talking about what we call the Ten Commandments. He's talking about all 613 laws in the Mosaic commands. The law is the dominating theme of this chapter, Romans chapter 7. And so the words law and commandment and written code are used 35 times in this section.

7:54In every one of the first 14 verses of Romans 7, the word law or commandment or written code is used at least one time. And Paul's point is that laws are only binding upon someone who is alive. I mean, that makes sense, doesn't it? Death releases you from the obligations of the law. Dead people do not break the law. And if you broke the law before you died, they do not send your dead body to prison.

8:27They send you to the cemetery. And so Paul illustrates this point by using an analogy, an analogy of a woman whose husband has died. He says a wife is only bound to her husband as long as he is alive. If he dies, she's free to remarry without breaking the law. So death in this case, the death of her husband, frees her, it releases her from the obligations of the law. Now look at verse 4. Likewise, my brothers, you also. Have died to the law through the body of Christ.

9:08Hmm. That was quite the transition. A wife in the example had her husband die, and now he's talking to the brothers in the church, brothers and sisters. It could also be translated, we have died to the law. What happened here? I want to remind you that Peter, the apostle, one of Jesus' closest friends and author of at least two books in the New Testament, wrote these words. There are some things in Paul's writings that are hard to understand.

9:41Doesn't that make you feel better? That Peter said there are some things in Paul's writings that are hard to understand. This is one of those things. So we have to keep our eye on the ball here. What is Paul's point? What is he teaching? What is the principle that he is getting at here? Death releases you from the obligations of the law. That is Paul's point. Death releases you from the obligations of the law. Okay, so in this analogy, we, God's people, were married to the law for 1,500 years. We're married to the law, but the law did not die, did it? No. God's law is still alive and well. He did not abolish it, and neither did Jesus. In fact, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, I did not. Come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it. So the law did not die. Who died?

10:39We did. We died. Look again at verse 4. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ. Well, this is building on what Paul taught earlier in Romans chapter 6. Look on the screen. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, Jesus, were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

11:16So Paul says, through faith, we died with Christ. We were crucified and buried with him. And that is symbolized in our baptism. Our crucifixion, death, and burial are symbolized when we go under the waters of baptism. We are buried with Christ in baptism. And that spiritual death set us free. Go all the way down to verse 6 in chapter 7 here. Paul says, but now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive. You see, our spiritual death secured our release from the law because As Paul said in verse 1, the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.

12:07Okay, so if we were married to the law, so to speak, and we died with Christ through faith, symbolized in our baptism, then we are released from the law and we are now free to remarry. And according to verse 4, that is the whole point. Look at verse 4 once more. 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.

12:43So remember all that Paul has been teaching in Romans. We were created to worship, and so we are going to worship someone. We might worship God or we might worship idols, but we are going to worship someone. We were created to belong. We are going to belong to someone, and so we can either belong to God or to the law. This is what Paul is teaching. Friends, God did not send his son to tell us to try harder to keep the law.

13:19God did not send his son to get rid of the law. God sent his son to fulfill the law on our behalf and then die in our place. Place for our failure to fulfill the law. Through faith, we died with Christ, so we died to the law. We are now free to remarry, so to speak, and through faith, we, God's people, have been united to Christ. We belong to him, we are married to him. And that, Paul says, is what the institution of marriage symbolizes. Look on the screen at Ephesians 5.

13:59Paul says, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Now look at how Paul ends Ephesians 5. He says this in verse 31. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Look at this. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

14:47A profound mystery. A husband and a wife become one flesh as a picture of our union with Jesus Christ through faith. The church belongs to the faith. To Christ, and Christ belongs to the church, just as a husband and a wife belong to one another. What a beautiful, profound mystery. So, friends, in light of all that Paul has just taught, can you see why he opens this section with the question, or do you not know, brothers?

15:23Do you not know? You see, Christianity is not really a religion, it is a relationship with a person, Jesus Christ. That is what Christianity is. When you become a Christian, you are not giving yourself to a code, to a set of rules, to a set of commandments or laws. You are giving yourself to a person, Jesus Christ. Now, if you want to become Jewish, you have to do several things. You've got to agree to keep all 613 of Moses' commands.

16:10You've got to be circumcised if you haven't been already. I hate that for you. And you've got to take a ritual bath. If you want to become a Muslim, you need to recite the Shahada, pray five times a day, give alms to the poor, fast. During Ramadan and make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca in your life. If you want to become a religious person, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, New Age, whatever it would be, you give yourself to a code, to a set of commandments, to a set of rules that you must keep and obey all the time.

