Romans 7 – why, Paul did you write Romans 7?

We – that is evangelicals who believe the bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God – have a problem. We know we can’t say it because it’s daft and contradictory, but, secretly, we have a problem.

There are some scriptures we don’t really believe.

They are slippery like bars of soap. Because we’re evangelicals we know they must be true but the truth is they haven’t ‘entered’ and shed any light…yet.

Some say the journey of the word is from the head to the heart. Not so. The words are no-where near our heads – if our heads are where our understanding lies.

The word of God, in fact, anything from God, who is spirit, is spiritually discerned. That’s the location for everything that happens, our hearts, our ‘inner man’, our spirit joined with His Spirit. That’s where it all kicks off.

Didn’t Jesus say ‘my words are spirit and life’? Not an intellectual puzzle that only the bright can discern.

So it is with one of perhaps the evangelicals’ most treasured scriptures – Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Romans works nicely up to Chapter 5 v 2.

Then we question Paul’s logic.

We want Paul to jump straight to Romans 8 v 1 and carry on. Maybe miss out Romans 9-11 (not much use to us unless you like endless debates about free will and predestination in the different packaging of election and grace, or Israel and the church). Romans 12 to the end is OK as a final flourish, but really, say many evangelicals (I’m one: if an evangelical is a person that believes the bible is reliable and, more than that, is the word of God) ‘Why didn’t Paul stop at the end of chapter 8…that’s what I would have done’.

5v2/8v1 ‘…we have access into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the glory of God’….‘therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’

‘This would have been much better, Paul. Your ‘therefore’ flows perfectly, now, and I’m happier with that.’

Here’s verse 3, and here’s my guess why we have so much trouble with the continuity with Romans. We know that commitment to Christ (in fact commitment to anything, any cause) will bring conflict and suffering, so we can ‘accept’ it as unavoidable, if unpleasant, but my hunch is that we don’t really ‘see’ how it fits in with Paul’s argument that runs from Romans 1v1 to 16 v27. We know it’s inevitable but we don’t really have much of a handle on why; it’s not integrated not our ‘theology’.

‘And not only that but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character, hope…’

There’s that word again ‘know’ like Paul uses a few verses on in chapter 6 ‘…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…’

Verse three is a small warning shot that leads on to chapters 6 and 7.

Chapter 7

As you may know, there’s an interminable debate about who the ‘I’ is in verses 13 to 25. Some verses seem to suggest the pre-Christian Paul and others the Christian Paul…and therefore ‘us’ by extension.

Let’s not get distracted; it’s verses 1-6 that are key.

Paul uses marriage between a man and a woman as a metaphor for being ‘married’ to the law i.e. trying to please God by obedience to the law by our own effort.

The woman, the wife, is married to her husband ‘the law’. Her husband is good, there’s no doubt about that. He’s perfect. But all he can do is point out the imperfections in his wife. He won’t help her, only condemn her. It’s not much of a marriage, and she has had enough.

She can’t divorce him (it wasn’t permitted) so the only way seems to be to wait until he dies then she will be free. ‘But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband’ v2. She can’t marry another man whilst married to the law or she’ll be an adulteress. It looks as if she is stuck.

But remember Romans 6 v 6 – and her we climb out of the metaphor for a second and return to reality. The reality is that we have been crucified with Christ. She has died!

‘Therefore…you have become dead to the law through the body of Christ’ v 4

The husband hasn’t died. The Law hasn’t died. But she has!

Now we begin to see the purpose of our crucifixion with Christ. It is to release us from the law, from the impossibility of obedience from our own efforts (trapped as we are in Adam – see chapter 5). Now we are free to marry another.

‘…so that you may be married to another – to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.’

Now we are married to Christ. Every believer. Not the old you. That was crucified, died and buried with Christ. But now you have been raised as a new creation, married to Christ to bear fruit that come from being married to Christ – a far better husband, who can and will help us.

We seem to have arrived back at 5v2 ‘we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope…’and then Paul goes and spoils it all over again by writing about the tortured person in v 13-25. It was looking so good? Why write 13-25?

The reality is that the wife has been married so long to the law and measured herself against his high standards. And, in the past when she failed, she redoubled her efforts, her resolve, and used all her ingenuity and imagination and resources to ‘improve’. Now she is married to a marvellous, loving husband, she really wants to please him and so sets about on the same path. The bible calls this self-effort the ‘flesh’. But her new husband, Christ, is showing her a new way, ‘not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit’. In chapter 8 Paul summarises it like this:

‘if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if you live according to the Spirit you will put to death the deeds of the body, you will live’

In the West in particular, we have been trained, taught, and encouraged to stand on our own two feet, to work hard, to be good, to be rational and solve our problems using our minds and so on. But if Christ, if Jesus, is going to help us we must listen to His way, which is to live by the Spirit. We need to be re-trained.

All our previous ‘in Adam’ way of living must die. Our crucifixion with Christ must seep through every part of our being.

Jesus was perfect. He was the sinless Son of God. We are rightly taught that He died in our place, for our sins, to save us from our sins. If you like that was to deal with the negative aspects of our life. But Jesus also taught there was a positive aspect of His death for us:

‘Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces many seeds. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ John 12 v 24,25

Here, the purpose of the crucifixion of Christ is not redemption but reproduction.

As a result of his sacrifice, going into the ground and dying, is more fruit, more seeds. Exact copies of the original, with the same life as the original seed.

Each believer is now a ‘seed’. That’s great you say! ‘I’m a new creation, no more in condemnation’, as the song goes. We’re back at Romans 5v2 ‘here in the grace of God I stand’.

But in your heart you know, you know, you know, what Jesus said. Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone. You know the scriptures say we’re being conformed to His death:

‘That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death…’ Philippians 3 v 10

This is the Christian life. This is the path ahead for all disciples. It was for THE disciples, and it is for us. We are not to be lone Christians, we must fall into the ground and die…or we will remain alone. All that independent thinking, all that reliance on our own ability, all that pride, all that strength, all those credentials, all that ‘I’.

We learn a new way:

‘…so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the letter’ 7v6

My L-plates are on. They have been since day 1 as a believer. There are no experts in the body of Christ. There is one head and that is Christ. We must rely on His life as our life. His life in us will shine like a light and show us where we are still relying on our own resources.

Final note

Living by His Spirit in us does not render us as passive imbeciles, controlled as puppets with a new set of strings! We don’t become religious automatons! Jesus wasn’t. Our souls are precious. Our minds – our ability to think is a wonderful gift. Our whole emotional apparatus is extraordinary. And our ability to choose left or right, our wills, are invaluable. And all the more, if the river of God is flowing through them to others beyond our souls and bodies.