Romans - Lesson 31

A. Death to the Law Brings New Life: 

Going back to our text it is interesting the way Paul concludes his sentence here. Remind ourselves of the end of Romans 6; there is a death to the law, but that brings new life. We can belong to another, to Him who is raised from the dead, bearing fruit for God. So, there is the Law and Christ; we can be bound to one or the other, but we can’t be bound to both at the same time, Paul suggests. 

To me, it is an Old Covenant and New Covenant contrast. In the Old Covenant, people lived under the law of God; obviously they themselves were to have faith and to have their hearts transformed. They were to love God, they were to do all those things, and were bound to work out their life in God as the Old Covenant people of God by the stipulations of His Law for them. But with the arrival of the New Covenant, it’s now Christ to whom we are fundamentally tied, not the Law. 

Paul then reminds us of something that he said a number of times in Romans, “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.” Pretty strong language again. Sinful passions aroused by the Law?! That reverses the way the Jews were viewing the Law. No, God gave the Law to take care of human passions. God gave the Law so that we wouldn’t have sinful passions. You can imagine people reading Paul or hearing him speak of this point and wondering what he is talking about, “the law stimulates sinful passions?” What in the world are you talking about Paul?!

The contrast then with the but now; I love Martin Lloyd Jones’ comment that the most beautiful words in the English language are the “but now” contrast that you have in these New Testament texts. Once when, here is who I was; but now, here is who I am. This is the contrast between my past and my present; my life under sin, my life doomed to eternal death; and the new life that I now enjoy. Dying to the Law, we are released from it; so that we are now serving in the new way of the Spirit. 

Here Paul does something which he often does, he announces a topic that is to become very important in a little bit. He brings in the Spirit here. There are no references to the Spirit in verses 7-25. But in Romans 8, Paul is going to come back and develop that point.

B. In verses 7-25, the Law is Portrayed Negatively: 

One way to think about the next part of Romans is to think that 7:7-25 is talking about the contrast between the old way of the written code, and Romans 8 the new way of the Spirit. 

My point is to set up the next part of Romans 7 then. We begin to understand why Paul raises the question he does in verse 7. Let’s remind ourselves of some of the key texts along the way. Romans 3:20 it says, “no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the Law, rather through the Law we become conscious of our sin.” This isn’t a very positive way to talk about the Law. Then Romans 4:15, “the Law brings wrath.” Romans 5:20“the Law was brought in so that the trespass might increase.” In Romans 6:14, “we are no longer under the law.” Romans 7:4we have to “die to the Law” and Romans 7:5, “sinful passions are aroused by the Law.” 

Paul has consistently to this point in Romans put the Law on the negative side of the ledger. The Law is what makes us aware of sin, the Law brings wrath, it increases transgressions, as Christians we are no longer under the it, it arouses sinful passions. There has been this litany of negative comments about the Law. So, Paul decides to explain more in-depth exactly what he is saying about the Law.  Is the Law sinful? This is in chapter 7 and verse 7. Paul reacts with his typical strong, mh genoito Certainly not! May it never be! God forbid! English versions translate that Greek in a variety of ways. It’s strong, strong negation. So, Paul is saying that we shouldn’t misunderstand him. The Law is not a sinful thing; rather (verse 12) it is God’s good gift to us. His commandment is holy and righteous and good. 

Nevertheless, Paul goes on to argue in verses 8-11, Torah has been used by sin to bring death. Paul is not going to back off from that point, but he is going to put the responsibility on sin. We’ll see how he does that in a moment. Then he asks the question, how can sin do this? Why can sin can take God’s good law and create these negative consequences? The reason is in me, “I.” God’s Law is a good thing, it’s spiritual and good and holy, but I am sold under sin, Paul says. That is why sin could use the Law in these negative ways.

