Roaming through Romans - Sin, Slaves and Spouses - Romans 6:15 – 7:6)

During the next few months, the SPC Thursday Evening Bible Study will be looking at Paul's Letter to the Romans, the single work that may best offer his theology and ethic. You see, in this letter, he explained to the church in Rome his understanding of human nature, faith, righteousness, and God's intention for everybody. He also offered practical ways we can live as Christians within the world and the church. And as we'll see during the seventeen sessions, what he had to say to the Romans is just as applicable today as it was almost 2,000 years ago. We'll following the schedule below:

• Session 1 - The Reason for the Letter (Romans 1:1-17)
• Session 2 - Human Guilt (Romans 1:18 – 2:11)
• Session 3 - Including the Jews and Everyone Else (Romans 2:17 – 3:20)
• Session 4 - But There's Faith (Romans 3:21 – 4:25)
• Session 5 - Faith and Righteousness (Romans 5:1-21)
• Session 6 - The Living Dead (Romans 6:1-14)
• Session 7 - Sin, Slaves and Spouses (Romans 6:15 – 7:6)
• Session 8 - Sin Remains (Romans 7:7-25)
• Session 9 - New Life ( Romans 8:1-39)
• Session 10 - Back to the Jews (Romans 9:1-29)
• Session 11 - But They Rejected Jesus (Romans 9:30 – 10:21)
• Session 12 - God's Ultimate Plan (Romans 11:1-36)
• Session 13 - Now What We Should Do (Romans 12:1-21)
• Session 14 - Obedience and Love (Romans 13:1-14)
• Session 15 - Concern for Brothers and Sisters (Romans 14:1 – 15:6)
• Session 16 - Tying It Up (Romans 15:7-33)
• Session 17 - Personal Greetings (Romans 16:1-27)

During our seventh session, we looked at Romans 6:15 – 7:6 and discussed how we've been set free from sin. The recording of our discussion and the passage we discussed is below.

Romans 6:15 – 7:6 [New Revised Standard Version] 

What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only during that person’s lifetime? Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 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. In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.