Journey Church: Basic Training 2015
Lesson 9- Leading with a Limp
Primary Texts: Romans 7
November 15, 2015
What does the 1st verse refer to when it refers to the law only affecting one who lives?
In the example of marriage what comparison is Paul making?
How does living in the law arouse sinful passions?
What fruit do will bear in death?
What fruit should we bear in life?
Now that I am saved and dead to sin and alive in Christ in what new way(s) do we serve life?
Name one significant thing that changed in you when you gave your life to Christ.
Why is Paul saying what he is saying?
- He is making clarification on what he is says.
He is giving illustrations;
- Abraham in Chapter 4
- Adam and Jesus in Chapter 5
- Slavery in Chapter 6
- Marriage and divorce Chapter 7
People get the Law and the Gospel messed up OFTEN
- We aren’t divorced from the Law, we are dead to the Law.
- The Law isn’t sin nor is it sinful.
- What then is the relationship between the Law and the Gospel?
- The Law has an important role to play.
- The Law shows our deficiencies.
- The Law shows Jesus excellencies because He lived to the standard of the Law.
- For Paul and for us the Law acts as a schoolmaster.
- Galatians 3:24-26 the Law was our guide to Christ’ or ‘… unto the time of Christ’ Ga 3:24. In classical times, a παιδαγωγός was a man, usually a slave, whose task it was to conduct a boy to and from school and to supervise and direct his general conduct. He was not a teacher.
- For Paul and for us the Law acts as a “goad”.
“By no means” is is a strong negative, followed by the explanation.
The principle of sin, not the Law, becomes death to the individual.
Sin uses the commandment, the Good thing, as an agent to keep on producing death is a person and is therefore seen as “utterly” sinful.
- The inner man;
- 2 Corinthians 4:16
- Ephesians 3:16
- Delighting in God’s Law
- Psalm 1:2 ”meditating on God’s law day and night.”
- Psalm 119; 06, 24, 47,
- This principle is continually doing two things:
- Waging war against the law of the believer’s mind;
- Making him a prisoner of the law of sin at work within his members.
- The result
- The indwelling principle of sin is constantly mounting a military campaign against the new nature, trying to gain victory and control (cf. "slave" in vv. 14, 25 and "slaves" in 6:17, 19–20), of a believer and his actions.
- The new nature is called "the law" of the "mind" (noos; cf. 7:25) because it has the capacity for perceiving and making ethical judgments.
- Further, despite a believer’s identification with Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection and his efforts to have Christ-honoring attitudes and actions, he cannot in his own power resist his indwelling sin nature. In and of himself he repeatedly experiences defeat and frustration.
Paul’s primary reference is to believers. In support of this position:
(1) The shift to the present tense;
7) The fact that Christians are already righteous in Christ but are not yet perfected until the day of redemption.
Referring to unbelievers, including himself, before regeneration and conversion.
(1) The structure of the passage (vv. 7–25 matches the life of the unregenerate previewed in v. 5, whereas 8:1–17 fits with the life of believers identified in 7:6);
(3) To say that Christians are “sold under sin” (7:14) and “captive to the law of sin” (v. 23) stands in tension with chs. 6 and 8, which trumpet the freedom of believers from slavery to sin;
(4) The suggestion that the present tense does not denote present time but the spiritual state of Paul when unconverted;
(5) The desire to keep God’s law reflects the mind-set of the pious Jew who wanted to live a moral life (as the verses emphasize, such people do not and cannot keep the law); (6) The section’s opening verse (v. 13) explains how the law brought death to Paul as an unbeliever.
Advocates of both positions agree that (1) Christians still struggle with sin through their whole lives (see Gal. 5:17; 1 John 1:8–9); and (2) Christians can and should grow in sanctification throughout their lives by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within them (Rom. 8:2, 4, 9, 13–14). Those who hold to the first position usually see this passage as describing both Paul’s own experience and the experience of Christians generally. Although Christians are free from the condemnation of the law, sin nonetheless continues to dwell within, and all genuine Christians (along with Paul) should be profoundly aware of how far they fall short of God’s absolute standard of righteousness. Thus Paul cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (7:24). The answer follows immediately: the one who has delivered Christians once for all (see 4:2–25; 5:2, 9) and the one who will deliver them day by day is “Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:25). As in many other places in Paul’s letters, this reflects his emphasis on both the “already” aspect of salvation (that believers have been saved) and the “not yet” aspect (that believers will be saved ultimately and for all eternity at the return of Christ), and that they live in the tension between the already and the not yet.
