Comparison Between Marriage and the Law
Romans 7-8 form a mirror. In chapter 7, Paul talks of his life under the law and tells of his battles and failures, and indeed the failures of any who tried to obey the law. Chapter 8 moves forward and speaks of the beauty of the grace of God by Christ's sacrifice to give power to believers to live as God wants them to live that the law could never provide.
He starts speaking of the similarities between marriage and the law in Romans 7:1-6. He is addressing this part of the letter specifically to those Jews who were familiar with the law of their faith. A Jew was born under the rule of the law and lived under that law for their entire life. Much of the law was repetitive, atoning for sin routinely and repeatedly. A Jew could not avoid or get out from under the law as it was part of their theocracy.
Part of that law included laws for marriage. Although divorce laws had been added because of the hardness of the hearts of the people, they were never God's intention. Paul details that a woman was considered bound to her husband for as long as he lived. Once he died, she was free from being under the law or control or rule of her husband and was free to marry again.
As long as her husband lived, she couldn't form an association with another man without being termed an adulteress. Once the husband died, she would be free from being called an adulteress, even if married to another man.
In like manner, before becoming Christians, Jews living under the law were condemned by the law to eventual death unless they went through the rituals of the law to cover their sin. The law had no power to help them to live better. It just condemned them when they fail.
That isn't so much different than the laws we have today. They define actions that are wrong, but don't really provide any help in living better. The threat of punishment is all that is there to stop a person from breaking the law, not unlike the threat of eternal punishment was there to keep the Jew from violating God's law. But the law in and of itself today does nothing to help a person live correctly. It is merely a threat of punishment to come.
Paul then declares in verse six that Christians are delivered from that law that held people under penalty of death with help by the help of the Holy Spirit. That newness of spirit as he points out is there to help people to not only seek forgiveness from God by confessing sin when they do wrong, but it also helps guide away from doing wrong in the first place. The dead letter of the law never had any of this power, and still doesn't.
As I've noted before, the law has a purpose, even in our lives today. We should all listen to the Holy Spirit as He tries to guide our lives in paths of righteousness. But the letter of the law is always there if we aren't listening well. And most all of us have times that we aren't listening well, I'm afraid. At least I do. We are free from the sacrificial system because Christ has paid the price for all the world's sin. We are free from the dietary laws. But the basic right and wrong moral laws don't change. Thou shalt not lie. Thou shalt not kill. All of the basic morality that God instilled via His laws for the Jews are still there for us today.
But, like Paul, we can be thankful that the Holy Spirit is there to guide us more closely in how we should act and what we should say and do. The Holy Spirit has always worked to try to convince mankind of sin, but He wants an even closer relationship with us today to help bring God's glory to an unbelieving Earth. I hope we all do our parts.
Relationship Between Law and Sin
In the rest of chapter seven, Paul gives a bit of his testimony about where he stood under the law. Romans 7:7-13 talks about how the law changed his perspective on life. He declares that the law itself isn't sinful. The law was given by God, so this should be plain. But it is possible that there were some early Christians in Rome who were trying to paint the law as something that was wrong for Christians to worry about and saying that they shouldn't worry about it because of grace. It is hard to tell from this passage.
What is clear is that the law made clear to Paul that he was a sinner. He wouldn't have known of his own mental thought process that lust was wrong, for example, except that God had written Thou shall not covert. That doesn't mean the Holy Spirit might not have been dealing with Paul's heart if he had such issues without the law, but having and knowing the law made it clear to Paul that lust was considered sinful by God.
He goes on to say that it was the law which created the warfare in his heart. Without knowing right from wrong, he could have gone about his business in any way that he saw proper, as long as somebody else didn't object and put a stop to the way he was living his life. But with the law, sin became a thing alive that he had to guard and fight against. He realized his position in God's sight and what God expected of him by the law.
When he received and understood the law, he realized that he was bound for eternal destruction. All Jews alive realized this as well as they had to follow through with atoning sacrifices to cover their sinful lives. But he describes his battle as even more strong. Sin was directly battling for his soul. He was waging war with it, and under the law he was all to often losing.
Sin, as Paul described it, continually was a deceiving agent, trying to mold itself as not being really bad. Think about Paul's life as Saul. From early in his life, he became an expert in the law and in applying the law. He was trained up by the best teachers. Then he went on to persecute the early Christians. Think of what deception had to go through his mind to justify not trying to stop the stoning of Stephen, for example. Imagine Paul, looking back on his life before meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus as he was blind for three days and later, realizing just how much deception he had allowed sin to have to make things look okay to him.
This is one of the most important things to think about in this chapter. Satan knows our weaknesses. He's been undermining people since Adam and Eve. He's good at it. Be aware of the deceptions that Satan is using to try to make something that God has called sin look acceptable. Churches have leaders who are openly homosexual - it must be okay for me to be - deception from the enemy. Our leaders live in a world of lies - it must be okay for me to lie - deception from the enemy. And just to hit on a failure to do good - our leaders are making the lives of the poor worse - I don't need to do anything to help them.
Don't doubt that if we listen to the deceiver, and allow ourselves to be trapped in a world of sin, we will end up destroyed just like Saul would have been had he not met Jesus. The law of God isn't sinful, but it does make clear what God calls out as sin. We need to seek to live a life in the Holy Spirit of which God approves.
Battle Between Flesh and Righteousness
In Romans 7:14-25, Paul goes into his struggle under the law to do what He felt was right. The law tried to elevate him to a moral position by words. But Paul admits that under the law, all to often he did the things that his spirit told him he should not do, and he didn't do the things that his spirit told him he should do. Whether by the law or the Spirit, in and of himself, he didn't have the moral power to live the way he wanted to live. The basic sin nature that was passed down from Adam continually interfered, and the forces of evil worked against him so he failed.
However, he didn't blame the law for his failure. He recognized that his flesh, and his inheritance from Adam had no power to help him do the will of God. His sin nature was continually at odds with what the law declared to be right. His inner nature wanted to follow the law, but he recognized that even he, who he proclaimed to be one of the best versed in the Jewish law, couldn't keep it all correct all the time. He delighted in its study. He rejoiced in its teachings. But it didn't, of itself, provide the power to keep it.
Indeed, Israel had fallen in keeping the law over and over again through their history. While the southern kings did a bit better than the northern kings, eventually each were given over to other empires and they lost their place in the promised land because of their continual failures in not keeping the law, and in particular in following other gods.
Paul then comments on what he considers to be his state under the law. He felt wretched. He asks who is able to deliver from this battle between doing right and wrong. And the last verse answers the question. He thanks God for the work of Jesus Christ our Lord. He has able to give us the strength to live as we should. Indeed, He gives a promise that we will never be tempted beyond our capability to resist. It is still our choice as to whether or not we take the path God wants or the path our flesh and Satan wants. Free will is still a thing. But we have a promise from God that there won't be any temptation that we face that will be too much to handle with God's help. We just have to choose right in this battle we fight with the flesh.(1 Corinthians 10:13; Hebrews 2:18, 4:15; James 1:13-14)