Romans - Lesson 29

Romans 7:1-6: 

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. So then, if she has married another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man. So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code

------------------------------------------------------

A. You Died to the Law: 

So, there are basically three parts to this paragraph. There is an introductory illustration about marriage; then in verse 4 the central theological point Paul is making; and in verses 5-6, Paul explains that theological point further. 

The whole analogy to marriage isn’t easy to understand. There are a lot of people who try to find allegory here. Let me explain that for a moment. The difference between allegory and illustration; an allegory can illustrate. In an allegory, and the parables of Jesus provide a good example here, , you have a story with specific components. In an allegory, each of these components has significance. For example, Augustine’s interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan says that every element in the story has significance. Jericho has meaning, Jerusalem has meaning, the wounds that the victim on the road suffers has significance, the oil and wine that the Samaritan uses to minister to the person, each of those have symbolic significance, and so forth. An allegory here then would say that the woman stands for something, the first husband stands for something, and the second husband stands for something. Each has a significant point of application. 

I am using the word illustration rather loosely here, but an illustration takes a different approach. An illustration says that you have details in a story but those details don’t themselves have significance. It is the communication of the details together making one basic point. This is often how the parables of Jesus work. Some of them have allegorical elements; Jesus Himself tells us that at times. However, in most of the parables of Jesus, they are stories with some detail that are intended to make a single point to illustrate something. 

I gave you now illustration yesterday of my children driving a small car in an amusement park long ago. Were you to assume that the amusement park stood for something, that the car they were driving stood for something? The steering wheel stood for something, and everything stood for something? Is that what I wanted you to get out of all of that? No, all of those were details to make a point. I think essentially that is what’s happening here in verses 2-3. Paul is telling a story about marriage and how marriage works, moving from one husband to another simply to make the basic point that when a death occurs, the law no longer applies in the same way. That is the point he makes in verse 4. You died to the Law. You remember the discussion we had yesterday about being dead to sin? It is the same language here. This is very bold actually; isn’t the Law something God gave the people? Isn’t the Law something that reflects God’s own holiness and goodness? How can Paul say that we need to die to the Law, the same way that we need to die to sin? That is what sets up the question in verse 7 here. Paul realizes that he has to explain this. It sounds like the Law is an evil thing, just like sin is an evil thing. 

So, what is it that Paul is saying here when he tells us that we are people who have died to the Law? We have a basic question raised in terms of the way we read our Bibles. How do we read a really significant part of the Old Testament? If you are preaching through Leviticus, what is your congregation supposed to take out of that book? How does it relate to Christians? Christians have come to very different conclusions about this. 

I have two quotations here that illustrate the range of opinion. How are we as Christians supposed to view the Old Testament Law? Greg Bahnsen in a book called Theonomy written about twenty-five years ago said that “The Christian must observe even the minute details of God’s law... The NT believers are responsible to keep the older Testament law, for it has abiding validity until the world passes away.” (G. Bahnsen, Theonomy, 490).  Some will see allusion here to the Matthew 5:18 passage where Jesus says that not a jot or iota will fall from the Law until all is accomplished. 

Steven Westerholm on the other hand (both of these are fine evangelical scholars by the way) says “Christians are free from obligation to the law…. the will of God is no longer defined as an obligation to observe the law’s statutes. (S. Westerholm, Israel’s Law & the Church’s Faith, 208,209)

B. The Three Basic Categories of the Old Testament Law: 

So, let’s talk about this as a theological issue for a little. I think as you look at the history of the discussion, you get three basic options. There has been the tradition of looking at the Old Testament Law and dividing it into three basic categories. First, you have the ceremonial law: laws about sacrifices, ceremonies, observance of festivals and feasts, etc. Second, you have the civil law: statues and provisions in the Law God gave Israel that govern the way they were to live as a nation. This included the appointment of judges in certain places, appoint cities of refuge so that someone who has committed a crime can flee there for refuge for a bit, various laws of this kind. Finally, you have what people call the moral law which tended to be identified with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, maybe not confined to it, but that has usually been the focus of the moral law  . 

A very wide number of Christians think the New Testament claims is that while Christ in His sacrifice fulfills the ceremonial law, so we are not to do it any longer in the way it was given to us; and while with the coming of Christ, we no longer have the nation of Israel, so the civil law comes to an end; God’s moral law continues to be applicable to Christians fully. There is no change in the continuity of the moral law. This is deeply built into not only Christianity but our culture also. The Ten Commandments become a way of focusing and summarizing what the Christian obligation is. I would guess that this is the most popular view among Christians at least in North America.

C. The Theonomy View: 

This was really popular for a while but it has now fallen out of favor. It tended to be a view held in some extreme reformed circles. Greg Bahnsen is an example of someone who argues the Theonomy view. You may have heard of the Christian Reconstruction Movement that argues that America society should be built on the Old Testament Law. So that, for example, we should continue to stone adulterers which would be an interesting thing to see in our society. 

