“’Til Death do us Part”

Romans 7:1-13

6/29/08


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    Ladies, imagine a marriage in which your husband were a bully.  Imagine what life would be like living with someone who was always demanding things of you, always accusing you, always putting you down.  Men, imagine a marriage in which your wife were a nag.  Imagine what life would be like living with someone who waRomans 7:1-13
“’Til Death do us Part”
    Ladies, imagine a marriage in which your husband were a bully.  Imagine what life would be like living with someone who was always demanding things of you, always accusing you, always putting you down.  Men, imagine a marriage in which your wife were a nag.  Imagine what life would be like living with someone who was always criticizing you, always pointing out your weaknesses, always speaking of your failures to others.  What kind of life would it be for either husband or wife to have to live in such a relationship “until death do them part”?  Well, while I hope that none of you have to live in such an abusive relationship, there is another relationship that we all enter into from birth that’s even worse than any abusive marriage we enter into by our own free will.  It is the relationship that exists between ourselves and the Law of God.  This marriage is an arranged marriage, one in which we had no choice but to enter into.  And unlike other marriages where it’s easy to get a divorce once we’ve had enough, the only escape from this marriage is by way of death; we’re truly in this relationship “until death do us part.” 
    And that’s the way St. Paul talks about the Law’s hold on us in today’s epistle text.  He compares it to a marriage.  But again, this is not the kind of marriage where the husband lives for his wife and treats her like Christ treats His Church, nor where the wife lives for her husband and submits herself to him in love.  No, the Law is a tyrant.  In this relationship, the husband (the Law) treats his wife (us) like a slave, constantly accusing and condemning her, always demanding, never helping, always cursing, never blessing, always punishing, never rewarding.  And while it promises life and salvation, it gives these only to those who perfectly keep all its requirements.  And so, the Law constantly teases and provokes us by holding a carrot before our eyes that it always keeps just out of our reach.  It is a spouse that we can never please, no matter how hard we try, and in the end, after a lifetime of abuse, it delivers what it threatens - both temporal and eternal death.
    In any other abusive marriage, a spouse might ask him/herself what he/she did to deserve this.  We might ask this question about our relationship under the Law.  What did we do to deserve this?  I’m a good person.  I’m nice to other people.  I haven’t killed anyone or stolen anything, and what sins I have committed have (for the most part) been little sins, nothing that really seriously hurt anybody else.  Why do I now have to live under this tyrant called the Law? 
    But here’s the bizarre twist that St. Paul spins in his discussion of this topic:  It’s not the Law who’s the real tyrant, but we ourselves.  Paul actually calls the Law holy, righteous, and good.  It’s not to be blamed for our condition.  It’s not really the one who’s at fault for our misery.  It’s not the Law that’s ultimately responsible for the suffering and death we experience under it, but our sin.  Paul brings this out when he writes, “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me; for sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.”  It’s not the Law but our sin, our disobedience to the Law, that brings us death.  The Law merely points out that we’re sinners.  It merely exposes our problem.  It shows us that we are the abusive partners in this relationship, that we are enemies of God from our conception, rebelling against Him in our thoughts, words, and deeds until death do us part.
    Paul shows that this is the case by using the commandment not to covet as an example of what goes on in his own life.  Here he describes sin as a sort of sleeping snake.  As long as you don’t disturb it, it doesn’t become active.  The same goes for sin.  Apart from the commandment not to covet, Paul wouldn’t have even known what coveting is.  But when the commandment not to covet came, Paul’s sin was awakened and it aroused all kinds of coveting in him.  His argument is that sin basically lies dormant until it’s disturbed, until the Law comes along and starts demanding things of it.  It’s not that we had no sin until the Law came, or that the Law caused  our sin.  We’ve been sinners all along, sinners from birth.  A snake is a snake even when it’s inactive.  We’re still sinners even if we’re not actively sinning.  But when a commandment comes along, our sinful lust comes alive and the first thing we want to do is break that commandment.  You see this in children all the time.  A child might be playing with his toys in the front room, totally engrossed in what he’s doing.  But you put out a tray of cookies for guests who are coming later, and you tell your child, “Now, no cookies before dinner,” what does that child now want?  He wants a cookie.  But because you told him he can’t have one, he wants one all the more.  That’s the way it is with sin.  It’s a condition handed down to us from Adam, which is aroused and exposed when God gives us His commandments.  They don’t cause us to sin; we sin, because we are sinners, hostile to God and His commandments from birth.  It’s our sin, not the Law, that brings us death.
