August 12, 2021
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Romans? Here’s today’s reading:
Romans 7 (NIV)
Released From the Law, Bound to Christ
1 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? 2 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..........Continue Reading
The idea that our sin nature can take even something good and make it sinful and the law displays that fact. We can love but when our evil nature turns that to lust it becomes sinful. It feels like Paul is saying that we are immediately attracted to what we are NOT allowed to do. Like when children are told not to do something it becomes the first thing they want to do so if we were to live life according to the law our sinful nature would never be able to handle it! It is by the grace of God we are forgiven and receive the power through God to do what is right.
Romans 7
Romans 7:24-25 NIV
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? [25] Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/rom.8.38-39.NIV
Romans 7-10
God through Christ gives a means to have our relationship with sin broken and yet far too often we bring back to life what Jesus has killed. The law is good in that it provides the righteous standard to live by, but it is flawed because it is dependent on the sin nature to operate. So the law reveals sin for what it is, but it cannot produce righteousness because the sin nature produces the desire to break it. And who of us cannot identify with the conundrum that Paul talks about here: the very thing we know is right we don’t do, and the very thing we know is wrong, that is the very thing we do. Yes we are wretched, but God had a better way. We needed to understand our brokenness before we could appreciate it’s value….but now we rejoice that God provided Jesus and the Spirit to free us from the mess we would otherwise make with our lives…..
Can we do Romans over again in my schedule!!! Maybe a chapter a week. Can’t believe I have missed over this incredible book. Especially chapter 7 leading into chapter 8. My soul and spirit still leaps for joy when I read the transformation from ch. 7. To ch. 8. Words cannot express. Chapter 8. The hall of fame Grace filled chapter. Vs. 1. Not guilty.!! Vs. 15. No fear!! Vs 28. All things in our lives our Gods workmanship. Vs 29. Predestined. Justified. Reconciled. Glorified. My God. This is to much!!!!! Ending. Nothing can separate us from God. Are you serious!! If this chapter doesn’t make your heart leap for joy. Check for brain waves!!! Hallelujah!!!!!!!!
Wait a minute. There’s more. I’m bursting with joy this morning. Vs 11. The same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead. Abides in us!!! Will also raise us from the dead. My lord!!!!
Someone please tell me why I deserve Gods mercy!! Then I read chapter 9. Vs 14-16. I can’t read anymore
“But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.”
I also thought of the purpose of the law as “taskmaster” in Galatians.
“But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. 23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. 24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. 26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”