Romans 7:1-7 Dishonest Translators

This passage, Paul likens the law, the Mosaic Law, to a husband and the church to a wife. When we're looking at the—he gives an application there that is extremely important that we'll be talking about this morning. How many of you had a chance to read the passage?

Very good, very good. Okay.

So he starts off, "Do you not know, brothers? For I speak to those who know the law." So he's particularly addressing Jews here, but it would pertain to, I guess, we by now, Gentiles, know the law fairly well too. "How that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives."

Okay, why is that? Why doesn't it have dominion after someone lives?

Not a trick question. I mean, he's stating something that's obvious.

"Dead man doesn't need the law." Dead man doesn't need the law.

Once you're dead, it doesn't matter whether it's the Mosaic Law or Caesar's Law, it's over. I mean, he can get your money, but you're gone. I mean, there's nothing further the law can do with you. Like I say, your state is still there. But so as long as you're alive, if you were a Jew, you were under the law. As soon as you died, yeah, everything is set. You're not under the law. You don't escape from God. God's law is still going to apply, but you no longer have to live by the Mosaic Law.

John Chrysostom says this. And I thought this was very interesting. Paul does not say husband or wife, but man. In Greek, it's anthropos. Which word is common to either gender? Which that would have been so true in English. Anyone my age, man just means human. It can mean a male, but yeah, unless the context shows that it just means a human. And it still does. But with the feminist movement starting in the early '70s, then females don't want to be referred to as by man, which is actually an honor. I mean, Clement of Alexander, we honor our women. We refer to them as men the same as we refer to ourselves. So people can look to something to find fault with where it's actually a mark of respect.

Anyway, he continues. He earlier said, "For he who is dead is free from sin." That was back in Romans 6:7. "Accordingly, the law is given for the living, but it ceases to give commands to the dead." Okay? So that's obvious. Yeah. No more commands once we're dead.

Now, Romans 7:1 can also be translated, and still just as true. "Do you not know, brothers? For I speak to those who know the law, how that the law has dominion over a man as long as it lives."

You see, it works both ways. And some of the early Christians understood it this way, and some of them understood it the other way because in Greek, that last part, as long as it lives or as long as he lives, it could mean either one in the Greek.

So if we look at it this way, what is Paul saying?

I mean, clearly he's referring to as long as the law is still in force. Right. So it has dominion as long as it's in force. And once it's not in force, then it no longer has dominion. There's a lot of laws that the United States has had that people have had in other countries. But just talking about the United States, there are a lot of laws that used to be that have been canceled. They're no longer the law. They have no more dominion over us because they have been canceled. So yeah, the law only has force as long as it lives. Now, origin felt like this is what Paul is saying because the next two verses follow this line of thought.

But yeah, it's uncertain. We're going to see at the end why it is uncertain. But both are true. Whether you die or it dies, either way, it no longer has dominion over you. Okay. Does anyone have any questions or comments on that? Yes, Andre? I was going to say you should probably mention about the law being capitalized because not everyone necessarily knows why it's capitalized. Since the modern translation put it with a lowercase L, I just thought you might mention that.

Yes. And it would be equally true with the lowercase L. But since his context, he's talking about the Mosaic Laws we're going to see. Yeah, here, capital L. Well, we talked about this, oh, I don't know, quite a number of months ago, maybe a year ago that in Greek, yeah, there weren't capital letters. Well, I mean, there were, but I mean, you didn't capitalize a word. There was no proper nouns. No rule to capitalize proper nouns would be the correct way to say it. So in English, when you're translating, you have to decide is this a proper noun or not since in today's English, we capitalize proper nouns.

Okay. Next verse. "For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law," and that would be either the Mosaic Law or it would have been Roman Law, any law, "to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband is dead, she is freed from the law of her husband." Okay.

So this is why if you're looking at verse 2, it seems like Paul in verse 1 must be saying the law is in force, has dominion as long as it lives because the next thing he says is, "For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives." Okay? But if he's dead, then she's freed from his law. Okay?

So that would equate to the Mosaic Law as well. Does anyone have any comments on that verse? Anything that came to your mind when you read that?

Okay. And we're going to see in verse 3, he's going to liken then the law to the husband and the wife to the church, to all believers. We make up the bride.

Okay. But if the husband is dead, she is freed from the law of her husband. What do you think it means, the law of her husband?

Okay. His headship, his authority in the home, that a wife would be under the law of her husband. It wouldn't be a popular term today. And in some ways, it works both ways. There are rules that wives lay down how they would like things to run in the household, where we're supposed to put our dirty clothes and at what time to be at meals and that sort of thing. So there's, yeah, rules in the marriage that you both live by to have harmony in the home. But since he's using the illustration of the Mosaic Law, then yeah, he talks about the law of a husband, the authority that he had in the home and still does under God's law, that a wife is under that authority, under his dominion as long as he lives.