The point that they are arguing is, we see no evidence, theonomists claim, that God intended the civil law to stop. Going back to that quotation from Bahnsen, the idea is that you start from what the Old Testament says. God gives a law and we must assume that the Law God gives His people is in force until He says it isn’t. Only God has a right to say that we don’t have to follow His laws anymore. The New Testament clearly says that the ceremonial law isn’t in effect anymore. Hebrews, for instance, is fairly explicit about that; we don’t have to do the sacrifices anymore; Christ’s once for all sacrifice takes care of all of that. 

But the argument is, according to the theonomists, there is no evidence in the New Testament where God tells us to stop obeying the civil law. No text clearly says that. So, we have to assume that God intends the civil law also to be applicable to His people. This view was popular about twenty to twenty-five years ago. Rashdoony and Gary North supported this back in those days. I believe that it was an attempt on the part of Christians to say that our society is going to hell in a handbasket., the moral relativism of our age; how do we keep that from happening? One way to do that is to say let’s keep the civil law in effect. Let’s keep the Old Testament Law with its standards fully applicable. It is going to give us a moral compass that we don’t otherwise have.

D. The New Covenant Law: 

So, we have three options of which the first two are wrong. The third option is the correct view; at least the view I hold (laughter). 

I don’t think both of these views are radical enough. I don’t think they are radical enough to do justice to what Paul is saying here. You have died to the Law. It doesn’t say you’ve died to part of the Law, to some of the Law; you have died to the Law. As I read the New Testament, this is consistently the way the Law of God is treated. James makes this explicit in James chapter 2. He says that if you break one of the commandments, you are guilty of the whole because it’s a package. Paul in Galatians 5 argues the same way. If you want to be circumcised, you must commit yourself to the whole law. The Law is a single entity, it’s a package, you cannot pick and choose in it. 

So, the view I think does more justice to the New Testament evidence taken as a whole, sees the Law of Moses to be in its entirety something that is no longer directly applicable to the Christian. Putting it in a very simplistic way and moving from the text in 1 Corinthians 9:20-21, God’s law is given to His Old Covenant people in the form of the Torah. God’s New Covenant law however is given to His people in the form of Christ’s Law; the language Paul uses here and in Galatians 6:2. 

Now to make this a little more accurate or complicated, it is very clear in the New Testament that nine of the Ten Commandments are picked up from God’s Old Testament Law and applied to believers. There are obviously elements of the Old Testament Law that are picked up and restated and directly applied to Christians in the New Covenant law. 

The one exception is the Sabbath command. This becomes a real sticking point for those who argue for a continuity of the moral law. As our Seventh Day Adventist friends remind us, consistency would require us to continue worshiping on Saturday and resting on Saturday because that is the Sabbath day. They are absolutely right in terms of consistency there. If the Ten Commandments are eternal moral law applicable in the way God gave them to His people forever, then we are required to worship and rest on Saturday.  That becomes a real issue then when we think about some of the options here. 

E. The Law of Christ: 

So, when Paul says that we are not under the Law, the Torah, when he says that we have died to it, he is reminding us as Christians who now belong to the New Covenant, we are no longer directly responsible for God’s Old Testament Law. We can look at the laws of different states; if you commit a crime under one state’s law, another state cannot try you for that law even if they have a lot of similarities. You are obliged to a certain set of laws based on where you live. 

So, as Christians we are obliged to what I would call the Law of Christ which is the fulfillment of the Law of Moses. I think when Jesus talks about fulfilling the law in Matthew 5:17, the point He is making is that His teaching which He gives us in the Sermon on the Mount, and the teaching of the apostles whom He appoints, fulfills the Law of Moses. It is that which the Law of Moses was pointing toward and anticipating in salvation history. 

Student Question:   
You don’t believe that Christ is talking about His perfect obedience to the Law? 

Dr. Moo:   
No, I don’t think that can be what it is saying. He said that He had not come to abolish the Law, but He came to fulfill the Law. Immediately He goes on to talk about the commandments that are applicable in verse 19, and in verses 21-48, He talks about His teaching, “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” The issue there is Jesus’ teaching, not His own life or obedience.

Student Question: 
Are you saying He is rightly interpreting the Law?

Dr. Moo:   
No, I don’t think He is interpreting the Law.  I think He is saying Moses said this; I’m saying that.  If you think about those so-called antitheses, they work in different ways.  Moses says don’t murder; I’m saying don’t hate. You could say, maybe Jesus is saying behind murder is the emotion of hate, so that’s included or something.  But when He quotes the Old Testament that says you shall repay your oaths or vows, Jesus says don’t take them at all. That’s not interpreting that Law, that is changing it.

Student Question:   
What are you saying that he means that the law is fulfilled?

Dr. Moo:   
It means the same thing it means throughout Matthew; that the New Covenant realities are anticipated by and pointed to by the old covenant realities. So, just as Israel’s history is fulfilled in Christ, “Out of Egypt I have called my Son” in Matthew 2:15, that is a fulfillment Matthew says, when Jesus and His family come from Egypt to Israel again. It’s a statement about Israel’s history that is fulfilled. 

The idea of fulfillment here is much bigger than we sometimes make it. It doesn’t simply mean prophecy/fulfillment; it means the whole Old Testament and all of its parts - history, institutions, law, prophecies, all of it – anticipates and is fulfilled in the New Testament, obviously in varies ways.