Chapter 7                    

Romans: -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- -7- -8- -9- -10- -11- -12- -13- -14- -15- -16- 
  7:1 Or are you ignorant, brothers and sisters (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law rules a human only during the time he is alive? 2 The married woman, then, is bound by law to her living husband, but if her husband should die, she is free from the law to that husband. 3 If her husband were still alive, she would be called an adulteress if she joined herself to another man, but if the husband should die, she is free from the law, and does not become an adulteress if she marries another man. • 4 In the same way, my brothers and sisters, you also have already been put to death to law through the body of Christ so that now you belong to another in full marriage union, that is, to the One who was raised out from the dead, so that we should bear fruit [bring forth life] as now connected utterly to God. 5 While we were in the flesh, the desires of our separation from God were energeoing through the law inside our members to bring forth fruit to death. • 6 But now, we have been separated away from the law, having died to that which held us back from God, in order to serve now in newness of Spirit, not in oldness of letter, that is, not by any written law.

7 What then shall we say? [p] Is the law sin? It cannot happen! • You see, I could not have known sin, I could not have known my disconnection from God, except through law. Indeed, I would not have known what coveting might be, if the law had not said, “You will not covet.” 8 By taking its opportunity through the commandment, sin achieved inside of me all covetousness; for apart from law, sin and disconnection is dead, that is, it has no existence. 9 I once lived apart from law, however; but then, the commandment came to me and made falling short live again, and thus, I died, that is, in the wrong way. 10 And the commandment that was supposed to put me into life, proved instead to put me into death. 11 Indeed sin and disconnection from God, having taken its opportunity through the commandment, completely deceived me and then, through the commandment, killed me. 12 So, indeed, the law is devoted, and the commandment is devoted and just and good.

13 Has that which is good, then, become death to me? That cannot happen! Sin and falling short, however, produced its death through that which is good, • so that it might be seen by me as disconnection from God, so that sin might appear exceedingly sinful to me through the commandment. 14 We are aware that the law is spiritual; but I am fleshly, having been sold under all falling short. 15 Indeed, (in this non-Christ position) I do not know what I produce. I do not perform what I want, but I perform what I hate. 16 And if I perform what I do not choose, I agree together with the law that it is good. 17 Yet now I am no longer the one producing the performance but the falling short which dwells inside of me. • 18 Indeed, I know that (apart from Christ) nothing good dwells inside of me, inside of my flesh [separate from God]. The desire for good is present with me but the ability to produce good is not. 19 For the good that I want to do, I don’t; but what I don’t want to do, this evil I keep on doing. 20 If, then, I do what I do not want to do, it’s not me doing it, but sin, that is, disconnection from God, dwelling inside of me.

21 So I find this principle, that, in spite of my desiring to do good, evil is right there alongside of me [the tree of the knowledge of good AND evil]. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward person. 23 But I see another practice inside my members, warring against the intentions of my mind, and making me captive as a prisoner of war to the practice of sin and falling short existing in my members. • 24 Oh me, oh my, I am a wretched man! Who will draw me [to Himself] out from this body of death? (q) [r] 25 Grace and thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So, then, I myself with the mind serve God’s law, but flesh serves the practice of falling short.
 		  
 
Gospel Comments Notes
• Ruling Verse 5: Paul completes this part of Romans with a restatement of our full marriage union with Christ, inside of which we are protected from all sin and death by the Cross.

• Life: Let’s paraphrase Romans 7:4-6, recasting Paul’s words. “Now that we are inside of Spirit, the desires of our union with God are energeoing through the law of the Spirit of Life inside of Christ Jesus (see Romans 8:2), inside all that we are, bringing forth fruit to Life, the knowledge of God into our world (see 2 Corinthians 2:14-15 & Revelation 12:1-5).

• Ruling Verse 5: “I have been crucified with Christ. I live, however, but no longer I. Christ lives inside of all that is me.” – Having established a finished Cross and our full union with Christ, Paul writes only out from this absolute. Paul is taking us back through the confusion of separation from Jesus in order to demonstrate that God did not design us to live in any other way than inside a full joining together with Jesus.

• Definition: The law gives the knowledge of sin, the knowledge of right and wrong, of good and evil. But the law CANNOT give Life, that is, the knowledge of God (see John 17:3). We define the law specifically as word that is itself True inside of God, but that we can receive only on the outside of ourselves, separate from Jesus, that we might FAIL to connect with God by SELF.

• Definition: The law as the knowledge of good and evil is NOT meant for humans. It is GOOD, of itself inside of God, but God made us weak intentionally, to be filled with Himself as the One who does. God did not give us the ability to do.

• Covenant: God’s Covenant with us REQUIRES no sufficiency in self and all-sufficiency in God. The purpose of Romans 7:18 is not to erase Galatians 2:20, which Paul reaffirmed in Romans 7:4-6, but to make it clear that we NEED Jesus. There is NO connection with God out of ourselves.

• Definition: God created us out from the soil of the earth. And in doing so, He formed us to be perfectly compatible to Himself as He is, that we might be His image, the revelation of God as Love through our humanity. When we try to “do” God without God, having our backs turned against Jesus sustaining us, then all we can produce is lawlessness.

• Ruling Verse 5: We do NOT carry a body of death (see Romans 6:5-11). Such a delusion exists only in those who try to connect with God through self-doing. Jesus shares flesh and Spirit with us, His Soul intertwines with ours.

• Ruling Verse 6: Jesus is our living Sacrifice, “our Scapegoat,” carrying even ongoing sinfulness in His empty grave, having already placed us entirely inside of God our Father.

• Speak Christ: “Thanks be to God” is the Eucharist, our return to the Father through Jesus. We stay with Paul, quickly fleeing the horrors of a separated life back into our Father.		 p. Paul has just esablished that through our already completion union with Christ, we no longer have a relationshiop with sin and the law. Next, Paul inserts a parenthesis, a “what if” regarding the law as it brings confusion into our lives. Paul is showing how ineffective the law is, that it accomplishes nothing. His purpose is to place us into a God-intended despair, that we would never seek sufficiency in ourselves. The huge problem is that readers of the Bible do not know the Gospel and thus falsely assume that Paul is now giving us the formula under which we live as Christians, that God has left us under the horrific awfulness between practice and desire.

q. “This body of death” is the Greek practice of chaining a murdered body to the back of the murderer so that he cannot be free of what he has done.

r. In verse 7, Paul left our complete separation from law and our marriage union with Christ in order to set forth the reality of “Sin not I” in a life separate from Christ and in oppositon to “Christ not I.” “Give thanks” means that we do NOT live in such a horror. Now Paul returns to the full force of our freedom from the law of sin and death, for we live inside a totally different law, the law of the Spirit of Life, that is, the Tree of Life.