But if he dies, then of course, she's no longer bound by that. Okay. Any other thought on that?

Okay. All right. So he's likening the law to a husband who dies. So when did the law die?

And there could be perhaps room for more than one answer on this. I have a specific thing in mind, but when do you think the law died? Maybe when God started enforcing it? Or are you thinking of a specific time?

I was thinking of a specific time, but yeah. So when did it no longer have dominion over? I mean, we know the Jews kept keeping it and still do many of them today. But when did it no longer have authority from God? I would say when he was dead. Okay. All right. I would say somewhere right between the time of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Okay. All right. So I think your answer, Zach, is what most Christians would say. And there would be, I think it would be defensible. You almost have sort of a transition period there. I was thinking the same as Justin, the passage in Luke 16:16. "The law and the prophets were until John.

Since that time, the kingdom of God has been preached and everyone is pressing into it." So I would say the authority probably ended, yeah, somewhere during the ministry of John. Like you say, I don't know you can get a specific date, but there is sort of a transition. It would seem like it was final, done with when Jesus died on the cross that certainly the authority of the law went. But as we know, the Christians didn't grasp that at the time. They were still living under the law. And that's why it was a shock when God directed Peter to go to Cornelius, who was an uncircumcised Gentile, a Gentile who was not living by the law, or at least not the entirety of the law.

And the Jewish Christians were shocked. Well, wait a minute. And so, yeah, it took a while. I think the authority of the law ended with the ministry of Jesus Christ. The gospel age began then. But yeah, God didn't just stop it coldly. I guess he could have, but he let it continue on. Now, origin points this out. Now, I think the law ended by God's authority. We know it did before the destruction of Jerusalem. But God certainly brought it to a decisive end then. Origin comments, "Jerusalem was destroyed along with what they called the sanctuary of the items in it, which were designated as holy. Also, the altar of burnt offerings was destroyed along with the entire worship associated with it.

The Jews cannot keep their feasts in the place which the Lord God appointed to them for keeping feasts, even though according to the letter of the law, they are specifically commanded to do so. Furthermore, they are unable to stone those who have committed this or that sin." So there's a lot of things. I mean, even today, the Judaism you have is rabbitical Judaism. It has a lot of commandments that aren't in the law. But there's a whole lot of things in the law that Jews do not keep today. I mean, even of ultra-Orthodox Jews, you can't. The different, they don't offer animal sacrifices. Think of all of the commandments in Leviticus, Exodus about offering an offering for this sin, for that, etc.

You can't do it. There's no priesthood. There's no temple. There's no altar. All of that ended. All the things of going, hygienic things of going to a priest when you had this disease or that. Yeah. That's no longer done. All the commandments about stoning this person or that, that power was taken from the Jews. So even though the Jews, the unbelieving Jews would not recognize that the law ended, God was trying to make it crystal clear. Look, this is over. The new covenant is in.

Just as he had prophesied that there would be a new covenant. So certainly by AD 70, it should have been clear to everyone that the law had run its course.

All right. Romans 7:3. "So then if while her husband lives, she is married to another man, she will be called an adulteress. Yet if her husband is dead, she is free from that law so that she is not an adulteress, even if she is married to another man."

Okay. Now, this is an important, extremely important verse in the Bible. Okay. So is Paul here talking about the provisions of the Mosaic Law? I mean, he's using an analogy about the death of the Mosaic Law. But when he says, "If while her husband lives, she is married to another man, she will be called an adulteress." Was that true under the Mosaic Law?

No. I thought it wasn't a woman allowed to go out, or maybe that was just a man he was allowed to go out and marry. They both were. No. You were right. They both were. They both were. So yeah, you had divorce and remarriage in the Old Testament. So this would not be true under the law of Moses that, yeah, her husband lives, she could be married to another man. She would not be called an adulteress under the Mosaic Law.

So what law is Paul talking about here when he makes this statement?

Was there perhaps, I don't know, was there perhaps a moral law God had in place already that Paul referred to from creation? He is. He is. And who brought that law back into force? Jesus did. Yeah. So like I say, he's not talking the point of this passage. He's not explaining or teaching anything new about divorce and remarriage.

