Session 21 – Romans; Romans 7:1-7: Mark Lanier, 11/02/25

Romans 7:1-7 - Death Ends Legal Obligation (Mark Lanier)
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Introduction & Personal Story
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So, I am so glad you're here today. We've got a good packed audience in here. We've got friends on the internet. I got a a text message yesterday from a, a friend out in California. Who watches on the internet and, and others, and we're always grateful to the people who work hard to put it on the internet.

But I gotta tell you something I have been thinking through as I got ready for class today on Romans chapter seven, and one of the things I've been thinking through is my life now, if you were to say to me, what were the major influences in your life that got you where you are today? I [00:01:00] could tell you, obviously, uh, the Lord, I could tell you obviously my family, but I mean, nestled right up there near the top would be debate.

Now I'm not talking about what you use to catch the fish.

I'm, I'm talking about. High school debate. You may find this, uh, surprising, but it is high school. It was in high school debate that I met who ultimately became my sweet wife, Becky.

I was a couple of years past her in school. I was a junior. At Corona High School and our debate [00:02:00] coach sent us back to the middle school where she was in ninth grade at the time, McKenzie Junior High, and they had us go back, had me go back to try and talk the ninth graders into signing up for debate when they went to high school.

The idea was if I went over there and did a good job, then they might want to sign up for debate. And it was a way to keep the debate program growing. So I went over there and I had taken speech as a ninth grader. It was the same speech teacher, her name's Barbara Gibbons. At the time she was Barbara Smith, Ms.

Smith. But she told me, Hey, when you get over here, I'll have the class choose someone to do a little mock debate with you. And I said, that'll be great. And she said, but I'm, I'm not gonna tell you who we, you know, it's just gonna, you're gonna have to do it off the seat of your pants. I said, no trouble. I can, I mean, after all[00:03:00]

I got this. Okay. So I go back to the campus and lo and behold, if they haven't. Decided to have little Becky Smith debate me. Now, I went back to find pictures of us from this era,

and I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, you may have beat her in debate, but how on earth did you ever get her to date you when you looked like that? And she looked like that. Well, it took years, but we debated. if you want to know who won, you can get either answer, ask me and I'll tell you.

I did ask her and she'll say she did, but I truly think I did. But [00:04:00] I will readily admit it's the last time I've won an argument with her now. The reason this came into my mind is because we're in Romans chapter seven, and I think Romans chapter seven may be the most debated chapter in some ways about what Paul means.

It is Romans chapter seven that has that 15th verse that says, I don't understand my own actions. I don't do what I want. But I do the very thing I hate. Now, this is a very debated passage and has been for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years because on one hand you've got people who say, well, Paul's clearly talking about before he was a Christian.

But then you've got other people who say, oh, no, no, no, that the [00:05:00] Christian can experience that. Right, and then you've got other people who are saying, especially, maybe he's backsliding, and then you've got a whole nother layer of debate where some people just say, Hey man, Paul's just on the struggle bus.

He's having trouble. And then others, no, no, no. Paul was so good. He's just voicing the experiences that other people are having.

By the way, bill and Ann Young are in class today. They've moved to Colorado a couple of years ago and I almost quit teaching when they left, but they said they'd watch occasionally on the internet. So I keep teaching. They're back in town briefly and uh, it's just really nice that y'all came out here.

Thank you guys.

So I'd love with y'all being here to explain to you exactly this passage. The problem is, is it's not gonna be today. We won't get that far. So it's coming soon, and I'm sorry. [00:06:00] Today, all we've got time to do is to get the warmup. And the warmup is still warm to my heart because it's a legal analogy. So I wanna set it in front of you, but we gotta get it in the flow of the book of Romans.

Romans Overview & Context
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So if we're looking at the flow of Romans, Rome as a church, started out with Jews. Now that's an anachronism. They didn't have church edifices like that. They met in homes. They might rent a hall out or something like that. But church buildings were not yet in place. But it started out with Jews that were visiting Jerusalem from Rome.

During Pentecost, the Jews returned back and with them by definition. Is the church. Gentiles were added to that church. And we know that from a number of different sources. We know that the [00:07:00] Gentiles, uh, took over in a sense when the Jews were expelled from Rome, the Jews come back when Nero, uh, becomes emperor.

