Joined to Another

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Zach Boldt

Hickory Corners Bible Church

Regarding the Law • Sermon • Submitted 10 months ago • Presented 10 months ago • 37:56

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Not only have we died to sin, but we who are in Christ Jesus have also died to law, and all of this happened to us for a distinct and particular purpose!

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Romans 7:1–4 LSB

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is master over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman has been bound by law to her husband while he is living, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. So, my brothers, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

When we try to answer the question, “What makes a Christian?”, our answer must inevitably and invariably start not with us, but with God. For God is holy; Deut 32:4 declares of Him, “The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.”

And man, for our part, can be easily summarized by the very next verse in Deuteronomy 32:5, “They have acted corruptly toward Him, They are not His children because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation.” Far from describing simply that generation in the time of Moses, it could just as easily describe each and every generation that has walked the earth.

Under Sin and Under Law

We have been set down and appointed under the realm of sin, Romans 5:19 explaining that “through the one man’s disobedience the many were appointed sinners,” the many referring to everyone. And so, each and every person who has ever lives stands forever guilty before God on account of this condemnation.

Not only do we stand condemned, but Romans 5:20 declares an even greater condemnation: “Now the Law came in so that the transgression would increase...” The Law itself has no need to condemn us, we were already under the condemnation of sin, but the Law did increase our sin.

How then, can we ever be free of such condemnation? How can we be free not only of the original sin and its condemnation, but also of the increased sin and condemnation which came in on the side, the Law?

Last time, we addressed the first part of the answer, and of absolute necessity the answer must start with God rather than man: if you are in Christ Jesus, “you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ”.

The Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, came to earth in the flesh, the Eternal Son was sent by His Father, born of a woman, born under the Law. He lived, He died, He was buried. Before there was any possibility of us being saved from the realm of sin and law and death, He had to undergo this indignation, this shame. But not only did He live and die and his body was buried, but His body also was “raised from the dead”. He despised the shame, He bore the reproach, and His heavenly Father vindicated Him, raising Him from the dead such that the power of the grave is broken; death, the just and righteous conclusion of the law of God, has been conquered!

For Him. For Christ Jesus. Not yet for you and I; we are still in our sins, His righteous life vindicated Him, but what about us? Yes, we started this exposition with Christ Jesus, as is good and proper; but how does that apply to us?

The first part of the answer we saw last time, that something had to happen to the Son of God. But also, something likewise had to happen to us. And so, having already looked at what happened to Him, we may now consider what has happened to us.

Now, although Paul is talking about our past in this verse, something that is over and done with, there is a very specific sequence of events that he describes.

We started out in the reign and rule of sin, as I already mentioned.

To look at this verse in its context, of verses 1 through 4, “So, my brothers...”, he is pointing us back to what he has been teaching, what he is about to say regarding us is directly related to the first 3 verses; the law is master over a person as long as he lives; that discussion about a married woman being bound by law to her husband while he lives; that if one party dies, the other is free, they are released from that bondage.

We, Paul is saying, were married to the Law. It was our husband, and we were bound under its rule and dominion. We could not simply leave it, nor could we be joined to any other master. We were stuck, as it were, with no legal recourse and no future.

This truly already ought to be familiar to us; Paul has already introduced these things to us, so I want to take you back in your minds to what we learned in Romans 5.

In Romans 5:19, Paul explained that before we were even born, we had been “appointed sinners”, we were set down within the realm and rule of sin, having been constituted sinners. “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were appointed sinners”, he wrote. We were, in every sense of the phrase, “slaves of sin”, as Romans 6:17 reminded us. We weren’t our own, we were the property of another, we had no choice but to do the will of our master, and were indeed obedient to Slave-master Sin; we were beholden to his will and his ways, with no ability to free ourselves from under his rule.

