Pauls Footsteps #320

 “When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.” Romans 7:5 NLT 

Footsteps # 320. Christians are those who know that they have nothing good in themselves, that God did not give the law to save people, and that faith in Jesus is the only way to life eternal. They have died to all forms of self-sufficiency and law-keeping as the road to life.   

At this point, we should be careful. It is the believer who has died, not the law. The law is alive and well, and as Paul will point out a little further in the chapter, the law is holy, just, good, and spiritual (Rom.7:12, 14). But God never gave it so that people could save themselves by keeping it.  

The law still stands as God’s great standard of righteousness, it still condemns the sin of those who break it, and it still pushes men and women to the foot of the cross for cleansing from guilt and sin. But it has no cleansing power in itself. When people become dead to the law as a way of salvation, then they can be resurrected and remarried to God’s true plan of salvation in Christ which will produce “fruit to holiness.” (V22.)  

Read Rom.7:5. What does living in the flesh mean here? (The word flesh occurs 150 in the NT.) Here it refers to bodily weaknesses. (c.f.Rom.6:19)  

When Paul speaks in the past tense about Christians “living in the flesh” he refers to the time when they “were controlled by the sinful nature” (NIV). Sinful nature is characterised by “fleshly desires and outlook”. In that sense, Paul contrasts “living in the flesh” in Romans 7:5 to living in the Spirit in v6. The first he and other Christians had when they lived under the dominion of sin, while the second came with the dominion of righteousness.  

We must not equate living in the flesh with living in an earthly body. Rather, Paul is speaking to the fact that when the Romans used to live according to their lower nature (their sinful nature) the law aroused their sinful passions and produced deadly fruit.

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