The Bible Study Podcast, episode 60. This is a ninth episode where we'll be looking at the book of Romans.

In a series, I'm calling Christianity 101.

Welcome to the Bible study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. Before we get into chapter 7,

let's recall what Paul has told us so far in the first six chapters. In the first few chapters,

Paul made sure that everybody understood that everyone, all of us had sinned, had a broken relationship

with God that needed reconciliation, that needed someone to come and make it right,

and the one who came and made it right was Jesus.

He went on to say that the wages of sin were death, that some penalty needed to be paid,

but then went on to talk about grace how God had paid that penalty through Jesus.

In Chapter 6, he encouraged us then, since we had died to sin

with Christ's death, that we should leave it behind, that we should leave that old life behind.

In Chapter 7, he deals with that theme as well as a new theme, which is, why is it so darn hard?

The first part of Chapter seven begins this way.

Do you not know brothers, for I'm speaking to men who know the law, that the law has authority

over man only as long as he lives. For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband

as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.

So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress.

But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she

marries another man.

So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.

For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying

to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we could serve in the new way

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