Freedom from Bondage (Romans 6:15-7:6)

Pastor Ostella

8-8-99

We have entered now into some work on Romans 7-8. These chapters need to be seen in the context of the whole book. And we focus the larger context when we talk about the theme and shape of the book. The theme is rich and complex. I like the illustration of a cluster of grapes. If you look closely at a cluster of grapes, what do you see? For a few weeks now I have the status at home of being the fruit salad king; I am the dicer, slicer, and maker of all fruit salads. Sometimes my wife thinks I am more of a fruit cake peasant then a fruit salad king! But discharging this task has caused me to observe some things about the great variety of fruits that God has provided for us.

Regarding grapes in a cluster, what do you notice? I notice how compact the cluster may be. The little branches that have the stems with particular grapes hanging from them are intertwined so that sometimes you cannot pull a section without affecting other little branches. Often I end up pulling one grape off at a time. Romans is like that. The theme is a cluster, a compact cluster that makes up a rich and juicy whole. We have to deal with the theme as a whole, while noting each specific part at the same time. We have to deal with both a cluster and with individual grapes.

To get at the theme initially we have to begin with some individual grapes of truth. The theme is the gospel (briefest statement of the theme). Paul was set apart for the gospel (1:1, good news of God, another brief form). The central person in this gospel is Jesus Christ (1:3, regarding his Son…descendent of David, Jesus Christ our risen Lord). It is the gospel promised in the prophets of the OT Scriptures (1:2). In this gospel there is a core, "a righteousness from God" that is received by the obedience of faith (1:17). And this obedience is the fruit of a divine call (1:5-7). The apostles call by the gospel which is the context in which God extends a saving call (cf. Rom. 8:29-30, the foreloved are foreordained, called, justified and glorified by the effectual working of God the Almighty Alpha and Omega). This is all gospel, good news. Salvation is the work of God from beginning to end.

The shape of the book can be summarized in this way: introduction (1:1-17), the need of justification (1:18-3:20), the provision of justification (3:21-11:33), the duty of justification (12-15), and the conclusion (16).

To read the gospel to the Romans properly, we need all these truths that make up the theme of the book like a lushes cluster of grapes. The good news is found in the whole cluster. It is all edifying, cleansing, and sanctifying. There is much in this book on God's sovereign purposes. There are aspects that are difficult to understand and that are difficult to accept, but we must submit our hearts to our majestic Lord in reverence and awe. In this submission to Him we will find all these truths to be nourishing, uplifting, renewing, and revitalizing. To know that our salvation is totally the work of the Lord bends the knee in worship and forges the feet for service.

We narrowed down last week to Romans 7:1-6 on the Holy Spirit and the law. These teachings have some complexity and a number of you had some good questions about it. So we will try to clear some things up as we look at this part of Romans again under the title: "Freedom from Bondage." This is not a story about the other guy. It is not a story about the world or about people in general. It is a story about you; it is a story about me. The diagnosis about man's fallen condition is most importantly a story about ourselves, about our true condition in the fall. This fact, of course, makes this a difficult topic in Scripture because the heart is deceitful and disparately wicked. It is hard for us to face the truth about ourselves, even as professing Christians. We are so much like the madman in the wilderness who brings the queen of the realm to see a monster in the forest. Bending over the brook, he points and says, "look there is the monster." He cannot grasp the fact that the reflection he sees on the surface of the water is a reflection of his own ugliness. Scripture is like a mirror that reflects back to us some hard truths about you and me. Again, how true it is that we need God's diagnosis of our problem, we need to hear what He says and we need to confess it-to agree with God. But, remarkably, it is difficult for us to admit that what we see is the reflection of our own ugliness.

As the title indicates we have a problem (bondage) and a solution (freedom). I will deal with each beginning with the problem.

1A. Problem: Bondage under the law

Let's look again at Romans 7 and its context to see what is involved in this bondage under the law. And note carefully that this will help us understand what is meant by freedom from the law (if we misunderstand one we misunderstand both; the meaning of freedom is tied inseparably to what one is freed from).

First, it means to be under the authority of the law as long as you live (7:1). Don't let the word "only" throw you (as used by some translations like the NIV here). No Greek word supports this translation. What we have literally is "the law has authority over a man as long as he lives" with no "only." This is an aspect of bondage in the passage: its for life (cf. the word "bound," vs. 2, 6, but the meaning in v. 6 is much fuller than in v. 2). The jurisdiction of the law over us all our lives is the point of the illustration from marriage (vs. 2-3) which is "till death do us part." This text is not dealing with any exceptions that actually dissolve a marriage (as discussed by Jesus, Matt. 19:1-9). Paul uses an example of a person married to two people at the same time. The law identifies her as an adulteress. It calls sin by name. As a whole then, Paul stresses the fact that death of one party releases the other from the marriage covenant. He simply wants to isolate the point that the law has binding authority to such a degree that it can only be altered by death. Now we have part of the picture in view but not the whole.

