Landon Coleman
Immanuel Sermon Audio
Not Ashamed: Romans 7:1-6
If you have a Bible, you can open to Romans chapter 7, there's an outline in the bulletin where you can follow along this morning, Romans 7, we're going to start by reading our text. It's the first six verses in Romans 7, so you can follow along in your copy of the scriptures. The text is printed on the handout, words will be on the screen. You listen to the word of God as we read it together this morning, Romans 7, 1. Paul says, "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. 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. Accordingly, she will be called an adulterous if she lives with another man while her husband is still alive, but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulterous. 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. 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, 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. The grass weathers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord will stand forever. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful to be gathered together, grateful to sing your praises. You are worthy of our worship. Father, we are grateful to read from your Word this morning what a privilege to open to the Book of Romans and to read these great truths about who you are and all that you have done to save us, to justify us, to sanctify us, to glorify us. Father, give us wisdom as we try to work through this section of Romans and give us hearts that are willing to submit to the authority of your Word. We don't just want to learn these things, but we want to live these things and so we ask for your help and we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we just read Romans 7.1 to 6. Our passage is almost literally right in the middle of a unique section in the Book of Romans and that section runs from Romans 6.1 all the way to the end of Romans 8 and in this section Paul is talking about sanctification and when the Apostle Paul talks about the idea of sanctification the truth that he is driving home to us is that we have been saved from sin's power. In our justification we've been saved from sin's penalty. In the future, in our glorification we will be saved from sin's presence. Right now in the work of sanctification God has saved us from sin's power and this is really important that you understand what Paul says and how he says it. His argument in Romans 6 and 7 is that we have died to sin's power. It's not that we're learning how to be free of sin, but it's that we have been as an accomplished fact we have been saved from the power of sin and now the process of sanctification plays out in our lives in that we are learning how to live as free people. We're not trying to become free, we are free and we're learning how to live as free people. If you want a movie illustration of what we're talking about here you can think about the movie The Shawshank Redemption and if you've seen this movie you know that red has been in prison for all of these decades. He never gets parole, spoiler alert at the end they finally let him out. You've had plenty of time to see this movie so I'm just going to tell you. He gets out in the end, he's free, but he doesn't feel free. He is free. He walks out of the prison, his debt to society has been paid. He's fully released of any remaining incarceration or time in prison, but he says I'm institutionalized and I don't know how to live as a free person and there's this scene in the grocery store where he just doesn't know how to be a free man and the movie kind of ends with the hope that maybe he is going to learn in fact how to be free. That's a picture of sanctification in our lives. Sanctification is not you trying to work your way to freedom. You are free from sin's power and sanctification plays out in our lives in a process where we are learning how to live as free people. And what we're learning in sanctification is that as free people we no longer serve sin, but now we are free for the first time we are free to obey the Lord Jesus Christ. So you may remember Romans 6 and 7, one of the rhetorical devices that Paul uses are questions. He poses questions. And his questions are in response to the flow of his argument, the things that he had heard people raise concerns and objections to his teaching, to the gospel. In each of these four questions in Romans 6 and 7, the answer given by Paul is by no means, absolutely not. It's not just the Greek way of saying no, but it's a Greek way of saying very strongly and very emphatically, absolutely not. And so in Romans 6, 15, Paul poses one of these questions. In this question that he poses in verse 15, are we to sin because we're not under the law but under grace, this is a Jewish objection to Paul's teaching because some of the strong statements that he had made about the law. And so I've given you these verses. If your Bible's open, you can look at Romans 4, 15, Paul says the function of the law in our lives is to reveal our sin. And sin, as people who break the law, it brings God's wrath into our life. If you look at Romans 5, 20, he says again, the law reveals our sin, it shows us our sin, and it increases the trespass. It increases our accountability with God. In Romans 6, verse 14, he says, look, we are no longer under the law