Three Deaths, Two Marriages, One Life – Romans 7:1-6

 I’ve used this illustration before, but it takes us to an important point, so please bear with me. During the summers of my last two years in high school, I worked in Wyoming for a uranium company. My job was to survey mining claims or to carry the posts which marked the corners of those claims. During that time, I was sleeping in a bunkhouse in a tiny town whose business district consisted almost entirely of two gas stations and two cafes. Jeffery City’s only source of life was related to Western Nuclear Uranium Corporation. Most of us surveyors ate breakfast and supper at one of the two cafes. They also prepared sack lunches for us every day. All our meals were paid by our employer – we could order anything that we wanted. And for the first several weeks during both those summers, my dinner meal was a huge T-bone steak. Since steak was rare at home, I would never have believed that I could tire of eating T-bones. But I was wrong, and after a couple dozen of those things, I began to order other dishes once in a while.

As church-going Christians, listening to Bible-based lessons, and especially in expository studies such as this one in the Book of Romans, you have heard at least a hundred sermons and references to God’s Law. You should know – now that you have become a child of God, your relationship to the Law is different from what it once was. Even though, as Paul says in verse 12, “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good,” in some ways it is far less important to you. You have tasted it so often that, even if you once enjoyed it, it no longer excites you.

But you may have forgotten how important law – or the Law – is to the rest of humanity. To people who know nothing of grace, some sort of law is usually the key to their false religion. Of course there are those who struggle to say that there are no divine Laws, or there ought to be no laws. We might call them “antinomians” or extreme “libertarians.” By their very struggle against law they bring attention to the Law. Then there are many branches of the Jews, who believe that God’s Law is at the core of true religion. The Sadducees were not as legalistic as the Essenes or the Pharisees, but generally speaking the Jews greatly loved Moses and the Mosaic Law. For some of them, nearly every moment of every day was governed by some sort of law or tradition which was once based on something that they saw in the Law of God. And then if you cris-crossed the world, you’d find that just about every religion, from the most idolatrous and pagan to those under the umbrella of Christendom … they all have their rules, regulations and law-based superstitions. In fact, just about everybody, except the well-educated Christian, lives under a cloud called “the Law.”

The people to whom Paul was writing either were, or had been particularly enslaved to it. But not only that, there were professing Christians, who were deliberately telling Christians that they were as bound to the Law as they had ever been. They were telling the saints of God that unless they obeyed Moses, they couldn’t be followers of Christ. So we have to understand and forgive Paul for returning to this subject again and again, studying it so thoroughly.

In the first part of chapter 7 we read of three deaths, two marriages and one new life in relation to God’s Law.

Marriage number one.Of course, marriage is one of those institutions which has been stolen and is governed by culture and tradition. As a result, marriage in our part of the world, and in our day, is quite different from marriage in Central Africa, Saudi Arabia, or in most of the world two thousand years ago. For example, generally speaking in our part of the world marriage is matter of willing agreement between the two people who are getting married, but in other places, people are forced into wedlock by their families or their tribes. Remember that Paul is studying the law, and he’s only using marriage as an illustration. This is not a thorough study of marriage and doesn’t get into questions of adultery and so on. But he is using the kind of marriage to which he was familiar, and not modern western marriage. From our perspective, we might picture two people making a willing, loving covenant together, but Paul was probably thinking about two people who had been betrothed by their parents when they were young or even at their births. They were married whether they really wanted to be married or not. And like it or not, there is not a “single” person who is not under the covenant of marriage – to God’s Law.

As a general rule, there is only one way for that married couple to be separated – death. I believe that a part of the marriage ceremony ought to include a reference such as “till death do us part.” Despite what man, and sin, have done to the institution of marriage, when it comes to Paul’s point of illustration, death is the only deliverance from the institution of the law. “Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?” It does not matter if any of us ever wanted to be joined in wedlock to the Law, that was arranged long before our births. In a sense it became effective and was consummated when we reached the point of understanding the meaning of law and of our ability to disobey its precepts. But that doesn’t mean that we weren’t essentially married to it from birth. Remember that in the days of the New Testament, the betrothal, or engagement of two people, was considered to be as sacred and binding as the marriage after the feast was over, after the new household had been established, and after children had been born. Mary, for example, could have been stoned to death as an adulteress, even though her marriage to Joseph was in its betrothal stage and had not been completed.

As far as Paul’s illustration goes, you and I came into this world as betrothed to God’s law. We were as bound to it, as if we were born fully ordained Levites with incense lamps in our hands. And that helps to explain why it is that death reigns from the moment of birth. Death is the result of sin, and sin is the transgression of the Law. There is not a soul upon earth who is not guilty before the Law of the universal God – Jehovah.

If at some point in our adolescent lives – which sometimes extends into our 70’s 80’s and 90’s … If at some point in our adolescent lives, we decide that we don’t want to be married to the Law …. if we claim a divorce and decide that we would rather be married to atheism, antinomianism, or some religion whose laws are not the same as the Lord’s, we have become spiritual adulterers.

There is no divorce from the Law; there is only one way to be delivered from this marriage – death. Of course, if we are the one to die, then we are free – but only in a sense, because from the moment of our death and then throughout eternity, we will be paying the penalty that the Law demands for our sins. But what if the Law died first? Then we would be free to marry another. Is this possible? Can I be free from the demands of the Law against me? Absolutely!

