CF Bible Study, Romans 7:1-3: Marriage to Sin and the Bond of Law

McDonald’s Basement, October 10, 2007

1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?
2 for the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband.
3 So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.
Romans 7:1-3

For the past two months we have studied Romans 6. We have talked about the mastery of sin over the natural person, and the fruit that is born, and the death that results. We have also talked about the believer’s death to sin in Christ, the good fruit that is born, and life that results. What we have not talked about much—and what is crucial in understanding all of that—is its underpinning; what is behind and what is underneath slavery to sin and slavery to God. That is what we will look at tonight. It is possibly the most important link in Paul’s reasoning.

Romans 7 is complex. Do not tune out or give up because it is complex. Strong, deep, God-saturated people are built upon deep, complex, God-saturated doctrine. Great Christians are created in Romans 7—in the hard passages of Scripture. So do not tune out or give up because of the complexity of this chapter. You have a golden opportunity tonight to lay some foundations, to continue to build your life on rock-solid, complex theology, and to run from the utterly flimsy foundation of the beach.

Chapter 7 Follows Chapter 6

Romans chapter 7 is not disconnected from Romans chapter 6. That is huge. If you miss that, you will probably miss most of the chapter. If you grasp that, you will probably grasp this chapter. What makes the chapter so easy to miss is that it is easy to imagine Paul as completely changing his imagery and ideas from chapters 6 to 7. But in reality, chapter 7:1-6 is the most important part of his answer to the question in verse 6:15, and it is the groundwork of all of chapter 6. What we need to do, then, is go back and trace the line of thought from chapter 6 up to chapter 7 and try to find the link.

“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” Paul asks in 6:15. He then answers decisively in verses 19-23. It is now unfathomable that you could live in sin as a slave of God. You were a slave of sin, you had bad fruit, and that results in death. But you are now a slave of God, you have the good fruit of sanctification, and that leads to eternal life. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (6:23)”

And then, immediately after this answer in verse 23, Paul says, “Or do you not know . . . that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives.” Verse 1 of chapter 7 comes directly after verse 23 of chapter 6. Undoubtedly there is a link. What is that link?

Is not this the link: “Why? What is behind all of this slavery to sin, and bad fruit, and death, Paul? And what is behind freedom from sin, and good fruit, and life? Why is the ‘wages of sin death,’ and how can God give the free gift of eternal life?” And Paul’s answer in chapter 7 is: the law is behind slavery to sin, bad fruit, and death. And freedom from law is behind slavery to God, good fruit, and life. The beginning of chapter 7 is meant to illuminate chapter 6. So, in some ways, this is the most important part of Paul’s argument, because it shows the underlying reason for everything that he has said in chapter 6.

Verse 1: A Man is Under Law as Long as He Lives

For a few weeks this summer, I was in South Africa. It is against the law to drive on the right side of the road in that country. As long as you are in the realm of South African law, it will have the ability to condemn you. That is Paul’s quite straightforward first point. “Or do you not know . . . that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives. (v. 1)” In other words, if a man is alive (or in the realm of law), the law has jurisdiction over him. While you are in South Africa, you cannot drive on the right side of the road.

What should you do, then, if you want to drive on the right side of the road? You should go to a country where it is legal. You should go out of the realm of that law and come to a place where it has no power. As long a person is in the realm of law, it rules him. Let me use an illustration a bit closer to Paul’s wording. A murderer is under law as long as he lives. As soon as he dies, however, he is free from that law. He may be dead, but he is free. The federal penal system has no jurisdiction over dead bodies.

Now why is that important? It is important because it relates to believers’ death in Jesus. Paul draws a parallel. He says that a man who is alive physically is under law. And a man who dies physically is freed from law. And then the parallel: “. . . you were made to die to the law through the body of Christ . . .” You have gone out of the realm of law just like the man who dies physically, and it has no more jurisdiction over you than it does over his dead body. Jesus representative crucifixion removed the condemnation of the law for you, thus making you dead to the law.

Marriage to Sin
2 for the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband.
3 So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. (7:2-3)

Here Paul brings in an illustration about a marriage to demonstrate the point that he made in verse 1—that the law has jurisdiction over a man as long as he lives. He says in verses 2-3 that a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is alive. Therefore, she cannot marry another man. But if her husband dies, she is free and can be joined to another.

Surfacely, that is a very bad illustration. It seems to be an atrocious attempt at illustrating something already clear enough in order to make it more clear. “All you are trying to say, Paul, is that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives. That’s a simple enough concept. Why are you pulling out such a complex illustration to explain something so straightforward?” That is an enormous question. Why does Paul use this illustration? Why does he take us down such a strange, complicated track, in using the picture of a marriage and then comparing to our situation in Christ? Why does he not use a simple illustration like one I used earlier about South Africa or the murderer? The answer to that question is the key to verses 1-6. If you get the answer right, you will understand the point. If you get the answer wrong, you will totally miss the point. So why does he use this illustration?