C. Paul Changes Over to a Narrative Story Line: 

Verses 7-11, two points; one, the Law is holy, righteous, and good. Introduction to the paragraph in verse 7, then verse 12 comes back and asserts a positive statement, but in between Paul develops this argument about an experience using the first-person pronoun. What is famous and endlessly contentious about 7:7-25 is Paul’s sudden use of a narrative style in which he uses the first-person pronoun. So, from verse 7 right through verse 25, it’s all about “I”, “me”, “my.” There has been long debate about these verses. 

I think the initial reaction is to say aren’t these academics creating issues that don’t exist again. We can do that sometimes. This does happen. We can create jobs for ourselves by finding problems that don’t exist, and then spending many pages trying to find solutions for problems that don’t exist. I think a lot of average readers of their Bible are going to come to the passage here and say what in the world are you academics debating? Paul here uses “I”; Paul is the writer of the letter; “I” refers to Paul; done deal. I have a lot of respect for that common-sense approach to scripture. I think scripture should be read and interpreted in the community of believers. Average Christians often bring a common sense, a stubborn seeking to understand the Word as they have it, that can be a rebuke sometimes to our complexities and to our debates. 

But I must say on the other hand I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing unless I recognize that our English Bibles are always going to be falling somewhat short of giving people all the evidence they need. Number one, we have English and not Greek Bibles. I’m a translator of the Bible, I know how many decisions we make, and I know how many times we as a committee come to passages and say there is no great way to bring this Greek or Hebrew over into English. So, here’s the best we can do, but it isn’t perfect, it’s not quite getting just what’s there in the Greek or Hebrew. 

As I said the other day, we have the benefit of looking at a number of really fine English translations; we have the benefit of being able to compare seven or eight excellent English versions, many of them written in the last twenty to thirty years. That gives us a resource, that gives us a basis, even in the English text to be pretty confident that we can get the sense of what’s going on. 

But I’m not going to lie to you; I wouldn’t have spent the time to learn Greek that I did, and I wouldn’t be teaching Greek to students if I didn’t believe knowing Greek, knowing Hebrew does give you some access to the Word of God that you can’t get in English. For some of you who don’t have the languages, number one, get them. But number two, let me also say, I would have someone who is a good interpreter of the English text, rather than someone who is not that good a reader of scripture, but knows Greek and Hebrew.  Greek and Hebrew are important tools, but they are only tools. Ultimately, it is someone who is really seeking to read scripture, inhabit it, understand it, that is important.  

But at any rate, in talking about the issue here, there might be some things in the Greek text that we can’t bring out in the English that the people reading the English text aren’t going to see. Perhaps more important, however, it is possible that Paul is using a kind of convention of his day that contemporary readers are not going to know about. People who don’t know the ancient world aren’t going to know about some of the styles, some of the genres, some of the ways in which words worked back then. That’s where people who study the ancient world can sometimes assist us. 

This is a case in point. This use of “I” is found sometimes in Scripture as a kind of device to personalize an issue. The clearest instance of this is in Lamentations where in order to poetically and emotionally express the sufferings of Jerusalem, Jerusalem is presented as speaking in the first-person, “my walls are broken down” and “pagans are desecrating my streets.” There is a long passage that uses first person, “I,” to refer to Jerusalem. 

So, a commonsense approach to Roman 7 says that of course Paul is talking about himself, but when we recognize some of these ancient parallels, we recognize that there could be other options. It’s kind of a methodological point, where all of us, myself included, depend on other scholars who have done good work in the ancient world. You know a lot of the resources available to us of people who know that ancient world well and are trying to communicate some of its key points to us in those reference sources.

D. Options for Interpretation: 

Again, who is Paul talking about here? Look at the sequence here, it’s helpful to focus the issue, in verses 9 and 10. Paul says, “once I was alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.” You have the transition here of I was alive, then the commandment came, and I died. 

