Notes on Romans

“For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law (for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified; for when Gentiles who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them),” Romans 2:12-15, NKJV.

“For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God,” Romans 2:28-29, NKJV.

The physical realm is ever a veil over our minds and a web of deception; God would have us know the Spirit of reality, the true being, and not merely the manifestation. In this case, the written law is a manifestation of the inner law. The inner law is the Spirit and heart of the matter and is the law into which we are born and by which we shall be judged. Whether or not we have known the written law is irrelevant—we will all be judged by the inner law. Not the law we, in our debased minds, conceive for ourselves, but God’s law, the knowledge of which is present in all and to which the conscience does indeed bear witness, “so that they are without excuse.” (See Rom. 1:18-23.)

But the written law bears witness of the inner law, and those who follow the written law declare the inner law to the world. Therefore, those who transgress the written law also debase the inner law in the eyes of the world. For the worldly perspective is merely external—without knowledge of the Spirit of God, all things are material and shallow; the inner existence is an idea only and has no definite being. Therefore the inner Spirit must be manifested in outer works—hence the importance of both faith and works in the Christian walk. “Faith without works is dead”—for faith alone does not serve others, but only ourselves. It is easy for the world to blaspheme the God of a dead faith—it is very difficult to blaspheme the God of a living faith. A living faith is directly comparable to a living person—if faith is alive only in the spirit, it is dead in mind and body and therefore dead to the world; if it is alive in spirit and mind it is alive only to the individual and is like a lamp hidden under a basket; if it is alive in body, mind, and spirit, it is alive to God, the world, and the individual, and will bear much fruit. But to return to the discussion of the law: by no means do I mean to say the inner law is invisible and ineffectual when not accompanied by the written law—rather, the written law is a direct result of the enforcement of the inner law. In and of itself, the written law does not justify us, for it is the inner law (the law of faith) which justifies and the written law which testifies. The inner law must be ever first and foremost.

“Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law,” Romans 3:20-28, NKJV.

The written law (the law of works) has its place as witness—as seen in verse 21—just as the physical realm testifies of and mirrors the spiritual realm. The true power flows from the Spirit and the workings of the inner law.

“Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law,” Romans 3:31, NKJV.

“Or do you know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?” Rom. 7:1, NKJV

“What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet.’” Rom. 7:7, NKJV

“I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died,” Rom. 7:9, NKJV

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit,” Rom. 8:2-4, NKJV

What is the distinction, if any, between “the law” and “the law of God”? What conclusion is to be reached regarding “the law” according to Paul? The “law of sin and death” is the written law, which, though “holy and just and good” (Rom. 7:12), produces sin and death by its very existence (Rom. 7:7-11). “The law of the Spirit” is the inner law—the law of God—through which we have life and by which we are freed from “the law of sin and death.”

“…When the commandment came, sin revived and I died.” This is an interesting statement, is it not? This concept relates directly back to Adam & Eve’s sin in the garden of Eden: their sin was not the physical action of eating the fruit, but of disobeying the commandment of God. Had God neglected to forbid the fruit, they might have eaten without sin; but by the commandment, though “holy and just and good” (for the fruit indeed was not, if you will, fit for human consumption), “sin revived and [they] died.” The law originated with sin as a moral necessity, but by its very association with sin it became also a stumbling block and a harbinger of sin itself. The relationship between the law and sin is rather like the question of the chicken and the egg. We can be certain that before sin, there was no need for the law; but Paul asserts (rather boldly) that “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.” There is the idea that with the creation of “good” as a descriptive adjective, evil arose as a natural opposite, but it is difficult to apply this same concept to sin and the law, for the law is, in a way, a preventive measure against sin, while sin is quite literally the transgression of the law. Sin and the law are quite tangled up with one another, which is, I suppose, why Paul uses the term “the law of sin and death.”

There is, of course, also the question of sin and “sinful nature.” Sin, in one sense, is the physical transgression of the law; in another since, it is the very inclination and capacity to transgress the law, which, even if not, hypothetically, submitted to, is quite present in each one of us as an undeniable nature and, in and of itself, is quite enough to condemn us in the sight of the holy God. Let us return momentarily to the garden of Eden. We know that the committed sin was that of disobeying God’s commandment by eating the fruit; one rather overlooked point is that of the fruit itself. The tree was called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” In the first case, there was the very physical sin of consuming the fruit contrary to God’s commandment; in the second case, there was the influence of the fruit itself—that is the endowed knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve made the conscious decision to eat the fruit before they actually ate it; in other words, it is natural to assume that at the time of this decision, they were aware of no evil. They had no concept of evil and therefore no concept of sin; their decision to disobey God could not then appear to them to be sinful. Adam & Eve, though their decision to disobey God was in fact a sin, were not, if you will, conscientiously punished for that sin until they ate the fruit, at which point the power of the fruit enlightened them to their sin. It was not the physical action of eating the fruit that condemned them, but their sudden knowledge of sin. At this point, they were made aware of the commandment as a law which might be either obeyed or disobeyed, and were consequently aware that they had, in fact, just disobeyed it. At this point, then, “sin revived and [they] died.” Notice—sin revived. For, while the actions were sinful, the condemning effects of sin were withheld while they were ignorant, but revived when they were enlightened. This “sin of knowledge,” as it were, was passed on to all mankind in that we are ever aware of the sins we commit, however we attempt to deny or conceal them—as, indeed, Paul demonstrates in Romans chapter one.