He's just mentioning it as an established fact among Christians. I mean, that's what makes this so important. He's not, "Okay. Now I'm giving you some new instructions here." He's just taking this as a given. His whole point of mentioning this is that he's likening the law to a husband and is saying, "As long as a husband lives, if a wife remarries, then she'll be called an adulteress." So likewise, if a Jew was married to Christ before the law ended, then spiritually they would have been adulteresses. But the law had ended, and so they were free to remarry.

Okay. So he's referring to the law of Christ, or you could say the law of nature, the law that was here established in the Garden of Eden. Matthew 5:32. "But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery.

And whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery." So he does not give any exception on that. Whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. So this is what Paul is referring to. He says, "If a woman, while her husband is living, marries another man, she will be called an adulteress." Not by the world, not by the Jews, but in the Christian church.

Same way, Mark 10:11 and 12. "So he said to them, 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.'" Okay. So Jesus covered everything. Now, why does he say, "If a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery?" Under the Mosaic Law, a wife couldn't remarry.

I'm sorry. She couldn't divorce her husband. She could remarry. She couldn't divorce her husband. He had to initiate it.

Anyone have any? That's not in the Bibles. You don't have your excuse for not knowing it.

Okay. Under Roman law, a wife could divorce her husband. A man could divorce his wife. A wife could divorce her husband. So he's saying this because he knows his gospel is going to go out to the Gentile world. So yeah, he's stating something that was already in force in the Gentile world, even though I don't remember the setting of Mark 10, but he's probably speaking to Jews there.

Okay. So this is what Paul is referring to. And like I say, by the time he writes Romans, which was maybe AD 50, 55, something like that, yeah, this is already just an accepted fact in the Christian church.

He's able to build it into an illustration. Theodoret, an early Christian commentator, said this, "The holy apostle was not ignorant that the law gave permission to the living to dissolve a marriage when it was no longer agreeable. However, he was mindful of our Lord's assertion, which declared that Moses gave them that law on account of the hardness of the heart of the Jews.

However, the law of nature had added no such provision. For Jesus says that God made one man and one woman establishing the law concerning marriage in the very manner of creation."

Okay. So yeah, an important verse here because, like I say, it's already an established fact in the Christian church that he can just bring it out as a given. It's not like he's handing down a new teaching.

"While her former" this is from Origin. "While her former husband is still living, a woman is an adulteress, even though she seems to be married to a man. Likewise, the man who seems to marry a woman who has been put away does not so much marry her as he commits adultery with her. This is according to the declaration of our Savior." So this was clear to the early Christians. There wasn't any dissent on that matter. And it was clear to all Christians. I would say this didn't change till the 20th century.

So somehow everyone decided they knew more than all the Christians who lived before them all the way back to the apostles.

Okay. So who is the new husband that a Jew could marry? If he says, "If your husband dies, then you can marry and you're not an adulteress." So the law died. So who was the new husband then?

Everyone knows. So just somebody say it. Christ. Okay. So do you understand what he's trying to get across to the Jews who were still clinging to the law, the Christian Jews, okay, who were still they felt very guilty if they did something on the Sabbath or if they ate pork or if they a number of things that they felt really uncomfortable doing. And he's saying, "Look, okay, you were under the law. That's fine.

You had the law of your husband, the Mosaic Law, and you were under that law. But that husband died. You're free from that. You can marry Christ and come under his laws. And that's what you need to be worrying about, not the law of Moses, that you're freed from that." Now, it's easy for us to say, "I mean, we're any Jews, I think we're all Gentiles, fleshly Gentiles, all spiritual Jews." Okay. So for us, it's pretty easy. I mean, we've heard this and heard this. We grew up hearing it as a child and all that. But yeah, in the first century, this was a hard bridge to cross. If you had been raised a Jew, this had been God's law from the beginning.

And now suddenly that law is dead and there's a new covenant. I mean, that had been prophesied in Jeremiah. So I mean, it's not like, "Oh, this is unheard of." But still, it just was a hard thing for Jews to get over. Probably somewhat like Mennonites that the law had become part of their culture. So it wasn't just like, "This is God's law." It became part of their culture, which wasn't a bad thing at all.

A lot of the godly things we do have become part of our, you might say, Mennonite culture that is good. It helps things. You just kind of do it second nature. And that's the way it was. But then it was, in their case, the law was dead. It wasn't a sin to if you don't want to eat pork, I mean, it's not a sin to refrain from that. It made it hard in your inner relationships with the Gentiles was the big problem.

Okay. So the new husband is Christ. 2 Corinthians 11:2, Paul says, "For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." So that is our new husband, whether we come from a Jewish or Gentile background. We all have the same husband. We are all part of the same bride.

And again, in Revelation, "Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints."

