If you'll take your Bibles and turn with me to our text for this morning, it's Romans

chapter 7 verses 1 to 6.

Or do you not know, brethren, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?

For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living, but if her husband dies she is released from the law concerning the husband.

So then, if while her husband is living she is joint to another man, she shall be called an adulterous.

But if her husband dies, she is free from the law,

so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.

Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined

to another, to him who is raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.

For why we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law, were at work in the

members of our body to bear fruit for death.

But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve a newness of the spirit and not an oldness of the letter.

Let's pray together. When we were in the flesh, Father, that is when we were just plain ordinary humans without the Holy Spirit, without grace, without faith, our sinful passion. Our sinful passions

prostituted the holy law of God

and made it an instrument to defeat its own demands. And thus we showed ourselves to be exceedingly sinful.

Father, I pray that we would sense the weight of sin this morning, that there's a reality in the world that is

mammoth beyond human description. It's the cause of all suffering in the universe. It's the cause of infinite wrath from

you. It's the cause of the creation of hell. It's the ruination of marriages. And it's called sin.

Lord acquaint us with the weight of this malady in our lives. Don't let us take lightly our condition. Help us to feel the appropriate seriousness of our own rebelliousness and insubordination. And Grant, I pray that seeing ourselves for who we are, the cross of Jesus

Christ, the blood of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the

intercession for us by Christ in heaven, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of Christ, the Church of Christ, the Word of Christ,

would appear to us for what it really is of infinite value beyond all human treasure.

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