as a system of salvation. We are under God's grace. And Jewish Christians or Jewish people who had not converted to faith in Jesus would be listening to Paul say these things about the law and they would have viewed the laws the very foundation of their life and their identity and their nation and everything and they would be saying to Paul, Paul, it's like you are completely destroying the foundation of who we are. You are taking the law away and you're saying these things about the law. We don't understand. How are we supposed to live if we don't have the law? Should we just continue in sin, Romans 6, 15, if we are under grace and we're no longer under the law? You know that Paul's speaking to his Jewish friends, his Jewish brothers, look what he says in verse 1, he calls them brothers and he says, I'm speaking to those who know the law. I'm speaking to those of you who care about the Old Covenant and the Old Testament and the law of God and you're concerned that we're just going to sort of live these sinful lives because we're no longer under the law as a system of salvation. So he poses the question in verse 15. In his first answer, we looked at last week. The first answer in verse 15 to 23 is the analogy of slavery. We talked about that last week. Paul says you're either a slave to sin or you're a slave to God. You're going to serve somebody. Should we just continue in sin? Absolutely not, he says. You were a slave to sin and now you are slaves to God. You are not going to continue in sin. In our text he gives a second answer. He doesn't spend quite as long talking about this answer, but the analogy here is not slavery, it's marriage. And I want to say something very seriously. Some of you are saying those are the same thing. And I'm going to say to you, we are culturally conditioned to think that way and it's a lie from the enemy. If you think that these two things, marriage and slavery are the same, you have a completely unbiblical understanding of marriage and you need to repent of it. And I'll be honest with you, I'm as culturally conditioned as you are and when I made that list this week, I put those on paper and I said, same thing. And I thought, no, they're not the same thing and that's the very basis of Paul's argument. Are we to continue in sin by no means and Paul is going to explain himself by talking about marriage? Now, I'm going to be honest with you. We're going to look at seven, one to six, it's a pretty straightforward passage. We're just going to walk through it. It's not that complicated, okay? We're going to understand the way that Paul lays out his argument. I think you'll be able to see it clearly. What's more complicated is to allow the truths of this passage to actually play out in our lives. So we're going to walk through the text, I'm going to show you Paul's argument and then we're just going to step back and we're going to think about marriage and we're going to think about how this idea of marriage impacts the way that we think about our lives today, living as free people, people who have been freed from the power of sin because we've been united to Jesus Christ by faith. So Romans seven, one to six, let's start with the principle. The principle Paul lays out is that the law is binding on a person only as long as that person is alive. This is what he says in verse one, starting in the middle of the verse, he says the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives. When you sign your name to legal documents, you make commitments, we understand that when we bury you and we have your funeral, those obligations are gone. That's what Paul's laying out. These commitments and these obligations we live under in this life under the law, they are binding on us as long as we are alive. He follows the principle with an example. Here's the example, marriage vows are legally binding, quote, till death do us part. That's not Paul's wording, but that's the wording from a traditional marriage vow that you may have heard in a ceremony. Here's what Paul says in verse two, a married woman example is bound by law to her husband while he lives. If her husband dies, she's released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she'll be called an adulterous if she lives with another man while her husband is still alive. But if her husband dies, she's free from that law and if she marries another man, she is not an adulterous. Now look, the focus of this passage is not marriage and divorce and adultery. That's not the focus of the passage. This is an example that Paul is laying out and the principle is that our legal obligations are binding as long as we live. In the example, he lays out his marriage and he says, "You make these vows until death part you." So a few weeks back, I read to you from the Book of Common Prayer, I read to you the beginning of the Anglican liturgy for a wedding ceremony. And it starts with the words, "deary beloved." Let me read to you the vows from that same liturgy on marriage. Will you have this man to be your husband, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him in sickness and in health and forsaking all others be faithful to him as long as you both shall live? These vows, Paul's laying this example out are binding as long as we're alive. So that's the principle. That's the example. Let's talk