Romans 7 Commentary
Released from the law, bound to Christ – that’s the subject of this chapter. Christ becomes the law; Christ rules. We see the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s words: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” Jeremiah 31 verse 33.
The law is no longer a set of rules but the person of Jesus Christ. Keep Jesus in your heart and the entire law is kept!
We break the rules because rules are there to be broken. Or, you wouldn’t be accused of breaking glasses if glasses didn’t exist in the first place!
So the scripture blames sin on the existence of rules – the law. The law does have power but it’s the power of punishment – death. The traffic rules come with the power to punish, for example. There is no other power to the rules or the law. So men and women are in trouble. On one end, sin helplessly pulls them into lawlessness and on the other end, the law punishes them.
Look at this desperate human situation and see how cool the Jesus solution is! Jesus is the Law. He has the power. You won’t be pulled to lawlessness easily. It becomes easier to do right than wrong. But we won’t do away with the law because it still defines right and wrong. The Law is now Jesus! Only He has the power to keep you away from sin.
The trouble we have with this chapter is in its usage of the terms sin, death, and the law. In some cases, ‘sin’ is an entity with both power and a personality – may actually be synonymous with satan, the chief god, or the god of deception and rebellion. In some other cases, ‘sin’ is simply the breaking of the law. It is also a verb to denote the actual action or an evil physical operation.
Death is almost always a reference to spiritual death. Physical death is rarely meant though almost always and erroneously inferred. The ‘law’ is a set of rules or a standard – often called the written code. But it may also refer to the way of the Spirit as is the case in the New Testament church.
There is a general feeling that ‘standard’ or ‘standards’, written or otherwise, may be referenced by the same term. In the case of Genesis, a standard existed that forbade Adam and Eve from eating of the specific known fruit tree.
Adam broke God’s standard. ‘Sin’ began to rule, in strong partnership with the serpent. We need to have all these thoughts as we digest this chapter. Doing away with the law or the standard is to let men and women eat the fruit freely – to have unrestricted access to the trees of Eden. Take note: The Tree of Life is Jesus. The Tree of Knowledge is Jesus. It all comes back to the same point, have Jesus and have everything! He is the Law; He is the standard! The Law is fulfilled in Jesus!
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