Living Hope Church

Pastor Phil Steiger: If you would turn with me, please, we're in Romans Chapter 7 this morning. Romans Chapter 7, and in just a few moments, we're going to start a reading. We're going to get through the first six verses of this chapter today.

Romans Chapter 7 is a curious chapter. It's an incredible chapter of Scripture. You should know that as we open up this chapter, through the years of church interpretation and the reading of the word of God, this chapter has had a lot of controversy around it.

In fact, some have said that what's inside of Chapter 7 is not even necessary for the Christian to actually read. There have been some inside of biblical scholarship and biblical teaching who have said, as a matter of fact, you get to the end of Romans Chapter 6, you can make your way all the way around Chapter 7 and get yourself to Chapter 8. You don't even need to bother with it.

As we read even the first three verses, it's really interesting to me that if you track down some reflection in biblical scholarship on the first three verses, there are a lot of individuals who are going to say, "These verses don't make sense. Paul said some ridiculous things. It doesn't even belong there." It's incredible to me that people who approach the word of God are sometimes able to just say, "Eh, not this part. Maybe not this one. This one doesn't make sense to me."

As a matter of fact, as we work our way through Chapter 7, we're going to find some incredible things in this chapter. We're intended, I believe, to struggle with the Apostle Paul as we make our way through all the rest of this chapter and then into Chapter 8.

A lot of the controversy in the last half, the last third of this chapter... if you've read it recently, maybe you have some of this language in your heads. If you haven't read through the rest of it, I encourage you after this sermon to read through all of Chapter 7 and then into Chapter 8.

But a lot of the controversy comes from the Apostle Paul saying things like, "There are things that I want to do to honor God, but I find myself doing exactly the opposite things. There are things I no longer want to do in my life, but I find myself doing them all the time." He talks about this tension that is inside of him.

There are some who say, "Well, that tension doesn't belong inside of the Christian life anymore. You get saved, if you appropriately lay yourself before Jesus Christ, you never suffer with sin ever again." I'm here to tell you, I hope that's you... no. I'm here to tell you the truth is just the opposite.

The Apostle Paul is talking about the life and the journey of the believer. As he makes his way through Chapter 7, you and I are intended to get to the end of this chapter and ask the same question that he asks at the end when he goes, "Who will save me from this condition?" Then the move into Chapter 8 is one of the most glorious moments inside of this book.

Even in a larger scale, as we work our way through the book of Romans, we're working our way from a section of the book where he's been talking about justification with God into a section of the book where he's talking about sanctification with God.

You may remember, if you go back the last two or three chapters, you're going to read that word, that idea, justification, over and over again. Justification simply means that when the Holy Spirit draws you and you come into relationship with Jesus Christ, God wipes the slate of your past and your sin clean. He makes you right with Himself. He justifies you... just as if I had never sinned.

It's because of Jesus Christ that justification is possible. So it's that moment of being made right with God. But then sanctification is our life with Jesus Christ, as He begins to tear down the power and the rule of sin over our lives. This has been a lot of Chapter 6, and a lot of it's going to come to a head here in Chapter 7.

Sin had ruled over us, but now we belong to a victorious Jesus Christ. So our lives are supposed to become, by our submission to Him and the power of the Holy Spirit, more and more like Jesus and less and less like our sin. Paul's moving from justification to sanctification. It becomes, by the end of this chapter, one of the more personal moments inside of this book and inside of Paul's letters.

As he moves into that moment, he uses a very specific image or analogy about marriage to begin talking about life with Jesus Christ. Now, this passage is not about marriage and death and divorce. It is actually about death to the old life and birth into the new with Jesus Christ. That movement turns out to be incredible news for the follower of Jesus Christ.

As we jump into this incredible chapter and this passage of Scripture, there are a couple of things I want us to keep in mind. First of all, very straightforwardly, we have to keep this before ourselves: we belong to Jesus Christ. As Romans is moving ahead, this becomes an incredibly important point to the Apostle Paul.

We have a unique union with God because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and because of the life of the Spirit of God. We belong to Jesus Christ now, and this opens up a brand new life for the Christian, brand new realities for the Christian. Then we're going to see a new way of life in the Spirit of God.

