Chuck Larsen

There are numerous uses of the idea of “adultery” as the picture or illustration of how Israel had turned away from God to have affairs with other gods, particularly the gods of the people who lived around them. The whole book of Hosea is about how a faithful husband (the picture of God) had married a woman who was continually being unfaithful to him. Yet, the husband repeatedly accepted her back because he had loved her so much. The idea of “unfaithfulness” and “adultery” is familiar to Bible readers. In the New Testament, however, Paul uses the idea in a very fascinating way. Romans 7 actually begins with a discussion about this idea of unfaithfulness in a marriage. Paul writes in the first three verses, “Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.”

Paul has used marriage and adultery to help us understand our relationship with God and with the law. You see we’ve all been born espoused (so to speak) to the Law of sin and death. We personally consummated that contract when we reached the age of accountability and sinned on our own accord. Therefore, we might say we were born married to the Law! Law is our husband. He dictated our behavior. He instructed us on what is right and wrong, and it was his permanent goal to keep us following his rules. Psalm 19, says, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” Being perfect, it shows no love, no compassion whatsoever. He tells us everything that we’re supposed to do but he doesn’t help us one bit. All he constantly does is point out to us every way and every time that we fail! It’s “death” to be married to someone like that. It destroys us. Paul says it brings a ministry of death. In 2 Corinthians 3:6-7, he writes, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.  He refers to life under the law as a “Ministry of death, carved in letters on stone…”

But God loves us! So, he devised a plan to get you and I out of our marriage to this miserable mate called the law. God planned a murder! He did not kill the Law. He killed you and me! The person married to the Law died! Then after our death, he allowed us to be born again. This is what Paul was getting at in Romans 7:4. He said, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead.” Again, Paul lays this truth out for as at the beginning of Romans chapter 8. He says that the “law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us…”

In my battle against the spiritual forces of darkness, I don’t often feel like I’m doing really well. I keep trying harder and harder, and it results in my failing and failing. I find over and over again that when it’s all about me and my effort, I just can’t measure up to God’s standard. I say stupid things! I think bad thoughts! I act in ways unbecoming of a soldier of Christ. The consequences of Romans chapter 7 seem to be mine. My inconsistent behavior, thought life, and tongue confuse me. I just don’t understand why this is part of my life. Why am I plagued with this radical inconsistency? Further, I feel guilt and shame. I’m frequently frustrated, which almost always leads to discouragement. This, then, leads me to the brink of despair.

Then I came to my senses and remembered that the war had already been won. Jesus Christ won that victory on the cross for me. I must not let my connection with him get loose. It’s when I take my eyes off Jesus that I begin to drown in the sea of trouble. It’s when I put my mind on my own strengths that my weaknesses overwhelm me. As I reconnect, the strength returns. The ultimate result is guaranteed. It’s so encouraging to know that complete and comprehensive victory is certain. When we look at ourselves in the light of God’s strict moral codes, called “the law,” we see ourselves and our sin as clearly as the pimple on my chin when I look into the mirror. The law brings sin alive in our flesh and awakens our souls to our weaknesses. The interesting thing is that was its intent. Paul writes, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:20–21). You see, the victory is indeed ours. God’s grace always triumphs over man’s sin. The point is, as James M. Boice puts it, “…regardless of how badly we may think we are doing now or how near despair we may be due to the intensity or duration of the struggle. It is the very knowledge of a final victory that will enable us to fight on.”

Boice goes on to illustrate his point: “When the armies of Oliver Cromwell were winning battle after battle in the English Civil War, it was said of them that they could not lose because they knew, even before they started to fight, that God had given them the victory. I do not know how true that was of Cromwell’s army. There were Christians on both sides of that conflict, and Cromwell’s cause was not entirely free of base motives. But whatever the case with Cromwell’s soldiers in those very human battles, the principle does hold true for us, the soldiers of Jesus Christ who are engaged in fierce spiritual warfare against sin. Apart from Jesus, not one of us can prevail for a moment. But united to him, we not only can prevail. We will.”