Free From the Law
Romans 7

1. Our age is filled with growing crime, lawlessness, and rebellion. Politicians are pushing a "law and order" platform. The sermon title doesn't seem to fit into the mode of the age, at least from a concerned number of people. But freedom from the law is not a device for revolution, chaos, or immorality. Law is a good, but not a perfect thing. There is something better than law and it is this true that the apostle is setting forth. By way of example, we hear a great deal about justice. We want justice, but this is not the ideal situation. There is something greater than justice and that is mercy. Just so in the case of law, the law is good, but there is something greater.

2. The law concept being rejected here is that of using the law for the purpose of being accepted before God. The law is good, but it has been inadequate in its fruitfulness. It has served to point up man's sin rather than enable him to win favor with God. As long as he is in sin, the law serves to continue as a means of mmm showing him his inadequacy.

3. If the law is inadequate, how can we remove ourselves from its sphere of influence? There is only one way of being free from the law of God. That is death: Paul makes two points to show this. First, A marriage is binding until death. Now, if my wife decided that she wanted to take another husband beside me, according to the law, I could call her an adulteress. But if I died, then she would be free to marry any rich man that came along without being charged either by the moral law or civil law as an adulteress. The point is that death frees or ends its hold on a person. That is all that is meant in that example. Second, v 4 points up the truth that you have died to the law through the body of Christ. We must ask again–as on other occasions--when did this take place. Paul’s answer is that it occurred when Christ died because we are cells of his body. When he died we died. When he was raised, we were raised to a new life free of the law.
Since the law cannot touch a dead man, it cannot touch us because we have died to it and now live on another level.

4. We are therefore free from the law. This has lessons
for daily Christian living.

I. Free from the law's power--indictment. v. 7, 13.

1. The purpose of the law is to make sin known as sin. Paul tells us that "once upon a time he had no consciousness of sin. In his earliest days he did not make the acquaintance of the law; (as a child) he lived a carefree life. But "shades of the prison-house began to close upon the growing boy. The day came when Paul had to take upon himself the obligation to keep the law. The occasion might be his bar mitzvah ceremony, (the ceremony in which a Jewish boy at the age of thirteen
become a “son of the commandment" i.e. assumes personal
responsibility to keep the law.

2. There is the youth of the child in which one is free from responsibility and indictment. What do you say when a three-year old spills detergent all over the floor and then tries to clean it up with water. Just before you grab up the child ready to tan its hide, your spouse comes along and says, "Honey, after all, he is only· a three-year old child and you can't expect him to know any better." Right?
Now add 5 years to his experience and he has been shooting a
sling-shot with stones toward a neighbor's house where there is a big picture window and a couple of cars out front. You now say to your son: "it is not right and good to be shooting your slingshot toward anything that can be broken, killed, or maimed, and if you do, I will not only take the sling-shot (warning) away from you, but I will give you a good spanking.!! Right? Right"? Add 5 more years to the child, and one day you come into the house and find that your son has been shooting out windows at the local elementary school. What do you do now? You tell him,"son, you know you should not have been doing that, don't you? He nods his head yes. Why did you do it? I don't know. I just did it for the fun of it. Is it any fun when you have to pay for all the damage you? No.

3. I've sketched these three illustrations to point up
several things. 1) This is a passage frequently used by Baptist to undergird the idea of an age of accountability. Once I lived free of the law's indictment, pena1ity, and guilt. This spans the time from birth to a nebulous period in which the child becomes aware of personal involvement for his actions

(2) At some point in growing up, the law begins to indict us for our sinfulness. Continuing to point up my sin without the ability to deliver me from my sin, the law is weak.(3) It is not good to live life under constant indictment, and Christ's dead--being our death--frees us from the law's indicting force. There is a proverb that says "death dissolves promises and agreements." In other words, an agreement ceases to be binding when one of the parties to it dies." We have
died in Christ, and therefore are free of its indictment.

II. Free from the law' negative motivation

1. Prohibitions, as a matter of common knowledge, tend to awaken a desire to do the things that are forbidden. The smoker may forget how much he wanted to smoke until he sees a sign which says, “No smoking.” A child can hardly wait to ease his hand around some precious glassware that you have asked not to be touched.
Augustine's Confessions relates a youth prank.”There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears--not to feast upon them ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs--though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to be a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in that theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law, in order that I, a prisoner under the rules might have a maimed counterfeit of freedom, by doing with impunity what was forbidden, with a dim similitude of omnipotence?" That is to say that the desire to steal was aroused simply by the prohibition of stealing.”

2. "It is highly significant that Paul has chosen for his example the one prohibition of the Decalogue which deals with the inner life, and not with overt action: One may by discipline and self-control keep himself from breaking the first nine of the commands. Granting a man's ability to refrain from outwardly killing a man, or committing adultery, or stealing, what about the fact of desire. A rabbi who lived about 100A.D., Eleazar ben Azariah, said, “One should not say, I have no desire for mixed garments or Swine's flesh, or illicit sexual relations." One should say I have a desire for these things, but since my heavenly father has forbidden them to me, what can I do?"

