Romans 7 is well known to most Christian people because of the debate it has provoked about holiness. Who is the ‘wretched man’ or ‘miserable creature’ (NEB) of verse 24, who gives us a graphic account of his inner moral turmoil (15ff.), cries out for deliverance, and then immediately appears to thank God for it? (25)? Is this person regenerate or unregenerate? And if the former, is he or she normal or abnormal, mature, immature or backsliding? The different schools of holiness teaching are obliged to come to terms with this chapter.
But it is never wise to bring to a passage of Scripture our own ready-made agenda, insisting that it answers our questions and addresses our concerns. For that is to dictate to Scripture instead of listening to it. We have to lay aside our presuppositions, so that we can conscientiously think ourselves back into the historical and cultural setting of the text. Then we shall be in a better position to let the author say what he does say and not force him to say what we want him to say. It is of course legitimate to seek secondary applications to contemporary questions, but only after the primary task of ‘grammatico-historical exegesis’ has been diligently done.
If we come to Romans 7 in such a mood of meekness and receptivity, it becomes evident at once that Paul’s preoccupation is more historical than personal. He is not answering questions put to him in a Christian holiness convention, but rather struggling with the place of the law in God’s purpose. For the ‘law’ or the ‘commandment’ or the ‘written code’ is mentioned in every one of the chapter’s first fourteen verses, and some thirty-five times in the whole passage which runs from 7:1 to 8:4. What is the place of the law in Christian discipleship, now that Christ has come and inaugurated the new era?
Before coming to Romans 7, however, we need to ask what Paul has written thus far about God’s purpose in giving the law. Paul’s reply is couched in almost entirely uncomplimentary terms. To be sure, in theory the person ‘who does these things will live by them’ (Rom. 10:5, quoting Lv. 18:5). But in practice no human being has ever succeeded in obeying the law. Therefore it can never be the way of salvation (Gal.3:10f.; 21f.). Instead the law reveals sin (3:20), condemns the sinner (3:19), defines sin as transgression (4:15; 5:13; cf. Gal. 3:19), ‘brings wrath’ (4:15), and was even ‘added so that the trespass might increase’ (5:20). In consequence, God’s righteousness has been revealed in the gospel altogether ‘apart from the law’ (1:17; 3:21a), although the law helped to bear witness to it (1:2; 3:21b). And sinners are justified by God, not through obeying the law but through faith in Christ (3:27). Such faith upholds the law (3:31) by assigning to it its proper function. Abraham himself illustrated this principle, since the way he received God’s promise was ‘not through law... but through the righteousness that comes by faith’ (4:13f.). This antithesis shows that the whole gospel vocabulary of promise, grace and faith is incompatible with law.
So far then, almost all Paul’s allusions to the law have been pejorative. The law reveals sin , not salvation; it brings wrath, not grace. And these negative references culminate in what to Jewish ears must have appeared his shocking epigram that Christian believers are ‘not under law, but under grace’ (6:14f.). It is the springboard into Romans 7, which begins with similar statements that we have ‘died to the law’ (4) and so have been ‘released from the law’ (6). How dare the apostle be so dismissive of God’s law? One has only to read Psalm 19 and 119 to sense the enormous pleasure which godly Jews derived from the law. It was to them ‘more precious than gold, than much pure gold’ and ‘sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb’ (Ps.19:10). How then can the apostle denigrate it as promoting sin rather than righteousness, and death rather than life? How could he proclaim freedom from it? What did he mean that we are ‘no longer under the law’? Was he declaring it to be abrogated? His words must have sounded like a clarion call to antinomianism.
Moreover, Paul’s teaching is by no means of purely antiquarian interest today. For the advocates of the so-called ‘new morality’, which was first proclaimed in the 1960s but is still popular today, appear to be twentieth-century antinomians. They maintain that the category of ‘law’ has been abolished for Christians and that the only absolute left is the commandment of love. There are also contemporary holiness teachers who declare similarly that the law has no place in the Christian life. In support of their position they quote both ‘ Christ is the end of the law’ (10:4) and ‘you are not under law’ (6:14f,), as if these statements meant that the moral law has been annulled. What Paul writes in Romans has direct relevance to this debate.
Romans 7: 1-25. God’s law and Christian discipleship. (continued). august 18 email
Whenever we come across a negative statement, however, we cannot interpret it until we discern with what it is being contrasted. For example, if you were to say to me, ‘You’re not a man’ without adding any positive counterpart, you could be insulting me (meaning ‘but you’re a baby or a pig or a demon’), or you could be flattering me (meaning ‘but you’re an angel’). Similarly, on my return from a recent visit to the United States, I remarked to a friend. ‘I haven’t had a bath for a month.’ Before he had time to express his disgust at my lack of personal hygiene, however, I added, ‘But I have had a shower every day’.
What, then, did Paul intend when he described Christians as being ‘not under law’? He used this expression in two different letters and contexts, and so in two different senses. He also clarified the meaning of each by the contrasting phrases he added. In Romans 6:14f. he wrote that ‘you are not under law, but under grace’. Here the antithesis between law and grace indicates that he is referring to the way of *justification*, which is not by our obedience to the law, but by God’s sheer mercy alone. In Galatians 5:18, however, he wrote that ‘if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law’. Here the antithesis between law and Spirit indicates that he is referring to the way of *sanctification*, which is not by our struggling to keep the law, but by the power of the indwelling Spirit. So for justification we are not under the law but under grace; for sanctification we are not under law but led by the Spirit.