So we've got that kind of history and Paul's writing into that church, and Paul does so. Him and he puts a theme at the very beginning of his letter and his theme is Romans one 16 and 17. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, because it's the power of God to save everyone who has faith and the death and resurrection of Christ, which is the gospel in Paul's speak.

The death and burial resurrection of Christ is, is salvation for everyone. Who believes that's the basis of our salvation. We are saved. Not because we're good enough, not because we're um Americans, not because [00:08:00] we're wealthy, not because we're poor, not because we're, um, uh, got heads of hair, not because we're bald.

None of that. And it's certainly not because we measure up to God's standards. It's not even because God's just gonna say, I'm loose goosey about sin, I'm gonna let it slide. This just, God doesn't just become loose goosey about sin and let it slide. This just, God doesn't run a kangaroo court. And so this just, God says, the reason you'll be saved is because I, God will pay the price that must be paid for sin.

And so that the death and resurrection of Christ is God's power to forgive [00:09:00] sin without destroying God's character. And so Paul sets that out and he says, Jews need it. Gentiles need it. Everyone needs the death of Christ. Nobody is good enough. And so as he does this and he continues to move, he says, this is the righteousness that's there.

And, and, and it's always been that way. He can even go back and use Abraham as an example. Abraham was not justified because of what he did. He was righteous before God because he was faithful. He followed God in faith. It was his faith that was counted as his righteousness. So then once Paul does that, Paul starts moving into chapter six.

And in chapter six Paul says, you died to sin. Now why is this relevant? Because Paul knew if he's [00:10:00] going to teach people the gospel truth that you are saved because of the work of Christ, then does that let other people say, well, it doesn't matter how I live, then it doesn't matter. God's in the forgiving business.

I'll give him a lot to, I'll give him a lot of business. I'll do a lot for him to forgive.

A, a as, uh, uh, the Christmas oratorio that I, I cited said, you know, God's in the forgiving business. I'm in the sinning business. It's a pretty good system. We're symbiotic. We work well together. Paul knew that mentality might be out there. When, um, I, I went to Lipscomb University and I had a professor who was a wonderful Greek professor there, and he, he understood the gospel and he taught the [00:11:00] gospel, and, and he would have us translate these passages and, and we would take books of the Bible.

As a class, and we would take them in Greek and he would, I mean, we just worked through the Greek and that would be the Bible class. And when I first began to understand this in a, in a profound way and wanted to teach it, I'd gone back to law school. And when I was in law school in Lubbock, Texas, the hub of the plains for Texas Tech is seated, who, by the way, beat Kansas State yesterday.

And if you're watching this on the internet and you're a Kansas State supporter, y'all looked really good for a player or two. And, um,

sorry. Um. Where was I? Anyway, I went back and I was having a chance to teach in the college ministry. Now the, the pastor, the minister over the college ministry was Charles Mickey, who's in our class [00:12:00] right over here. He and his delightful wife, Kay and Charles, uh, uh, I said to Charles, I said, man, I'd just would really love to explain and teach this, and Charles had me in his office and he said to me, he said, that's good.

He said, but when you teach this. Make sure you teach the rest of it. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, remember, even Paul had to worry about people hearing that they are saved only by the grace of God and not by their works. And Paul had to worry that they would take that as a license to sin. He said, you're teaching college kids.

They are quick to find that license to sin, he said, so just make sure you're teaching both sides of it and, and he's dead, right? I mean it's the natural response of some is to say, well, it really doesn't matter. And Paul says, oh yes, it matters tremendously. Do you not understand you? You, when you were baptized into Christ, you [00:13:00] put on Christ, you died to sin you.

You joined Christ in his burial and resurrection, his death, burial and resurrection. That's the picture image of baptism. He says, if you are dead to sin, you don't live like you're alive to it. And that was chapter six. Now today. We're in chapter seven because it's the next logical consequence. Paul might be saying, okay, well you're dead to sin.

You're alive in Christ. But now another follow up question, so maybe it does matter whether or not we sin, but well, what about the law? Is the lawyer relevant? Can we ignore all these commandments? Can we just live by how we feel? Judge Ed Kincaid in Dallas' Federal district judge, and a wonderful friend, [00:14:00] and he said to me, he said, I'm always nervous when someone says, this is how I feel about God.

