“Since I am speaking to those who understand law, brothers, are you unaware that the law has authority over someone as long as he lives?
Therefore, my brothers,
you also were put to death
in relation to the law
through the crucified body of the Messiah,
so that you may belong to another — to Him
who was raised from the dead — that we may bear fruit for God."
-Romans 7:1-4
When we say that we die what do we mean?
We all pray that we would die to our self and that we would be new creations, leaving our old ways behind.
Yet, many of us continue to stay with the same bad habits and inclinations toward sin.
What exactly does it mean that we were put to death?
Paul begins with the example of marriage. He uses the law to show that if you're married then that in itself means something. It means you belong to your spouse, so that if one of you goes off and sleeps with someone else you have broken God's law of marriage and will be punished. However, if one of you dies then you're technically no longer married. A living person cannot be married to a dead person. So that if the living one remarries they do not break any law because once their former spouse died they were set loose from that covenant vow. They became single again.
Paul emphasizes this abiding law. The power of punishment was only present when both people were alive in their marriage. When one died the law no longer mattered because their was no more connection. The living and the dead do not and cannot be connected so neither does the law uphold its authority when one is lost to death. And since the living person is now single the law is now present for him or her as a single person. Meaning that person is allowed to marry again without punishment for breaking the law. The law is for those abiding in life. Because the law has to do with how we live.
So this means if you are married and you cheat on your alive spouse then you are subject to the requirements of the law, which is punishment. Because God's law says "thou shalt not commit adultery." However, if your spouse dies, then that law no longer pertains to you because you are no longer married. You can marry someone else and it would be totally legal.
Okay, I hope we all understand that point.
Two living people = married.
One living + one dead = not married.
“Since I am speaking to those who understand law, brothers, are you unaware that the law has authority over someone as long as he lives?"
So if he's dead the law no longer has relevance to him because it's for living people.
Now let's look what Paul says a few verses later...
"Therefore, my brothers,
you also were put to death
in relation to the law"
Okay so here one of us is no longer subject to the law of God! I mean, that almost sounds heretical. So what does Paul mean?
We were put to death in relation to the law.
This means that at some point before we met Jesus we were abiding in the law of the living. The law of the living is that law that God gave to Moses about what a human can or can't do in the world that He created to flourish. Breaking the law (which is sin) will lead to all kinds of forms of death: sickness, spoiled relations, depression, isolation, and everything that leads a person's steps toward self-destruction. Why would we want to stop abiding in this?
Because this law never helped us abide in it, it only showed us why we were self destructing.
It outlined the things that were bad for us, but it had no power to help us not do those things. We had to rely on our choices and will power to stick to the guidelines to life, but apparently not much has changed from back then because people still know better while choosing what's bad for them. Why is that? Because our will power is corrupted and weak. We don't make good choices because we don't have perfect goodness in us to do so. In other words, we are unable to make the kind of choices that will benefit our lives to the fullest. We can make some good choices, but eventually we will fail at some point in the law, and in fact we will see that we fail at every point of the law because that's how dysfunctional only one sin is. All it takes is ONE sin and we are screwed. So the law showed us why we were screwed by showing us how we needed to live--exposing how we don't live like that. In other words it was a good thing or a light that shone on our bad stuff. The law was always good because it was showing us the way to God, but it was not in itself the way to God--More like the brochure to get to Him. So we all had this brochure and it would say something like "in order to get God you need a million dollars made of white gold from the Swiss alps and dipped in stardust and sprinkled with rocks from the moon." And people would try and attempt to get this but nobody could ever do it. So in that silly analogy the law showed us what we needed but it didn't help us get those things on the list.
So Paul is saying something like: when you were living before Christ you were abiding by the law of the living, and that list continued to show you how impossible it was for you to get God. The law of the living said you needed to be a certain kind of person, essentially a perfect person, a holy person, if you wanted to get God because God is perfect and holy. And of course everyone wanted to get God at that time because they knew God was all goodness, love, security, and eternal. To get God meant to get life. To miss out on God was to go down the path of self destruction. Without God we were not abiding in life, we were more like prisoners in a concentration camp standing in line for the gas chambers and we had no way of escape because we simply did not have what was required to be free. The powers of sin were stronger than our power to escape.
You might ask or wonder why? Why were we so weak and incapable? Why couldn't we somehow just have the power to do what the law required for us to have God and live life?!
Well, we did at one point. Way back when the first of our kind was created, and instead of making God's Word right he and his wife made it doubtful. How many of us doubt God's Word today? We got that from our parents who got it from theirs who got it from their parents who got it from their parents who got it from their parents all the way back to Cain and Seth who got it from their parents: Adam and Eve. Because all it takes is ONE sin to mess up an entire race.