Inside of this passage of Scripture, Paul is going to introduce us to this idea of a new way of serving or living in the way of the Spirit, instead of the old way of the life according to the written code, the law, the life of sin and the flesh. He's introducing this way of life in the third member of the Trinity, the Spirit of God who is here with us this morning, the one who is inside of you if you are a follower of Jesus Christ. It is this context that produces a brand new life with God.

Paul has mentioned the Spirit of God a couple of times, but here he's going to prepare us for what becomes the primary topic of Romans Chapter 8, what in my mind is the greatest single chapter in the New Testament about the Spirit of God outside of the Gospels. He introduces us to this reality that something's new for the believer because the Holy Spirit indwells the people of God.

Let's begin reading. Romans Chapter 7, the first six verses. This is the word of the Lord. "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? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while she lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 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 the law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress."

"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 might bear fruit for God. 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. 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."

Let's look at the very last verse of Romans Chapter 6 because, again, this is all one thought. The chapters and verses were put in much later after the Apostle Paul, so there is a break here. But remember the end of Chapter 6: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord."

"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?" Paul's last point, as he built his way through Chapter 6, is that the believer is no longer under the obligation of sin or the law or the life lived according to the flesh. Without the presence of the Holy Spirit, without salvation, without Jesus Christ, he said we were bound by sin; it was our authority, it was our master.

He even uses this kind of double negative: he says we were free from righteousness, meaning we did not have the capacity to live a righteous life in Jesus Christ until Christ released us from that and then brought us into Himself. So now we become slaves to righteousness. But now he's using the image of the law, and he means the Old Testament law.

He's speaking to believers, Jewish and Gentile as well. Just as Paul has been arguing from sin to righteousness, he now uses the language of from law to grace. As you continue to read through Romans, we're going to start reading a lot more about law and the role of the law. Paul is speaking of the Old Testament law: what does all of this still have to do with us?

The law had a role to play. Paul's going to say we are free from that role, but then he's going to say it still has now a different kind of role to play for us. We've died to the obligations that are under the law. It's very complicated, but don't worry, we'll get there. Paul's not going to drop these; he's going to keep explaining to us what it all means.

The image that he uses to help us understand is one that is based on God's intention for marriage: that it is lifelong, heterosexual, and monogamous. This is the way we speak of God's intention for marriage because this is the way the word of God speaks of the intention of marriage. He uses that notion, especially the notion of lifelong and monogamous.

He's speaking to those who know the law. He's drawing on things that they know from the word of God, the way that God has built these kinds of institutions inside of this world. He's using just a very quick, small snippet of an analogy to then make a much larger point in Verses 4, 5, and 6.

He says in this passage of Scripture that the law is binding. The primary point of these first three verses is that death changes the hold of the law. For the individual that dies, they are no longer bound by whatever legal restrictions or obligations were laid upon them. At the point of death, the force of the law is just gone. This is his point.

The example he's using is the death of a husband and a wife who is free to remarry without any of this kind of legal guilt. We understand biblically it's male and female as well, but Paul is using the image of a wife because I believe that is specifically how he pulls that into Verses 4, 5, and 6.

The Bible recognizes valid reasons for divorce, legal in this context if you will, but keep in mind that Paul is not giving us a long, extended teaching on marriage and divorce and death and all of those things. He is speaking about the end of the obligation of the law at the point of death.

He even says in this passage, "But if her husband dies, she is free from the law." Again, Paul's primary point is that death breaks the force of legal obligation for that person. The law regulates life for the living and not the dead. You can't impose anything legally upon someone who is no longer with us. So he's just making this point for us.

And then he says, "But now, if you belong to Christ, you are dead to the law." It no longer has any obligation over you. So here it is in Verse 4. He even tells us in the vocabulary: this is a quick analogy because I'm making a much larger point. He draws this small little idea in Verses 2 and 3 especially, and then he pulls it into something gargantuan and glorious for the believer.

"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 might bear fruit for God." Friends, when Christ died on the cross, the unbearable weight of the law's requirements was broken, and the free gift of God's grace was given.

