Romans ~ Part 18

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As I’ve stressed in my previous post, our journey to comprehend the profound significance of Sha’ul’s Letter to the Romans is not just a study but a crucial cornerstone of our faith.

Freedom from the Law ~ Part 1

You may often feel torn between wanting to pursue your desires and the guilt accompanying them, much like Sha’ul’s struggle in Romans 7. This week, try sitting down and identifying specific areas in your life where you feel these tensions. Write them down and pray over them, inviting God into your struggles. Consider establishing a small group with friends from the church where you can share these burdens. Accountability through prayer and sharing can create an environment for growth and help you break free from the cycle of sin.

Law Binding During Lifetime

Sha’ul has explored the meaning of dying with the Messiah (6:1–14) and the concept of human enslavement to sin (6:15–23, building on the groundwork laid in 5:12–21). Now, in relating these ideas to the Torah, he introduces a new analogy: marriage. Throughout this chapter, it must be remembered that Sha’ul was not anti-Torah, as some suppose, but had a high view of the Torah. In v. 1, Sha’ul specifies that he is writing these verses to those who understand the Torah, primarily Jews, even though the letter as a whole is primarily addressed to Gentiles (see 1:5b–6).

¹ Surely you know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who understand Torah—that the Torah has authority over a person only so long as he lives? ² For example, a married woman is bound by Torah to her husband while he is alive; but if the husband dies, she is released from the part of the Torah that deals with husbands. ³ Therefore, while the husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress if she marries another man; but if the husband dies, she is free from that part of the Torah; so that if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.

A married woman, bound by law to her husband so long as he lived, was legally free to marry another man if her husband died.

Now Married to Yeshua

⁴ Thus, my brothers, you have been made dead with regard to the Torah through the Messiah’s body, so that you may belong to someone else, namely, the one who has been raised from the dead, in order for us to bear fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were living according to our old nature, the passions connected with sins worked through the Torah in our various parts, with the result that we bore fruit for death.

Believers have died to the “old self” (Romans 6:2–6) and are free to marry another and bear fruit for God.

⁶ But now we have been released from this aspect of the Torah because we have died to that which had us in its clutches so that we are serving in the new way provided by the Spirit and not in the old way of outwardly following the letter of the law.

As new creations, Believers serve as slaves in a new way with a new power from the Spirit, not as old men (6:6) laboring vainly under the letter of the law.

Law Gave Opportunity to Sin

⁷ Therefore, what are we to say? That the Torah is sinful? Heaven forbid! Rather, the function of the Torah was that without it, I would not have known what sin is. For example, I would not have become conscious of what greed is if the Torah had not said, “Thou shalt not covet.”

Therefore, what are we to say? That the Torah is sinful (literally, “is sin”)? In Romans 2:18, 3:20, 5:13, and 20, and the last few verses, Sha’ul has indicated that the Torah makes people sin. His concern is that readers might jump to the unwarranted conclusion that the Torah itself “is sin,” that is, sinful. So, he answers his question in the most robust possible negative language, Heaven forbid!, and proceeds in vv. 7–14 to analyze how a “holy, just, and good” Torah can stir up sin. The answer is that it is not the Torah’s fault but our own.

“Thou shalt not covet.” The tenth commandment (Exodus 20:14(17), Deuteronomy 5:18; see Mattityahu 5:22) can be transgressed without an external act: entertaining envy in one’s heart is already a sin. Thus, this example is well suited to proving that the Torah cannot be construed as a set of behavior rules to be followed mechanically (legalistically).

⁸ But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, worked in me all kinds of evil desires—for apart from Torah, sin is dead. ⁹ I was once alive outside the framework of Torah. But when the commandment really encountered me, sin sprang to life, ¹⁰ and I died. The commandment that was intended to bring me life was found to be bringing me death!

The phrase once I was alive has been variously interpreted as a reference to (1) Sha’ul before he came to know the law as a young Jewish boy, (2) Sha’ul before his conversion and the conviction brought by the Holy Spirit, (3) Sha’ul speaking as Adam in the Garden of Eden before the command came, or (4) any Hebrew before the giving of the Mosaic Law at Mount Sinai. The primary point in each of these interpretations is the same: God’s intent in the law was life, but sin deceived man by the law and brought death.

¹¹ For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me; and through the commandment, sin killed me. ¹² So the Torah is holy; that is, the commandment is holy, just, and good. ^[1]

Though the law makes sin known and is, in fact, used by sin to produce death, it is nevertheless holy, just, and good, reflecting God’s perfect and eternal holiness.

 

In our next post, we continue to examine the theme: Freedom from the Law.

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^[1] Romans 7:1–12.