    The Law, then, which by nature is holy, righteous, and good, turns into our accuser, threatening death, rather than giving us life, because we have disobeyed.  It shows us that, because we have spurned the Author of life and His love towards us, there’s nothing for us but death.  And the Law continues to judge and condemn us for as long as we are under it.  As in an earthly marriage, even more so in this marriage between the Law and ourselves, we’re in it “until death do us part.” 
    But here’s where Paul’s illustration of marriage also helps us understand what’s happened to our relationship with the Law since our Baptism into Christ.  In Baptism, a death has occurred and it has parted us from the Law.  In Romans chapter 6, Paul writes concerning Baptism, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  In Baptism you were crucified with Christ.  You died with Him in His death on the cross.  The demands and threats of the Law were met and suffered vicariously for you by Jesus.  He perfectly obeyed the Law and yet suffered its punishment of death in your place, so that having been united with Him in your Baptism it’s as if you yourself had perfectly obeyed the Law and have now been separated from it by death.  This is no divorce, where the marriage between yourself and the Law has been annulled.  It’s a death, in which the Law has been fulfilled and your connection to it has been broken in Jesus Christ, so that you are free to be joined to Him.  Baptized into Christ, we Christians have been released from the bondage to our former husband, the Law, and have been joined to our new Husband - Jesus.  We are now no longer under the Law but under grace.
    Now, in her marriage to Christ, the Church enjoys life under a Lord who loves her to the utmost.  He is a Husband who gave His life for her on the cross in order to free her from her abusive marriage to the Law.  And now, risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, He lives for her, pleading her righteous before the Father with His blood, delivering to her all the gifts He won for her through His Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper.  The relationship that exists between Christ and His Church is described by Paul in the book of Ephesians with these words, “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the Church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”  In Jesus, we are under no tyrant.  He does not threaten or bully us.  He does not try to motivate us by fear of punishment or hope for reward.  When we do wrong He disciplines us, but He doesn’t remove His love from us.  Instead, He leads us to repentance and speaks to us His words of forgiveness.  We may insist on divorcing Him, but He will never divorce us.  And death will never separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.  We are alive in Christ right now, and we will live and reign with Him in His heavenly kingdom forever.
    As we live as the bride of Christ in this life, however, we are to consider ourselves dead not only to the Law and its accusations, but also to our sinful nature and its lusts.  In our Baptism we died with Christ to the Law and to sin, so that we might be made alive together with Christ and walk in newness of life, just as He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity.  Joined as we are to Christ, we are to consider ourselves dead to sin and our former way of life under the Law.  Paul writes, “We know that our old self was crucified with [Christ] in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”  We’re in a new marriage now.  Jesus has saved us from sin, death, and slavery under the Law, so that we might be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.  Now that we belong to Christ, we live to please Him, not because we have to nor because we’re afraid of punishment if we don’t nor because we hope to get something from Him.  That’s the way we used to live under the Law.  But we live to please Christ, because of who we are now in Him - a people bought and cleansed with His blood, who live under God’s grace, not under His Law.