Again, at the end of Chapter 6: "The wages of sin..." By that point, we understood that he is speaking about life before Christ, life in the flesh, life under legal obligation without the role of the Holy Spirit within us. All of that produces nothing but death. But then the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is beautiful, and this is where Paul is headed. Christ's death becomes our death, and then Christ's brand new life becomes our brand new life. Just as He died on the cross, Paul says in other places, "I was crucified with Christ. Now it's no longer the old Paul that lives, but it is now Christ in me." His death broke that obligation and produced something else.

It says here in this translation, "This happens so that we can belong to another." So that we can belong to Jesus Christ. I really like the way the King James translates that same phrase: "that we can be married to another." We can be married now to Jesus Christ, the one who is risen from the dead, so that we can now live this brand new life. It's intentional: this married life in Christ that now bears fruit for life instead of fruit for death.

With this new life, it's a new marriage. You belong to somebody else, Christian. You don't belong to sin anymore. You don't belong to the enemy. You don't belong to any of that. You belong to Jesus Christ in as intense a relationship as marriage itself. Now in our lives we can bear fruit for life instead of fruit for death, he says. "Bearing fruit for God" versus "bearing fruit for death."

I want to think for a moment or two about part of what Paul is saying about the role of the law, and especially how legalism works. This notion that if you obey the law perfectly enough, long enough, then we're going to consider you to be a good person and you might actually find salvation. But you're going to need to follow the laws that I think are right and true to follow. This is hardcore, fundamentalist legalism.

Recognize this, stick this one in the back of your mind as you run across this in the world around you. It's going to help you understand some of the other religions and ideologies and worldviews that are around us. Every religion and worldview outside of the Christian faith is hardcore legalism. You have to behave a certain way, think a certain way, vote a certain way, live a certain way, put certain signs in your front yard.

If you put the wrong signs in your front yard, you're the wrong kind of person. But if you follow this ideology, we're going to bring you in, we're going to call you good. This is hardcore legalism. The goalposts are always changing, but you've got to keep up.

The Christian faith says you are saved and accepted and cleansed and washed by Jesus Christ. Now, out of obedience and love, you want to live a new life in Jesus. It's exactly the other way around. It's beautiful. Friends, the law cannot produce righteousness. The law shows us boundaries.

The law tells us what the will of God is and what's moral and immoral, what is pleasing to Him and what is not. It shows us those boundaries, but it doesn't produce the transformation of the heart necessary to create salvation and righteousness in Jesus Christ. It produces these boundaries for us, and then Paul says something absolutely incredible.

He said it actually stirs up sin within me. Look at this in Verse 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." "Our sinful passions." This is a word in the New Testament for lusts. They are aroused by the law, at work in our members, not just our hearts and minds but actually the physical parts of our body as well.

One of the things that the law does is it actually provokes unrighteousness. Think all the way back to the garden. Adam and Eve were living in a world of freedom and liberty in the very presence of God. They were given everything in the garden that was good except the one thing. What ends up being the point of the story?

That child is told the one utensil you're not supposed to touch is the knife. So what's the first utensil that child wants to touch? That's the one jar of cookies you're not supposed to go after until after dinner. So what's the one jar of cookies that little kid wants to go to? This is what the law does. "This is righteousness. This is unrighteousness."

There's something inside of our sin that naturally goes, "Well, I wonder what a life of unrighteousness is like." We follow that, and we live that, and we're drawn to that. Paul says without Christ, without the Spirit of God, without the free gift of the risen and powerful Savior who's victorious over all of that, our sin, our nature, is locked into that. Unrighteousness becomes more attractive than righteousness. Law arouses this within us, he says.

The law itself has no power to actually change the human heart. It can only punish transgression. This is why in legalistic structures, and sometimes inside of Christian churches that get this backwards, there is nothing but guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, and not grace and forgiveness and transformation. Law produces conviction and condemnation.

Notice this about the law as well, because this is going to become so important: the law cannot love us. The law can only chastise us. The law cannot love us. It can only chastise us. Living under the law, a legalistic and unforgiving ideology, cannot produce love or care or genuine guidance or the kind of transformation that really needs to happen inside of the human heart.

Part of what this means is that a life that is still caught inside of sin, or a life in which we still in some way follow false gods and false narratives and false ideologies, false ideas... all of that is all condemnation, no forgiveness, no love, and no transformation at all.

