LAW and FLESH

"I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me."
-Romans 7:21

I started yesterday my reading and as I always remind the saints at Twin Cities Grace Fellowship, the epistle to the Romans is jammed-packed and every time I read, something always jumps out: new and/or refreshing. The text is absolutely wonderful. Here are a few of my notes I have made on Romans 7; however, I don't include every verse in this blog.

Romans 7:1- “Death breaks the dominion and obligation of the law”
We are dead to the law so that our position of being dead to sin (chapter 6) can be put into practice. The reason why God had to do that is because the law was not designed to accommodate the deadness to sin. The law was designed to put sin into motion (7:5).

v. 4- God had to make us dead to the law so that we can bring forth fruit unto Him. (Gal. 2:19)
You can’t live unto God under the law, if God has to make you dead to the law so that you can live unto Him, God has to make you dead to the law so that you can bring forth fruit unto Him. Then that means you can’t do it under the law. This is the critical thing that we have to learn and realize the reality of.

v. 5, “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”

v. 6, “But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”
Newness of spirit is little (s) that means a new system of operation and thinking in your human spirit, instead of the letter of the law there. Instead of having that performance system in your mind and thinking that God is going to bless if you do good and curse if you do evil and having fear for your motivation of serving (law contract). Instead of operating out of that thinking, God says we are dead to sin, dead to law, so that we should serve in newness of spirit, Grace thinking, who you are in Christ, and operating out of that.

v. 7, next objection, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, thou shalt not covet.”

v. 8, “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.”

Example of v. 8
v. 9, “For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, SIN REVIVED, AND I DIED.”
Nothing wrong with the law, but our assumptions are wrong!!

v. 13, “Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”

v. 14, “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.” (Heb. 9)

v. 15-25= “Struggle to put His position in Christ under the law.”
The sin he wants to stop he can’t, and the good he wants he can’t.

v. 17, We are to be free from sin and dead to sin. Why then in verse 17, is sin doing anything in us? It comes by the law. The law does not provide the capacity to do the good you wish, but has the flesh operating and sin reviving. Our flesh is dead.

v. 22-23, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”

***Another law in my members…who wins the war, “and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. ***

v. 24, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
He just described functional death and the deliverance is getting yourself from under the law and operating who you are in Christ.

v. 25, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Reference-chapter 6, in Christ Jesus our Lord we are under grace!!! What we need is a system that doesn’t cater to the flesh because the flesh only serves the law of sin. What we need is a system that doesn’t call upon the flesh and that's what grace does, it's crucifying you in Christ. God puts us under grace, may we not put ourselves under law.