God's put this feeling in my, in my gut. And he says, I'm always curious, is it really God or is it the burrito they had for lunch? You know, can we just say, I got this feeling and I'm okay. And ignore the Bible. And Paul is saying in this chapter, in an echo of chapter six, you died to the law as opposed to you died to sin, you died to law, and again, now you're joined to Christ.

So what difference does that make to us? So that's where we are, and that's what we're looking at. And Paul starts it out with a, a metaphor, a marriage analogy. And marriage works really good for this because marriage is something that under the [00:15:00] law exists. You, you have, at the time it was a legal contract.

Now it's not termed that under the law, but you still enter into a, a, a license of marriage. You can have a common law marriage where you don't go through the formal procedure. You may not even file it with the the state, but you, you live as a married couple with the commitment of marriage, even if it's not one.

And it's this idea that there is a legal bond and obligation in marriage. It's a legal relationship. Um, if, if I. I am married to Becky. There are certain rights and and opportunities that each of us have because of the other one because we are married, so she, she gets the opportunity as a spouse to have legal chances that are related to me.

I have the same with her, [00:16:00] so you get legal. It's also exclusive. I am married to Becky. I like all of y'all, but I'm not married to you. I'm only married to her. She's only married to me. It's an exclusive relationship. It's also one that's permanent. Of course there's dissolution of marriage. I recognize that, uh, divorce has been around for as long as marriage has been around.

I recognize all of that as well, but the idea behind it is one of permanence, and so Paul is able to use a marriage analogy and the fact that this is something that's legal, this is something that's exclusive, this is something that's permanent until someone dies. But when someone dies, that changes everything.[00:17:00]

So that's the setup for the analogy. Now what I'd like to do is walk through this with you and shed some light on three different things. First, let's look at the marriage principle Paul talks about, and that's in verse one. And then we'll expand his illustration and track with him in verses two and three.

And then before we leave. We will do the application, which for Paul are the verses four, five, and six.

Romans 7:1 - The Principle (Death Ends Legal Obligation)
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So let's do that together. We'll start with the principle. Now the principle is pretty easy. Here's the principle. Death ends the legal obligation of marriage. Now this is his metaphor. This is his analogy.

He starts in Romans seven verse one. And he says, or do you not know brothers for? I'm speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person [00:18:00] only as long as he lives. Now he begins this with, do you not know brothers? Do you not know is in the Greek a agno, which is basically, are you ignorant?

Um, that's, uh, we get the word ignorant directly from it. Agnostic is, uh, another form. Uh, uh, do you not know? Are you unaware? And this for Paul is a rhetorical question. He is not expecting an answer the way it's written in the Greek. It's, it, it, it's like, Hey, everybody knows this. This is a gimme. This is a no-brainer.

He's used language like this already in chapter six. This whole chapter echoes what we read in chapter six, just applies to the law instead of to sin. He says, don't you [00:19:00] know brothers? And the word for brothers here is Adel Foy. It's in the masculine form. Um, so it's translated brothers, but it includes sisters.

Okay. It's, it's, uh, they, the, the, the masculine form for, uh, a Del Foy, uh, or Delphis. Uh, and for Anthropo is, it is used also. It's, it's inclusive. It's like if we talk about mankind, we're not talking just about men. Sharon's included. Okay. It's, it's, uh, historically, uh, the first book that I published outside of Legal World, um, I talked about the fall of man and the editor sent it back and said, that would've been great 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

But now we don't say the fall of man because it reads exclusive. And women fell too. I thought, well, man, includes both. Yeah, well, it does, but that's not the way we talk anymore. That's not the way [00:20:00] we ride anymore, so. Paul is not writing just about the brothers. Don't read this and say, well, it's just another sign that Paul was a misogynist, sexist idiot.

Um, no, that's just the language that they used, but the readers would've understood it to mean brothers and sisters. And the reason he's using the word brothers here, he doesn't have to, he could totally leave that word out. He could just say, don't you know?