As I think about this, the way I'm wired, my brain immediately goes to a couple of places. Don't let anyone tell you that wokeism is not a religion. It is a hardcore, cult-like religion. People who are caught up inside of that worldview are caught up in cult-like devotion to a bizarre set of narratives contrary to all of the evidence of their very own eyes. Wokeism is a hardcore, legalistic religion. It is strict legalism.

You have to follow the ideology of the day. Trust me, if you jump into this world, you've got to follow changing goalposts all the time. You think you're a good individual, and you've posted the right things, and you've put the right things up on the right holidays, and you've said all the right mean things, and you've canceled all the right people.

Next week, all of that is going to change. You're going to have to cancel more people, say more things, and keep affirming the next layer of sexual debauchery if you're going to be one of the good people. It is hardcore legalism. The goalposts are always changing, but you've got to keep up.

There is no forgiveness in this worldview that is quite frankly at war with the Christian worldview inside of our culture. There is no forgiveness in this worldview; there is only perpetual guilt and shame, especially based on things like skin color, religious belief, heterosexuality, being male. If you have any of these things against you inside of this religion, there is nothing but shame and no forgiveness for you whatsoever. That's how this thing works.

I've watched these things happen. Think about this: how many of you have had members, close members of your family, sever ties with you because of the woke worldview? "You're not good enough. You're not right enough. You don't believe the right things." They have severed their ties with you. Why? Because it's a cult. It's a cult. It is all transgression and absolute no grace whatsoever.

Friends, there are two of these religions right now on the rise inside of our world and inside of our culture that are vying for prominence and influence. It's wokeism and it's Islam. Both of these things are hardcore, unbending, unforgiving legalisms. The church walks into that world with something completely different: the free gift of Jesus Christ.

This means transformation and life here and now and life forever with our Savior in blessed perfection. This is the free gift of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said in John Chapter 3, "For whosoever believes." The law cannot produce righteousness. The law cannot give us love; it can only chastise and do harm to us.

Paul says, thankfully, "But now you are released from the law." Christ's death has released us, and our unity with Him frees us to a brand new life. Paul says you're going to live this brand new way of life. We learn now that we're going to serve in the new way of the Spirit instead of the old way of the written code, the law, which produced fruit for death. You and I now serve according to the way of the Spirit.

The rest of Chapter 7 fills out exactly that frustration and the failure of the written code to do the kind of change that we need inside of our hearts. Paul, of all people, had the written code probably memorized literally inside of his head. He goes, "There is a law in my head, and it keeps warring against the law of the Spirit. I keep obeying one instead of the other when I want to obey the law of the Spirit instead of the law of the flesh."

He walks us through this tension, and we walk with him and feel the same frustration, the same need and aspiration and desire as we go through the end of this chapter. The most dramatic move in the book of Romans is from the last question and exclamation of Chapter 7 into the first declaration of Romans Chapter 8. I'll let you discover that on yourself as you read it.

We have died to the law. Paul says, "You belong now to someone else. You belong now to Jesus Christ." I like that phrase "married to" because it carries through that image of the analogy he was drawing. He says, "But now, because of the death of Jesus, you're married to Christ, church."

I like this verb as well because this is the way the New Testament talks about the church and Jesus. The New Testament often talks about Christ as the groom and His church as the bride. We are preparing ourselves, He is even preparing us and bringing us through this life so that He may present us to Himself as a spotless bride.

In fact, there is this moment in the book of Revelation where we are finally there before Jesus Christ and we get to sit down and eat. We get to sit down and eat with Jesus. It's literally called the marriage supper of the Lamb. We are married to someone else now.

Because of this new relationship and this new way of life, there are privileges that belong to the child of God now. We didn't have access to these things before Jesus Christ. But now, we are the bride of Christ. I talk about the privileges that you and I have now in Jesus Christ.

This is an interesting week for this particular body of believers. Just yesterday, we celebrated a marriage inside of our spiritual family. Next weekend, our spiritual family's going to celebrate another marriage. In between, we're going to celebrate the home-going of someone who loved Jesus deeply, who now sees Him face-to-face.

There are privileges. The first privilege I got from one of the great pastor-theologians of the 20th century, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He put it like this: His name becomes our name. We literally take His name upon ourselves the way a bride takes the name of a husband.

