ANALOGY IN ROMANS 7

HAVE WE REALLY PAID ATTENTION TO PAUL'S LAW, MARRIAGE, AND REMARRIAGE ANALOGY IN ROMANS 7?

"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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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" (Rom 7:1-6).

The opening verses of Romans 7 are used by some Christians to assert that the Torah/Law [of Moses] is now "dead." But a careful look at Paul's marriage-remarriage analogy demonstrates that it is not the Torah that dies!!! No, the "dea[th]" (Rom 7:4) in this passage is the believer's!

There are four "characters" to account for in Rom 7:1-6:

1. The believer - the wife

2. The first husband - ?

3. The Torah - the law

4. The second husband - Christ

In Paul's illustration the Torah never dies. Rather it provides context for the marriage-remarriage conundrum, and its eventual solution via the death of the wife/believer. Building on what Paul wrote previously in chapter 6, the believer dies through his/her baptism into Christ to arise alive to God and to good works (Rom 6:11-22). The Torah was alive when the believer died with Christ in baptism. And the Torah is alive when the believer rises from this covenantal "dea[th]." However, the faithfully baptized believer’s relationship to the Torah is now changed via co-participating in Christ's death. Like all law systems, the Torah can only assert its condemning authority over living people. The "dea[th]" (ours) required for throwing off the condemnation of God's Torah was assumed by Christ … and when we co-participate with him in death via faithful baptism, the Torah can no longer condemn us. Period.

However, the believer maintains a current relationship of some sort to the still-very-much-alive Torah … or else why would Paul (even in this same letter to the Roman Christians!) have kept positively quoting from the Torah (Rom 9:12, 17), have kept alluding to it (Rom 10:6-10), and even have kept applying the Torah's commandments directly to believers in Christ (Rom 13:9)? Why would Paul have kept applying the Torah to himself (E.g. Act 18:4 [Sabbath], 18 [Nazirite vow; Cf. Num 6], 21 [Feast of {probably} Tabernacles {according to the majority of manuscripts}])? Yes, the Torah remains. It did not die at all! And the believer in Christ still has a relationship to it of some sort. But the Torah can no longer condemn the faithful baptized believer. That’s Paul’s point.

Perhaps a helpful analogy would be Paul's statement in Gal 6:14: "the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Now, "the world" is not the Torah, although presently the Torah has a negative power and influence derived from "the world" out of which Christ needed to rescue us (Gal 1:4 - AIONOS [world/age] and Gal 6:14 - COSMOS [world/age] being used here as rough semantic equivalents). But using "the world" in parallelism to "the law" for a structural analysis, and "crucified" standing in for "died" we can draw one among many useful conclusions: "the world" did not go away after our "crucifi[xion]" with Christ. It still affects us; in fact we may still rightly "use this world" as long as we are "not misusing it" (1Cor 7:31). Indeed we must. It is inevitable that we "use this world" to some legitimate extent … even though "the world has been crucified to [us], and [us] to the world" (Gal 6:14).

In a similar way, "the law" did not go away or die. No, it is us Christians who "d[ied] to the law through the body of Christ" (Rom 7:4), in the sense of our "having died to what we were held by" (Rom 7:6) through the Torah, i.e. "the sinful passions which were aroused by the law" (Rom 7:5). That is what held us! But that arousal to sin through the Torah was before our baptisms into Christ, when we were still "in the flesh" (Rom 7:5) and "c[ould not] please God" (Rom 8:8) -- a past-tense experience to those of us who now have the Spirit, i.e. who are true believers!

"But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His" (Rom 8:9).

So, through our co-deaths, co-burials, co-resurrections, and co-ascensions with Christ, and through the power of the indwelling Spirit, our minds can now be “subject to the law of God" (Rom 8:7) and we can, "according to the Spirit, now "fulfill" and "walk" out "the righteous requirement of the law" (Rom 8:4). The result of this new relationship to the Torah positions the baptized and Spirit-led believers so "that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter" (Rom 7:6). The Torah doesn't die or leave; we through our baptisms into Christ, and the indwelling Spirit, are now free to obey God through obeying the Torah.

The question then becomes, not “if?” the Torah applies to the believer in Christ today, but “how?” It is certain that the Torah applies in some way to Jesus’ faithful followers, but how? How do Jewish believers (like Paul) apply the Torah to themselves without lapsing into legalism (i.e. trying to gain ultimate justification with God via “works of the law” – Rom 9:32)? And how do the many of us who are non-Jewish disciples of Christ apply the Torah to our lives without likewise lapsing into legalism or “Judaizing” (i.e. converting to Judaism – Gal 2:14)? The answer/s is for another study, but suffice it to say for now that Paul expected all believers in Jesus Christ – Jewish and non-Jewish – to “walk [out]” (an action word) “the righteous requirement of the law … according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:4), to obey those portions of the Torah which apply to him/her via the power of the indwelling Spirit of God.

So, using Romans chapters 6 and 8 to fill in some of the gaps in Romans 7, we understand now that the first husband in Paul's marriage-remarriage illustration is not the Torah, but the believer's propensity to sin, what Paul elsewhere calls “the flesh” (Rom 7:5; Cf. Gen 6:3). The Torah stirs this propensity up. But through a new husband (Christ), and the indwelling Spirit, the believer can and should legally (as defined by the still-very-much-alive Torah) live unto “righteous deeds” (as defined by the still-very-much-alive Torah) in a lawful (as defined by the still-very-much-alive Torah) "marriage," without fear of condemnation. From the still-very-much-alive Torah.

-Michael Millier