stuart lawrence
Well-Known Member
Ah, get rom ch7 right and you've cracked I so to speak!Romans 7:2For a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the marriage. 3So then, if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she is joined to another man, she is not an adulteress. 4So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you could be joined to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, to bear fruit to God.
The husband is the old humanity. Even when there was no law, men still died. Even when men did not sin the sin of Adam, they still died. This indicates all of humanity from Adam to Christ are bound to the old covenant.
Adam represented humanity and all the liabilities he incurred on entering covenant through gaining knowledge of good and evil, fell on his descendants. Christ, as the second Adam, took on all the liabilities and settled the outstandings. As a representative with a clean slate, he was entitled to draw up a new covenant.
Are we identified with the old humanity? No, there is no old humanity. If there was, we would be obliged to remain in it, we can't be attached to two "families", that would be bigamy and illegal. The old humanity must die, for us to be free to be part of the new humanity, formed when Christ was raised to represent new Man.
Clear as mud? Excellent!
No need to go over the first three verses.
In 4-6 Paul stresses the need to die to the law( of righteousness) in order to live for God.
If we don't, sinful passions will be aroused I us by the law
We die to the law of righteousness and serve by following after the holy spirit not the written code
Which law is Paul speaking of in these verses? All of it, or the mosaic law but not the ten commandments?
Well in the next five verses he gives a personal example from his own life as to why he had to die to the law, for sin, taking advantage of the commandment simply magnified the sin. The example he gave was:
Thou shalt not covet, which is one of the ten commandments.
After stressing the law itself is holy, righteous and good, he goes on to elaborate of his struggles and faliure to obey the law he has been speaking of in verses 7-11.
The whole chapter concerns the moral law( ten commandments) not the legalistic law from verse 4 onwards, though the whole law is died to for the christian unto righteousness.
The chapter is the best example given as to why:
Sin shall not be your master, for you are not under law but under grace rom6:14
For the power of sin is the law 1 cor15:56
Howzat!!
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