But that wasn’t all we were. Just as we were placed under the realm and rule of sin, we were also then given as in marriage to the Law. The law wasn’t there at the start – no, Romans 5:20 declared, it came in later, it joined sin by the side, as it were. “Now the Law came in so that the transgression would increase.” The law did not cause any single person to be condemned to death and to eternal punishment; it was the disobedience of the one man, Adam. Romans 5:12-13 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.”

The Law, then, seems almost to be an over-the-top offense to us. Sin existed before the Law; prior to the Law came in, sin; it didn’t cause our condemnation, but rather it only served to increase the condemnation that already present; the Law serves to impute further sin to our account, to increase our debt to God, as it were.

And just as we were under the dominion of sin, so also were we under the dominion of the Law. And as the Law, we will read in verse 12, “is holy and righteous and good”, we realize that we were a very poor wife to it! For none of these words describe us while we are under the realm and rule of sin, of mark-missing. We are unable to be truly good, we are incapable of being righteous, and we are anything but holy. So, being married to it, even so we ourselves were only a poor and disobedient wife to the Law, all it could do then is provide ever further condemnation to us.

Now before I continue, I must take a moment to remind us all that this describes everyone yet in Adam. From the oldest person alive, to the captains of industry, to the plant-worker, to the schoolboy, to the baby born this morning, and even to the baby just conceived, all are in this wretched estate, all are under sin, Rom 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” not a single person can escape this condemnation and judgement under the realm and rule of sin on their own. Man cannot save himself, man cannot justify himself; to attempt or claim such a thing is foolhardy and condemns a person more.

Not only that, but refusing to believe this is the case, to say “well that is all right and good for you to believe such a thing, but I certainly do not believe that”, will likewise condemn you.

No, it does not matter what you think on this matter; a slave can certainly be whole-hearted in his work, deluded to the claims of his master such that he fails to recognize his own bondage.

If you refuse to accept His word, if you refuse to bow to His Christ and repent of your sin, your refusal to do so condemns you further still! Why? Romans 1:19-20 answers it succinctly, “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

The Law gives weight, it assigns value and defines the debt of our sin, holding it up to us and exclaiming, “this sin is your sin.” It is for this that Paul exclaims in 1 Corinthians 15:56, “Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law”. The law provides power and strength to sin!

And so, we ought to realize that our relationship with the law is then tied to our relationship with sin. Not in the main line, as it were, but by the side, Rom 5:19 saying that “the Law came in so that the transgression would increase.”

But what happened to our relationship with sin? We discovered in Romans 6 the relationship of the believer, the person justified in Christ Jesus through faith alone in His finished work alone, our relationship to sin, is that we have died to it. Paul said that explicitly in Rom 6:2, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” Continuing on from there,

Romans 6:3–4 LSB

Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:5–7 LSB

For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died has been justified from sin.

There it is! This is our relationship with sin – we were united with Christ Jesus; our old man was crucified with Him at Calvary, we died with Him there on the cross, we were buried and certified as being truly dead with Him in the tomb, we were raised to walk in newness of life with Him also.

Now, you begin to see why it is absolutely essential that we understand and comprehend the great and glorious message of our union with Christ is something that is done to us; it is not that we were admonished in chapter 6 to simply desire to die to sin, or that we should try on our own to kill sin within ourselves.

No, it is absolutely essential that we understand that we have died to sin; we have been legally separated from it.

And so now, having reminded ourselves afresh of this glorious truth, now we can return to our verse, Romans 7:4, in order to understand how it relates to this foundational truth:

Romans 7:4 LSB

So, my brothers, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

But it is not only sin that we have been separated and removed from, but also the law. “The Law is master over a person as long as he lives”, Paul had declared in verse 1. Even our being separated from sin was a legal matter itself; and here and now we realize we have also been separated and removed from under the authority of our first husband, the Law, by the selfsame event! We did not do this ourselves, but God has made us die to the Law through our union with our Lord Jesus Christ!

Paul wrote to the Galatians in Gal 2:19, “For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God.”