Don't you know that, and I'm speaking to those under the law. Don't you know the, you is already in his verb, but he adds brothers as a, a tender word. He's speaking in a tender way. It's, it's a, it's a word of affection. So he's saying, Hey [00:21:00] guys. Don't you? You know this to be true brothers. You're speaking outta love.

And he says, and I'm speaking to people who know the law. I mean, you, you know the law. Now, scholars will walk around this and try to figure out what it means to those who know the law, what law is Paul talking about? 'cause he doesn't say. Is he talking about the Jewish law? The Torah, good bit of reasons to think so.

Um, but he's got a bunch of people there. He is writing to Rome and Rome's got its laws. Is he talking about Roman law or is he just talking about law generally? And different scholars land in different places. Most modern scholars think he's probably talking about Jewish law if you're taking a poll or a vote.

But there are good respectable scholars who say he is talking [00:22:00] about law generally. Here I can make a debating argument for either side. Uh, I don't think it matters though. Because his point is not which kind of law, his point and, and it would apply equally under all three of these. His point doesn't change regardless of what the law is that he's talking about.

So he says, don't you know brothers, that the law is binding? On a person only as long as the person lives. Now, this word binding he's been using throughout chapter six as well. It means to have dominion over or to lord it over. The law is your Lord. The law controls you. The law is is has dominion and authority on you.

Only if you're alive. See, he used this same word back in Romans six 14 when he said, sin will have no dominion over you. And that word, [00:23:00] dominion, same verb. And, and this is important because remember, in the flow of this chapter six, you died to sin. Here, you died to the law. And so he, he's got this parallel track running here and we don't wanna lose track of it.

So he says the law is, has dominion, is binding, has jurisdiction, has authority only as long as you're alive. If you're not alive anymore, it doesn't have authority. Look, if you are standing in criminal court. And that judge is about to pronounce you guilty and send you to jail, and you drop dead at that moment of a heart attack and you're dead.

I mean, it's over. It's not like, oh, is he maybe dead? No, he's dead. DADE Dade.[00:24:00]

If that happens, you don't have to worry that the judge is gonna say, Hey. Get a casket for that dead man, and I want 'em to serve three years in Leavenworth. Put him in the federal pen for five. No. If you're dead, the judge dismisses the case. The law has no authority over you. If you go to a funeral with a dead person and that dead person owed you money.

You cannot go up to that dead person and say, uh, before they shut the casket, can you please pay me? Now, you might be able to make a claim on the estate, but that dead person doesn't owe you Didly squat. They're gone.

So, um.[00:25:00]

Jar. Pastor Jarret and I and several others had gone to a football game a few years ago. Pastor Jarret grew up, his, uh, uncle I think had played for Mississippi State and he loved Mississippi State. And Mississippi State was having a pretty good year and they were gonna play Georgia. Georgia was like ranked number one in the country at the time.

Now, Mississippi State had a football coach named Mike Leach, and Mike Leach kind of came into his own at Texas Tech. He was my buddy. And so I called Coach Leach and I said, Hey, I'm bringing my pastor in for the game this Saturday to see Georgia. Uh, just excited about it, wanna know if it's going to, and, and Mike Leach said to me, he said.

Hey, when you get here, come find me. I'll get you a signed jersey to give your pastor. I'm like, I'm gonna [00:26:00] look pretty good to the pastor. That's pretty good. So I said, okay, well, we get there and I mean, he's playing number one Georgia, and the last thing he needs is Mark Lanier trying to get down on the field.

Say, Hey coach, where's my jersey? So I figure I'll just sort of lay back a little bit. We'll enjoy the game and I'll hit him up in the next week or two. It seems reasonable, doesn't it?

Uh, Mississippi State got killed by Georgia. Glad I didn't mess with the coach. We go back and a couple of days later before I call Coach Leach up, he drops dead of a heart attack. I mean dead. Now I can't call his cell. And say, Hey, I don't know who's answering this, but uh, I know he is dead, but would you see if he left a signed jersey for me to give my pastor?

I mean, it's [00:27:00] gone. It's gone. The law only has authority while you're alive. Hence, when you're married, you take a vow till death do us part right. Right. That's the principle. It's an easy principle. You see why he says, don't y'all know this? Of course you do. Everybody knows it. And now he gives an illustration.

