May 7, 2017
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Reading along with us in Romans? Here’s today’s reading:
Romans 7 (ESV)
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? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 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 that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4 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 may bear fruit for God. 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. 6 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… Continue Reading
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The inner struggle
Romans 8
Freedom and the eternal perspective
Thankful for this …
4Likewise, 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 may bear fruit for God,
And that we do that with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Posting from my phone:
This morning I listened to a reading of Romans 1-7 twice, then read Romans 7 tonight.
This morning, something clicked for me in chapter 6 (I think) that has been bugging me for years, specifically concerning baptism. Paul reminds us that righteousness was credited to Abraham because he believed God — and that righteousness was his before he was circumcised (“received the sign”). I connected “the sign” of circumcision to baptism.
But now I’m wondering why Peter told the crowd gathered on the day of Pentecost (see Acts 2) that to be saved, they must “repent and be baptized.” They already believed in Jesus, judging from their reaction to Peter’s preaching. Or did they? Was there a mass baptism that day? Thousands of people? Or was this something they put off and “got around to”? Who baptized them? Questions!!
Romans 7: When Paul talks about “doing what I don’t want to do” and “not doing what I want to do,” I love how he sees his sin. “Wretched”!! “Who will rescue me?” He hates his sin! And then he gives thanks to God for Jesus Christ!! Do we hate our sin as he does his own? Or do we just accept it as “part of being human”? I know some believe he was speaking of who he was before salvation, but I’m not so sure. It sounds like a present struggle for him. I need to look into this.
Who of us cannot understand this struggle of doing what we don’t want and not doing what we do want? I believe he is speaking after his salvation because he speaks in the present tense, not the past and he speaks of delighting in God’s law in his mind.
But the problem is not the law but with the sin that the law awakens…may I not resign myself to sin though because of the reality of this struggle, but reckon myself dead to it as Paul describes in chapter 6.
Thank you, Pastor Peter. The fact that he delights in God’s law in his mind is why I believe the struggle is post-salvation as well. Why would someone love God’s law before they received the promise of grace and mercy in Christ? The law would be a noose around their neck, a heavy burden, an impossible standard. Although I suppose the Pharisees delighted in God’s law, and the self-righteous may as well…