Jesus had kept the law in every detail, He provide Himself righteous before God in every regard, and yet still He submitted to full and final end of the full course of the Law, being put to death by it in a violent and intentional manner on a tree, a cross of wood.

And yet, 1 Pet 2:24 declares the glory of Christ Jesus, “Who Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that having died to sin, we might live to righteousness...” The Law put its demands of me, all upon Him. “We were united with Him in the likeness of His death”, Paul wrote. “Our old man was crucified with Him.”

I, no longer being in Adam, but now being in Christ, being united with Christ, He as my federal head and representative, He fulfilled the demands of not only sin but also of law. So, then, when the Law demanded its righteous and just punishment, that punishment has been met. The Law, according to its own terms and its own demands, has been fulfilled and satisfied. It is completed, and in this it can place no more demands upon me; “through the Law, I died to the Law.” I was “made to die to the Law through the body of Christ”.

And so, the law can no longer be master over me. A death has occurred, separating me from my first husband, the Law. I am now free to be joined to another; something that would have been abhorrent and evil to God before, is now not only permissible and possible, but Paul declares here that it was for this reason that I was made to die to the Law! “…so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead”!

In other words, our dying to sin and to law, was not itself the reason Christ suffered and died at the hands of men on account sin and law. As great and glorious, as freeing and joyful as this is, we dare not stop here!

For of first, and greatest, importance, we were made to die to the Law, being released from the bondage under that first husband, for the purpose that we “might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead.” Now, rather than being under the constraint and coldness of the letter, we find ourself taken out of that marriage yielding only death, and now put into a union with none other than the Son of God Himself!

The idea of being united to Christ Jesus is not particularly new for Paul, after all he had just declared in Romans 6:5, “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection”. But lest we be confused, it is important to understand that Romans 6 contains no reference to our marriage to Christ Jesus. The Authorized helps us here greatly when it renders that phrase in Romans 6, “we have been planted together in the likeness of His death”. That union was one of living things grown together in an organic sense, as a tree branch having been grafted in to a new trunk.

But now, Paul is declaring that the result of this grafting-together union, namely causing us to die to the law, has occurred in order that we may be joined to Christ in the manner of a wife to her husband, under Him and under His authority. We see this most clearly in Ephesians 5:22-23,

Ephesians 5:22–24 LSB

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

This is the same language, being “subject to” Christ, that Paul is using and referencing each time we read of being bound or joined in these first 4 verses of Romans 7.

Paul is not contradicting himself, then! He’s not saying that we were joined to Christ in an adulterous fashion, in order to later be married to Christ in something of an underhanded and extra-legal manner. No! Such a thing would be abhorrent, it would dishonor the law of God!

United, then Betrothed

But he is saying that we were united to Christ in an organic sense, in order that we would be crucified and die and be buried with Him, dying both to sin and to law, so that neither sin nor law may now be master over us! And the immediate and proximate purpose for this, is that we may now be joined not only as being grafted in to Christ Jesus, but also in marriage to Christ Jesus. “I betrothed you to one husband,” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 11:2, “so that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ!”

So now, we are betrothed to a husband who will never die, Romans 6:9-10 declaring, “knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”

And we ourselves, on account of that organic union with Christ, will likewise never die again, (Rom 6:8 saying “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,”).

And so, our marriage with our new husband, Jesus Christ, is eternal, it is lasting, and we shall never be separated from Him!

Therefore, how can a Christian ever be removed from Christ? How can a person justified by faith lose their salvation?

For not only have we been removed from the realm and rule of sin, but we have likewise been removed from the realm and rule of law. Not only have we been planted together and grafted into Christ Jesus, but we are now eternally married to him as a wife, neither of us dying or able to die to that union!

I may fail at being a good wife, but when I fail, I am failing against love, I am being a poor wife, but cannot ever return to my former husband, the law!

Very well, then; this is the teaching, this is what the apostle is declaring is true of us who have been justified by faith. Lord-willing, next time we shall begin contemplating the result of this glorious betrothal to our husband!