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Welcome, everyone, to our Bible study through the book of Romans. This is Pastor
Tom Holliday. And this week we are looking together at Romans chapter 7.

You might remember last week we looked at the fact together that if you're going
to grow, grow as a Christian, you have to understand grace. This week we're
going to look together at the fact in Romans chapter 7 that if you are going to
grow, you have to understand the law. Specifically, you have to understand that
you're free from the law of God, the Old Testament law.

Something in our human nature makes us want to go to extremes. And last week we
talked about the extreme of license, that somehow we want to take God's grace
for granted and presume on God's grace by saying, "Hey, I can do anything now I
want with my life. " And of course that's not true.

Grace causes you to grow, not causes you to flee from God's love and God's
direction in your life. And this week we're going to talk together about the
extreme of legalism, the idea that to grow you really need to just keep to every
little bit God's law. Well, God's law was given for a reason, but that is not
the reason.

And if you and I are to grow in Jesus Christ, we have to understand that we are
free from the law. We have died to the law and so we are free from the law. And
in this section of Romans chapter 7, verse 6 verses we're going to look at
together today, we're going to look together at a picture that Paul gives of
this, a picture of marriage.

And we're going to, through that picture, see that spiritually the law no longer
has any hold on you. Let me read for you Romans chapter 7, verses 1 through 3.
"Do you not know, brothers, prime speaking to men who know the law, that the law
has authority over a man only as long as he lives?

For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is
alive. But if her husband dies, she's released from the law of marriage. So then
if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she's called an
adulteress.

But if her husband dies, she's released from that law. She's not an adulteress
even though she marries another man. " The law is not dead.

The law is not even bad as the old nature is. The law is simply not capable of
bringing us to salvation. It can't show us our sin.

It can't make us right before God. Now remember, we talked about a few weeks
ago, the law is talking about the Old Testament law, the law about sacrifices
and ceremonies and civil law and moral law contained in the Old Testament. And
here Paul reminds us that to grow in Christ, we have to realize that we're free
from the law.

What does it mean to be free from the law? It does not mean that we can just
ignore the moral direction that God gives us in the Old Testament. Obviously,
being free from the law doesn't mean that, well, now murder and adultery,
they're just okay.

Lying and stealing, no problem with those. To be free from the law or to die
through the law, as he talks about here, means that you no longer look to the
law for salvation or for the power to grow as a believer. The law is powerless
to save us or to grow us.

When you depend on the law, you find yourself getting up day after day trying to
pull yourself up by your own spiritual bootstraps, trying to find the power to
do what is right in that which is powerless to give you the power to do what is
right. It's a life where you feel that the burden's all on your shoulders and
that burden is too great for us to bear. Just repeat this phrase with me in your
mind.

Rules cannot produce growth. Say that again in your mind. Rules cannot produce
growth.

The entire book of Galatians is written to emphasize that truth for the
believer. This entire chapter of Romans is written to emphasize that truth.
Rules cannot produce growth.

Rules can force us to behave in certain ways, especially if they come with
enough reward or enough punishment, but they can't deepen our love or strengthen
our relationships. The kind of growth that God is working to bring into our
lives. If you're a parent and you give your children only rules, you never allow
them to make a decision on their own until maybe they're out of college, are
they going to be mature adults ready for life?

Not a chance. Rules alone can either produce unthinking compliance or more often
rebellion, but they can't produce growth. It takes something more than rules.

It takes something in the heart. God wants us to grow in our relationship with
him and rules cannot deepen relationships. The law does have a purpose.

It has a purpose in our lives before we become believers. It shows us how far we
are from God, but the law is not able to bring us near to God. Only Jesus Christ
can do that.

The law has a purpose in our lives now that we are believers. For those of you
that are thinking, how does this work in my life now that I'm a believer? The
law now that we're believers shows us the character and the goodness of God.

We're going to talk about that in a couple of days, but it cannot bring us near
to God. It cannot produce growth. The law was given and we have died to the law
and there's a reason.

