Romans 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
In verses 5-6 Paul contrasted the old life of sin with the new life in Christ. In verse 5 he stated what the old life was like. Paul spoke of the old life as “the flesh”. We are all born in the flesh. Paul spoke of the “motions of sins”. The Greek word translated as “motions” refers to “something undergone” or “emotions”. The point is that prior to salvation, our nature was to sin. We have already been told that in different ways. God obviously wants us to get this point. The law that God gave to Adam was that if he would eat of the forbidden fruit, he would surely die. That law came into effect when Adam disobeyed God.
In Genesis 4 we see that the law of sin that Adam now owned, was passed on to his children. Cain remained in that state and he developed his own religion because of it. He did not like it that God did not accept his false religion. He demonstrated the law of sin further in being angry with his brother and eventually murdering him. He already picked up on the sin of lying and he lied to God. He faced further judgment from God due to his persistence in sin.
Skipping ahead to the end of the flood we read:
Genesis 8:21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
God reminded Noah and his family and all of mankind that the natural man is bent on sinning. That is the fact. Romans 3:23 declared that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 6:23 declared that “the wages of sin is death”. That is the law of the natural man.
Our country has been involved in a one sided discussion on sodomy over the past while. Several provinces have made statements that they will protect the rights of parents to guide their young children and to protect them from unjust interference from outside forces. Alberta is the latest province to state some protections they will put in place. Other politicians have come out condemning what Alberta has stated.
These politicians claim that it is wrong to not support a child who has been brainwashed into thinking they are something other than what they were born as. They cannot see the cruelty in first of all brainwashing the child and then encouraging that deluded child in ruining their lives with drugs and surgeries that can never be reversed. Of course the next step in the government’s wicked plan is MAID, which will then encourage these confused and ruined people to kill themselves with help from the taxpayers!! The wicked certainly weave a wicked web.
The cruelty is not in parents who are given the responsibility to protect and provide for their children. By the way, that responsibility comes from God, not the government. The cruelty is from parents who reject God and subject their children to an ungodly public education. Parents need to be saved and attending a good church that will help them to train their children in such a way that will expose them to the truth. It is not wrong to protect children from all the ungodly influences of society. It is interesting to listen to ungodly adults. They condemn a godly parent who takes his children to church and reads the Bible to them at home on a daily basis, etc. Yet they praise the parent who avoids church and takes their children to a movie or some other secular event. The devil has certainly been very effective in blinding the minds of them that believe not.
Then there is the cruelty of a system that is interfering in the God ordained rights of parents to train up their children in the way they should go.
As Paul was directed to write in verse 5 and elsewhere, we can expect lost people to behave as lost people. The more hateful people become toward God, the more openly defiant they will be toward God. Romans 1 makes this clear.
In verse 5 Paul warned that the end result of living in the flesh is death. I realize that our governments are pushing for more people to die. Our governments do not believe in an afterlife. If they do, they do not believe there will be a judgment after death that will be bad news. We need to remember that God knows what He is talking about. A life of sin leads to eternal death. Not just physical death, but the second death which is the lake of fire.
In verse 6 we are told that “now”; speaking of what happened at the moment of salvation. The saved person has been delivered from the law of sin. The saved person is passed from death unto life. The law of sin is no longer hanging over the saved person. They have been given eternal life.
Now that we have been saved, we need to serve in newness of spirit. We have been given life. Now we need to be taught how to live in this newness of spirit. Our nature has been changed. Now we need to feed that new nature. The capacity to receive and to grow is there. God provided that at the moment of salvation. Now it is up to the saved person to live in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
Lost people live by the letter. Every lost person has a conscience. We have already learned that. Lost people can sear their conscience. They can push it back and ignore it, but they cannot remove it entirely. Every person interprets the “letter” in their own way. Most of my lifetime I was told there was such a thing as a “white lie.” It was a lie, but not a serious one. Now, our P.M. and the mainstream media and even other media have bought the redefinition of this as” ‘misinformation, disinformation’. Long words that simply mean lying. The government classifies any information it does not like as a lie.
I will not use the government appointed words because we do not need to use them. God calls anything that is not truth a lie. That little three letter word hits like a big hammer when the person is guilty. It is when the person is hit with that big hammer that they can stop and consider the need to be changed. The lost sinner needs to be changed. He is headed the wrong way. He needs to understand that and he needs to repent and be saved.
The “letter” is trying to live by some artificial standard that man has developed from the truth of God’s law. God never told anyone to live by the law. God knows no man can live by the law. Adam needed to trust God in order to avoid eating from the forbidden fruit. When he disobeyed God, he sinned. He could not keep the law on his own. He fell and great was his fall.
Paul tells us that once we are saved we have been made alive and now we need to live in the light of that fact. We can do that if we have been made alive. We must do that if we have been made alive. We will desire to do that if we have been made alive.
God makes it very clear that His salvation is not like anything else on earth. His salvation is precious and it is powerful. He has only one gift of salvation. There are not different versions of it, at least not in the Bible. In medicine, you can get the real thing or you can get a generic version of the real thing.
In New Evangelicalism you have the generic version of God’s forgiveness and His salvation. It does not work. It leaves the recipient a cripple. In the Bible we get the truth because God’s Word IS TRUTH.
We can see the love of God as we study the book of Romans. He does not want anyone to continue to go through life believing a lie. He wants each person to know the truth and to understand that it is possible to live according to His righteousness. It is also required of those who are saved.
Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
We will get to that passage eventually. God’s message is clear and it is a blessing to live by His Truth.
Pastor Bartel
