Legend writes:
yes I agree, Jesus expanded the ten commandments.
Me too. Not adding, just expounding. He expanded them enough to demonstrate that all are sinners - lest there be doubt. Then he compressed them into two rules. Love God/love neighbour
Romans 7, the way I understand it, is all about how the law cannot bring life. Flesh is the cause of sin (Rom 7:5,6). Because of sin and the dominance of flesh, men find it impossible to follow the law. Paul himself moans about how he's held captive by his own flesh and awaits deliverance (Rom 7:24).
There is much which stands to reason. See what you think Legend.
1Do you not know, brothers”for I am speaking to men who know the law”that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? 2For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 3So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
All law demands obedience. Both our own worldy law and the biblical law. Our law /commandments must be followed or punishment will ensure. "Do this, don't do that - or else". And at any point in life one is subject to it. But if one has committed a crime in everyday life, say a murder, and dies before the trial (Judgment), then the law is powerless. You have escaped its domain. Paul is talking common sense. But he is also talking about our spiritual condition. It is not just our bodies which are subject to Gods law, but also our spirits. Whilst our bodies can escape the temporal aspects of Gods law (pain, decay, disease and finally death) by dying, our eternal spirit, as it is, cannot. For the law is eternal also. The only way our spirit can escape the punishing intent of the spiritual police is if somehow or other it can be induced to die. And in doing so, flee the juristiction. But how can an already dead-to-God spirit die? By inverting Pauls analogy: bring the dead spirit to life. Change the juristiction in which it dwells ti whit: translate it out from its positon under the reign of the law of sin and death
Paul tells us in the very next sentence that this has in fact happened to a Christian. They have 'died', spiritually to the law. The law-as-punishment can no more claim juristiction over them spiritually than can temporal law claim juristiction over us when we physically die. It happens only through Christ ("nobody comes to the father except THROUGH me")
4So, my brothers, you also died (spiritually) to the (punishing)law (of sin and death) through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.(no spiritual dying > no spiritual fruit bearing) 5For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. 6But 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.
If law means "do this, do that" and we are released from it by dying then we are no longer captive to the power of the law. And the only power the law of sin and death has is to punish us for not complying. The Law cannot make a person comply in and of itself. Indeed Paul appears to be blaming the Law for causing us to become absolute law breakers. A possible conclusion. But...
7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." 8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.
Laws purpose explained. The purpose of the law is to let a man know he is a sinner. The example of offence Paul gives: covetting, existed before the law came. Adding the law let people know clearly that this was an offence.
The law started out with "Don't eat of the fruit" and expanded right out with Jesus' exposition on the mount. To wrap it all up, Jesus summed all possible sin that could ever be carried out in thought, word or deed by issuing 2 golden rules: love God (don't offend him in any way) love you neighbour (don't offend him in any way). 1000's of ways to sin every single day. Impossible to avoid doing. Unless dead to law, the law has you completely within its grasp
11For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
The law holy though it is, was issued so that sin, doing only as evil can do, would use it to trap you in its clutches. Not a little bit sinful but completely and totally sinful. The more law the more sin you are guilty of committing. Steeped up to the neck in it. Jesus' 2 rules provides a law which can convict us of every thought. word and deed we could have - should we ever transgress.
14We know that the law is spiritual (like I said above); but I am unspiritual (born in Adam - with a dead-to-God spirit), sold (by the law) as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do”this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
This is not Paul speaking of himself in this incidently. He is not describing himself personally as if this applied to him at the time of writing. The grammatical tense used when he says "I am this that and the other's" has made a switch to a perpetual tense where he throws his voice as it were, and speaks the mind of "everyman". He is describing that which is going through a mans mind when the law (the schoolteacher) begins the final leg of its intended work of leading a person to Christ. Everyman has arrived at the point of conversion.
Point of conversion is what is being described all the way up to end of chapter. Everyman is coming to see that the law is in fact good. Whereas before, it was something that cramped his style and was to be circumvented (by following the temporal letter and not the spiritual spirit of it) he nows sees it as good. Adultery isn't a bit of fun whose guilt induced must be buried a.s.a.p., it actually is wrong: it destroys lives and makes people unhappy. Anger is wrong. Rather than point the finger and justify ones getting angry - everymans starts to see the hurt and pain it causes. Breaking the speed limit cos he is in a rush is wrong - he sees he is unjustified in putting precious lives and others health at risk.
"BUT I STILL DO IT!" Having this knowledge of the laws goodness is tormenting him. For knowing it and concurring with it - yea even WANTING to follow it does him no good. For he finds he still breaks it - even though he doesn't want to!
What is a behaviour that one hates increasingly, yet is one which one finds one cannot give up. Its called and addiction. Slavery. A addicted slave to sin. "I thought I was my own all along. I thought I was making my own choices according to my own free-will, I had my morality worked out and that according to that I was a fine fellow (even if I slipped occasionally but hey! who doesn't). I didn't realise the drug I choose to ingest. I didn't realise it would prove habit forming. I didn't see, like any other addict, that I would become completely dependant in it"
Paul continues describing the torment of the person being convicted (convinced) by the law....
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
Prior to this, the law has been something which the man has twisted and contorted to suit his own book. Now it turns on him like a roaring lion. Aslan is not a tame lion. The Law of sin and death pins him in a corner and screams in his face
"YOU'RE AN ADDICTED, HELPLESS LAWBREAKER. AND YOU ALSO REALISE NOW WHAT THE WAGES OF THAT ARE"
24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
The cry of sheer anguish of an addict. He resides in a body which is filled with sin. He is trapped. Its going down and he is going down with it. There are no excuses to hide behind anymore. His state of addiction and helplessness has been fully revealed. There is nowhere left to turn. Paul doesn't enter into the private moment that occurs when everyman turns to the only one who can help him now. There are billions of people and billions of ways in which the appeal might be couched. Perhaps it could be this thought which instigates the turning back to God. The thought that causes the Prodigal to lift his head from the pigstys trough.
"All who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved"
25Thanks be to God”through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Everymans post-conversion exclamation.
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
The split has occured. No longer a dying physical body umbilically attached to an already dead-in-Adam spirit. Instead a physically dying body being progressively shed from an alive-in-Christ spirit. That dead spirit has been re-born into life. It is freed from the law of sin and death. It is freed from the death-like grip of the Law.
A justified spirit, made righteous in Christ contained within a sinful flesh can only result in one thing. War! A war we are henceforth exhorted to fight. Until the day the dying flesh draws its last breath is finally reunited with a new body. A glorified body. A resurrection body. A body just like Jesus' body.
To enjoy Him forever.
This message has been edited by iano, 05-May-2006 04:39 PM
™ Version 4.2