    The Apostle Paul writes, “But now we are released from the Law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the spirit.”  When the Law was your husband you were a slave, living under its constant demands, accusation and condemnation, “until death do you part.”  But that death has occurred for you through your Baptism into Christ, where you were not only crucified with Him but were also raised with Him.  In those waters you were released from the Law and were joined to Christ, that you might walk in newness of life.  Now, you are no longer slaves, but the free people of God, the Bride of Christ, a relationship from which death can never part you.  Live, then, as those who have been given the new life of the spirit, until death parts you from this life and ushers you into the life of the world to come, which will begin with the marriage supper of the Lamb, a feast of which the Lord’s Supper is a foretaste.  Amen.
s always criticizing you, always pointing out your weaknesses, always speaking of your failures to others.  What kind of life would it be for either husband or wife to have to live in such a relationship “until death do them part”?  Well, while I hope that none of you have to live in such an abusive relationship, there is another relationship that we all enter into from birth that’s even worse than any abusive marriage we enter into by our own free will.  It is the relationship that exists between ourselves and the Law of God.  This marriage is an arranged marriage, one in which we had no choice but to enter into.  And unlike other marriages where it’s easy to get a divorce once we’ve had enough, the only escape from this marriage is by way of death; we’re truly in this relationship “until death do us part.”  
    And that’s the way St. Paul talks about the Law’s hold on us in today’s epistle text.  He compares it to a marriage.  But again, this is not the kind of marriage where the husband lives for his wife and treats her like Christ treats His Church, nor where the wife lives for her husband and submits herself to him in love.  No, the Law is a tyrant.  In this relationship, the husband (the Law) treats his wife (us) like a slave, constantly accusing and condemning her, always demanding, never helping, always cursing, never blessing, always punishing, never rewarding.  And while it promises life and salvation, it gives these only to those who perfectly keep all its requirements.  And so, the Law constantly teases and provokes us by holding a carrot before our eyes that it always keeps just out of our reach.  It is a spouse that we can never please, no matter how hard we try, and in the end, after a lifetime of abuse, it delivers what it threatens - both temporal and eternal death.
    In any other abusive marriage, a spouse might ask him/herself what he/she did to deserve this.  We might ask this question about our relationship under the Law.  What did we do to deserve this?  I’m a good person.  I’m nice to other people.  I haven’t killed anyone or stolen anything, and what sins I have committed have (for the most part) been little sins, nothing that really seriously hurt anybody else.  Why do I now have to live under this tyrant called the Law?  
    But here’s the bizarre twist that St. Paul spins in his discussion of this topic:  It’s not the Law who’s the real tyrant, but we ourselves.  Paul actually calls the Law holy, righteous, and good.  It’s not to be blamed for our condition.  It’s not really the one who’s at fault for our misery.  It’s not the Law that’s ultimately responsible for the suffering and death we experience under it, but our sin.  Paul brings this out when he writes, “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me; for sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.”  It’s not the Law but our sin, our disobedience to the Law, that brings us death.  The Law merely points out that we’re sinners.  It merely exposes our problem.  It shows us that we are the abusive partners in this relationship, that we are enemies of God from our conception, rebelling against Him in our thoughts, words, and deeds until death do us part.
    Paul shows that this is the case by using the commandment not to covet as an example of what goes on in his own life.  Here he describes sin as a sort of sleeping snake.  As long as you don’t disturb it, it doesn’t become active.  The same goes for sin.  Apart from the commandment not to covet, Paul wouldn’t have even known what coveting is.  But when the commandment not to covet came, Paul’s sin was awakened and it aroused all kinds of coveting in him.  His argument is that sin basically lies dormant until it’s disturbed, until the Law comes along and starts demanding things of it.  It’s not that we had no sin until the Law came, or that the Law caused  our sin.  We’ve been sinners all along, sinners from birth.  A snake is a snake even when it’s inactive.  We’re still sinners even if we’re not actively sinning.  But when a commandment comes along, our sinful lust comes alive and the first thing we want to do is break that commandment.  You see this in children all the time.  A child might be playing with his toys in the front room, totally engrossed in what he’s doing.  But you put out a tray of cookies for guests who are coming later, and you tell your child, “Now, no cookies before dinner,” what does that child now want?  He wants a cookie.  But because you told him he can’t have one, he wants one all the more.  That’s the way it is with sin.  It’s a condition handed down to us from Adam, which is aroused and exposed when God gives us His commandments.  They don’t cause us to sin; we sin, because we are sinners, hostile to God and His commandments from birth.  It’s our sin, not the Law, that brings us death.
