(RASV-1901)

ROMANS

CHAPTER 7

   THIS next segment must be considered by keeping both God’s visible dispositions and God’s invisible dispositions in an operative state. That is, the man and his wife are clearly in a visible state, but the death spoken of here "you also were made dead" is a part of the invisible state. Just as the "oldness of the letter" is observing the natural and visible, and the "newness of the spirit" is observing the spiritual and is a part of the invisible:

   ROMANS 7—“¹Or are you ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long a time as he lives? ²For the woman that has a husband, is bound by law to the husband while he lives; but if the husband dies, she is discharged from the law of the husband. ³So then if, while the husband lives, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: But if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man.

   ⁴Wherefore, my brethren, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that you should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God. ⁵For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. ⁶But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter."

   aaron-Then examining sin and the law:

    ^"7What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had not known sin, except through the law: For I had not known coveting, except the law had said, you shall not covet. ⁸But sin, finding occasion, worked in me through the commandment all manner of coveting.

   For apart from the law sin is dead. ⁹And I was alive apart from the law once. But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. ¹⁰And the commandment, which was unto life, this I found to be unto death. ¹¹For sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me. ¹²So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good.

   ¹³Did then that which is good become death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, by working death to me through that which is good; --that through the commandment sin might become exceedingly sinful.” Amen!

   aaron-By recognizing the death that is attached to sin, this passage has outlined the process that is involved in the crucifying of the flesh.

   “¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual: But I am carnal, sold under sin. ¹⁵For that which I do, I do not fully understand: For the things I approve, I do not practice; but the things I hate, that I do. ¹⁶But if I do what I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. ¹⁷So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwells in me. ¹⁸For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. ¹⁹For the good that I approve, I do not do: But the evil which I would not do, that I practice. ²⁰But if I do what I would not do, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. ²¹I find then the law, that, when I desire to do good evil is present with me. ²²For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:

   ²³But I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. ²⁴O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?

   ²⁵I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin."