July 21

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! ~ Romans 7:7

Dead to the Law, Alive in Christ

“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ~ Romans 7:7

We live in a day and age where the cry of freedom is shouted from the rooftops. Freedom from religion. Freedom from rules. Freedom to do whatever you want. But the truth is, no one is really free until they have died to the right thing and come alive to the right Person. Romans 7 slices straight into that reality. It exposes the difference between being bound under the law and being one with Christ, and if you don’t understand the difference, you’ll never walk in the new life God is offering you.

The passage opens with a simple statement about life: “Or do you not know, brothers, indeed, if you do, you have in fact returned to living by the old written code, is that a woman is bound by the law to her husband while he lives, but if the man dies, she is freed from the law of marriage?” (Romans 7:1-2a). That is not a principle about marriage. It is an illustration. God is using it to point to a much greater reality. The point is this: We were once married to the law, the written code of commandments. But a great exchange has taken place. We died to that old marriage through the body of Christ (Romans 7:4). If you are in Christ, then you are no longer under the law, you are under Him. You have been set free from that old marriage.

Let me be clear on this: The law is not the problem. Romans 7: 12 declares, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” The problem was not the law, it was us. Our sinful flesh perverted what was good, and used it to fuel our rebellion against God. The law says, “Don’t covet,” but sin used that commandment not to calm our coveting but to make it worse. That is how perverse we are apart from God. We take what is good and turn it into a weapon against ourselves.

The law exposes sin, but it can’t save from it. It reveals our need, but it can’t provide a solution. And that is precisely what it was intended to do. “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet” (Romans 7:7). The law shows us that sin is not just a checklist of bad behaviors. It is something inside us, a power that deceives and destroys. The law brings it into the light, but it is Christ who brings the cure.

If you are trying to live under the law, if you are trying to work to earn your way to God by keeping commandments and being good, you will only be a slave to sin. The old path leads to death. But if you have died with Christ, you have been set free, not to live in sin, but to live by the Spirit. “We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6). That is what real freedom looks like. Not lawlessness, but a new heart. Not a list of do’s and don’ts, but a living relationship.

Ask yourself this question: are you still trying to find acceptance with God through your good performance? Or have you surrendered to Jesus, and been raised to walk in the newness of life? The law cannot save you. It never could. Only Christ can. He has perfectly fulfilled the law, and taken the penalty of your failure at the cross, so that you could belong to Him, “to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4).

You will never bear real fruit until you have died to the law and been made alive in Christ. That is not religion. That is the gospel. And it is the only way to live.

Read / Listen

2 Chronicles 4:1-6:11
Romans 7:1-13
Psalm 17:1-15
Proverbs 19:22-23