The Good and Perfect Law of Grace

Romans 7:1-12

Freed from the Law

1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. 4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

Sin's Advantage in the Law

7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." 8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. 9 I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. 12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

The Law is compared to the marriage covenant which binds man and wife, a man and a woman, together until they part by the death of one of them.  Only then is a wife (or husband) free from the obligations of God’s law binding them to each other and not another.  If one should not wait for the death of the other and married someone else, it is adultery, and only the death of her husband sets her free to remarry under the eyes of the Lord according to His word and will as set forth in the scriptures.  This is a picture of our spiritual union with Christ who makes the binding covenant of the Law and its adherence to works to earn God’s favor null and void.  We are widow as it were from the old covenant of works that we might be joined in eternal unity with the Lord come from death to life and who nailed the Law’s requirements to the cross (Colossians 2:14) to signify that old relationship is over that the new may lawfully take its place with Jesus Christ as we become His bride in a corporate relationship.  The church is the bride set free from the Law of sin and death (Romans 8:2) that we may be joined in a most holy and unbreakable union of spiritual marriage to our Lord and Redeemer!  There is no divorce from the Lord once we are joined with Him as He never dies and promises the same for us in union with and in Him, now and past the grave with the certainty of our own resurrection of our bodies just as we have had in our spirits in our regeneration of rebirth in this life.  Since we have been freed from the Law and its rules to earn salvation and have died to that hopeless requirement, we have hope to conquer the sin which once held us in bondage as the Law only inflamed by unachievable demands of perfection.  That hope is in the perfect Lord who kept every aspect of the Law for our sakes that we might then find our unreachable righteousness in Him who reached down to us and not in our own efforts according to the letter of the Law.  Since we then are dead to that Law through the cross we have a new life in which to serve in the enabling power of His Holy Spirit living inside us until we enter heaven and are in His presence with incorruptible bodies away from the presence of sin which we still battle daily with here.  The Law brought our sin into view and never was evil or caused our sin; it only revealed our preexisting inherited sin as the old man under Adam and which were revealed by the Law of Moses to point us to the need of a Savior to fulfill the Law for us (Matthew 5:17) as only a perfect Man and God can be and accomplish.  The old Law by itself under the Old Covenant of works could never set us free or earn God’s favor be it demonstrated our inability to keep it completely (James 2:10-12) and led us to death as Adam and Eve found out by trying to be like God in knowing good and evil by themselves apart from God’s word and instruction (Hebrews 5:14).  As it is written here, sin only deceives us into thinking we can do good enough through keeping most of the Law (though not all as is required) and leads to death and judgment in the end.  The Law itself is good and just and holy, but our ability to keep it without God is impossible and leads to our sure destruction in the end.  Only through God putting His Spirit in us and writing His Law in our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33, Romans 2:15, Psalm 40:8, 2 Corinthians 3:3) can enable us to please Him and do what is right according to His Word.  Hebrews 10:16-17 reminds us that He has not only written the Law on the tablets of our hearts and not the cold stone tablets given to Moses, but that He has also forever forgiven our sins revealed by the failure to keep the hard stone commands to the letter by Hos work for us in perfect keeping of every not and tittle written for us to now follow with His enabling power and grace.  We are not freed from the Law but from its power over us to keep it ourselves apart from God’s work and wisdom and forgiveness of grace to slowly work it into us in our conformity to Christ in our lifetime of His sanctifying work in us (Psalm 138:8, Philippians 1:6) as promised.  May we strive in His wisdom and grace to keep His good moral Law as a response of grace and not to attempt to earn or keep it.  This is the good and perfect Law of Grace.  Amen.