A Relationship Change That Sanctifies – Romans 7:1–6

PRAY & INTRO: In his letter to the saints in Rome, Paul began his treatise on God’s good news—the gospel—with a lengthy section depicting the bad news: the deserved condemnation for our sin. Jews and Gentiles alike, we have all merited God’s wrath against our unrighteousness. But then Paul follows this up with a careful explanation of how any person (all of us unrighteous) can be right with a perfectly righteous God. The key to unlock this mystery is justification by faith alone in Christ alone—that God in his grace will grant acquittal and a righteous standing before him based on the righteous work of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus.

Therefore, Paul says, our hope of eternal life is also secure because by faith in the Lord Jesus we are fully reconciled to God. Yes, the Lord Jesus brings about the reversal of the state and fate brought upon mankind by Adam’s sin. But each person must respond in faith to Christ in order to receive this gift of righteousness, thereby securing our hope based upon the certainty of God’s gracious promise.

Now, Paul knows that this security of justification by grace through faith raises another question. Won’t this teaching of not meriting salvation by our works lead people to think they can just live in sin because it won’t matter? Paul says, absolutely not. The justified will be sanctified, but the order has been reversed, and the power to accomplish it is not their own. Instead of a person’s effort to be set apart to God leading to a final verdict of justification, it is the work of God to justify us and to continue sanctifying us. In fact, by justification in Christ the saved have become willing slaves of righteousness, empowered to grow in holiness not by the Law but by God’s own Holy Spirit.

So we come to a part of Paul’s discussion of sanctification where he describes a change of relationship to the Law, in order that by the Spirit we may bear the fruit of sanctification.

Romans 7:1–6 ESV

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? ² 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. ³ 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. ⁴ 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. ⁵ 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. 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.

When we come to chapter 7, the central point of the text is that… 

Those who have died with Christ to the Law and possess the Holy Spirit have the ability to bear fruit for God.

We will see this from the details of these first 6 verses, but it is also tightly connected to the overall section from 7:1-8:17. As we proceed even further into chapter 7 and the beginning of chapter 8, this point Paul makes here in these opening verses becomes more developed and more pronounced. Paul continues explaining: Because of how sin works, our own human efforts to keep the Law can neither save nor sanctify from sin. We need to be in a new covenant with Christ and have his Spirit within us to have any hope of sanctified living consistent with God’s law.

It’s also helpful to note how this section transitions from and flows out of Paul’s previous discussion of sin and reference to the law. In fact, what set all this discussion in motion began at 5:20.

Romans 5:20 ESV

²⁰ Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

Chapter 7 in particular describes the law’s relationship to the problem of sin, by which Paul means especially the Mosaic law, taking his cue from these earlier references to the law in chapters 5 and 6.

Paul has been explaining how the era of grace in the new covenant is not a license to sin, but instead empowers holy living from the heart. Similarly, without further explanation yet, he had said twice in a row in the middle of that discussion that believers in Christ are “not under law but under grace” (Ro 6:14-15). Surely what Paul means is not that believers have been freed from any law whatsoever (for he can say other places that we most obey the law of Christ and keep God’s commandments - Gal. 6:2; 1 Cor. 7:19). But Paul means that we are no longer under the dispensation of the Mosaic law but are in a new dispensation, which he has been calling essentially the “reign of grace.” Now that the Messiah has come and perfectly fulfilled the Mosaic law as no one else in Israel could do, and who died to sin and for sin and rose again, those united to him by faith are living in this new era of relationship to God. 

So what Paul is doing in this chapter is continuing the discussion as to whether this reign of grace promotes lawlessness, and he will prove that not only have we been set free from the law, we must be free from the law and united to Christ. Furthermore, Paul will go on to show how the law cannot possibly justify or sanctify, and in fact the sin in our feeble flesh seizes the upper hand when we are aware of the law’s command. Instead, we must have, and Christ has granted, a new way of life by the Holy Spirit.

In these introductory verses to this section, Paul emphatically proves this same point. He describes a principle regarding the law and continues with an analogy from marriage, where a death frees the living party to be united to another. He will then draw a theological inference regarding how believers are released from the system of the Law and covenanted to Christ. Finally, he explains why the freedom from the Law and presence of the Spirit is necessary to produce real sanctification. 

