Romans – The Play Part 3

And you picked up that brick, and you said, “I’ve had a bad day. Everybody’s been telling me what to do and what not to do, and doggone it, you’re not going to tell me what to do.” And that evening, you went to jail. Did the law put you in jail? No. Your actions put you in jail. And your actions put you there because you were weak in the presence of both the law and in the stirring up of sin, which utterly controls you. Now, brothers and sisters, it is with this background that Paul rushes in to save us from this law, so that we will no longer be stirred up by it, we will no longer be exposed to the sinfulness of sin, no longer see our great weakness, and no longer see sin use the law to cause us to be disobedient.

And Paul uses an illustration, and it’s so interesting up until and through chapter seven how much death is important here – how, what a friend we have in death. It was by death we were put away from sin – that’s chapter 6. By death, we’re going to be put away from the law. By death we will be freed from sin, and by death we were freed from the law. Do you remember chapter 6? Sin had a slave. Who was it? You. Then what happened? Do you remember? Christ died, and at the time He died, you were plunged into Him, immersed into Him, made one with Him. And sin turned around to find its slave and couldn’t find it. All it could find was the tombstone: “Here lies me, dead.” And from your viewpoint, when you rose from the dead, you found the tombstone, and it said: “Here lies sin.”

But you’re having problems with the law. And Paul comes back to this utensil – death – and says: Do you not know? All the problems you’re having with death, do you not understand that there is one thing that can break a contract between two people, and that is death? In the same way it was with sin, so it is now with the law. And he gives an illustration, but I have looked at this passage, and I have looked at this passage, and I have tried to think about Paul writing it. And those of you who are listening to the recording now, don’t lose your uppers. Paul was writing too fast. He left out a few words. He implies something that he does not say, because in fact, his illustration here falls apart.

I have just told you what he implied. Paul implies that death will break a contract between two people, no matter which one of them dies. But he switches around without realizing that. He is talking about the law being put to death, but without realizing it, when he ends his illustration, the law does not die. And he doesn’t say that in this passage. Listen to him again—I’m in the opening of Romans 7: “Do you not know, brothers, for I speak to men who know the law, that the law has authority over what? A man. Do you see? A man, only for as long as he lives.” Does that mean that if the man dies, then he is free from that law? Is that not true?

We talked the other night about Madame Mentonot, who was dug up fifty years after she had died and was beaten by a French crowd or French revolutionists who’d gone mad. By the way, I forgot to tell you—her body was perfectly preserved. But now they beat on her, hung her, hung her up by her neck. Didn’t bother her a bit. Because she was dead. There is no corpse that has ever been in any way intimidated by law or sin. It just ends with death. So here, the law has authority over the man as long as he lives. But he switches and talks about a woman.

“For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive.” So, we begin looking at this man, do we not? She’s married to a man, and we’re thinking he’s gonna die, right? Yeah. He’s gonna die. And she’s gonna be free. And that’s what he says: “But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.” You got it?

Now then, listen to that. There is a law, it’s the marriage contract. If the husband dies, she’s gonna be free from marriage. So then, if she marries another while her husband is alive, she is an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage – not an adulteress, she’s just…here she could be a terrible, horrible, sinful human being, but if he dies, she goes, marries another man, they have physical union, there’s no sin in it. It’s wonderful. Married. Isn’t that wonderful? What happened to Mary? She found a good man and married him. Mary is married to Joe, and she’s living with John. Isn’t that horrible? See the difference in what death does? Death takes something—that same act—and in one, makes it glorious, holy marriage. The same act makes it terrible adultery. Death is the difference. Okay, you got it?

But if her husband dies, she’s released from the law and is not an adulteress. She’s happily married to another man. Alright, so we’re waiting for the man to die, are we not? Boy, I tell you, the greatest day I ever lived was when I found out who died. That husband’s still alive, saints.

Starts off: “Do you not know that law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?” And I keep waiting for that man to die. He doesn’t die. Now listen to this, very interesting, in the illustration. Who is the man? Who is the man? Who is the woman? Who’s the man? No, no—oh, no one knows. Ah, this has been debated forever. I’m going to tell you what I think.

Our carnal nature? That’s very possible. It’s not sin, because sin’s already been handled in Romans 6. To me, the husband is the law. And there is a union between the law and me, and I am married to the law. And I want him to die. And I will be free from him. Why was I born a Jew? I want to introduce to you now, please, and listen carefully – this dear woman. She was foolish in her young life and married what she thought was a wonderful man who would answer all her problems. I’m gonna tell you something. I’m gonna get to a parenthesis here.

I believe Paul is reflecting on his own past experience here. Let me give you what I have as a daydream about this. I think Paul is writing this, and he’s reflecting back on when he was a little kid playing out there in the streets of Tarsus, doing anything he wanted to, saying anything he wanted to—just free, totally free in his conscience. Then he is thirteen years old, and he is at that age, by Jewish custom, he is put under the Hebrew law. He starts learning all the rules and regulations and laws, and more rules and more regulations and more laws, and more rules and more regulations and more laws.

And by the time he is persecuting the Christians in Jerusalem, there are two Pauls: the devout defender of the law, but someone who, when no one is looking, is crying out: “That which I would, I do not. And that which I would not, I do.” He is in turmoil over the fact that he—probably the only Jew in the world—he cannot obey the law. He knows the rest of them are, because they always laud the law, praise the law, and defend the law, and seem to be perfectly happy with the law, and are able to obey it. And Paul is saying, “What I want to do, I never do. And what I don’t want to do is what I do.” I think Paul is giving his own experience of his relationship to the standard of the law here. And he is also telling us of his own deliverance.