Ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ…that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit.
—Romans 7:4, 6
The believer is not only dead to sin, but also dead to the law. This is a deeper truth, giving us deliverance from the thought of a life of effort and failure, and opening the way to life in the power of the Holy Spirit. “Thou shalt” is done away with; the power of the Spirit takes its place.
In the remainder of Romans 7, we find a description of the Christian as he still tries to obey the law but utterly fails. His experience is such that he says, “In me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing” (verse 18). He discovers that the law of sin, notwithstanding his greatest efforts, continually brings him into captivity and causes him to cry out, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (verse 24). In the whole passage, “I” is everywhere, without any thought of the Spirit’s help. Only when he has cried out in despair is he brought to see that he is no longer under the law, but under the rule of the Holy Spirit. “There is therefore now no condemnation”—such as he had experienced in his attempt to obey the law—“to them which are in Christ Jesus….For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1–2).
As chapter 7 gives us the experience that leads to being a captive under the power of sin, chapter 8 reveals the experience of a man in Christ Jesus who has now been made free from the law of sin and death. In the former, we have the life of the ordinary Christian doing his utmost to keep the commandments of the law and to walk in God’s ways, but always ending in failure and shortcoming. In the latter, we have the man who knows that he is in Christ Jesus, dead to sin and alive to God, and by the Spirit has been made free and is kept free from the bondage of sin and of death.
Oh, that men understood the deep meaning of Romans 7, where a man learns that in him, in his flesh, there is no good thing, and that there is no deliverance from this condition except by yielding to the power of the Spirit! Only in this way can men be free from the bondage of the flesh and can fulfill the righteousness of the law in the power of Christ.