16:53But if you want to become a Christian, you give yourself to a person, Jesus Christ. Jesus does not say, Do these things. He says, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's what Jesus says. You confess him as Lord, you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you follow him. You give yourself to a person. And if you are a Christian, this is what you've done. You've come to the person of Jesus Christ. You've received him, and he has received you on the basis of his righteousness, not your own. You belong to him. You live in union with him, and he will never leave you or forsake you.

17:45But friends, if you have not come to the person of Jesus Christ and given yourself to him, it does not matter what you call yourself. You can call yourself a Christian all day long, but if you You have given yourself to a code, to a set of commandments, to a set of rules. You are not a Christian no matter what you call yourself. You are only a Christian if you have given yourself to a person, the person of Jesus Christ.

18:18Do you belong to Christ? I'm not asking you if you're a religious person. I'm not asking you if you're a spiritual person. I'm not asking you, do you do religious stuff from time to time? I'm asking you, do you belong to Jesus? Have you come to Him through faith and repentance? Have you received Him through faith? Because unless you've done that, you're not a Christian no matter what you call yourself. So, we've been set free from the law to belong to Christ. We died to the law, we've been set free through faith in Christ. We now belong to him. And what is the end goal of belonging to Christ? Well, Paul tells us in verse 4, it is to serve God. Let's go back to verse 4.

19:17Likewise, 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. Now, bearing fruit is not a choice. Fruit-bearing plants bear fruit. That's what they do. And in the same way, we all bear fruit. It may be bad fruit, it may be good fruit, but everybody bears fruit. Look at what Galatians 6 tells us. Paul says, Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will, from the flesh, reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.

20:20So here in Galatians 6, Paul says, We're all sowing seeds. Everybody is sowing seeds, and those seeds are going to bear either good fruit or bad fruit. If we sow to the flesh, we're going to reap corruption. If we sow to the Spirit, we're going to reap eternal life. But we're all going to bear fruit of some kind. So, what kind of fruit were we bearing before we belonged to Christ? What kind of fruit are you still bearing if you don't yet belong to Jesus Christ? Look at verse 5.

20:58For while we were living, Living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. Paul says, while we were living in the flesh, that is, before we died with Christ through faith, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. Now, we're not going to deal with the phrase, our sinful passions aroused by the law this morning. Paul is going to talk about that at length in the next section, and so we're going to save that for the next sermon. So today, I want to focus on the fact that before we died with Christ through faith, sin was at work in our members.

21:50Well, what did this look like? How did it show itself when sin was at work in our members to bear fruit for death? Look on the screen at Galatians 5. Paul says, now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. Paul says, Sin was at work within us. Like we talked about the last few weeks, it was deceiving us into using our flesh, the members of our body, to bear fruit for death. We sowed to the flesh, and from the flesh we reaped corruption. As we saw last week, the wages of sin is death. While we lived in the flesh, we bore fruit for death. So that was before, that was before we died to the law through faith in Christ, but now we belong to him. And so Paul says the point of that, of belonging to Christ, is to bear fruit for God. And in fact, that is the very thing that Jesus taught extensively in John 15. It is the main point of John 15, that we, his people, would bear fruit for God. Look at all of these verses from John 15. Look at verse 1 and 2. Jesus says, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Now look at verse 5. Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Verse 8, by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. And finally, verse 16, Jesus says, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

24:30Jesus was crystal clear that his followers were to bear fruit, much fruit, and fruit that lasts. We, God's people, are not supposed to bear fruit once in a while, or fruit that kind of manifests itself for a moment and then disappears, or fruit that rots. No, we're supposed to bear fruit, much fruit, and Jesus prunes us, the Father prunes us, so that we can bear more fruit that will last, that will abide. And friends, from the context of John 15, that fruit, among other things, is love.

25:11And that makes perfect sense because that is how Jesus summarized the entire law. Look at what he said in Matthew chapter 22. Someone comes up to him and says, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God. God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

25:49In other words, if you love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and if you love your neighbor as yourself, you are bearing the fruit that Jesus is talking about here. You have fulfilled the law. But wait a minute. We're right back to the law. I thought Paul's whole point was that we have died to the law so that we could belong to Christ. Exactly. That's exactly right. We have died to the law. The law isn't dead. We died through faith and we rose again. And now, friends, we have been set free to obey the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. Isn't this what Jesus taught? Think about his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. The letter of the law says you shall not murder. But what does Jesus say? If you are even angry sinfully with your brother in your heart, you have murdered him.

