Opening: Have you ever had a bad habit that you were eventually able to break?
How did you do it? Did it take a long time or did you break “cold turkey?”
Scripture: Read
Romans 7:1-6.
Connect
the Text with Your Life:
- Another day talking about sin. Today, Paul uses a different metaphor: death. And this is a difficult passage. The basic thought of the passage is founded on the legal maxim that death cancels all contracts. He could still have put the thing quite simply. He could have said that we were married to the law; that the law was killed by the work of Christ; and that now we are free to be married to God. But, quite suddenly, he puts it the other way, and, in his suddenly changed picture, it is we who die to the law. How can that be? By baptism we share in the death of Christ. That means that, having died, we are discharged from all obligations to the law and become free to marry again. This time we marry, not the law, but Christ. When that happens, Christian obedience becomes, not an externally imposed obedience to some written code of laws, but an inner allegiance of the spirit to Jesus Christ.[1]
- When Paul talks about being “released” from the obligations of the law, is he discouraging religious living or spiritual disciplines?
Prayer
Focus: That we would “serve God, not in the old way of
obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.”[2]