Remember that this is just an illustration, even if it is a Biblical illustration, so it could be attacked as being less than perfect. But Paul’s point is this: When the Lord Jesus Christ died, He was bearing the penalty of the Law. With all my sins laid upon His heart and upon His back, you could say that the Law was there as well. When my Saviour died for me, my relationship to that Law died as well. And then when Christ arose from the dead, having delivered me from the Law, I was free to marry another.

That brings us to the second marriage and to the second death:The first death is that of the Law. It wasn’t a murder, and it certainly wasn’t death due to old age. It was an execution – a crucifixion. And it was a part of the text’s second death – that of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we have often said, there are no perfect earthly illustrations of the work of divine salvation. There is no earthly equivalent to the Law’s dying in the death of Christ – but theologically it is so.

By the sovereign grace and authority of God, when Christ died, our marriage to the Law came to an end. “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” Picture, two neighboring Jewish families, the father’s are coworkers or perhaps cousins. Their wives are both expecting, and the men begin to talk. They like each other, respect each other, and think that a closer bond between their families would be a good thing. So they decide that if one wife should have a son, and the other a daughter, then those two children should some day marry. It’s not like modern mothers who just think and dream about their babies growing up and marrying certain other babies. In this case, the fathers make an agreement between themselves, shake hands or exchange gifts and tokens in regard to a very special covenant. And when the two children are old enough, they are wed just as their fathers decided before their births. Ah, but let’s say the husband in this new family is killed in an accident only six months after the ceremony. Now this young lady is freed from a marriage that she never really wanted. We’ll say for the sake of argument, that now she is at perfect liberty to marry anyone whom she chooses. Even though that is true, it might be more theologically correct to say that she is still young enough to be forced to marry another young man of her father’s choosing. Should I say, that she should marry another man of her HEAVENLY Father’s choosing?

All of us come into this world dead in trespasses and sins, because we are under the Law. But when those for whom Jesus died, put their faith in Christ, repenting of their sins, the law becomes dead to them, and they are free to marry another. It’s not just to any other, but to one other – the One who died for them and rose again. This new babe in Christ does not have liberty to remain single. She has no right to be wedded to the world or to sin. The Saviour freed her from a disastrous marriage, and He deserves to be her new Spouse.

Christian, your body is not yours to destroy with any kind of abuse, drugs, gluttony, unnecessary risk, the lack of medicine when medicine is necessary – with any kind of sin. Just as in any marriage, the body of the spouse is no longer his or her own, but a gift given to the partner. “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Not always is a second marriage better than the first, and sometimes it is far worse. But in the case of this second marriage – this marriage to the Son of God – no relationship could ever be sweeter. And that marriage must not be marred by sin on our part.

Now this scripture confuses things by bringing up a third death.We won’t abuse the illustration by pushing it too far, but theologically it is quite easy to grasp. Verse 4 – “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” Which is more true – that the Law died in Christ, or that the sinner died in Christ? Certainly the holiness of God did not come to an end when the Saviour died. The Lord is just as just and righteous as He has ever been. And His will has never changed and never will be. Right will always be right; wrong will always be wrong; and sin will always be sin. But in a sense the claim that the Law had against us as sinners died when Jesus died.

And then in another sense, when Christ died, so did the sinner – the spouse. This was the theme of the Apostle in the last chapter. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” “We shall also LIVE with him.” Isn’t this another part of the average marriage ceremony and vow? The wedding couple promise to live together in mutual respect and love until death separates them. Why don’t more repenting sinners, consider this when they seek for deliverance from the law and sin? Why aren’t more Christians taught that this should be a part of their new Christian lives? In coming to Christ, they are supposed to be coming to live with a new Spouse in a new marriage with a new home. And it isn’t just another engagement to be completed when they move into their Heavenly mansion. It is a marriage which begins on earth and may only occupy a meager apartment or small cabin for a few years until retirement. But the marriage begins at salvation, not at our translation or glorification.

The point is this: if we died with Christ, then it shouldn’t really matter what the conditions of our new life is like.

And that leads to our final point.There may be three deaths and two marriages, but there is also one new and wonderful life. There are very few more life-changing events in a person’s life than a marriage. People talk about how traumatic the birth of someone’s first baby can be. Others talk about what happens when people move from one house or one city to another. But there is nothing like the entire life-change that takes place when two people promise themselves to each other and blend themselves into one.

And that should be exactly the experience that we feel when we are saved. We have a brand new life. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” The Christian should find that he has a new place of worship, or at least a new energy and spirit of worship. He should have a new vocabulary, and new friends, new recreations, a new library – a new life.

What should we think about a bride who wants to live with her mother and not her new husband? What will happen to that marriage if the husband refuses to give up his old girl-friends? How successful will that marriage be, if each partner maintains a separate bank account or charge card?

As far as the illustration goes, the Christian is the new bride, and Christ is the Bridegroom. We are supposed to live with Christ and share everything. We are new creatures in Christ, and we should have lives that match that newness.

So what should we think about a professing Christian, who lives in spiritual or physical immorality? Must we take his testimony even though it is contradicted by what we see in his life? Christian, examine your life to see if it matches what you professed when you were baptized. Are you really married to the Lord, or are you still a slave to sin and doomed under the law? Come repent before God and put your love, as well as your trust, in the Lord Jesus Christ.