Romans 7:2-3 - The Illustration (Marriage Analogy)
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Now in a minute, this is gonna start getting hairy, so hang on for this and. Verse two. A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she's released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she'll be called an adulterous if she lives with another man while her husband's alive.

But if her husband dies, she's free from that law, and if she marries another man, she's not an adulterous. Okay, let's parse that apart. A married woman. [00:28:00] Now, Paul does not use a wife doesn't use the word for wife directly. He uses this phrase, who? Ros Gunney. A woman who is under a man, under a man's authority, under a man's legal rights.

A woman who exists under the law of a man. That's fairly harsh language, even though it's accurate language for that day and era. But the translators just wanna make it, okay. A married woman, but she's a Paul's language. Paul's illustration works well because he's talking about a woman who is, who is legally under her husband.

She is bound by law. Del is this verb bound. It means she's tied to him. She is. She is [00:29:00] knitted into him by law. You take a woman who's knitted into her husband by law if her husband's alive and she goes out and starts living with someone else, she's an adulterous. And, and that's his illustration here.

He's, he's gonna say, look, you take a lady and she's married to a guy here, we'll give her long hair. So you know, she's a lady and she's married to a guy. If they are, they are tied together.

As long as they're both alive. But the problem is while they're tied together, if they're alive, if her husband dies,

then she is [00:30:00] released. And this word that's translated release kaar, it means separated from and does mean in different places, untied. So his, his image here is if the husband dies, then this whole thing comes apart. She's untied. It's a pretty simple analogy. It's not hard to follow, and that's what he's saying.

So till death do us part, when death comes, they're parted. So Paul can say, she'll be called an adulterous.

Romans 7:4-6 - The Application (Died to the Law)
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That's what she's called. If she lives with another man while her husband's alive. But if her husband dies, she's free from that law. She married another man. She's not an adulterous. Now, it's interesting to read [00:31:00] history on this.

There was, uh, in the early church days and by early church here, I'm in the 400 era, but Augustine is late three hundreds early four hundreds. He is one of the pillars of the Patristic father era. For what he had to say and how he read scripture and all, and, and when Augustine came to this, he read this very symbolically, Augustine said, the woman is your soul.

The first husband is your sinful nature. So you're married to your sinful nature until your sinful nature dies, and then you can take a second husband, and that's your new nature. Now, that sounds spiritually wonderful, but that's no more what Paul's talking about than the [00:32:00] man in the moon. With all due respect to Augustine, who's brilliant in so many different ways, and.

Heaven forbid I ever say he was wrong on anything, but he was wrong. Okay? This is a good place where we can remember two things. Our goal when we study the Bible is to take what the Bible says and we do something called exegesis. That means we read the text and we try to draw out what scripture says. We wanna understand what Paul.

Mint and then we apply it. What I think Augustine was doing here is something that's a little bit different. It's something that's called ice ESUs. X means out of ice means in two. What he was doing is taking his theology and reading it into the scriptures. [00:33:00] Now, I don't judge him harshly. Because we all tend to do that.

We know what we believe, we see this scripture, and we just automatically tend to say, oh look, that's saying exactly what I believe. And we tend to read our beliefs and into scripture instead of trying to read scripture and understand it. It and then apply it, it, you know, and, and sometimes if we do it right, it'll change what we believe.

Sometimes it won't because our beliefs are right. I'm not saying that that Augustine's theology was messed up on that. What I am saying is that's not what Paul's talking about. And it's a good teaching moment for us to remember I said Jesus. Is not what we should be doing. We should do ex of Jesus. I said, Jesus is not a good thing, and Paul's not here writing about the nature of the way that Augustine was doing it.[00:34:00]

Paul's just using a simple law analogy and he says, you died to the law and when you died of the law, you're free to remarry without being an adulterous or adulterer. Now that's the illustration. Let's go to the application and these last three verses we'll look at today. Paul says, likewise my brothers.

Hosty. Likewise, my brothers, and again, my brothers, Adel Foy Moo, my brothers and sisters, but it's an affectionate word, and so he's inserting it with affection. It just shows his heart as a writer here, he's not harsh. Paul, he's, he's a, um, Paul's showing affection. Likewise, my brothers and sisters, you also have died to the law.