Second, bondage under the law means that the law stirred up sin in us. Look at v. 5. The law aroused our sinful passions. This begins to bring into view our true state in the fall. Here we need a divine explanation. Many of us have been spared a life in sin. Some of you became Christians when you were young and the evil within you was prevented from bearing its worst fruits-though I am sure it bore plenty. Remember that inward sins of the heart are as bad as outward sins. But whatever our experience may have been, we still have sinful and deceptive hearts and have a difficult time logging the truth against ourselves.

Our state in sin is so bad that the righteous reflection of holiness and purity, the law of God, stirs us up, not to holy living, but to passionate sins from the heart. To get a fuller picture we need to ask, "What prompted the discussion of the law in 7:1?" The preceding paragraph crystallized a point being repeatedly made back to chapter 1. As fallen sinners, since the fall of our first parents, we were slaves to sin.   Consider how intense this language is regarding the former bondage in the middle of 6:19 (it was a voluntary slavery; we offered the parts of our body to it).

Note the unusual but telling language of 6:20. The only kind of freedom that we have in our natural state in the fall is freedom from righteousness. That is what makes the teaching on free will so false though it is widespread. As I have said before, probably the biggest hoax of modern thinking, especially in America and especially in matters of philosophy of religion and ethics, is the claim that man has a free will. Remember that man does not have a will like having a heart or lung. It is the person that is free or not. We should speak of a free person who wills instead of having a free will. And if you ask, "Where in the Bible does it speak of unsaved man being free in his exercise of will?" The answer is obvious. Nowhere. But if you ask, "does the Bible speak of unsaved man having an enslaved will, or better, of man being enslaved in his exercise of will?" then the answer is obvious. Yes. Everywhere it deals with man's state in the fall it indicts: man is a slave to sin; he loves darkness and hates the light and will not come to the light; he is an evil tree that only brings forth evil fruit.

Nowhere in the Bible does it speak of fallen man as having a free will. But again a better way of expressing this is to say: "nowhere in the Bible, either explicitly or implicitly, does it speak of the natural man as being free in the exercise of his will." Does he exercise his will? Yes. Does he make choices everyday? Yes. But the important question is this: "is the natural man free, does he have freedom, as he goes about day by day making choices and exercising his will?". No he is not; instead, he is a slave in bondage to sin (cf. the sermon, "Does Man Have a Free Will?").

Again, note carefully the use of the word "free" here in this context and throughout the Bible (the slave to sin is free, free from righteousness-free from ethical living). What a graphic way of showing us our bondage in sin. Think of a football field with its four boundary lines. Let's say that inside the boundary lines of this football field is only righteous turf and outside these boundaries is only unrighteous turf. The non-Christian is free from righteousness. He makes choices everyday. He roams around the football field taking this pathway of this sin or that. He may even day dream about goodness, righteousness and religion. But he never sets foot on the field of righteousness. Why? Is it because he is a puppet on a string? No. Is it because he is being forced to do evil by some outside power – as Flip Wilson, the comedian used to say, "because the devil made me do it"? Not at all! Does God prevent him from coming into the righteous turf as if he wants to come but God blocks him? No. Why then does he never set foot on this turf? Because being a slave to sin means that he wants to sin, he does not want to serve God. This is his desire deep in his soul. He cannot do anything else because the inclination of his heart is to sin always. He wants to sin because he is a sinner. Again that describes you and it describes me in our unsaved state (this describes "the weakness of your natural selves," 6:19a).

We should make the following distinction clear. People are not sinners because they sin. They sin because they are sinners. This is what is in the human heart. So the evil tree brings forth evil fruit and the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. This is what we want and will because this is what we are deep within and there is nothing we can do to change ourselves (Jer. 13:23, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.").

In 6:21, the end of it all, pointedly, is death. This is a sobering look at ourselves. To be under the law is to be in bondage to sin in our "natural" state in the fall. We are totally helpless. The law intensifies sin in us. And we are without excuse (cf. Rom. 3:10-19 which describes our bondage under the law. We are helpless and unable to do good and though unable we are nonetheless inexcusable). It is a bad state that we are in as fallen sinners. We are sick, sin sick. We need to hear all of God's diagnosis. He tells us of our utter helplessness in our natural state as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve (Rom. 5:12, by one man). Now let's shift out thoughts to the remedy to this state under the law of sin and death.

2A. Solution: freedom from bondage

The marriage illustration paved the way for the point that the solution to our sin problem under the law is death-the only way out is in a pine box. So how can there be Christians living on this earth if no one is freed from the law except by death? The answer is that Christians are people who died with Christ. Christians are people who were crucified with Christ back there at Calvary. Outsiders are often perplexed at the attention to the cross that characterizes Christianity all through the pages of the New Testament. One of the reasons for this attention is that the people of God died with Christ on the cross (Christians died to the law through the body of Christ, Rom. 7:4; baptism symbolizes our union with Christ in His death, Rom. 6:3-4; we were united with him in death and crucified with him, Rom. 6:5-6). What Christ did on the cross effected the change in these Romans who thus became fellow Christians (brothers) with Paul. What Christ did on the cross nearly 2000 years ago effected the change in you and me that released us from the bondage of the law, if we are believers. His death and resurrection had a purpose: we died to the law in order to be released, to belong to Christ and to bring forth fruit to God. (7:4).

