Paul is saying that, in its curbing function or use or purpose, the Law may curb, but it curbs us to death. The Law may indeed instruct, and it will instruct us to death.
Many of the epistle texts present great opportunities to teach on an article of faith. All the pericopes we are given from Romans could qualify. Faced with this Romans 7 selection, it might be tempting for the preacher to turn the sermon into either a doctrinal lecture about sanctification or a therapeutic reflection on “the struggles we all face.” Resist both temptations, preacher. Romans 7 is not, primarily, about spiritual improvement, emotional honesty, or managing your inner life more effectively. Romans 7 is about death. More specifically, it is about what happens when sinners collide headlong into the Law of God. And when that crash happens, death is right there ready to reap. This is well summarized at Romans 7:9: When the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
Death is always there lurking around the corner, with the law always law-ing us to death. Lex semper accusat – I have well-meaning colleagues who will insist that is not all the Law does, of course. The Law curbs, the Law hammers, the Law reflects, mirrors, makes us conscious of sin, sure, but it also teaches and guides. This is all fine and well. Do not lose sight of this lesson, preacher: Paul is saying that, in its curbing function or use or purpose, the Law may curb, but it curbs us to death. The Law may indeed instruct, and it will instruct us to death.
Hear that refrain and use it to effect in your preaching! Biblical preaching pays attention to the heartbeat of the text, the phrase, image, tension, or contradiction that freight an entire message. Paul’s argument circles around law, sin, and death in Romans 7. He seems obsessed with it! And the preacher should not shy away from doing that too. Paul employs repetition not only in theme but in vocabulary as well. It is not laziness here, but, rather, constant confrontation with reality, for himself, and for his audience; drilling, repeating, echoing, and hammering on. Some folks fear repetition, chary of covering ground already traversed and explained elsewhere, but it is wise to remember preaching is not just for explanation or exposition. The best preaching is invasive. Good preaching of the Law will press and expose, will trap liars in deceits and strip defenses away. Think carefully about light exposing the corners we would rather prefer stay obscure, and the light of God’s Word acting diagnostically and refreshingly for honesty and healing (refer to John 3:16-21).
The Law laws us to death. That is a refrain Paul is singing. Sing it yourself and return to it in your own preaching. Crescendo this and let your listeners begin to feel boxed in by it. Because, frankly, they are, and you have been called to make certain they are hep to the fact.
Revealing this, reinforcing it, and embodying it is at the very heart of biblical preaching. It is properly dividing the Word of truth (1 Timothy 2:15), properly distinguishing law and gospel. Notice, this is no mere doctrine to give lip service to, not just a category to explain. Rather, law and gospel is actually event which the hearer experiences. Everyone confronted with the Word of God in Christ undergoes it. The order of this matters, too. The preacher ought to strive to make the hearer experience the killing work of the Law before the Gospel is delivered in its sweetness. There are lots of ways to steer wrong in this regard. For example, flattening law into “helpful advice from God,” and reducing gospel to “encouragement” like “but don’t worry, Jesus died for you anyway.” This is what some folks will call “gospel reductionism.” Notice, it is essentially the same as “law reduction,” which is another phrase for it is just “bad preaching.” This is because the Law is not advice. It is accusation (lex semper accusat)! It is exposure! It is the voice of God revealing that sin is not merely what we occasionally do (active sin) but it is what we are by nature. The Law calls the thing what it is. That, incidentally, is why Old Adam hates the Law.
This is what some folks will call “gospel reductionism.” Notice, it is essentially the same as “law reduction,” which is another phrase for it is just “bad preaching.”
Because sinners hate it, it can seem hard to make law land bluntly and matter of factly. Conflict management specialists might offer a tool from their box on defusing defensiveness here. I find humor (only if it comes natural to you by personality!) can be effective at the beginning of a sermon that needs to deliver the Law. Humor lowers defenses. And more importantly, it exposes absurdity. Just think of the comic frustration people feel toward the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. Mixed fabrics? Dietary restrictions? Hair regulations? The preacher can play with that irritation a bit. “Keep your laws off my body,” an anti-authoritarian bumper sticker I have seen more than once. It is funny at first, but then, suddenly, not so funny. It is not funny at all once the hearer realizes that the same rebellion lives quite comfortably in her own heart, in his own attitude. Why ten commandments? Why not three commandments and seven suggestions, and we get to choose which ones? We all want negotiable morality. We would all be happy with a God who curbs other people’s appetites and blesses our own. Humor can be a scalpel here, slicing through the baloney and revealing a theology of glory and self-sufficiency hiding underneath rugged, western notions of individualism, autonomy, and self-expression.
Of course, that distinction between theology of glory and theology of the cross should shape the sermon underneath everything else. The theology of glory imagines that spiritual life is fundamentally about improvement, measurable righteousness, visible success, or moral competence. It loves to quantify and pat itself on the back. It wants a manageable God and a survivable law, which is the only kind of law Old Adam is confident in, the kind he can fulfill. But Romans 7 annihilates all of that. Paul is not describing a manageable struggle or some past, pre-salvation reality. He is illustrating the here and now, being simul, being sinner and saint at the same time, and how sin is yet captivity. It is contradiction, bondage, and death. “I do not do what I want,” is another powerful refrain through the chapter. The sermon that guides the hearer to recognize herself there will not aim at sentiment, but at catastrophe and utter despair. Paint the picture accurately so your hearer sees herself, sees himself, in that mirror.