about the application. Here's Paul's application, "Believers have died to the law and they are united to Christ." Now, this flows out of everything he's been saying in chapter 6. We've died to the law and we are united to Christ. Verse 4, "Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law." You've died to the law. Now we talked about this all the way back in chapter 6, in verse 4, in verse 2, we died to sin, we were buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life. Verse 5, "We've been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." So you've died to the law through the body of Christ, through your union with Christ. You put your faith in Jesus and you're united to him. And the result is, verse 4, that you may belong to another. Now, I want you to see something that's hard to see in English and it's easier to see in the original language. In verse 4, where Paul says that you may belong to another. That's the exact same word used in verse 3, where Paul says, "If she marries another man." It's the same word. So what he's literally saying in verse 4, "You've died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may be married to another, that you might belong to another, that you might be united to another, that you might be joined to another, to who, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God." We're not under the law. We've died to sin. We've died to the law. We have been united to Jesus Christ. We've been united to him in his death and united to him in his resurrection. We've been raised to walk in newness of life and we've been united to Jesus so that we might bear fruit for God. You see how this goes back to the original question in verse 15? We're just going to continue in sin, we're just going to do whatever we want. If we're under grace, we're not under the law, absolutely not. You're united to Jesus. You've been joined to him in his death and his resurrection. You belong to him and you've been united to him so that you might bear fruit for God. The rest of the passage is pretty simple. Paul looks backward to the past. He says, "Those living in the flesh were captive to sin in death." That's verse five, "While we were living in the flesh past tense before our conversion, while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions were aroused by the law and they were at work in our members to bear fruit for death." We'll have more to say about this idea of being in the flesh. It's our old nature. It's our sinful nature. It's who we are apart from God's grace intervening in our life. And Paul looks back on the time that we were unregenerate, unsaved, not justified, not sanctified. And he says, "We're just in the flesh and all we could do is bear fruit for death." That should make you think of Romans 6, 23 that we saw last week. The wages of sin is death. Back to yourself in your flesh, you're enslaved to sin, you're under the rain and the power and the dominion of sin. And the result of those things Paul says is death. Then he talks about the present and he says, "Those who are alive in the Spirit are free to truly obey God." Verse six, "Now we're released from the law, having died to that which held us captive. We were captive to the law because we were sinners and we were condemned by the law because we were sinners. We were slaves to it. But we're released from the law, we've 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. If you want a parallel passage to what Paul is saying here, you can look at Galatians 5 where he talks about the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. Left to ourselves, our lives are marked by the works of the flesh, but by God's grace as the people of God, as saved, justified, sanctified people, our lives are marked by the fruit of the Spirit." That's the logic of the passage. It's not that complicated. Verse 15 is the question, are we going to sin because we're not under the law but under grace? Answer one, no, we're slaves to God. We're no longer slaves to sin. Answer two, we have been united to Jesus Christ. We belong to Jesus Christ. We have been joined to Jesus Christ so that we might bear fruit, not to death, but for God. Now, let's just think about this. Let's think about the idea of marriage as it relates to union with Christ. Let me just make a few cultural observations that will sort of help us understand the lenses through which we think about marriage because I think most of us have been culturally conditioned to think about marriage as a constraining thing rather than a freeing thing. I'll just give you a few examples of this. One example would be people who make the joke, and it's a stupid joke. They refer to their spouse as the old ball and chain. The old ball and chain. I'm just dragging them around, holding me back, constraining me. I could be so free, but I got this thing. I'm chained. Do you hear the language of slavery in that and being imprisoned? The old ball and chain. Another example, you can find communities of people online. You can find social media accounts, and the entirety of the social media account is given to celebrate intentional, singleness, and childlessness. To celebrate it, and to celebrate it because you can watch these videos. You can see these little clips and reels and TikToks because I'm not bound to some other person. I