Let me emphasize the profound truth as to when this death occurred. Note what is not said here (in 7:4; 6:1-8). It is not the case that we died with Him when we believed. Instead, we died with Him when He died. The substitutionary death of Christ is such a marvelous truth! And what He did for us on the cross was applied to us by His call, as we saw last week comparing 7:4 with 1:6-7. The death of Christ caused us to belong to Christ and to bear good fruit ( 7:4). But how is my death with Christ back in history applied to me in my life time? It is by God's call. "Called to belong to Him" (1:6) is parallel with the goal of His death: in order that we belong to Him (7:4). We also have good fruit (7:4) paralleled with called to be saints (1:7, saints are "holy ones," people set apart for obedience).

We should also comment on the fact that he makes the awesome point that love is the tap root of calling. Compare v. 7 with 8:30 where all the loved are predestined to the glory of the image of Christ. Foreknew, as shown in a previous sermon, 8-9-98, is "loved intimately beforehand." After reaching back into God's plan-to His loving plan of our conformity to Christ (foreordained to His image), Paul then moves forward into God's actions on our behalf in time: All the fore-ordained or pre-destined are called, all the called are justified, and all the justified are glorified. These are His acts in getting His loved ones to their destiny.

What a remarkable thought, we died with Him. Can any thought reach deeper into the heart of the Christian, then this one: that when Jesus died he took my sins with Him to the cross and bore away the punishment of the law and He secured my release from the law's power! It is beyond comprehension that He did this for me, an undeserving sinner and slave to sin.

Effectual calling is a blessing granted to us by our great high priest and it is rooted and grounded in His death. Compare Paul's teaching with John 12:32, where calling is described as drawing or actually bringing to Jesus, as He says, "to myself." By the cross, He will effectually draw Gentiles-all men, men of all nations-to Himself (cf. the Greeks in context). He does this through the word of the apostles (as via Paul, Rom. 1:4-5). Through the risen Christ, Paul was appointed to call people from among the Gentiles to obedience. Our very faith, our obedience of faith, is the gift of the death of Christ on the cross for us. It is a gift as a bestowal not simply an offer (as stated in hymn 143, He created faith in me; this should be sung always with thanksgiving).

That it takes a powerful work of Christ in death and resurrection to free us shows how bad this bondage really is. It is aptly said, "Ye who think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful load; tis the word the Lord's anointed, Son of man and Son of God." Also, that it takes the power of God's call to set us free shows the severity of this bondage. Furthermore, all this magnifies the glory of the blessings of grace to undeserving sinners like ourselves.

So we have freedom. We have been released for the new way of the Spirit (7:6). This explains how slaves to sin who are free from righteousness come to faith. They are set free. Consider Romans 6:17 for a moment. Paul says to the Roman Christians, "you wholeheartedly obeyed" (or obeyed from the heart). How do we explain this in light of all the verses on slavery to sin, suppression of the truth, doing of nothing good, and the inability of slaves to submit themselves to God (Rom. 8:7)? There is only one answer: these slaves were set free (6:18). It is by God; that is why Paul thanks God and not the Romans (6:17a). It is God's call that releases us from bondage under the law of sin and death. The heart that would do evil only and continually is changed; the evil tree is made a good tree; the sinner is drawn to Christ; so then out from the new heart flows the obedience of faith. Do you see how wrong it would be to say that the Romans, or you or I, were set free because we wholeheartedly obeyed? That has the cart before the horse. It denies that we were in bondage. The slave to sin is not one who can simply choose to love and obey God. If he could do that he would not be a slave. Again, Romans 8:7-8 says clearly that in our fallen state as slaves to sin our minds are hostile to God, we do not submit to God's law and authority over us, we cannot submit in obedience to God (v. 7). Instead, we are controlled by the sinful nature (v. 8).

We have terribly evil hearts. This is an indictment against you and me. But what grace, what marvelous grace-God sets His love on us and sets us free. This is totally His doing and it is not suspended on any response from us because our only response is hostility. But when He sets us free, we run to Jesus. "Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night; Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose went forth and followed thee." This hymn expresses it well. "Imprisoned and bound in sin," that was our natural state in the fall. By God's "quickening ray my chains fell off and my heart was free." Being free, I followed Jesus, I obeyed from the heart and submitted myself to His law, to His authority, to Him.

Look carefully and thoughtfully at your bondage. Consider "the pit from which you have been digged." Face this indictment squarely. If you do, then you will cling ever so tightly to Jesus Christ the risen Lord of glory and grace. And you will do so with bended knee, in reasonable service, and with lips expressive of undying gratitude.

May we fall down before the majesty of our God in due recognition of our true state in sin. May we abhor ourselves and lay claim to nothing before His righteous throne. Grant it O God, that we may cling to the Lord Jesus Christ renouncing all self-reliance and exclaiming that it is "Thy work alone O God" that has brought me to worship at Your feet." To God be the glory forever and ever, Amen!