You also died to the law (Rom 7.1-6)

What Is the Law?

The law is really a shorthand description for all of God's commands in the Old Testament. According to the Jewish Talmud there are 613 different commands — 365 negative ("don't do this, don't do that") and 248 positive ("do this, do that"). These are usually grouped into three categories: the moral law, summed up in the Ten Commandments (remember the Sabbath, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not covet); the civil laws, governing Israel as a nation (court procedures, what to do in cases of self-defence, health-and-safety rules such as building a parapet around a flat roof); and the ceremonial laws, regulating worship, sacrifices, and the priesthood.

Yet all 613 commands are captured in two catch-all commandments Jesus himself gave: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" and "Love your neighbour as yourself." Every one of those Old Testament laws simply spells out what it looks like in practice to love God and to love your neighbour.

Two Ways of Relating to God

The law reveals God's will — if you want to know what pleases God, the law shows you. But the law also stands for a way of relating to God: a way based on obedience and performance. If you could keep all 613 commandments perfectly — for the right reasons, at the right moment, to the right degree — then on the day of judgement God would say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." The law stands for a relationship with God that is based entirely on our performance.

The problem, of course, is that we cannot keep the law perfectly. We are all born with a sinful nature — born "in Adam," hanging on to Adam's belt as Paul showed in chapter 5. Because of that sinful nature we are guilty before we even do anything, and then we inevitably go on to break God's law. As Paul concluded earlier: "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Rom 3:10).

The law is like an X-ray or MRI scan: all it can do is show you what is wrong. Having the X-ray will not set the broken bone — it just reveals the break so the doctor knows what treatment is needed. That is what the law does. It cannot save us; it can only condemn us. That is why we need another way of relating to God — a righteousness from God apart from the law, received through faith in Jesus Christ. There are only these two options: either we come to God on the basis of the law and our performance, or we come to God on the basis of the gospel and Christ's performance.

Two Dangerous Extremes

When Paul wrote in Romans 6:14 that "sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law but under grace," many of his readers would have been shocked: Not under law? That raises the question of what place the law has in the Christian life. And there are two wrong extremes that Christians fall into.

The first extreme is legalism — the idea that we must still relate to God by obeying the law, that we must keep ourselves in God's good books by our performance. Paul deals with this in verses 1–6 (the focus of this sermon). The second extreme is antinomianism (literally "against the law") — the idea that the law has no place at all in the Christian life and we can simply ignore it. Paul tackles that in verses 7–13. After dealing with both wrong extremes, he shows us the middle way in verses 14–25: the law-fulfilling freedom of the Christian.

The Horror of Legalism

Imagine someone who cannot swim falling into deep water off the diving board at Salthill. In their frantic distress they work out that by treading water they can keep their head above the surface — but if they stop moving their legs for even a second, they will sink and drown. That is how some Christians think about the Christian life. You have to keep obeying the law constantly to stay in God's good books. If you don't pray enough, if you don't come to enough church meetings, if you don't share the gospel with enough people, if you don't give enough money — then God is going to throw you out. It is performance-related religion: if you don't measure up, you're out on your ear.

Think about how horrifying that would be in a family. Some families do operate like this, and it is awful. Children who feel they must perform to earn their parents' love. We heard about a girl in school who got 94% in a test and was terrified of going home because she knew her parents would be furious — "Why didn't you get 100%?" Imagine children waking in a sweat every morning, terrified of displeasing their parents, tiptoeing through a minefield of hundreds of rules, running themselves ragged to meet impossible expectations. There is no security, no peace, no assurance. That is no kind of relationship. It is meant to be love-based, not rule-based.

And yet that is exactly how many Christians think about the Christian life — rule-based rather than love-based, grounded in law rather than grace. It produces bitter fruit: a crippling lack of assurance (how can you ever know you are doing enough to keep this demanding God happy?), self-righteousness (Christians who compare their performance to others and look down on those who aren't measuring up), harshness, pride, and boastfulness. This temptation to legalism is especially real for conscientious, Bible-believing Christians in a church like ours — people who care deeply about God's word and want to be faithful to it. The devil probably cannot tempt us into antinomianism, but he can very easily push us towards legalism. And he does not care which extreme we land on — either one will serve his purpose perfectly well.

