“Aug 6, 2024 - Death and Freedom”

Monday, August 05, 2024

Death and Freedom

Reading:  Romans 7:1-6
    
    Paul has been stressing that in our baptism we died to sin (Rom 6:11) so that we no longer live in it.  Here he wants to also say that we have died to the Law of Moses—and are now free to follow Jesus without the Law.  “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?”(Rom 7:1).  Commitment to law ends when the person dies.  He illustrates by using marriage, which severs the bond between people and makes the surviving mate “free from that law” and able to remarry (Rom 7:3).  Death sets the person free.  “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”(Rom 7:4).  When we die to sin, we also die to the Law and can now be “married” to Jesus.  Death sets us free.

    But why does dying to sin also mean dying to the Law?  “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”(Rom 7:5).  Rather than setting us free, the Law of Moses only worked to arouse our sinful passions (see Rom 7:7-8).  So the Law ironically led us deeper into sin.  “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”(Rom 7:6).  The Law became the tool by which sin “held us captive”(Rom 7:6, see 6:17, 20), but “now we are released.”  When Jesus died—and we died with him—that death set us free.

    All of this may seem strange and obscure to people who have never lived under Moses’ Law.  Paul’s point is that we need more than a set of rules to show us how to live.  All rules do is show us our failings and need for help.  Yet to set us free from our sin, we needed someone to die.  Jesus died for us and we died with him.  Now we are free to live for God, empowered by his grace and strength, ready to bear the good fruit he wants to produce in us.

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One Thing to Think About:  Why did God want to give us more than a new set of rules? 

One Thing to Pray For:  Gratitude for Jesus’ death that liberates and transforms me
 

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