So the initial three verses depict the following:

A death releases one from the lordship of the law regarding a former covenant, freeing them to enter a new covenant. (verses 1-3)

Here Paul provides a principle and an analogy, before then drawing a theological conclusion by comparison and explaining its implications.

- Principle: The law rules as long as one lives.

Paul returns to addressing the audience as brethren, indicating that he speaks to the saints in Rome, whom he calls brethren again at v. 4, definitely referring to those who have faith in Christ. Even though Paul speaks “to those who know the law,” it is unlikely that he refers only to Jewish believers, because we discussed in our introduction to Romans that there are many indicators that the audience in Rome is not only mixed but likely has a greater number of Gentile believers.

What might Paul mean then that his audience should know the law (“or do you not know?”), and that they in fact do know the law. When Paul writes about the law, he most frequently is referencing the Mosaic law in particular, but contextual cues are needed because he can sometimes mean law more generically, as a principal of law in general.

In this context, Paul probably does both. As we said, the broad purpose is certainly to contrast the era of the Mosaic law with the new era of grace through Christ. But when he says that we should know “that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives,” he may very well mean this as a principle regarding any law, which would therefore apply to the Mosaic law as well. Either way, the point is that the principle is generally true, and that Paul’s overall point is in regards to the Mosaic law (which is the former covenant). This becomes more clear with the analogy.

- Analogy from the marriage covenant: The death of one frees the other to be united to someone else.

The illustration Paul gives is rather straightforward to understand, but there are three things worth noting in the marriage analogy of vv. 2&3.

1. There is an evident Jewishness to the analogy that should keep our minds connected to the Mosaic law. Notice Paul emphasizes the fact that the woman is bound by law to her husband until he dies, because in Judaism a man could divorce his wife but the wife could not divorce her husband. By contrast, in Roman culture and law, the woman could divorce a man just as much as the converse. Whether or not the old Jewish mindset and legal system is fair to our sensibilities isn’t the point, but that it is according to Jewish custom.

So then point in v. 3 is not to say that a man would not also commit adultery by living with another woman, but the point is that this woman, who has less say in the matter and unable to divorce her husband, is freed from the former covenant if her husband dies, in order that she is free to covenant herself.

2. A second thing that is good for us to note is that the analogy has a clear purpose and shouldn’t be developed into some complicated allegory. The point is straightforward: According to the law, the death of the husband frees the wife to be united to someone else.
3. Finally, because this is an analogy for a particular purpose, we should be careful not to read too much into it, building marriage and remarriage doctrine from this illustration. There are other texts, however, where Jesus and Paul teach about Christian marriage and God intent that it should likewise be a permanent covenant while both parties live, and the extremely narrow exceptions for allowing divorce (and likewise remarriage). Those are issues then to be debated elsewhere from Scripture, while the intent here is the narrow purpose of the analogy.

Overall then, Paul’s point from the principle and the analogy is that a death releases one from the lordship of the law regarding a former covenant, making them free to enter into a new covenant. Now the reason we say it like that and not some other way is because we have the verses that follow it, to help us understand the purpose.

Believers have died with Christ and have been released from the Law to be covenanted to the Lord Jesus, in order that we may produce the fruit of sanctification to the glory of God. (verse 4)

Romans 7:4 “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.”

Verse 4 gives us Paul’s theological inference and application for the principle and illustration. Our union to Christ (6:5) by faith (5:1-2) means his death has ensured our death to the Law (the Mosaic covenant) and means we now belong to the resurrected Lord (in a new covenant). … in order that we can produce fruit that brings glory to God—the fruit of sanctification (6:22), of growth in holiness, of becoming like Christ.

As Paul goes into this theological application from the illustration (giving the purpose of the analogy), notice an important shift in who it is that dies. In the illustration, the husband dies. But here in v. 4, it is believers who die to the law through the death of Christ.

Notice too that the former covenant we die to and are therefore freed from is the Law (meaning the Law of Moses), and we are joined in new relationship to the resurrected Lord Jesus. Paul teaches this same concept with a different metaphor in Gal 3:23-25.