It's my privilege to present to you at the end of these weddings, "Mr. and Mrs..." and I use one last name because there is a union there. Such is the union between the spiritual bride and her Savior. You are a Christian. You carry His name with you everywhere you go. It's the most valuable title you could ever have.

You may or may not know there is this subtle but wonderful little moment buried in the book of Acts. In Acts Chapter 11 Verse 26, the last sentence just simply says, "The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch." There was a moment when that happened.

These people were different. Their lives had changed. They no longer belonged to anybody else or to another ideology. They no longer lived the way they used to live; they now follow this guy, Jesus of Nazareth. He is the Christ in the Greek. Now they've taken on the title of, "Oh, that's Phil, the Christian. Oh, that's this person, the little Christ. That's what I see in them now."

We were given by the world the name of our Lord and Savior, and the name of the groom of the bride of Christ. There's no other greater name we can bear. What does it mean if we are ever ashamed of the name that we have been given? You and I now belong to Jesus Christ, and He has given us His name.

We also enjoy the privileges of belonging to His family now. The most common image in all of Scripture for the people of God is some version of family. When we do premarital counseling and we're talking to a young couple, one of the things that we counsel them is, "Yeah, the two of you are getting married, but you're also marrying families."

You're marrying into a family and everything that family brings into your life. In our existence and in our broken world, that's full of good, difficult, and sometimes bad. But friends, when you join the body of Jesus Christ, you're joining God's family. You now carry with you the privileges that He gives those that He calls His own.

You are His son or His daughter. He says He has adopted you; He has pulled you into His family and made you His own. We are heirs with Jesus Christ in all that is His. This is incredible. You have been made heirs with Christ for all that God is giving in His kingdom, because we belong to the family of the King.

Later in Romans Chapter 8 Verse 17, Paul simply says, "We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ." Colossians 3 Verses 1 through 3: "So you have been raised with Christ. Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

You've died to this life, to sin, to the obligation of the law and all that comes with it. Now you are firmly held in the hand of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We enjoy the privileges of His family. Because we belong to another, we have access to the Father. We didn't before Christ.

Now, you and I have access to the one who created us and loves us. He is the Ancient of Days, the only wise God. You have access to Him because of Jesus. In Ephesians Chapter 2, Paul says this: "So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens... but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone."

This is part of what Christ has done. Your sin put you on the other side of that wall, but now because of Jesus Christ, He's broken that down and pulled you into Himself. Now we are in the household of God. Our sin expelled us from the garden, but Jesus grants us access to our Father and our Creator and the lover of our soul.

Because of this, you are in an absolutely unique position to know the love of God. The way a bride knows the love of her husband, that intimate relationship is a reflection of Christ and His bride. Friends, if you belong to Jesus Christ, you have access to the love of God in a way that you did not before.

Now we're on the inside of the family. We are adopted in, and we are children who are perfectly loved by a good and great Heavenly Father. We have access to the Father of God because we belong to somebody else.

Then, friends, this note: the bride and the groom are guaranteed life together for all of eternity. Our memorial service this week reminds us of this. The bride and the groom are guaranteed by Jesus Christ life together for all of eternity. The promise of heaven is not a crutch or a silly thing that we teach little kids to make them feel better.

The promise of heaven is the final and eternal reality. It is the eternal proof of the unassailable authority of our risen Savior. It is the final triumph of good over evil, of life over death. We will see our Savior face-to-face, and we will be with Him forever. This is the promise of heaven.

At the end of the book of Jude, the author says this: "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time, now and forevermore. Amen."

Now to Him who has saved you in this life and who is able to keep you and preserve you through every season of life you go through. He is the one who will present you glorious before God with great joy. The death of His saints is precious in the eyes of the Lord.

Christ saved you here. He will carry you through this life and present you perfect before the Father, ready for the splendors of heaven. If we right now were in the splendors of heaven, we're not ready for that. We're not built for that. There's decay in the members of this body, but what Christ is going to do is preserve you through this life and prepare you for the next one.

He's going to take all of that within us that is not ready for the face of God and He's going to purify and cleanse it. He's going to make you ready for the glories of eternity. Ephesians 5 says: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."

I hope you know Jesus Christ this morning. This is the only way in which there is the potential of salvation and transformation. The promise of eternity is reality. If you belong to Jesus, He will take you to be with Him forever with great joy. Let's pray.