Faithfulness to God is like a Marriage

July 2, 2017


SECOND LESSON: Romans 7:1–6

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

L: This is the Word of the Lord.

C: Thanks be to God.

One of the Joys of being a Christian is to know that God loves us and that through faith in Jesus Christ we are saved and will live eternally in heaven. This gives us great hope and peace. And at the same time, Christians are plagued by sin. Oh, we know that we are forgiven and will be forgiven again and again. But we love God and want to live a god-pleasing life, a life without sin. But we keep falling back into sin. We have not only disappointed God, but ourselves too. We feel like we have cheated on God, that we have not been faithful to Christ. But it is like we cannot help ourselves. How can we quit sinning? We are Christians. We confess our sins every Sunday in Church and also during the week when we feel the burdens and guilt of our sin and weakness. It would be nice not to sin at all. But how can we humans do that?

In the letter to the Romans, St. Paul gives advice to the Roman Church and also to us in the Church in Okinawa. The Holy Spirit speaks to us today in these words and so it becomes a personal letter directly from St. Paul to you or to me.

In the opening chapters to the book to the Romans, Paul gives a good reason not to sin. Sin leads to death and hell. That alone should give enough fear to make us do the right thing. But that fear makes us slaves to the Law of God. This sort of fear is not faith. It makes us think that we can go to heaven if we do the right things. But we can never be perfect in God’s eyes, so we need a righteousness that comes from God, through the forgiveness of sins which Christ gives us through his death and resurrection. It is that faith that saves us. It is not longer fear, but love. We do the right thing not because we fear God’s wrath, rather we do the right thing because we love God.

And yet we continue to sin.

To help us break out of the bondage to sin, St. Paul gives us encouragement. Last week we talked about the advice in Romans Chapter Six. There the advice was that we used to work for the devil, but now we work for Christ. When the devil was our employer, we produced evil and sin, when God is our employer; we produce good works and love and kindness, etc. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 6:23).

Today, St. Paul gives us another way to understand our relationship with God and to help us live a good, Christian life. It is the example of marriage. In the Bible, this is a common image. In his parables, Jesus speaks of heaven like a wedding reception. In Revelation, John speaks of the Church as the Bride of Christ. In the Old Testament, the Prophet Hosea speaks of Israel as being the wife of God. God is often called “Lord”, and this is the same word often used for “husband” in the Old Testament. Like a husband, the Lord is jealous of his wife. And one of my favorite passages to show this is in Exodus 20, the First and Second Commandments, where this word is used:

• “5 You shall not bow down to [idols] or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.”

Whether the husband or the wife, it is like we had been married to the devil. The laws of marriage say we have certain obligations to our spouse. Depending on the place and time and customs, the wife has to cook and clean and the man has to work and bring home money to support his wife and family. When we are married to the devil, we have to sin. Sin is not an option. When Satan is our spouse we are supposed to sin, no, we are obligated to sin. We must serve our spouse.

But if the spouse dies, the other person is free. Free from that nagging wife! Free from that insufferable brute! Free from doing what the devil wants us to do. The devil has died to us when Christ died on the cross and descended into hell victorious over the devil and has set us free!

And now we can remarry. We can bind our love with Christ.

Paul carries this one step further.

When a spouse dies, the spouse who dies is now free from that spouse who is still living. I can imagine a man on his death bed, finding comfort in the thought “Soon I will be free from that nagging wife!” Or the woman might find relief in the thought “Finally I will be free from that insufferable brute!” In our Baptism, we have died to sin. In repentance and faith, we have died to the slavery of the devil and have died to the fear of the Law. In Baptism, we have risen with Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we are free to enter the marriage feast of heaven. Here the marriage vows are mutual faithfulness and love. Christ is faithful to us, we are faithful to him. This is true love.

St. Paul wants us to live our Christian life as if we were on an extended honeymoon. We have eyes only for the one whom we love. We exist only for the one with whom we now have the same family name. Our name is “Christian.”

Amen.

Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church


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