https://youtu.be/kfR0Goipiqw




A Commission of Submission



Romans 7:1-6



7 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law [a]has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. 4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.



Judaism’s relationship with the Law of Moses began in a solemn covenant-ceremony performed at Mt. Sinai. Large sections of the Torah record the terms of this covenant. So for a Jew to walk away from the Torah was to violate the sacred vow they had made with God as a people. The result of that violation would be to bring upon themselves the curses contained in the covenant. No observant Jew could just decide to stop following the Law. To do so would make them nothing less than an infidel. This is the underlying issue Paul is addressing here. He wants his Jewish readers to see that following Christ is not a breach of the covenant, and the way he does this is to compare the covenant made at Sinai with a marriage covenant. The central point of the argument is this: the vows of a marriage covenant cease to be in force when one of the parties dies, and the same thing is true of the vows made at Sinai. He has just shown us that the person who puts their faith in Christ is counted in the spiritual world as having died with Him. (this was preached 2 weeks ago) As far as God and the Law are concerned that person has died and therefore is released from obligation to the Law. They are free from their vows, and its power to curse them has ended. The ultimate demand of the Law is death, and that demand has been met.



A woman who has entered into a marriage covenant cannot leave a faithful husband. Marriage is a solid, binding agreement that cannot be broken without bringing God’s judgment, unless the spouse dies. Paul explains that just as death releases a spouse to remarry, the spiritual death that takes place when a believer dies with Christ frees a Jew from their obligation to the Law. Our death with Christ is not just a mere figure of speech, but rises to the level of our own actual physical death. Nothing less than death could free a Jew from the authority of the Law, and that death took place when by faith we joined Christ in the grave.



So Paul tells these Jews, because they died with Christ the covenant made at Mt. Sinai lost its power to hold them and they are free to enter a new marriage. Their new groom is the resurrected Messiah. And just as marriage produces the fruit of children, so a believer’s marriage-like covenant will produce fruit for God. They now enter an entirely new relationship with the Law. They no longer have to fulfill it down to the smallest detail, fearing the curse it threatened. The radical change which took place in their own spirits set them free to fulfill the true intent of the law. Being married to Christ, they have the power to successfully serve and obey God. While we are not under Mosaic Law, we are not lawless.



1 Corinthians 9:20-21 and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the [a]law, that I might win those who are under the law; 21 to those who are without...

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