Through the body of Christ [00:35:00] 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. This likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law. This is an echo of having died to sin, which he said in chapter six. You're dead to sin. There's been a realm transfer.

You're dead to the law. There's been a realm transfer. You are not under the law anymore. You died to the law through the body of Christ.

This goes back to his very beginning. I'm not ashamed of the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, because it's only through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ that we have life, that we [00:36:00] have righteousness, that we are made right with God. It is through Christ. We died. We have been crucified with Christ.

So he says it is through the body of Christ. Now, there are a few people who say, well, I think you may be talking about the church there. No, there's nothing in here to reference the church in that regard. With all due respect, he's talking very cleanly. He's, he's just saying, look, died. Now, the weird thing is, is he says, you have died

not the law. Through the death of Christ, you have died. But here's his point, and this gets, um, some people all riled up when they try to work through the analogy and they say, well, his analogy's breaking down. Yeah. He is not making an analogy that's gonna be perfect in every way. He's trying to illustrate a point.

[00:37:00] Don't lose track of the, the forest for the trees. The point is, here's the believer husband, number one is the law. And the believers are under the law. In Galatians, he'll call the law a pedago oath. A pedago was the, the tutor, the guardian who taught a a, a young child, their manners, who was responsible for walking the child to school, picking the child up from school and walking the child home.

That there was the caretaker, the one who helped the child grow into adulthood. Responsibly and well, and he says that's what the law was. It would point you to Christ. It would, it would teach you your manners. It would teach you to behave. It would help you to grow up. But the law died and husband number two is Christ the death dissolved the marriage.

You're not married to the law anymore. More

so. Likewise, my brothers. You've died to the [00:38:00] law through the body of Christ, so you may belong to another. That's the point here that, that he's drawing in this analogy. You have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another. And then he is got this clause down at the bottom in order that s.

Likewise, my brothers, you've died to the law through the body of Christ, so you may belong to another. To him, who do we belong to? To him who has been raised from the dead in order that it's called a hena purpose clause in Greek hena is this word here in order that for the purpose of bearing fruit for God, we did not.

Um, [00:39:00] die to the law just to go out renegade, just to start freelancing so that we could live for our own good, so that we could do whatever the heavens we wanted to. That is not why it happened. It happened for the purpose of us to bear fruit to God. If you look at Galatians two 19.

Galatians is a sister book in a lot of ways because he deals with so many of the same issues there with Romans. Look at two 19. Paul writes

Through the law, I died to the law. Why? So that I might live to God. There's a reason why if we lose [00:40:00] track of the reason why, then we will not live the life we're called to live. Pastor Jart this morning, I think he was freelancing, so if you go to the 10 45 service, you may not hear it. I don't think it's in his notes, but it was powerful.

In fact, I think it was in his announcements. In his announcements, he went through this litany of scriptures that talk about how important the mind is. If it, it is the, the battlefield is right here before anywhere else, and we gotta get our mind right. And Paul's saying, you need to focus on something here.

You did not die to the law just so you could live lawlessly and recklessly feeding your own passions. You died through the body of Christ so that you can bear fruit to God. There's a purpose behind all of [00:41:00] this, and the purpose is to bear fruit for God. And that's what we're getting in this passage, and that's what Galatians two 19 is saying when it says I might live to God.

So Paul continues. He says, while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions and, and this flesh sarks in the Greek will, we'll get to it later. It's a buzz word. We need to flesh it out, but that's a different class. 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.

And the way this reads and the Greek that Paul's using is he's saying

it's not. Just that the law pointed out your sin, [00:42:00] the law actually worked even more than that. The law worked in, in a way that aroused your passions to for sin. Um, the best example I can think of, I don't remember what it was, but Becky and I were doing something recently and there was this sign that said, do not whatever, whatever.

And Becky looked at me and she said, you know, I don't know what it says about my personality, but just them telling me not to do it makes me wanna do it so bad. And I was like, me too. And that's what Paul's talking about here. Do you remember what it was, Becky? Oh yeah, it's exactly right. Texas Tech. We throw tortillas on the field during, during uh, uh, kickoffs.