27:00The letter of the law says you shall not commit adultery. But Jesus says if you even look at another person lustfully, you have already committed adultery in your heart. The letter of the law asks the question, who is my neighbor? But the spirit of the law, to illustrate the spirit of the law, Jesus teaches the parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite who passed by this person, beaten and bloodied and left for dead, they obeyed the letter of the law. They're on the way to the temple to serve. They can't touch a dead body. They can't touch blood, or they'll be unable to serve in the temple. They obeyed the letter of the law, but who obeyed the spirit of the law? The Samaritan. The Samaritan who scooped him up and bandaged him up and took him to the inn and paid for his expenses. He obeyed the spirit of the law to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

28:00Friends, obeying the spirit of the law is impossible in our own strength. We cannot do it. We can't even keep the letter of the law consistently, to say nothing of the spirit of the law. So how in the world are we supposed to do this? Look at verse 6. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive. So that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

28:41We were not released from the law to live in sin. And we weren't released from the law just so we could get remarried to it. We were released from the law so that we could serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Brothers and sisters, when you believed in Jesus Christ, he sent his Holy Spirit to dwell inside you, empowering you to do that which you could never do before. The Spirit of God enables us to keep the Spirit of the law, to love God with everything, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. That is how we bear fruit for God. We bear fruit for God by wholeheartedly obeying the Spirit of the Law, which is only possible when we abide in Christ and serve in the new way of the Spirit.

29:43I love the way that John Barrage captured this. He was an 18th-century hymn writer. Take a look at what he wrote: Run, John, and work, the law commands, yet finds me neither feet Nor hands. But sweeter news the gospel brings. It bids me fly and lends me wings. Friends, we could never keep the letter of the law, much less the spirit of the law. That much is evident to anyone who has ever tried. When you attempt to keep the letter of God's law, you have to keep moving the goalposts to win that game.

30:30That is exactly what the Pharisees did. They kept moving the goalposts, they kept redefining God's impossible commands until they were something attainable, something measurable, something they could be successful in keeping. But Jesus blew up that whole way of thinking. He taught that the point of the law, the summary of the law, the spirit of the law, was to love God with everything and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. That is not possible without God's Spirit. But thank God He has given His Spirit to us. Not a portion of His Spirit, but all of His Holy Spirit. Do you realize that? All of God dwells in you through faith.

31:22That is unfathomable. Now we can bear fruit for God. Much fruit and fruit that lasts by loving. God and loving others. You see, friends, rules are either unhelpful or unnecessary. If you don't have love, rules are not going to help you. Because without love, you're going to look for every possible way to get around the rules, or you're going to try to keep the bare minimum of whatever the rules require. If you don't have love, rules are unhelpful.

32:02But if you do have love, rules are unnecessary. I don't need rules to love my wife or my children. Why? Because I love them. I'm not asking, what's the least I can do for these people? What do I have to do? What's the bare minimum here before I'm sinning? No, love knows no limits, and so rules are unnecessary. So today, if you're asking the question, what's the least I need to do to stay on God's good side, what are the rules here? It's because you do not have love.

32:48You are still married to the law. That's why you're asking questions about rules. You need love because love is the only thing that's going to save you. You're free from rules, free from the law. You cannot keep the letter of God's law. You certainly can't keep the spirit of God's law. But Christ came for you. He came for you to live and fulfill not just the letter of God's law, which He did, but the spirit of God's law, to love God with everything and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. He died for our failure, and he rose again so that through faith in him, you could die to the law and be set free to belong to Christ.

33:39And once you belong to Christ, you can serve in the new way of the Spirit and bear fruit for God. Fruit that lasts. So, friends, if you have not done so, do that today. Come to the person of Jesus Christ in faith. When you do, you'll be set free from the law to serve God in the Spirit. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we are a people that think rules are helpful and necessary. But so much of that is tied to the fact that we want to know what's the least that we have to do.

35:00We're not asking questions about love. What does loving you require? What does loving our neighbor require? We want to know the rules because the rules are simple and straightforward. Although there are hundreds and hundreds of laws in the Mosaic covenant, there are no rules written down for millions and millions of scenarios in our lives that we could get out of simply because there's not a Bible verse for it. But that would be to obey the letter of the law and not the Spirit. And so, God, we see this morning that we've been set free to serve you, set free to bear fruit by serving in the new way of the Spirit, where we are asking questions not about rules, but about love and what love requires.

36:00God, I pray that we would be a church, a people, defined by love. Jesus said that everyone would know us by the love that we have for each other. And as I looked around this morning before the service started and I saw brothers and sisters hugging each other, embracing each other, warmly greeting each other, God, we pray that our love for one another would increase and increase so that everyone in this community knows that Jesus is alive because of the love that we have for each other. Not because we're all the same, not because we all look the same, we've got the same hobbies or anything else, but because your spirit resides within us. We pray for that. We pray that our love would carry us outside of this building to love our neighbors and our coworkers and our classmates. That this town, this campus, this nation would be one over, this world would be won over by the love that we have for one another.

37:09God, we thank you for setting us free to belong to Christ. And we pray that those who have not yet been set free would be set free this morning to belong to him so that they too can bear fruit for God. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.