don't have these little bratty kids clinging on to me. I'm free to do whatever I want to do. Every day I wake up, I'm free to do whatever I want. It's a whole genre of social media account. What they're saying is, if you have a family, if you're married, and especially if you have kids, you are a slave, you're not free, you're enslaved, and you should be like me, free, to do what I will. To give you one more example, there's places in the world today where young people are simply not getting married. They are just not getting married, and I could give you stats from Western Europe. I could give you stats from the United States. We tend to be about 10, 20 years behind Western Europe. Let me give you a statistic from South Korea. This is interesting to me, not because many of us are Koreans, but because South Korea is a significantly Christianized country in South Korea. I'm not saying that this is a simple answer to this. In South Korea, 81% of people, 4 out of 5 between the ages of 19 and 34, are intentionally not married. And in the surveys and in the studies, the number one reason they give is, "I want my freedom." You say, "Well, maybe there's economic factors involved. Maybe there's culture, maybe." But the number one reason given in these surveys is, "I want my freedom." And here we are. We're talking about marriage as an illustration of the freedom we have in Christ, freedom to obey. Look, I just think we've been warped by Western idea of freedom. I think in the West, we tend to think about freedom as no limits on my personal autonomy. Anything that constrains me as an assault on my freedom, and I would just submit to you, there are other ways to conceptualize and think about freedom. I'll just give you a few quick examples. The first would be the piano. If you want to be free to play the piano like Mark Dawson, you have to constrain yourself to practice, and unless you constrain yourself, you will not have the freedom. You're free to bang on it and make an atrocious noise, but we're not going to ask you to join the band. You're not free to join our band, praise team. I'll give you another example, unless you constrain yourself by the limitations of med school, you're not free to practice medicine. You don't just let people decide in their 40s or their 50s, I'd like to be a doctor now. There's a process you have to go through, it's not an easy one. You have to limit yourself to be free in this respect. I think marriage is the same. I think you understand this. If you want to be free to enjoy your marriage, your spouse, your family, you have to constrain yourself with vows that exclude all other people, and you have to give yourself not just to make vows once and then ride on those fumes, but to cultivate a marriage of love and trust, and it's not easy. It takes a lot of work, but if you want to be free to enjoy that thing, this is what you have to do. Likewise, Paul's argument in Romans 7 is pretty simple. If you're not united to Jesus, you're under the reign of sin and you are enslaved to the law, and you're not free to obey God at all. Paul is essentially responding to this question, are we just going to continue in sin? And this is what he's saying, "Before Christ, that's all you did." That's all you could do. You're completely enslaved to sin, captive to the law. And only when you're united to Christ, when you're joined to Him, in effect when you're married to Him, are you free? He shouldn't surprise us that the Bible here speaks about freedom and our relationship with the Lord in terms of marriage. The Bible begins with the marriage, the first marriage, Adam and Eve in the beginning. And I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the Bible ends with the marriage, with the marriage of Jesus Christ and His bride. And in the middle, what Paul says is that God in the beginning created marriage to be a picture of the relationship between Jesus and His people. That our union with Christ, where two become one, when we put our faith in Jesus, we're united to His death, united to His resurrection, is pictured in marriage. And so he brings up marriage here to say, "Should we just continue in sin, or are we just going to live our lives in sin?" And what he's saying is, "By no means, that's a ridiculous notion. You've been joined. You belong to another." So here's what I want us to think about. We'll work through these pretty quickly. I want you to think with me about how marriage impacts your life. And the ways that marriage impacts our lives probably has a parallel in the way that our union with Christ impacts our life. So let's just think this through. In marriage and in union with Christ, our identity is changed. Our identity is changed. I mean, one example of that would just be a woman who takes the name of her husband. Her name is literally changed. But for both spouses, regardless of whether a name change takes place, in marriage you take on a new identity. You become, at that moment, a husband, or a wife. That's a new identity that you take on when you're joined to this person. People not only know you as so-and-so, but now they know you as so-and-so spouse. It's a new identity. When we're united to Christ, our identity changes. There's a number of texts I could show you about this. But how about what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6. He