However, Pau1's point is that covetousness, or desire produces death because the law declared, thou shalt not covet. So Paul says, "I should never have come to know what covetousness was but for the command which says, Thou shalt not covet. But that commandment provided a bridge from which it launched an attack on me, and as a result it brought all kinds of covetousness to birth within me. Without a law to stir it into life sin lay dormant; but when I became aware of the law, sin sprang to life andl aid me low. Here is a paradox indeed.
the law was given that man might keep it and live; but it was
death, not life, that this law brought to me." (Bruce, pp.147-3)

III._Free from the law’s misery: despair

1. The first questions is: who is Paul talking about! Who is the I? Paul before he was converted to Jesus or Paul after he became a follower? On MWF I take the first option and on TThS I take the second. Trying to understand the passage is complicated all the more by the fact that there is much here parallels our experience as Christians facing temptation and sin. I'm inclined to say--for different reasons than those advanced by defenders of this view--Paul is ta1king about the life of the Jewish believer under the law without the gospel of Christ. This is the main point of chapter 7--freedom from the law.
The law had a definite misery associated with it--the misery of despair over inability to perform in obedience. How much more despair is the fact that the law is predicated on performance and I cannot do what I mentally assent to in regarding the law as right. V. 20 points up the inability yet associated with the reign of sin under a reign of the law.

3. Freedom from this misery is seen in v. 24-25.” Who will deliver me from this state of despair.” God has done it thru Jesus Christ. I am no longer accounted responsible salvation-wise, in terms of the law. The despair of my inability is over because I am free from the law. I do not despair because of sin that I commit because there is forgiveness
and restoration to fellowship.

4. Deliverance is present from the problem of despair. It is also future when a resurrected body will be ours and we stand delivered from the presence of sin.

5. Do not be confused and conclude that tension between your body and spirit is now at an end. There is a parallel between the Christian and the Jew under the law to some degree. The Christian experiences something of the same conflict but does not come to despair because salvation is not predicated upon performance of the law. Moreover, the Christian having been free from the rule of sin and the reign of law, has the Spirit of Christ (v.6b) in his new life to help in overcoming the sins of the flesh, the spirit, and the world.

Martin was 21 years old and headed for the study of law, a profession that meant advancement and preferment.(1505) While he was out walking on a sultry summer day, a bolt of lightning felled him, and in terror, he called on St. Anne for hpn and made a vow to become a monk ....This step infuriated his father who looked for a eminent career for his son as well as security in his old age. He chose a religious order that was strict in discipline and set out to fulfill his vow. A vow demands fulfillment and Martin set out to fulfill it to the full. He sought by every means to make himself acceptable to God in the fulfillment of his vow!. He mortified his body. He fasted, some times
for days on end and without a morsel of food. He gave himself to prayers and vigils beyond those required by the rule of his order. He went to confession , often daily and for hours at a time. In spite of his religious orientation in the monastery, there were times he hated God.

Martin had been taught that Christ is the judge, viewing man's performance on the basis of the law. How did Martin stack up? The more he tried the worse he felt. And even if one succeeded in fulfilling a measure of the law this achievement would lead to pride and hence a relapse in the depths of sin.

Martin came to see that the real Christian is free from the demands of the law for salvation. Martin's struggle went on for ten to 12 years before he saw that salvation is by grace thru faith--only then could the Reformation begin with Martin Luther.

Some of you may have been confused about the demands of God upon your life. You have been struggling to win approval, and the despair of your soul has been increased by the inward knowledge that you are not achieving it. You have seen the gap between what God’s law demands of you and what you have not been able to perform. Let me say that your struggle is over. In Christ you are dead to the law's misery--despair. There is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.

Conclusion
1. Freedom from the law means that we are free from trying to achieve salvation ourselves. God has done for us what we could not do in the law itself and by ourselves. Jesus Christ has come and our success in living a Christian life free of despair, is in the degree that we let him reign in us.

Henry Drummond was a well known Christian around the turn of the19th century. He used to visit friends on the weekend in mid Scotland. Once as he was returning to Glascow one of his friends. “There is something we are going to ask you to do for us. You know John, the coachman, "we are troubled about him. He has taken to drinking and no one has been able to help him. He is now on his last chance with us. Do you think you could help him? When the coachman came for him, Drummond got into the side beside him. As they rode on, he talked about horses and as they came to a dangerous bend, he asked, what would happen if these horses ran away with us here?
It would be fatal", he replied.

"But, said Drummond, if you found they were out of control and you knew that I, sitting beside you, could control them, what would you do? I'd give you the reins." said the Coachman. "John, said Drummond,"there's a pair of wild horses in you. They'll drag you over the precipice. Why not hand over the reins to Jesus Christ."
Before they reached the station, the coachman did just that. This is what He find within ourselves. Not one, not two,
but many wild horses ready to pull us over the precipice
to sin. Jesus came to assume the reins of our heart so that we can be free of the law and have the sins of our flesh under control.