Romans 7, Read Whole

If the case against the Torah has a fortress, it is Romans 7. The argument usually runs like this. Paul compares us to a married woman. While her husband lives, she is bound to him by law, and when he dies, she is free. The law is the old husband. Through the cross the old husband died, and now we belong to Messiah instead. A believer who has died with Messiah is no longer bound to the law.

Many sincere teachers have read the passage that way, and it is easy to see why. The words “law,” “released,” and “died” are all there.

The passage repays a slow reading, with one question asked of every sentence: who is doing what?

Romans 7:1-6 Or do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to those who know nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) — that the nomos(law) exercises dominion over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by nomos(law) to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the nomos(law) of the husband. So then, if while her husband is alive she becomes another man's, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that nomos(law), so that she is not an adulteress though she has become another man's. So then, my brothers, you also were made to die to the nomos(law) through the body of Messiah, so that you might belong to another — to Him who was raised from the dead — in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were in the sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh), the sinful passions that came through the nomos(law) were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been released from the nomos(law), having died to what held us captive, so that we serve in newness of pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) and not in oldness of the written letter.

Who Died, the Law or Us?

Begin with the illustration in verses 2 and 3: a woman, a husband, and a law. Who dies? The husband dies, not the law. The law is still standing at the end of verse 3, because it is the law that declares “she is not an adulteress.”

Now see how Paul applies it in verse 4: “you also were made to die to the nomos(law).” It is we who were made to die. Nowhere in these six verses does Paul say that the law died. If he had wanted to say it, this was the place to do so, and he did not.

It is easy to miss this when one comes to the passage already knowing what it “must” mean. When the mind expects to read that the law died, the eye passes straight over “you also were made to die.”

Released from What?

Next, look closely at what the woman is released from. Verse 2 says it precisely: “she is released from the nomos(law) of the husband.” She is not released from law in general, but from the rule that bound her to that one man.

Ordinary marriage law works the same way. A widow marries again. The marriage law did not vanish when her first husband died. The same law that bound her to him now says she is free to marry, and the same law that would have called her an adulteress before now says she is not one. She did not walk out of the law. She went to a new husband within it.

What, then, were we released from? Verse 5 tells us:

“For when we were in the sarx(flesh), the sinful passions that came through the nomos(law) were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.”

That is what held us captive. The law exposed our sin and passed its sentence, and the fruit of that old life was death. That is the marriage that ended. We were released from condemnation, not from the standard.

Verse 6 shows what the released person does next: “so that we serve in newness of pneuma(spirit) and not in oldness of the written letter.” The word is douleuo δουλεύω dool-yoo'-o, to serve as a bondservant serves. Paul does not say that we stop serving. He says that we serve in a new way.

Paul Answers the Misreading

Paul knew how his words could be taken. Before anyone could conclude that the law was finished, he stopped them in the very next verse:

Romans 7:7 What then shall we say? Is the nomos(law) sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through nomos(law); for I would not have known epithymia ἐπιθυμία ep-ee-thoo-mee'-ah(lust, desire, strong craving) if the nomos(law) had not said, "You shall not have epithymia(lust, desire, strong craving)."

“May it never be!” And as the chapter goes on, he could hardly be clearer:

Romans 7:12 So then, the nomos(law) is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Romans 7:22 For I delight in the nomos(law) of God according to the inner person,

Romans 7:25 I give thanks to God through Yeshua Messiah our Lord! So then, I myself with my nous νοῦς nooce(intellect, spiritual domain) serve the nomos(law) of God, but with my sarx(flesh) the nomos(law) of sin.

Hold verse 4 and verse 25 side by side. The same man, in the same chapter, writes both “you also were made to die to the nomos(law)” and “I myself with my nous … serve the nomos(law) of God.” If dying to the law in verse 4 meant being no longer bound to it, Paul could never have written verse 25. No one delights in a law he believes is dead, and no one serves a law he has been set free from keeping.

Where Romans 8 Ends the Argument

Romans 8 draws the line beneath it all. We looked at these verses in Chapter 8 of this book, but here they complete what Paul has been saying:

Romans 8:3-4 For what was impossible for the nomos(law) — in that it was weak through the sarx(flesh) — God, by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful sarx(flesh) and concerning sin, katakrino κατακρίνω kat-ak-ree'-no(condemned) sin in the sarx(flesh), so that the dikaioma δικαίωμα dik-ah'-yo-mah(ordinance) of the nomos(law) might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the sarx(flesh) but according to the pneuma(spirit).

What was the law unable to do? It was not unable to tell us what is right, for that it did perfectly. It was “weak through the sarx(flesh),” unable to make the flesh obey. So God condemned sin in the flesh through His Son, “so that the dikaioma(ordinance) of the nomos(law) might be fulfilled in us.” The goal of the cross is not a people without the law’s requirement. It is a people in whom that requirement is at last met.

Who, then, refuses the law?

Romans 8:7 Because the phronema φρόνημα fron'-ay-mah(mindset) of the sarx(flesh) is hostility toward God, for it does not submit to the nomos(law) of God — indeed it cannot —

It is the flesh that “does not submit to the nomos(law) of God.” The side that resists the Torah is therefore not the Spirit but the flesh. A person born again of the Spirit is not someone who lives without law, but someone in whom the law’s requirement is fulfilled.

What the New Spirit Does

How does that come about? The prophets had already answered. Ezekiel, looking ahead to the day when God would renew His people, wrote this:

Ezekiel 36:26-27 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh) I will put within you; and I will remove the heart of stone out of your flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr'), and I will give you a heart of flesh (basar). And my spirit (ruach) I will put within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statutes (chuqqim חֹק khoke), and you shall keep my judgments (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt') and do them.

“And I will cause you to walk in my statutes (chuqqim).” Here is the meaning of serving “in newness of pneuma(spirit).” The Spirit does not replace the statutes; the Spirit is how we at last walk in them. The heart of stone is taken out, a heart of flesh is put in, and the Spirit causes us to walk in His statutes.

So Romans 7 should be read as it stands. We died, not the law. We were released from condemnation, not from obedience. And what remains for the one who has been released is service, by the Spirit, with delight.

At this point someone usually reaches for a single word to end the conversation: “That is legalism.” The word carries great force in the church. It is also a word that appears nowhere in the Bible, and it deserves a closer look.