The Principle: Death Ends the Law's Authority (v. 1)

"Do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to men who know the law — that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?" Paul assumes everyone understands this. If the Gardaí go to arrest a man for breaking into a bank and discover that he died that morning, they do not put his corpse in handcuffs and take it to prison. You cannot prosecute a dead man. You cannot fine a dead man. You cannot punish a dead man. He is dead to the law. The law only has authority over a man as long as he lives.

The Illustration: Marriage Law (vv. 2–3)

Paul picks the law of marriage to illustrate the principle. As long as both husband and wife are alive, they are bound by the marriage law to be faithful to one another. If the husband commits adultery while his wife is alive, he is guilty. But if his wife has died and he remarries, he is not guilty of anything — his legal obligations ceased at her death. Death ends one relationship and enables another to begin.

The Application: Married to Christ (vv. 4–6)

"So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God" (v. 4). There was a time when we were under the authority of the law — as though married to it, obligated to obey it in order to get right with God. But then we died to the law. When? Paul tells us: "through the body of Christ." At conversion, we were unhooked from Adam's belt and hooked onto Christ's belt. Everything that happened to Christ happened to us: his death became our death, his resurrection became our resurrection.

And what did Jesus do when he came to earth? Two things. First, he lived the perfect life we cannot live — he obeyed all 613 commands, his performance was flawless. Second, on the cross he died the death we deserved — he paid the penalty for our law-breaking. Because we are united to Christ, his performance becomes our performance, his obedience becomes our obedience. We get all the reward and none of the punishment. If it depended on our performance, we would get all the punishment and none of the reward. But through Christ, it is the other way around entirely.

Your standing before God right now does not depend at all on your miserable, pathetic obedience. It comes by grace, through Christ's obedience. That is the gospel. That is the antidote to legalism. You do not have to keep yourself in God's good books, agonising each day: "Am I going to do enough to keep him happy today?" You come through Christ, and all the blessings are yours and none of the punishment.

Not Free and Single — Married to a New Husband

But does this mean we can simply do whatever we want? Look at what Paul says: death freed us from the law "that you might belong to another." We are not free and single. We have been married to someone else — to Jesus Christ. And he is the kindest, best, most loving husband you could possibly imagine. Like the housekeeper in the illustration who resented all the rules her master gave her — but then married him, and because she loved him she now kept all those same rules gladly, in the new way of love rather than the old way of the bare written code.

Paul gives us a before-and-after picture in verses 5–6. You know those Facebook ads — perhaps it is the algorithm targeting men over 50 — showing a man before he started Tai Chi walking and the unrecognisable specimen he became within two weeks (he even seems to have changed ethnicity from one photo to the next). Verse 5 is the "before" picture: before conversion, relating to God by the way of the law, you bore fruit for death — one long act of disobedience, piling up sin and guilt for the day of judgement. Verse 6 is the "after" picture: now we serve our new husband in the new way of the Spirit. We still obey, but with a completely different motivation and a completely different feel. We are not trying to earn anything or keep ourselves in God's good books. Now we love him, we are thankful for all he has given us, and we want to please him.

Healing from the Old Marriage

Women who have been in abusive relationships take a long time to heal. Imagine someone who after years of abuse eventually remarries — a good man, devoted and loving. Yet even years later, she might instinctively flinch whenever her husband lifts a hand suddenly, because she still expects to be struck. She breaks out in a sweat if she burns the food, because the old husband would have beaten her for every small mistake. Years of constant criticism have left her crippled by self-doubt. It takes time for those deep wounds to heal, and the scars may never fully disappear. It takes time for her to realise that her new husband is not like the old one — that he is warm, kind, patient, and loving.

That is a picture of many Christians. Those of us tempted towards legalism keep relating to God as if we must perform our way into his good books: "Unless I read the Bible for an hour every day, he'll be annoyed with me. If I have a single covetous thought, something bad will happen. I must get to every single church meeting or he'll fly into a rage." Paul says that is the old way of the written code — the law-based, rule-regulated relationship with God. It is not the Christian way. It is not the way of grace.

Jesus has kept the law for us. Jesus has died to pay the penalty of the law for us. There is no more punishment to bear — nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. We do read the Bible, we do pray, we do come to church — but not to keep an angry, irritable God happy. We do it because we love him, because we are thankful for all he has given us, and because we want to please the one who has loved us with an everlasting love.

So then, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ.

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