says, "Don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?" And that dot-dot-dot, he lists out all kinds of unrighteousness, works of the flesh, things that used to characterize your life. He says, "Look, these people, they're slaves to sin, they're not going to inherit the kingdom of God." And he says, "You know what? That used to be you." Such were some of you, past tense. That was your identity. But you were washed and you were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. The believer literally takes Christ's name, Christian, a little Christ. Our identity is fundamentally changed. Listen, the world has suggestions for where you find your identity. The world says that you should find your identity first and foremost, at least in our culture in your sexuality or your preferred pronouns in the work that you do or the level of education that you've obtained. Sometimes the world encourages us to find our identity. This is so ridiculous, but to find our identity in the sports team we root for. That's my identity above anything else. Maybe you're tempted to find your identity in your political affiliation or in one particular person. In union with Christ, just like in marriage our identity is changed. Secondly, in marriage and in union with Christ our decision-making process is changed. The way we make decisions is fundamentally altered when we get married. So we should expect that when we're united to Christ, joined to Christ, belonged to Christ that our decision-making process should change. So I'll just give you a personal example of this. Brooke and I got married in 2002. Like many of you, we had our first fight on the honeymoon. It doesn't take long, does it? The fight was about money and the fight, the disagreement was about one of us wanted to buy a thing and one of us didn't want to buy a thing and it was a silly thing, a stupid thing and the grand scheme of things. But here's what both of us learned, which yours is mine and what's mine is yours. I don't get to make my own decisions anymore. We make decisions together now and we got to figure out a way to be on the same page about this. We got to figure out how to make decisions differently because we have now been joined to one another. Look, when you're united to Jesus Christ by faith, you make decisions differently. Whereas you used to make decisions based on your own self-interest, now you make decisions saying, "What would honor the Lord in my life?" Because I've been saved by him and I've been united to him. How can I honor the Lord in this scenario? The world will give you advice. The world will say you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want and you shouldn't accept any limitation on your decision-making freedom. That's not how marriage works, at least it's not how it works very long and that's not how union with Christ works. When you're united to him, your decision-making process changes. Are you going to continue in sin? Absolutely not. The way you make decisions is fundamentally altered. Number three, in marriage and in union with Christ, our debts are changed. Our debts are changed. Brooke and I were fortunate we both entered marriage debt-free. Unfortunately, we also entered marriage money-free. Some of you would say, "I got married and I married someone with a giant savings account, and what yours is mine, it worked to your advantage." Some of you would say, "You know what? I worked hard my whole life to be debt-free and to save and then I married someone who had a lot of debt. And that debt becomes your debt." When you're married to a person, finances, they're no longer neatly separated into distinct silos. Your debts, your wealth is fundamentally changed. Look where the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 8, 9, "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich." You understand that happened at the cross. Where Jesus took your sin debt, it became his. And if you're a believer, you understand the thematic principle of the book of Romans, Romans chapter 1 verse 16 and 17, Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes the Jew first and also the Greek for in the gospel, the righteousness of God has revealed from faith, for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith." Jesus paid your sin debt and when you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and you're united to him, you receive his righteousness as a gift, not as something that you've earned. We just sang about that a minute ago. The righteousness of Jesus that is of no good work that I've done, but it's a gift that he's given to me, or debts are changed. Look, the world is confused about this idea of debts. The world will say, "Oh, look, this is not complicated, you just sign a prenup and you keep everything separate, keep it distinct." Or maybe the world says, "Look, when it comes to debts, you just wait around long enough and the government will come along and waive their magic government wand and all your debt will just disappear and we'll just sort of shove it under some rug and it'll just go away." And the Christian understands that's not how debt works and the Christian understands my fundamental debt is my sin debt and I can't pay it, but Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sand had left a crimson stain, he washed