Page 47 - Romans Student Textbook.doc

Study Section 8: Chapter 7 – Relationship between Sin and the Law

8.1 Connect
According to the Pharisees of Christ’s day, the law of God (Mosaic Law) was composed of 613
rules as recorded in the Torah. It was a guidebook given to Israel to help them understand what a
person must do to be perfect and righteous before God. By the time Christ came, it had produced
heartless, cold, and arrogant brand of self-righteousness.

The Pharisees interpreted the laws of Moses by adding oral traditions. For example, the Law of
the Sabbath did not permit working on the sabbath. To define what this meant, the Pharisees made up 39
sub-rules called the Melakhah, to define what a person was NOT to do or what was considered “work.”
For example, of these 39 were making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, writing
two or more letters, erasing two or more letters, extinguishing or kindling a fire, carrying more than two
sticks a certain distance, and on and on. Of course, when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, they considered
that a forbidden work on the Sabbath, even though it was not a part of the Melakhah or prohibited
activities. They made things up as they went along.

If salvation could come through keeping the Law, then the Pharisees were close to salvation. But the Law
simply shows that everyone can’t keep it. It shows us all that we are a hopeless sinner, separated from a
Holy God.

The big questions is, “Is the Law a bad thing?” The passage we will study exclaims clearly, NO. It serves a
function to show us how we are hopeless sinners, unable to keep it. This is a very important concept to
grasp within our theology. Let’s learn together…

8.2 Objectives

1. Students should be able to describe the relationship of sin to the Law of Moses.

2. Students should be able to explain the interplay between the desire to do good and the
influence of sin on the enactment of that desire.

3. Students should be able to answer the question, ““Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

6.3 The Passage: Romans 7:1-25

Or do you fail to understand, brothers, for to those who know the law I am speaking, that the
law has power over the man for whatever time he lives? For the married woman to the living
husband has been bound by law, but when the husband dies she is released from the law of the
husband. Therefore, then while the husband and adulteress she is called if she is with another
man; but if the husband has died, she is free from the law, so that she would not be an
adulteress being with another man. So that, my brothers, also you have put to death the law through the
body of Christ, in order that you might become to another, to the one who was raised out of the dead
ones, so that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the desires of sin, the ones that
through the law were at work in your members unto bearing fruit to the death; but now we have been
released from the law having put it to death in which we were held fast, so that we serve in newness of
spirit and not oldness of the text.

The law of God no longer functions in us to enslave us to our sinful passions, but we are set free to live
apart from sin with the help of God’s Holy Spirit.

Therefore, what will I say? Is the law sinful? May it never be! But I did not know the sin except through
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