In the middle of our text today, are the two marvelous words “But now.” They point to the tremendous change that has taken place in the life of the one who has come to Christ as Savior. This is a change Paul has been talking about all along, of course. He has been pointing to the difference in a person’s life when one who formerly was apart from Christ becomes a believer.

As far back as Romans 5, Paul contrasted our being in Adam with our being in Christ. The former is what we were before our conversion. The latter is what we have become after it – what we are now. In chapter 6 he contrasted our original slavery to sin with our new and happy slavery to God. In our last study of the first verses of chapter 7 he spoke of two marriages and explained how we have died to the former in order to have the latter. Paul is developing the same idea here. It’s obvious that he is, because he begins with the word for, thus linking this section with what has gone before. Paul wants us to know – Can we possibly doubt this after what he has said earlier? – that to be a Christian is to be “a new creation” in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). To be saved means that we are no longer what we were and that we must live differently.

The strength of these verses (Rom. 7:5-6) is in the powerful terms Paul uses. The first important term is “sinful nature” or, more literally, “flesh.” “Flesh” (sarx) is the word the Greek text uses. In verse 5, Paul obviously doesn’t mean the whole of mankind, because it is being used as a contrast to those who are “in the Spirit.” And it isn’t referring to the body or even to any parts of the body. In Romans it is a term for the unregenerate, for unbelievers. It is what we were before God saved us.

In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly (“fleshly”) – mere infants in Christ…For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?” (vv. 1, 3). The Christians in Corinth were acting badly, as Christians frequently do. In that area of their lives they were “worldly.” That is, they were acting as if they were not Christians, as “mere men,” unregenerate. But because they were not unregenerate but were actually Christians, they had to stop that bad behavior. Their sin was inconsistent with what they had become in Christ and was therefore intolerable.  This is precisely what Paul has been saying all along in these middle chapters of Romans, He has been teaching that the Christian is not what he was before he became a Christian and, for that very reason, he must (and will) live differently.

The next thing Paul says, as he develops the contrast between what we were then and what by the grace of God we have become now, is that our relationship to the law has changed profoundly. That is, not only have we been changed; our relationships, beginning with the law, have changed too. Here again we have to look at a few terms carefully. The first is “passions,” which occurs in the phrase “sinful passions.” By itself the word passions is neutral and even somewhat passive. The Greek word corresponds to what we usually mean when we speak of our natural appetites, impulses, or emotions. Impulses can be good or bad. But here Paul links these normally neutral passions to sin, calling them “sinful passions,” pointing out that when the law is allowed to work upon them it excites them not to good but to bad behavior.

What does this mean? Does it mean that the law of God, which is “good,” itself turns morally neutral appetites or impulses into bad appetites or impulses? Not at all! The problem is that in the unregenerate man or woman these impulses, though not necessarily good or bad in themselves, are in fact bad, because they have been corrupted by our sinful natures. When the law tells us that we should not do something, our sinful natures rebel and do evil instead. The law is good, but we are not good. Hence, before our conversions the law actually increased rather than reduced immorality. What Paul is saying here is that before our conversion the law served only to arouse our sinful passions. It pushed us to sin. It was only after we had come to Christ that this changed and we found ourselves being drawn in the way of righteousness by God’s Spirit. Christians can sin, and they do. But they do not continue in it. What they do is what Paul says they do in verse 6.

That brings us to the final contrast in these verses. We have looked at the contrast between what we were and what we are now. We have looked at the contrast between our former and present relationships to the law. The final contrast is between what we did as unbelievers, the “fruit” we bore, and our present fruitfulness as Christians. “What was the sum total of our work as unbelievers?” asks Paul. “We bore fruit for death” is his answer (v. 5). This is a different way of putting what he said in verse 4, though it amounts to the same thing. We could do nothing to please God, and all we did do displeased Him. Even when we thought we were doing fine!

Paul knew this by experience. He says in Philippians that before he met Christ he was so outstanding in his conduct that he could claim to have been “faultless” in respect to legal righteousness (Phil. 3:6). To use the terminology of Romans 7:6, he was indeed serving faultlessly “in the old way of the written code.” But it was not “in the Spirit.” So not only was it not acceptable to God, it was actually evil. It was an exercise in self-righteousness, and it led even to persecution of Christians. It was “fruit” of a sort. But it was fruit unto “death” quite literally.

Now I want to say something more. If those about us who are Christians really are Christians, not only is it the case that they must bear fruit to God – serving “in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code” – they actually are doing so, regardless of whether or not they are doing it in the precisely the way you and I are doing it. They may be very different from us and may be serving in very different ways. But if they are truly Christians, they are serving God, and we should acknowledge it.

Romans 7:5-6 Reflection Question:

Give some examples of the different kinds of fruit you have done recently.