Paul’s Epistle to the Romans
November 14, 2021
Opening Prayer
This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice
and be glad in it! I thank You, O God, for the countless blessings You have
showered on us today. On a Sunday, Jesus, our Savior, rose from the grave. On a
Sunday, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the apostles. So it is proper that on
this day we call to mind our redemption through Jesus Christ and the gift of
the Holy Spirit, who was poured on us abundantly in Holy Baptism.
We thank You for Your holy and pure Word, which was (or will be) preached to us this day as You have ordained for the salvation of our souls. We thank You for all the bodily and spiritual blessings received from Your fatherly hand throughout our lives. We thank You because You have guided, led, preserved us from our youth, and shown us so many favors in body and soul. Who could ever recount all Your blessings?
However, this day will be not only a day of thanksgiving but also a day of prayer. We beg You, our God and Father, grant us to spend this day in Your fear. Keep us from temptations, vain thoughts, and evil company. How we wish that every artery in us were a tongue and every drop of blood a voice to praise and glorify You, O Blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! We pray that not a single hour would go by in which we do not show forth Your praise!
Seal the Word that we have heard in our hearts. Grant that we may diligently ponder it, let it govern our lives, and that we may walk accordingly. As we have now grown to be a week older, grant that we may increase in Your knowledge, in love and piety, and that we may grow in the inward self. We pray for the gift of Your Holy Spirit. May He put us in mind of Your Word during this week and throughout our lives. May He guide, govern, and lead us. Bless our labor and employment, and grant us to continue to live in Your grace for the rest of our days and years, until at last we reach heaven, where we may, with thanksgiving, keep the eternal Sabbath.
This is the day the Lord has made; He calls the hours His own. Let heav’n rejoice, let earth be glad And praise surround the throne. Amen.[1]
Romans 7:7-12
7 What then shall we say? That the
law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not
have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law
had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But
sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all
kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I
was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came
alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that
promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For
sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and
through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy,
and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
v. 7
Is the law sin?
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Death frees us from sin.
-
Death frees us from the law.
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Is the law, therefore, sin?
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Certainly not!
-
“The Law and sin are utterly disparate; and yet
there is an uncannily close connection between the two. Paul came to ‘know’
sin, to experience it as a powerful reality in his life, when he was confronted
by the Law.”[2]
What does the law do?
-
It makes sin known.
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“For I would not have known covetousness if the
law did not say (and continue to say), ‘Do not covet.’”
Interestingly, the apostle uses the 9th and 10th Commandments to display what the law does.
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Covet means – desire, long for, lust for
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Is it necessarily wrong to desire something?
-
So, when is it wrong?
o
9th Commandment: You shall not
covet your neighbor’s house.
o
10th Commandment: You shall
not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant,
his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
-
Covetousness ties us back to the 1st
Commandment because it explicitly deals with the attitude of our hearts. It is
the temptation to not trust God for every blessing or turn to him in time of
trouble.
-
James 1:14-15 - But each person is
tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then
desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is
fully grown brings forth death.
-
Jeremiah 17:15-13 –
Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in
man
and makes flesh his strength,[a]
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 He is like a shrub in the
desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched
places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
7 “Blessed is the man who trusts
in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 He is like a tree planted by
water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of
drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
9 The heart is deceitful above all
things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
10 “I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,[b]
to give every man according to his
ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”
11 Like the partridge that gathers
a brood that she did not hatch,
so is he who gets riches but not by justice;
in the midst of his days they will
leave him,
and at his end he will be a fool.
12 A glorious throne set on high
from the beginning
is the place of our sanctuary.
13 O Lord, the hope of Israel,
all who forsake you shall be put to shame;
those who turn away from you[c]
shall be written in the earth,
for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.
We do well to examine the desires of our hearts.
-
The moment of silence before Confession and
Absolution.
-
The old habit of announcing before communing.
Luther on the Work of the Law
Here we hold that the Law was given by God, first, to
restrain sin by threats and the dread of punishment and by the promise and
offer of grace and benefit. All this failed because of the evil that sin has
worked in humanity. For by the Law some people were made worse sinners, those
who are hostile to the Law because it forbids what they like to do and commands
what they do not like to do [Romans 3:20; 7:7-9]. Wherever they can escape
punishment, they do more against the Law than they did before. Those are the
unrestrained and wicked, who do evil wherever they have the opportunity.
The rest become blind and arrogant. …[T]hey conceive the opinion that they are able to keep the Law by their own powers. From this come the hypocrites and false saints.
But the chief office or force of the Law is to reveal original sin with all its fruit. It shows us how very low our nature has fallen, how we have become utterly corrupted. The Law must tell us that we have no God, that we do not care for God, and that we worship other gods [Romans 3:10-18] – something we would not have believed before and without the Law. In this way, we become terrified, humbled, depressed. We despair and anxiously want help, but see no escape [Romans 7:21-24]. We begin to be an enemy of God and to complain, and so on [Romans 5:10]. This is what Paul says, “The law brings wrath” (Romans 4:15). Sin is increased by the Law, “The law came to increase the trespass” (Romans 5:20).[3]
How do we look at God’s Law?
-
Three Functions
o
Curb
o
Mirror
o
Guide
-
Do we cling to the idea that somehow, in some
way, we can keep the Law?
-
Do we turn the Law into the focus of our faith?
[1]
Adapted from Starck’s Prayer Book, CPH, 2009, p. 7. The original translation of
this prayer book was in 1921. The prayer quotes Psalm 118:14, and This Is
the Day the Lord Has Made by Isaac Watts.
[2]
Franzmann, Martin, Romans: Concordia Commentary, CPH, St. Louis, 1968, p. 125
[3]
Smalcald Articles, Article II
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