Galatians 3:23–25 ESV

²³ Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. ²⁴ So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,

Finally, notice the purpose clause for why Paul is explaining this in the present context of sanctification: “in order that we might bear fruit for God.” In recent context, namely the last part of chapter 6, and especially verse 22, I sought to explain how Paul is in fact using fruit to describe the sanctification produced. 

Romans 6:22 ESV

²² But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

The product is sanctification, growth in holiness, and it’s end is eternal life.

So here in 7:4 there is another contrast from the analogy in vv. 2-3. In contrast to the issue being sinning against the law (the example in the analogy was adultery), the new union to Christ positively produces actual holiness that glorifies God.

As Paul continues in vv. 5&6, he explains the necessary difference this makes by way of contrasting life before and after coming to Christ, explaining and highlighting the need for us to be freed from the law’s power-sphere in order to serve in the new way of the Spirit.

This is necessary for our sanctification because…

Under the Law, our feeble efforts in the flesh cannot succeed because our sin takes advantage of the law to produce greater sin, leading to an unholy living that ends in death. (verse 5)

Romans 7:5 “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.”

In the flesh (sarx) - natural human existence apart from God - which for Paul also means being in Adam, born predisposed to sin and already destined for the consequence of death.

Paul exposes (here and continuing later this chapter) the inherent incapacity and weakness of our human flesh. (Paul will describe his own experience with this reality: the insufficiency of self-effort to be holy.)

Paul also says something here that would be astonishing to Jews and God-fearers apart from Paul’s teaching on the subject. Contemporary Judaism promoted the notion that adherence to the law brought life. But Pauls says that “our sinful passions” are energized or “stimulated in our members through the law.” Paul will come back and explain this in a more detail in vv.7-11, but the meaning of it is that law not only gives definition to the sin, but our sin takes advantage of the rule and urges our rebellious response. So the problem isn’t the law, but our sin. However, the sinful passions within us take advantage of the law by stimulating us to rebel against what God has commanded.

And where was that life leading us? Instead of being sanctified by the law, we were losing the battle to our sin and living a life of unholiness, with the consequence of death—physical, spiritual, and eternal death.

By contrast, our faith in Christ releases us from the Law because we have died to its restraining hold on us, so that we are enabled to serve Christ by the new way of the Spirit. (verse 6)

Rom 7:6 - “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.”

“But now” indicates a new era, and Paul repeats with clarity that justification by faith in Christ releases us from the old covenant system of the Mosaic Law. This is more than being freed from the condemnation of the law, although that is certainly included (8:1). It is freedom from bondage to the Mosaic law as a system. So by the illustration and union to Christ in his death and resurrection, we have died to the Law’s lordship over us. Again, as we said, Paul teaches this concept also in Galatians 3.

Here the point is that the change in relationship is one that truly accomplishes sanctification in way that the former covenant could not. “The old way of the letter” or “the written code” is a description of the law that allows Paul a deliberate contrast with “the new way of the Spirit.” We have this concept in our own language when we say that we should understand and live by the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law. Only when Paul is saying it, he depicts us as no longer being under the old covenant system while also showing that the only way we can live consistently with the spirit of God’s law is by his own Spirit whom he has given us.

Holiness is produced by the Spirit rather than by the law. And the fruit Paul states another way here as sanctified service: those character traits, thoughts, and actions that will be “for God’s glory.” (v. 4) 

Summary: In our flesh we cannot live up to the Law and produce the fruit of sanctification. But by our death to the Law’s hold on us and the gift of the Spirit through our union to Christ, God himself enables us by his grace to grow in holiness.

Just as our justification is a gift of God’s grace, so too our sanctification is by God’s grace to empower us his own Holy Spirit at work in us to grow us in holiness. The first step in Paul’s argument is recognizing the necessity of death to the former covenant (the law of Moses) in order to experience God’s grace at work in us by his Spirit. Because of the indwelling presence of sin in our flesh, the law cannot produce holiness. We must be united to Christ and have his indwelling Spirit to battle against sin and grow in holiness.

What concluding application might we take from this text?

- As we live in a spirit of submission to Christ, our new Lord, the Holy Spirit sanctifies us.

- Legalism will not do because the Law makes us aware of our unholiness and fleshly inability.

- It is therefore continuing dependence upon God that produces holiness.

PRAY

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