    The Law, then, which by nature is holy, righteous, and good, turns into our accuser, threatening death, rather than giving us life, because we have disobeyed.  It shows us that, because we have spurned the Author of life and His love towards us, there’s nothing for us but death.  And the Law continues to judge and condemn us for as long as we are under it.  As in an earthly marriage, even more so in this marriage between the Law and ourselves, we’re in it “until death do us part.”  
    But here’s where Paul’s illustration of marriage also helps us understand what’s happened to our relationship with the Law since our Baptism into Christ.  In Baptism, a death has occurred and it has parted us from the Law.  In Romans chapter 6, Paul writes concerning Baptism, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  In Baptism you were crucified with Christ.  You died with Him in His death on the cross.  The demands and threats of the Law were met and suffered vicariously for you by Jesus.  He perfectly obeyed the Law and yet suffered its punishment of death in your place, so that having been united with Him in your Baptism it’s as if you yourself had perfectly obeyed the Law and have now been separated from it by death.  This is no divorce, where the marriage between yourself and the Law has been annulled.  It’s a death, in which the Law has been fulfilled and your connection to it has been broken in Jesus Christ, so that you are free to be joined to Him.  Baptized into Christ, we Christians have been released from the bondage to our former husband, the Law, and have been joined to our new Husband - Jesus.  We are now no longer under the Law but under grace.
    Now, in her marriage to Christ, the Church enjoys life under a Lord who loves her to the utmost.  He is a Husband who gave His life for her on the cross in order to free her from her abusive marriage to the Law.  And now, risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, He lives for her, pleading her righteous before the Father with His blood, delivering to her all the gifts He won for her through His Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper.  The relationship that exists between Christ and His Church is described by Paul in the book of Ephesians with these words, “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the Church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”  In Jesus, we are under no tyrant.  He does not threaten or bully us.  He does not try to motivate us by fear of punishment or hope for reward.  When we do wrong He disciplines us, but He doesn’t remove His love from us.  Instead, He leads us to repentance and speaks to us His words of forgiveness.  We may insist on divorcing Him, but He will never divorce us.  And death will never separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.  We are alive in Christ right now, and we will live and reign with Him in His heavenly kingdom forever.
    As we live as the bride of Christ in this life, however, we are to consider ourselves dead not only to the Law and its accusations, but also to our sinful nature and its lusts.  In our Baptism we died with Christ to the Law and to sin, so that we might be made alive together with Christ and walk in newness of life, just as He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity.  Joined as we are to Christ, we are to consider ourselves dead to sin and our former way of life under the Law.  Paul writes, “We know that our old self was crucified with [Christ] in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”  We’re in a new marriage now.  Jesus has saved us from sin, death, and slavery under the Law, so that we might be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.  Now that we belong to Christ, we live to please Him, not because we have to nor because we’re afraid of punishment if we don’t nor because we hope to get something from Him.  That’s the way we used to live under the Law.  But we live to please Christ, because of who we are now in Him - a people bought and cleansed with His blood, who live under God’s grace, not under His Law.
    The Apostle Paul writes, “But now we are released from the Law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the spirit.”  When the Law was your husband you were a slave, living under its constant demands, accusation and condemnation, “until death do you part.”  But that death has occurred for you through your Baptism into Christ, where you were not only crucified with Him but were also raised with Him.  In those waters you were released from the Law and were joined to Christ, that you might walk in newness of life.  Now, you are no longer slaves, but the free people of God, the Bride of Christ, a relationship from which death can never part you.  Live, then, as those who have been given the new life of the spirit, until death parts you from this life and ushers you into the life of the world to come, which will begin with the marriage supper of the Lamb, a feast of which the Lord’s Supper is a foretaste.  Amen.

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