it, why does snow? Number four, in marriage and in union with Christ our family situation has changed. Okay, it's true that you start a new family in marriage, but you know what is also true? You get a new family. You start a new family, right, leaving, cleaving, there's a new family unit, but you also get in varying degrees a new family. And some of you are smiling fondly right now, you're thinking about your in-laws and you're saying, "Oh, I'm so blessed, got a new family, they're the greatest." And some of you are grinning with a snarky little grin or shaking your head and you're saying, "That didn't work out so great for me, I got this whole group of people, I didn't ask for them, but I got them, that's how marriage works." There is a new family unit created, but you get a new family. And I tell you something about union with Christ in Ephesians 2, Paul says that in the gospel we're reconciled to God and we are reconciled to each other. That means when you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you not only start a relationship with Him, but you also get a new family and they're sitting next to you this morning. Brothers and sisters in Christ. And guess what? Sometimes we are just as dysfunctional as your families. And sometimes you look across the room and you say, "I don't want to sit by that guy at Thanksgiving lunch, I don't want to, but it's your family, it's your family, your family situation has changed." Look the world says focus on yourself, you don't need to sacrifice for others, the world says you should identify toxic people in your life and just cut them out of your life. And the New Testament says you should serve one another and bear with one another and love one another and be kind to one another because you've been reconciled to one another. You have a new family. Number five, in marriage and in union with Christ our future has changed. When you say the words I do, you start to think about school and jobs and career differently. You say the words I do, you start to think about kids and grandkids differently, things out there in the future. You think about vacations that you might take or retirement someday. You think about all those future things a little bit differently. You even think about your death and your burial differently. You say, "Well, now we need a headstone for two." That's where we want to be buried. It changes everything about your future. When we're united to Christ by faith, Paul talks about this in Colossians 1. He says Christ is now in us and He's the hope of glory. It changes fundamentally and eternally changes our future when we're united to Jesus Christ. Apart from Him, our future is death and the wrath of God and when we're united to Him, we have the hope of glory. The world has all sorts of things to tell you about your future. The world might say that when your heart stops beating and your brain starts waving, that's it. That's just it. You become warm food. Just put you in the ground and we forget about you. Or our post-modern "Anything Goes Culture" might say to you, "When you die, you get whatever you want. You have the power to create and write your own story. However you want it to be, that's how it's going to be in the future." But the gospel has something to say about our future that it's fundamentally altered by virtue of the fact that we have been united to Christ by faith. So here's the question in verse 15, "What then are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?" Paul's answer is, "By no means, by no means. You were slaves to sin, now you're slaves to God. You were slaves to the law. You were under the law and now you belong to another, to the Lord Jesus." Father, we're grateful for your word and we are grateful for the great work of salvation that you have accomplished on our behalf. We're thankful for you, Father, loving us when we were sinners. We're thankful for the Lord Jesus, dying on the cross and paying our debt. We're thankful for your Spirit who gives us life and unites us to Jesus by faith. Father, we're grateful for the freedom of salvation on our end. We understand that a great debt was paid by the Lord Jesus, but we thank you that the call on our life is simple, as to repent of our sin, as to believe in Jesus, and as to receive the righteousness of God as a gift. So Father, we do pray for those who are here who have never done that and we pray that they would find hope in Jesus Christ. They would find life and forgiveness in Jesus. Father, for those of us who have put our faith in the Lord Jesus, we pray that you would help us to understand how drastically our lives are changed by being united to Him. Everything about us is changed. Everything about our future is changed. And we pray that we would live as people who are free. We have been free, set free from the power of sin. We've died to sin. We're no longer under the law. But we pray that you would help us to see that our union with Christ changes everything about our lives and by no means will we continue in sin. What we're going to be honored is we take a moment to sing. We're just going to sing truth about the Lord Jesus Christ and the fact that all of our hope is in Jesus. So Lord, as we lift our voices together, be honored in our worship. We love you. We pray and we sing these things in Jesus' name, amen.