We Have Been Delilvered

Alba 10-10-2021

WE HAVE BEEN DELIVERED

Romans 7:1-6

K. Edward Skidmore was a student at Ozark Bible College (now Ozark Christian College) back in the early 1970s. He told how when he was working as a janitor at O.B.C. there were two or three times he had the opportunity to clean the floors in the girl’s dorms.

He said: “One thing that astounded me as I went from room to room was the large pin-up pictures and posters of brides on the walls. Some of these girls had pictures taken from BRIDE magazine all over their walls.”

Then he said: “I might add that some of these girls didn’t even have boyfriends yet. It didn’t seem to matter whether marriage was imminent or not, the idea of being a bride and wearing a beautiful white gown with a veil was the biggest dream on some of these girl’s minds.”

The joke used to be that many girls went to Bible college to get their MRS degree (meaning they were looking for a man). Whether that is true or not, the Bible does have a lot to say about marriage.

Even in our text today from Romans chapter seven, there is a reference to marriage. But the purpose of the reference is to point to a spiritual truth about our freedom from the requirements of the Law.

Turn to Romans 7:1-6 as I read: 1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.

3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.

4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.

5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

In the illustration of marriage used here, the woman represents the person who is still under the requirements of the law. And that would still be the case for all of us if Jesus had not come.

Now, since we have been released from bondage to the law, we are free to be the Bride of Christ. Almost every wedding reinforces the point that Paul is making here doesn’t it?

Remember the part of the wedding vows that contain words like “‘Til death do us part” or “As long as we both shall live”. Those words certainly convey the idea that the marriage relationship is intended to be binding on both parties until one of them dies.

And when that happens, as Paul reminds us here, the remaining spouse is freed from the law of marriage. Notice in verse 4, it says that everyone who is “in Christ” has died to the law through His body.

So, in the same way that a husband or wife is freed from the law of marriage by the death of his or her spouse, Jesus died so that we would be freed from the requirements of the Law.

The only way to escape the authority of the Law is to die. But the problem is that when we die we face judgment and the penalty for our inability to keep the Law. In order for us to be free to have a relationship with God, we must also die to the Law.

There is a way for us to die to the Law and escape judgment. Jesus, by sacrificing His body and shedding His blood on the cross, makes it possible for us to die to the Law and be made alive to God.

And it is when we come to Jesus in obedient faith that we are united with Him so intimately that His death on the cross becomes our death to sin and to the law.

So how does that happen? In chapter six it declares that we were united with Jesus in His death, burial and resurrection through baptism. Remember how it says “that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death”?