To do that, a preacher has to avoid softening sin into vague brokenness or generic imperfection. Romans 7 is not “nobody’s perfect.” It is the cry of a man pinned beneath the weight of a holiness he cannot fulfill. The weight of that (notice the metaphor?) is pulling a card from biblical preaching and teaching. Paul is quite material rather than abstract, talking blood and bodies more than ideas and concepts. The preacher should preach bodily too. Concrete language is effective. Bodies are a part of this. The Christian faith you are proclaiming and seeding is not some modern Gnostic exponent, because sin is not abstract, nor is death just some metaphor. Preaching Romans 7 exercises your ability to engage the Law, and you cannot get away from Paul’s argument without feeling that exercise is what it has been for him and for all saints in the same struggle. Your sermon should feel like the struggle and sweat of this too. The hearer should experience how Christianity is happening in real flesh and blood, on the concrete, not in the clouds.
That is one reason sacramental language becomes so important in this kind of preaching. Once the Law has cornered the sinner, the Gospel must arrive externally and concretely. Again, not as an idea or inspiration and not reduced to something like advice for coping better, please no. The external Word is just as material (words in ears, water on flesh with the Word of God in it, bread and wine and body and blood in mouths), as concrete as the hammer of the Law is the cross and the empty tomb. The Gospel arrives as Christ Himself, delivered materially. That is why you need to deliver baptism as more than just a symbol, but as an actual, death-dealing, drowning flood, and, as Paul says elsewhere, a life-giving water, a washing of rebirth and regeneration (Titus 3:5), a death with Christ and a life with Him too. Similarly, absolution is not therapy or a reassuring encouragement. It is an actual verdict spoken into ears by an external Word. The Lord’s Supper is not religious reflection time. It is Christ feeding sinners with His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.
Once the Law has cornered the sinner, the Gospel must arrive externally and concretely.
Look for opportunities to move naturally from Romans 7 into this sacramental realism. Paul’s language already lends itself to such moves. Death and resurrection are not theoretical categories in Romans. They are realities Paul’s hearers (and yours!) participate in (for example, “buried therefore with Him by baptism into death,” Romans 6:4). Exploit that physical stuff. Old Adam is not being coached into better behavior. Old Adam is drowned, choking and spewing his death-rattles on the shore of the baptismal font. And it is not just any death, either, but quite specifically a participation in the historic death of Christ. This is the very point you drive your hearers to if you would have them saved. Reduce that message or detach Jesus from history, reduce your message to symbolism and your Jesus to moral example, and you have lost the plot. This is because the power of biblical preaching lies precisely in the scandal, in the concreteness of Christ’s death.
The theology of the cross insists that God does His greatest work hidden beneath suffering and apparent defeat. Dwell here when preaching Romans 7. Let your listener sit beneath the weight of death for a while. Let the Law do its alien work thoroughly. Let the hearer feel that all projects of self-salvation have collapsed completely. Only then should the Gospel break in fully as interruption. And when it does, preach Christ externally, historically, and objectively. Never locate assurance inside your hearer’s emotions, sincerity, or spiritual progress, because assurance is never found in introspection. Romans 7 itself destroys introspective confidence. Assurance comes from outside the sinner altogether (extra nos!) from Christ crucified and risen, delivered through Word and Sacrament.
This is why preaching should consistently move from abstraction toward delivery, not talking about Jesus, but actually giving Him to be received. This sounds like altering “Jesus forgives sinners” to “Jesus forgives you here.” Not merely “Christ died,” but “His death has become your death in baptism.” Not merely “there is grace,” but “take and eat, it is for you.” The “for-you-ness” is what you want to get across if you actually want to deliver the Gospel and not just talk about it.
Above all, preach Christ as the one who enters death willingly for sinners trapped beneath the Law. The Law always accuses. It always kills. The Law will always law you to death, whatever you may intend with it. But there is one death stronger than the death the Law threatens. The death of Christ under the curse of the Law becomes the death of death itself. And your task as a preacher is, finally, not to produce better religious people but to give Christ to the dead. Because only the dead can be raised, and only Christ raises the dead.
What follows is a brief outline to help frame your thoughts as you prepare the epistle for preaching this week!
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The sinner resents the Law
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“Keep your laws off my body”
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Humanity negotiates with holiness
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The Law always exposes and kills
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Sin rebels when commanded
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“The Law laws us to death”
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A theology of glory cannot survive Romans 7
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Self-improvement collapses
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Religious competence fails.
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Christ enters beneath the Law for sinner
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Accused, condemned, crucified publicly
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The curse falls on His body
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Christ now delivers His death and life sacramentally
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Baptism as death with Christ and resurrection with Christ
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Body and blood for dead sinners
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Romans 7:1-13.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Romans 7:1-13.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
