Bible Commentaries

Ro 7:1-25.

SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

Relation of Believers to the Law and to Christ

(Ro 7:1-6).

Recurring to the statement of

Ro 6:14,

that believers are "not under the law but under grace," the apostle here shows how this change is brought about, and what holy consequences follow from it.

1. I speak to them that know the law--of Moses to whom, though not themselves Jews (see on

Ro 1:13),

the Old Testament was familiar.

2, 3. if her husband be dead--"die." So

Ro 7:3.

3. she be married--"joined." So

Ro 7:4.

4. Wherefore . . . ye also are become dead--rather, "were slain."

to the law by the body of Christ--through His slain body. The apostle here departs from his usual word "died," using the more expressive phrase "were slain," to make it clear that he meant their being "crucified with Christ" (as expressed in

Ro 6:3-6, and Ga 2:20).

that ye should be married to another, even to him that is--"was."

raised from the dead--to the intent.

that we should bring forth fruit unto God--It has been thought that the apostle should here have said that "the law died to us," not "we to the law," but that purposely inverted the figure, to avoid the harshness to Jewish ears of the death of the law [CHRYSOSTOM, CALVIN, HODGE, PHILIPPI, &c.]. But this is to mistake the apostle's design in employing this figure, which was merely to illustrate the general principle that "death dissolves legal obligation." It was essential to his argument that we, not the law, should be the dying party, since it is we that are "crucified with Christ," and not the law. This death dissolves our marriage obligation to the law, leaving us at liberty to contract a new relation--to be joined to the Risen One, in order to spiritual fruitfulness, to the glory of God [BEZA, OLSHAUSEN, MEYER, ALFORD, &c.]. The confusion, then, is in the expositors, not the text; and it has arisen from not observing that, like Jesus Himself, believers are here viewed as having a double life--the old sin-condemned life, which they lay down with Christ, and the new life of acceptance and holiness to which they rise with their Surety and Head; and all the issues of this new life, in Christian obedience, are regarded as the "fruit" of this blessed union to the Risen One. How such holy fruitfulness was impossible before our union to Christ, is next declared.

5. For when we were in the flesh--in our unregenerate state, as we came into the world. See on

Joh 3:6

and

Ro 8:5-9.

the motions--"passions" (Margin), "affections" (as in

Ga 5:24),

or "stirrings."

of sins--that is, "prompting to the commission of sins."

which were by the law--by occasion of the law, which fretted, irritated our inward corruption by its prohibitions. See on

Ro 7:7-9.

did work in our members--the members of the body, as the instruments by which these inward stirrings find vent in action, and become facts of the life. See on

Ro 6:6.

to bring forth fruit unto death--death in the sense of

Ro 6:21.

Thus hopeless is all holy fruit before union to Christ.

6. But now--On the same expression, see on

Ro 6:22,

and compare

Jas 1:15.

we are delivered from the law--The word is the same which, in

Ro 6:6

and elsewhere, is rendered "destroyed," and is but another way of saying (as in

Ro 7:4)

that "we were slain to the law by the body of Christ"; language which, though harsh to the ear, is designed and fitted to impress upon the reader the violence of that death of the Cross, by which, as by a deadly wrench, we are "delivered from the law."

that being dead wherein we were held--It is now universally agreed that the true reading here is, "being dead to that wherein we were held." The received reading has no authority whatever, and is inconsistent with the strain of the argument; for the death spoken of, as we have seen, is not the law's, but ours, through union with the crucified Saviour.

that we should--"so as to" or "so that we."

serve in newness of spirit--"in the newness of the spirit."

and not in the oldness of the letter--not in our old way of literal, mechanical obedience to the divine law, as a set of external rules of conduct, and without any reference to the state of our hearts; but in that new way of spiritual obedience which, through union to the risen Saviour, we have learned to render (compare

Ro 2:29; 2Co 3:6).

False Inferences regarding the Law Repelled

(Ro 7:7-25).

And first,

Ro 7:7-13,

in the case of the UNREGENERATE.

7, 8. What . . . then? Is the law sin? God forbid!--"I have said that when we were in the flesh the law stirred our inward corruption, and was thus the occasion of deadly fruit: Is then the law to blame for this? Far from us be such a thought."

Nay--"On the contrary" (as in

Ro 8:37; 1Co 12:22;

Greek).

I had not known sin but by the law--It is important to fix what is meant by "sin" here. It certainly is not "the general nature of sin" [ALFORD, &c.], though it be true that this is learned from the law; for such a sense will not suit what is said of it in the following verses, where the meaning is the same as here. The only meaning which suits all that is said of it in this place is "the principle of sin in the heart of fallen man." The sense, then, is this: "It was by means of the law that I came to know what a virulence and strength of sinful propensity I had within me." The existence of this it did not need the law to reveal to him; for even the heathens recognized and wrote of it. But the dreadful nature and desperate power of it the law alone discovered--in the way now to be described.

for I had not known lust, except, &c.--Here the same Greek word is unfortunately rendered by three different English ones--"lust"; "covet"; "concupiscence"

(Ro 7:8)

--which obscures the meaning. By using the word "lust" only, in the wide sense of all "irregular desire," or every outgoing of the heart towards anything forbidden, the sense will best be brought out; thus, "For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust; But sin, taking ('having taken') occasion by the commandment (that one which forbids it), wrought in me all manner of lusting." This gives a deeper view of the tenth commandment than the mere words suggest. The apostle saw in it the prohibition not only of desire after certain things there specified, \ but of "desire after everything divinely forbidden"; in other words, all "lusting" or "irregular desire." It was this which "he had not known but by the law." The law forbidding all such desire so stirred his corruption that it wrought in him "all manner of lusting"--desire of every sort after what was forbidden.

8. For without the law--that is, before its extensive demands and prohibitions come to operate upon our corrupt nature.

sin was--rather, "is"

dead--that is, the sinful principle of our nature lies so dormant, so torpid, that its virulence and power are unknown, and to our feeling it is as good as "dead."