It is in these two senses that we have been ‘freed or ‘released’ from the law. But this does not mean that we have been divorced from it altogether, in the sense that it has no more claims on us of any kind, or that we have no more obligations to it. On the contrary, the moral law remains a revelation of God’s will which he still expects his people to ‘fulfil’ by living lives of righteousness and love (8:4; 13:8, 10). This is what the reformers called ‘the third use of the law’.
We are now ready to summarize three possible attitudes to the law, the first two of which Paul rejects, and the third of which he commends. We might call them ‘legalism’, ‘antinomians’ and ‘law-fulfilling freedom’. *Legalists* are ‘under the law’ and in bondage to it. They imagine that their relationship to God depends on their obedience to the law, and they are seeking to be both justified and sanctified by it. But they are crushed by the law’s inability to save them. *Antinomians* (or libertines) go to the opposite extreme. Blaming the law for their problems, they reject it altogether, and claim to be rid of all obligation to its demands. They have turned liberty into licence. *Law-fulfilling free people* preserve the balance. They rejoice both in their freedom from the law for justification and sanctification, and in their freedom to fulfil it. They delight in the law as the revelation of God’s will (7:22), but recognize that the power to fulfil it is not in the law but in the Spirit. Thus legalists fear the law and are in bondage to it. Antinomians hate the law and repudiate it. Law-abiding free people love the law and fulfil it.
Directly or indirectly Paul alludes to these three types in Romans 7. He does not portray or address them directly one by one, but their shadowy forms are discernible throughout. In verses 1-6 he asserts that the law no longer has ‘authority’ over us. By dying to it with Christ we have been released from it, and we now belong to Christ instead. This is the massage for legalists. In verses 7-13 he defends the law against the unjust criticism that it causes both sin and death. He attributes these instead to our fallen nature. The law itself is good (12-13). This is his message to antinomians. In verses 7:14-25 Paul describes the inner conflict of those who are still living under the regime of the law. If left to ourselves in our fallenness we cannot keep God’s law, even though we delight in it. Nor can the law rescue us. But God has done what the law could not do, by giving us his Spirit (8:3-4). This is the experience of those who find their freedom in fulfilling the law.
These three paragraphs of Romans 7 may appropriately be entitled ‘Release from the Law’ (1-6), in order to serve God in the Spirit, ‘A defence of the law’ (7-13), against the calumny that it causes sin and death, and ‘The Weakness of the Law’ (14-25), because it can neither justify nor sanctify sinners.
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Paul begins this paragraph by addressing his readers affectionately as *brothers* and by asking them for the third time: *Do you not know*? Having questioned their understanding both of the meaning of baptism (6:3) and of the implication of slavery (6:16), he now asks if they know the limited jurisdiction of the law. There can be no doubt that the dominant theme of the paragraph concerns ‘release from the law’, since he uses this expression three times (2, 3, 6), and refers to the law in every verse. He assumes that they do know, since he adds in parenthesis that he is *speaking to men who know the law*, the Jewish law certainly and the Roman law probably as well.
a), The legal principle (1).
Paul lays down the principle which he assumes his readers know: *the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives* (1). Or better, ‘the law is binding on a person only during his life’ (RSV). The word for ‘is binding on’ or ‘has authority over’ is *kyrieuo*, which is rendered ‘lord it over’ in Mark 10:42, RSV. It expresses the imperious authority of law over those who are subject to it. But this authority is limited to our lifetime. The one thing which invalidates it is death. Death brings release from all contractual obligations involving the dead person. If death supervenes, relationships established and protected by law are *ipso facto* terminated. So law is for life; death annuls it. Paul states this as a legal axiom, universally accepted and unchallengeable.
b). The domestic illustration (2-3).
As an example of this general principle Paul chooses marriage, and in applying it extends it. Death changes not only the obligations of the dead person (it is obvious that these are cancelled), but also the obligations of those survivors who had a contract with the dead person. *For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive* (or ‘until death parts them’), *but if her husband dies, she is released* (‘discharged’, RSV, NEB) from her marriage vows, indeed *from the law of marriage* itself (2). literally, from the law of her husband’ (AV), that is, from the law relating to him and her contract with him. The contract is clear: the law binds her, but his death frees her. Moreover, her release is complete. The strong verb used (*katargeo*) can mean to ‘annul’ or ‘destroy’. ‘The apostle is saying that the woman’s status as a wife has been abolished, completely done away. She is no longer a wife.
*So then*, Paul now draws a conclusion, *if she (sc. a married woman) marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress* (she ‘incurs the stigma of adultery’, JBP). *But if her husband dies*, and she remarries, *she is not an adulteress* (3), because she has been *released from that law* which had previously bound her. What has made the difference? How is it that one remarriage would make her an adulteress, while the other would not? The answer lies of course in her husbands death. The second marriage is morally legitimate because death has terminated the first. Only death can secure freedom from the marriage law and therefore the right to remarry. These references to death, freedom from law and remarriage already hint at the application which Paul is about to make.
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