I think the reason is that Paul wants to draw out something about the relationship of sin and man and the law that could not be seen with a simpler illustration. Miles from being a bad illustration, this is a masterful picture of the work of law in man. So let’s contemplate this for a moment.

Paul sets it up. There is a woman who is married to a husband. And there is something that binds that marriage together. What is it? Law. “For the married woman is bound by law to her husband . . . (v. 2)” So then, as long as they are alive, they are in the realm of law and it binds them together. If the married woman joins herself to another man she is an adulteress (v.3). You notice that is a big part of Paul’s point; the married woman wants to marry another, but the law prevents her by binding her to her current husband. As long as these two live in the realm of the law of marriage, they are bound to one another and cannot get free.

Something has to happen for this woman to be able to marry another. The husband has to die. While he lives, she is bound. If he dies, she is free. That is the set up. But what is the point? How does this relate to us? The answer is in verse 4. “Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another . . .” Just like the married woman, you were formerly bound to a husband and were unable to be joined to another.

So, who was your husband that Paul personifies in this illustration? My answer to that is this: Sin was your husband. Now why do I say that Sin was your husband and not law? It might seem at first glance that, in Paul’s mind, law is what you were bound to, because law is what you have died to (v. 4).

But notice the illustration again. In this picture, is the married woman bound to the law? No, she is bound by the law to her husband. I think this is the essence of Paul’s point. The law is what is behind and underneath man’s marriage to Sin. It is the underlying worker in all of what was said in chapter 6. Remember that he is using a complicated picture and not a simple one. The reason for that is that he wants to manifest something about how Sin and man are bound together. That point is this: man and sin are bound by law. If you only want to show the simple idea that a man is under law while he lives (v. 1), you use a simple illustration (like the one about South Africa). But if you want to display something about the way law forces and sustains man’s marriage to Sin, you use this illustration. And do not forget that this comes right after chapter 6. The imagery of man’s bondage to Sin as a master has not left Paul’s mind. He is merely bringing in a slightly new picture (which is not really new, because in Jewish culture that husband was a sort of master over the wife) to demonstrate that role of law in that bondage.

But here you say, “Bad illustration again, Paul. You said that the married woman is bound to the husband while he lives. And if he dies she is free. Now you say, in correlation (v. 4), we died and are free. That’s not a consistent parallel. In the illustration, the husband dies. In the application, we die.”

The object of the illustration is to show this: the law is what binds the marriage, and death to law is the only way the wife can be free from the husband. This death happens, in a sense, for both the wife and the husband through the husband’s death. They both go out of the realm of law through his death. Paul then takes that element of the illustration and applies it to us. We were bound to Sin by the law (like the wife), but now we have died to the law (like the husband and, in a sense, the wife) and (like the wife) we can be joined to another.

The Bond of Law

We need to address one more issue in order to fully comprehend this. Paul has implied it in chapter 6, but he hammers it in chapter 7. How does law bind us to Sin?

There is one fundamental reason, and it is found in chapter 5 verses 20-21. “And the Law came in so that the transgression would increase . . . so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign . . .” The first thing you see in this passage is that Sin reigns through something—death. It says that “. . . sin reigned in death . . .” This means that death (the condemnation for sin) is the foundation of Sin’s reign. It is a cycle. Sin results in death, and death means more sin (remember Romans 1), which means more death, and so on. The second thing you see in this passage is that something had to be there before Sin could reign in death—Law. “And the Law came so that . . .” The reason the Law (in this case the Jewish Law) had to come in for sin to reign in death is that, without law, there is no death (no condemnation) and therefore no reign of sin.

I have a picture in my mind that may help. Imagine a bar out in front of you. And imagine that two small metal balls are hanging down from that bar on the end of two strings. If you pull the ball on the right off to the side and then let it go it will hit the other ball. This ball will then swing to the left and then come back and hit the other ball, and these balls will continue to do this indefinitely. In my mind, the two balls are sin and death. Sin hits (results in) death, and then death hits (results in) sin.

But now move these balls a few inches apart and swing one at the other. What happens? Sin misses death and death misses sin. What must we do then? We must add another ball to hang stationary in the middle and transfer the energy from one ball to other. This middle ball is law. It is what causes sin to result in death and death to bring about sin. Without it, sin would swing free and then finally stop.

That is the point of 7:1-3. What is behind and beneath man’s marriage to master Sin? Paul’s answer is: law.

We will not apply these truths until next week in verse 4-6. But this week is very important set up. We have spent so much time on this so that we will view our death to law in Christ as glorious, and beautiful, and indispensable.

Bryan Elliff © 2007