The majority interpretation takes this commonsense approach I just described. Well, Paul is describing his own experience. He was a self-satisfied Jew thinking that he was right with God. Then Paul came to realize what the Law really required, perhaps at the time of his conversion. A few other scholars think that perhaps when he came of age. Robert Gundry has written an interesting article suggesting that some of the language Paul uses might reflect that point in time in adolescence where the sexual urge especially becomes really significant. You kind of get the naivety of a boy who suddenly becomes a man, struggling with the sexual urge. Paul realizes what the Law was really requiring, and then he realizes that he is spiritually dead. Probably a lot of us have heard this interpretation of the passage. 

There is a lot to be said for this interpretation but it seems to me that a lot of people have missed the fact that we are reading a lot into the passage when we interpret it this way.  Paul says that “I was alive, the commandment came, I died.” We are interpreting that to mean, “I thought I was alive, I came to understand the commandment, and I saw myself to be dead.” Perhaps this is a legitimate interpretation of the words, but that isn’t what Paul says. Paul says that there is this transition from life to death at the time of the coming of the commandment.

Very attractive then is this second option; Paul isn’t talking about his own experience, but Paul is talking about who he is in Adam. The only human being besides Eve who has ever lived, who was fully alive and died when the commandment came, were Adam and Eve. Every human being since Adam and Eve are born dead in trespasses and sin. 

Taking the language in the strict way that it is actually used here, this could be a description of the fall of humanity into sin. Adam and Eve were alive in the garden, God created them good and in fellowship with Himself. God gave the commandment to not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That commandment was disobeyed and the first human pair died. So, a second way of understanding the sequence here is that Paul is talking about Adam, and, indirectly, who we as human beings are in Adam. This is from Romans 5, the representative significance of Adam. 

Third, another option which might be less obvious at first sight; Paul is speaking in terms of his identification with the people of Israel. Paul has used this kind of language a lot as we have already seen in Romans. The coming of the commandment, the coming of God’s Law to Israel, meant knowledge of sin, it created wrath, it increased the trespass, it aroused sinful passions. Paul has been talking about the Torah in all these places. So, another option is to see Paul is identifying with the people of Israel. As a Jew under the Law, he has experienced the history of his people. 

In the commentary, I tend to favor this third view more than the other options. In work I’ve done subsequently, I need to give credit where credit is due. One of my PhD students at Wheaton wrote on this issue, making a strong case for a reference to Adam here. So, I am inclined to bring Adam into this more than I did in my commentary. (I want to write that note in my commentary someplace; Moo wants to correct himself in terms of the balance. I think Israel is still involve, but I think Adam is more involved than I recognize in the commentary.) But I do still tend to think that Paul is not so much describing his own personal experience, but he is experiencing who he is in terms of identification with Adam and the people of Israel.

E. Israelites and the Ancient World: 

Here is a basic point about the ancient world that we need to recognize; it’s a point about other parts of the world today. Wein North America are very individualistic in our viewpoint. Who I am is a matter of my decision and what I have decided to do and become; I can make myself whatever I want to be. This is part of the American myth, which is obviously false, but nevertheless we still have that myth. The idea that we have an equal society where everyone can ascend as far as they want is rubbish. 

People in other parts of the world understand that. They say, who I am is a matter of who my family is. Who I am is a matter of the village that I’m from, the people I belong to. That is what makes me the person that I am, not just my individual decisions. This was also very much part of the first century Jewish world. Jews said that they are who they are because of their relationship to their people, Israel. 

For example, in the Passover ceremony, every year Israelites put themselves back into the Exodus experience. The whole Passover ceremony is oriented around saying I was a slave in Egypt, God rescued me by parting the waters of the sea, and so forth. They identify with their past experience. 

I think this makes sense of what Paul is saying here then, in which he is reflecting on the way his people Israel have found the Law of God not to be a liberating force, but to be something that confirms them in their death. The fundamental analysis of the Law of God here is that God gives his Law to people who are already sinful. They already have a bent to turn away from God. So, when he gives his Law to us, the Law itself doesn’t enable us to obey it, it simply spells out in detail where we’re falling short. That’s the analysis we have here it seems to me.