Reflection on Romans 7:1-4
Rom 7:1-3: The first husband is the law. The second husband is Christ. The married woman is each one of us. The law convicts us of sin and thus condemns us to death. It makes requirements but does not give us the strength to fulfil them and justly convicts us saying that the wages of sin is death (6:23). Therefore, the Lord Jesus died for us to save us from death. Thus we are delivered from the yoke of the law and He, the Risen One, is the second husband. He does not dispense us from the requirements of the law; on the contrary, He requires an even more rigid adherence to the law in our hearts, but the difference is that He Himself – the Risen One, whom we now belong to, fulfils His requirements in us. “Abide in Me, and I in you … without Me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:4-5)
Application in everyday life:
When in Paradise man believed the devil, the spirit of lies became incarnate in him and the infection of sin and evil was encoded in our nature. Since then man is enslaved by this spirit of lies; he loves lies and is easy to deceive. And when this man is convicted by God’s law, it does not lead him to break with evil but to destroy the law and to legalize evil done by him as something good. An example today is UN conventions and Eurostandards connected with homosexual ideology which denies all moral and spiritual principles and legalizes evil. According to this ideology of lies, abomination and sin must be privileged and labelled as rights, freedom and tolerance. In fact it is a path of self-destruction, autogenocide of the individual, family and society. The only solution is to change the spirit, which actually means conversion when one calls a sin a sin and accepts salvation in Jesus Christ. His death delivers man from the bondage of sin as well as from the requirements of the law. Man begins to belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead (v.4).
Jesus says clearly: “You must be born again … born of water and the Spirit.” He speaks of baptism in water and the Holy Spirit. The first baptism grafts us into Christ’s death and His resurrection, and through the second baptism we receive the strength to be Christ’s witnesses (Acts 1:8) and Jesus may live in us through His Spirit. This necessitates continual repentance, that means denial of our corrupt nature. And if we renounce our own will and accept the will of God, Jesus can live in us. Then we can truly say: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20). He is the fulfilment of the law. (cf. Mt 5:17)