Maybe you think if you were the first man or woman you would not have doubted God's Word, or more specifically that you wouldn't have eaten that Apple. I am allergic to apples so I for sure would have stayed away, but what if it was a juicy pear that God said "Jamie, you can eat anything you want, except that pear tree." Every time I walked in the garden I'd see PEAR TREE. I'm pretty sure one of those days whether in 2 or 2 million I would have cracked and ate it. I don't like the idea that I cannot have something that appears good. None of us do. I don't like when I can't have something I might really want. Do I know that I want it, not always, in fact, hardly am I ever 100% sure that what I desire is what I truly want because it's good for me. Most of the time I want what I want for no deeper reason than the fact that I think it might be good. If I didn't think it would be good I wouldn't desire it!
So Adam and Eve were in a sense always destined to fall. God created humans to enjoy them by their free will, and He knew they'd screw up. But God allowed the fall to happen probably because He knew something was going to make their freedom even more beautiful.
"through the crucified body of the Messiah,
so that you may belong to another — to Him"
God had it planned from the beginning that Christ would be the way for us humans to have God. Christ would be the way and not our abiding in the law. The law was there only as a preface to show that Christ was the way. The law was there to show us that we were not given a free will to choose God, but that our free will was what would show us how much God loves us! We choose to doubt, we choose to sin, we choose to give up or turn around and quit, we choose to disobey what God asks of us, because as free beings we hold an awareness to our choices. How aware are you of your choices?
We are so aware we end up hating ourselves
or blaming others.
So Paul writes "you were put to death in relation to the law through the crucified body of the Messiah." All your free choices were now detached from the law. You no longer were subject to the law. It doesn't say "you were put to death." Clearly we are still alive in the physical sense, but in relation to the law we are dead. The law no longer impinges on our free choice to choose God. The law no longer shows us how we screw up at getting God. Now the law still reveals how bad our free will was in living life, but it does not hold us back from getting God. The list has been torn in the body of Jesus. The only person able to tear that list was God Himself! He came and said, I'm taking all your free willed choices, the bad ones, the wicked ones, the selfish and greedy ones, the self loathing ones, the blaming ones, and the worst one of all: the doubting God ones. He took all those choices that broke the law and died the death meant for a million billion people. He was our penalty of death substitute. He took our place in line at the gas chamber, and he set us free from the camp. He set us free from how our free will to disobey God was liable to punishment. We were there because we chose to make bad choices. Jesus allowed us to keep our free will but made it more free by taking away the punishment for our bad choices! He took away the death!
This is really mind boggling. This is the gospel.
Paul writes:
"who was raised from the dead — that we may bear fruit for God."
Jesus died our death, took away our obligation, our trying, our attempting, our efforts, our working, and our punishment for failing to do so, so that all we had in the end was His winning, His success, His finished work on the cross, and His life for us. We have life without the law because Christ completed the list on the law once he died. He completed it and then tore it up. Then he raised Himself up from the dead to prove that He would now do the same for us who believed in Him!
Now we don't try to earn or work or succeed at life. We look at Jesus as our new law.
Jesus shows us true freedom. Jesus gives us the life we all always wanted but never could quite will ourselves to reach. Now we have a free will that is covered by His blood.
So immediately the question might arise:
"What should we say then?
Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply?"
We died in relation to the law. We are no longer in line at the gas chamber. Why or how could we still be in line? We died to that!
Absolutely not!
How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in a new way of life.
For if we have been joined with Him in the likeness of His death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of His resurrection.”
Romans 6:1-5
So my question is this:
What kind of death have you died?
Have you died in relation to the law?
Or have you died in some other way....?
What kind of death have you died?
There is no half death.
We have either died to the punishment of the law or we have not.
If we have then we have the life that it promised through Jesus who finished the list for us.
So what kind of death have you died?
So then when we fall into sin we bring those law breaking choices to God and leave them at the foot of the cross. Every single one of them. And we walk away sin free, we walk away perfect.
We die with Christ by no longer being affected by our sinful choices as to be enslaved by them or in fear of the punishment of them. Instead we use our new freedom to ask God to show us the way and to show us what is keeping us in bondage to sin? But we do all of this freely, because it holds no punishment for us. We are in a maze to find Life and God is allowing us to look through every crevice with the promise that Jesus has finished it and we are now free to experience each part of the maze without fear of losing or not making it.
So as we go about our lives in the maze or the matrix or whatever analogy you want to call the unexpected and unknown, we carry the Life of Christ given to us.
We have Life, now what is it that you really want from Life?
Or in other words, what kind of death have you really died?
I want goodness, love, joy, and intimacy from Life. I have to die to competing and comparing. To envy and self loathing. I have died to those things that bring me death. The life I now live I live by faith not by my body.
Jmegrey
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