It's like it's a thing. You throw tortillas on the field and the big 12 gets so upset over it, and they have this big vote. You [00:43:00] can't throw tortillas on the field, except they can't just say it's a Texas tech rule. So instead, you can't throw things on the field, and if you do, you get two warnings, and after the second warning you get a 15 yard penalty.

So we're at the game, they're throwing tortillas on the field. They, I was not. They're throwing tortillas on the field. Tech scores again, we kick off again, we're throwing tortillas on the field. We just got our second warning tech scores again, we kick off again. We're throwing tortillas on the field. They got a big announcement.

Please don't throw tortillas on the field and you can see every college kid saying, Hey, I'm gonna throw more tortillas on the field. That's a good idea. I mean, it's the same thing Paul says, while we're living in the flesh, that our sinful passions were aroused by the law. It was at work in our members to bear fruit for death, but now we're released from the law having died to the law that which it held us [00:44:00] captive.

Have you ever just walked in guilt because you're not good enough, because you're doing things that are wrong, but it held us captive that we may now serve in the new way of the spirit. Not in the old way of the written code,

which by the way, the old way of the written code is an argument that Paul means something beyond just the Torah. Here he means any law, but that's another, that's a debate for other people. Um, here's what we've got. I tried to find a good picture. You got the old, and you got the new. And Paul's drawing a contrast here.

Paul says, Romans seven, five. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were work in our members to bear fruit for death. So what do we have? We have, we're [00:45:00] living in the flesh. We have sinful passions that aroused by the law and bore fruit for death. Did you know an overripe banana?

Is slimy and horrendous. I mean, yes, it makes good banana bread, but that's about it. In fact, my favorite birthday card says, uh, happy birthday and banana years, your bread.

Um, there's nothing this is good for other than banana bread. It bears fruit for death. But Paul says that's not true for us. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law, war at work, and our members to bear fruit for death, but now we're released from the law having died to that which held us captive.

So we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. [00:46:00] What's the new? We've been released from the law. We're not living in the flesh. Those sinful passions, we've died to sins power. It being aroused by the law we are now serving in the spirit. It bore fruit for death. Now we bear fruit for God.

The point of this is not to live for me. The point of being out from under the law is not so that I can do whatever I want. The point is you never were able to satisfy God's righteousness by how good you were and the law. Just if anything, was making you not just realize where you were falling short, but even feeding that, and now that you've been released from it, it doesn't mean the law was bad.

It doesn't mean that the law was of no good, it just means the law was never there. Rules of how to [00:47:00] behave. Were never there to get you right with God. You are right with God because Christ made you right with God. Period. End of story. And that's his application.

Conclusion & Call to Action
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So where does this leave us? We've got a principle, we've got an illustration, we've got an application, and I go back to Becky.

Because by God's graciousness and Becky's shortsightedness, we moved from debating to marrying.

But it works with this passage because what Paul is saying is we've moved from law to marrying Christ

and that leads us to the points for home. Paul wants us to know that we have died to the law. And so I urge us to [00:48:00] stop living the law's guilt quick, saying I'm not good enough. I talked to a man one time who was in his later years. Um, he said to me one time, he said, mark. Uh, I don't buy unripe bananas 'cause I don't think I got much longer.

And I said, uh, I said, well, how you feel about that? And he said, you know, I know I'm supposed to be saved by grace and faith and all. He said, but I just don't think I'm good enough. And I said, but that's the whole point. You're not That's right. That's the whole point. And, and it pained me to think that this godly man had been living for 70 plus years under the guilt of thinking he wasn't good enough.[00:49:00]

I got, uh, he's not, you're not, I'm not. Stop living the law's guilt. It just makes you worse. It's like the person who said to me one time, uh, I'm in debt so bad, I can't do anything about it except go shop.

You belong to Christ to bear fruit for God. There's a reason you belong to him, and that fruit will come from your union with Christ, not from your personal achievement. Amen. Let God's spirit empower you. Let God's spirit work through you. Quit keeping score. The game is over,

and now we serve in the new way of the [00:50:00] spirit. Doesn't mean we're serving less. It means we're serving better. Amen. Amen. Um, lemme bless you. In the name of Jesus Lord, in the name of Jesus I pray, liberation to the captives,

liberation to serve you in the power of the Spirit, to bear fruit for you to your glory in Jesus Christ. Amen.