So when it talks about his bride being adorned, he explains right there in Revelation, John, that these are the righteous deeds, acts, works of the saints. So that's what Christ wants us to be adorned with today is our Christian actions, how we live. Do we give glory to him in how we live? That's what he wants to see in our lives.

Chris Austin, "Paul places the law in the position of a husband, and he puts all believers in the situation of a wife. Paul does not deprive the law of its dignity. Rather, he speaks great things about its power. For while the law was alive, the Jews were bound to it. And those who transgressed it or left it while it was alive were to be called adulteresses. But if they abandoned the law after it had died, this was not to be condemned. For in human affairs, no one is faulted for doing the same thing." In other words, as a Christian, back to the illustration of a husband and wife, if your husband dies or your wife dies, you're free to remarry, and no one's going to call you an adulteress or an adulterer if you do so.

And that's the point Paul is getting across. You can let go of the law. That husband is dead. Again, it was not a sin to keep living by the Mosaic Law, I mean, except for the parts that would violate Christ's teachings. But it was not something that brought any grace.

There was no benefit in it any longer other than maybe a cultural benefit. But like I say, the problem it wasn't wrong, again, for a Jew to keep it. The problem was so many of them were wanting to force the Gentiles to keep the law, and that's where the issue came in. Okay. Let's look at that last verse then, Romans 7:4, this last of this illustration. "Accordingly, my brothers, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ so that you might belong to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, so that we should bring forth fruit to God." So again, always wanting to see fruit in our lives.

Okay. Now, think about that verse for a moment, what Paul says there. Then I want to ask you, did any of you notice that Paul has switched his analogy? Let's see if I can get back to it.

Okay. Paul sort of has pulled the switch on us. I'm sure it was purposeful. But he started with one analogy and he's changed it. Does anyone see what he has done? Now you've become dead. He says, "Now you've become dead. The law has died." Yeah. Yeah. So he starts off saying, "The law has died." And so you're free because the law has died. But then he ends up saying, "You have died," which is true as well. It's a double analogy.

The law has died, and so we are free because it has died. But in another sense, we have died to the law. We're no longer under that. And that's why verse one, if you want to, I said it could be translated about if the law dies, you're no longer under the dominion, or if he dies, whether it's it dies or he dies. And it's not clear because Paul uses two different analogies in this.

Chris Austin says this, "Paul adds the conclusion in such a way that it does not tally with the premise. For what the context would require would be, 'And so, my brethren, the law does not rule over you, for it is dead.'" But he does not say this.

Okay. So again, Paul was certainly intelligent, and he was writing under inspiration. So I don't think he just goofed here. I think he decided to have a double analogy and put them all in. If you don't grasp it one way, all right, look at it this way. Either way, you're not under the law.

In one sense, it's dead, and so you're not under it because it's dead. In another sense, even if you want to think it's alive, you're dead to it. So you're free from it. So either way, Paul is covering everything. Yes, Dale.

But it says, "Therefore," or, "Accordingly," or whatever. So he gives us a little hint that he's going to switch the analogy just a little bit. So he says, "Therefore," or, "Accordingly," now this is also true. This is true.

And this is true. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. There's probably a number of ways you can translate that Greek transitional word there. Because I would think, "Therefore," would be like this premise, this premise, therefore, this conclusion. And it doesn't seem to fit, but maybe therefore isn't the best translation. He may be, yeah, saying it another way. But yeah, whatever. He gives us two analogies. So if you didn't get it the first way, hopefully you get it the second. Okay. We have time for maybe one more. "For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sin that were through the law worked among our members to bring forth fruit to death."

Okay. Anyone have any thought on that verse? What are the passions of sin that were through the law? Did the law make people sin?

A lot of Romans is easily, like I say, the hardest book in the New Testament outside of maybe Revelation.

Paul, I mean, it's like almost every verse you come on a new snag. What does Paul mean here? He's possibly referring to the passions of sins that survived even while the law was in place. Okay. Yeah. I think you're on the right track. So the passions of sin were still there during the law.

So the law didn't take away sin. Yeah. They were still dealing with that. Chris Austin explains it this way. Paul does not say that the passions of sin were from the law. Rather, he says they were through the law. That is to say, they were made apparent through the law. Now, some of the English translations translate it that it makes it sound like the sin came from the law.

But yeah, I noticed he was understanding the preposition to be through the law, not from the law or that. So the law didn't cause anyone to sin, but it made people aware of what sin was.