We hear that in verse four. In verse four, Paul says, "So then, my brothers, you
also died to the law, to the body of Christ, that you might belong to another,
to him who was raised from the dead, in order that you might bear fruit to God.
" Did you hear in that verse two reasons that we've died to the law?

Two reasons that we're free from the law. One, that we might belong to another
and two, that we might bear fruit to God. Paul is going on with this marriage
illustration that he started with and he's saying in a marriage, if one person
dies and the other person remarries, they belong to another.

There's a commitment to another, but there's also a new opportunity for
fruitfulness in that marriage. Now, God said, "Be fruitful and multiply. " The
first thing you think of is children, but you also think of the kind of
relationship that God wants in a marriage.

The fruitfulness, the results that God wants to happen. What Paul is really
doing here is painting this picture. It's a picture of the way we used to be
when we were tied to keeping rules to produce growth and the way that we are
now, that we're tied to God's grace, freedom of God's grace.

He talks about that picture in verses five and six when he says, "For when we
were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law
were at work on our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying
to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in
the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. " You
notice he says, "We used to bear fruit for death.

" He talks about a problem and he talks about a process. He says, "Here's the
problem, the way it used to be. We were controlled by our sinful desire.

" And then he talks about the process. We're going to look at this quite a bit
during this week. The process, he says in this verse, is the sinful passions
aroused by the law were at work in our bodies.

There's a couple amazing verses in that phrase. First, he notes that the process
is sinful passions were even aroused by the law. The fact that there was a rule
made us want to break the rule.

We've all seen that in our own lives. We've seen it in our children. We've seen
it in teenagers that maybe you've tried to give a law to or a rule to.

We've seen it in every age at every aspect of life. The truth is the law often
arouses a sinful passion in us. That's what Paul says here.

He says that this sinful passion was at work in our bodies. It's interesting.
There's a lot in this passage about bodies.

It talks about the sinful passions aroused in our bodies, but it also talks
about the fact that Jesus Christ's body was given for us. Our bodies were given
to sin, but then Jesus's body was given for us so that we could be released from
sin. One of the fascinating things about that is that Christianity is a very
material religion, very material faith.

It's not this ethereal thing where everything just happens in a spiritual world
and it's really above and beyond our bodies in this world. No. Sin happens in
our bodies.

I sin when I do something stupid, something dumb with this body, these hands,
these eyes, these feet, this mind that God gave me. Jesus dealt with that in his
body in a material, physical, real way. That's the reality of faith and the
reality of the difference that Jesus Christ can make in our lives.

The picture is we used to be that way. Problem controlled by our sinful desires,
process the sinful passions aroused by the law. That's what we used to be.

"But now," verse six starts, "but now. " Again and again that phrase comes up in
Romans. "But now dying once bound us, but now we're unbound, but now we have
been released from the law, now we are released, but now we serve in a new way
of the Spirit.

We are released to serve. We are unbound and we are released to serve. "
Incredible verse about what God wants happening in my life and in your life
right now.

So let's talk to him about it. The Bible tells us that we've been released to
serve. Let's pray about how you and I might serve him today.

Just take a few minutes to say, "Jesus Christ, thank you that you want me to
live in a new way. " Instead of living the way I used to, where sinful passions
were aroused by rules and I found myself always frustrated trying to do what I
couldn't do in my own power, thank you that because of what Jesus has done, I
have been unbound. I have been released to serve.

And so today, help me to serve in the new way by the Spirit, drawing on you for
strength, looking to you for direction. And God, grateful to you for the power
that you give. Lord, I don't want to serve to impress other people.

I don't want to serve to work my way into heaven. I want to serve because you
love me. And I want to serve because you've already given me the gift of heaven
through my faith in your son, Jesus Christ.

And so today, out of that motivation, show me where to serve. In fact, right
now, even bring to my mind who I can serve, where I can serve, how I can serve
to make a difference because of your love for me today. I pray this, Jesus, in
your name, amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to continue to look together at what it means to be free
from the law. I know we've just touched on this and you probably still have a
lot of questions about it. So we're going to go into this a little bit more
deeply tomorrow as we continue in our look together through Romans chapter
seven.