It would be like what would be an illustration? You're the only business owner I can think of, Kevin, so sorry. But it would be like if I came into your business as an attorney, knowing every item of business law, Pennsylvania, township, federal, everything, and started going through, "Okay, you're not doing this. This is a violation of the law." I'm not saying I would find this if I went to your shop. Don't misunderstand me. But. Wow. Yeah. So all this time, you're thinking you're living totally sin-free that I'm not violating anything. And then some nosy lawyer comes in and, "No, this is wrong. No, you're wrong here. No, you're wrong there." And then you suddenly become aware of all of these conflicts.

So it's the same way with the Mosaic Law. Before the law, they knew a few things were sin. I mean, they knew it was sin to murder, to steal, to commit adultery. I mean, there were things that everybody understood. But then the law comes and points out, "Yeah, coveting." No one thought coveting was wrong and this sort of thing. So the law didn't make them covet, but it made them aware. This is sin. And so, yeah, under the law, you became aware of all these things that were displeasing to God that you didn't realize when you were a pagan or before the law was given. So there's that connection.

But yeah, we're free from that. The problem with the law, it pointed out all of these sins, but it had no power to help people come free from them. And there was the forgiveness through the animal sacrifices. But as Paul says, "The blood of bulls and goats can't really take away sin." So the law couldn't really take away sin, and it didn't give any power. There was no indwelling of the Spirit. Under Christ's dominion, we have the indwelling of the Spirit to give us power. I mean, we still fail. I mean, nobody lives a perfect sinless life. But we do have power that we can overcome sins.

We have the help of the church, the brotherhood, and we have the forgiveness guaranteed to us through the blood of Christ if we repent that can actually take away sin. So I mean, we have all of these things. Why would you want to be under that old husband when you've got a new husband who got all of these powers that come with it? It's what all throughout Romans, Paul is trying to get across.

Okay. My time's about up, but they're not up from below. So I guess we can keep going. "But now we are delivered from the law, being dead to that by which we were held, so that we should serve in newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." Okay. So we're delivered from all of those multitudinous commandments. But what does he mean we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not the oldness of the letter?

And that can be understood in a couple of different ways. So no matter what you say, it's going to be right. Well, I noticed that you have a small letter S there in your translation where the New Kingdom has the capital S. And now I'm curious. Okay.

All right. So you noticed that. So as we were saying in Greek, there wasn't a system to capitalize proper nouns. So like I say, you have to look at the context. And even with the context, you sometimes do not know. Is this law with a capital L or law with a small l? Is this Holy Spirit with a capital S? Or is it the spirit of something?

You don't know. And it seems like most of the pre-Nicene Christians understood this with a small s. Sometimes it's real hard to know because you have to look at what they're saying because there's no capitalization in the Greek. So even the ones who talk about it, it's a little hard to tell. Others understood it to be talking about the Holy Spirit. So and both are true. So if it's a small s, what it's saying is we're not under the letter. We have this expression today, the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.

You could keep the letter of something but violate the spirit of what it is. And it's the same way with the Mosaic Law. Okay. We don't serve in the oldness of the letter that we keep all of these different commandments and all of that. But there was a spirit of the law, a moral spirit, truths in the Mosaic Law that will never go away. I mean, they're still true today. They were reinforced by Jesus, such as the two great commandments. Okay.

And he said the whole law and the prophets hang on this. So most of the pre-Nicene Christians understood this is what Paul is saying, that we're under the spirit of the law, the eternal truths that were in the law, but not the letter. The letter kills, but the spirit of it. All of the prophecies about the Messiah, about the new covenant, about many things. You can still read Proverbs, a lot of truths in there that have never changed.

The 10 commandments, other than perhaps the Sabbath, are still everything there would still be true for us as well. Not to covet, not to steal, all of those things. There are a lot of eternal truths in the law. So the spirit of it is very helpful. And there's a lot we learn when we go back in the Old Testament that we can learn about the Spirit. But if we're trying to keep the letter, then that kills.

In fact, Paul says later on in this same chapter, "We know that the law is spiritual." So there is a spiritual significance. I didn't make this on a slide, but the best example I can think of where Paul illustrates this is it comes out in the verse in Timothy where he talks about, "Do not muzzle the ox."

And well, we know what the letter of that means. When he was threshing, not to put a muzzle over him, let him eat the grain. And Paul says, "Is God concerned about animals?" No, he's concerned about us. And he gives a totally spiritual application to that of supporting those in the ministry. So yeah, that's an example of the law is spiritual, that there's still spiritual significance to what is in there. Thank you for being a part of the Sound Faith Channel as we expand the kingdom of God, seizing territory from Satan with every broadcast. This channel is made possible because of all of your generous gifts and donations. If you would like to partner with the Sound Faith Channel in our battle to usher in the kingdom of God, you can make a one-time donation or give monthly on our website.

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