The first verse in Romans 7 is important for this specific semantic reason: it reveals the audience of this chapter as a group lawyers, trained in the laws of Judaism of that time. They can be like Paul, Christian Pharisees but they can also be Christian Latin Lawyers of Rome who had a Jewish background. It would not be correct to say that Paul is saying that he is talking to people who know the Ten Commandments. There are people who want to read Ten Commandments in chapter 7 every time they see it but that is not going to pay off. The rule of thumb is that when there is surrounding hints that it is the Ten Commandments, it is safe to assume that it is the Moral Law. There are scholars who are trying to minimize or sidestep the concept from a Book of Hebrews perspective that there must have been two kinds of laws in the Jewish religious system, the moral law that cannot ever be abrogated and ceremonial laws that served the type until the antitype [Christ] was to come. Paul speaks to them as “brothers”. “I speak to those who know the law”.

The law rules man. In modern society just as in ancient society the law ruled people but skeptics in the society always pointed out that law is made by someone and if the mood of those making the law is changed, then the law also changes. The moral law is unchangeable. God does not change His mood from one extreme to another. So God’s law cannot be changed ad hoc by human intervention or consensus or opinion polls on morality. What is wrong 6000 years ago is wrong today as well. Cultures change but God’s law never changes. Consensus can change human laws related to acceptable behavioral practices in society by if that conflicts with the Word of God as Torah or God’s moral law, it is unacceptable. Period. Modern Jurisprudence and their equity philosophy embracing Satan and his cronies holus bolus, is not acceptable to God and His moral law. God and His religion cannot be adjusted to fit modern whims. The LGBTQH sympathizers are trying to tell their audience that God has more room for adjustment to our sinful habits than we are prepared to allow Him to. But that is fake and a wrong perception of the Bible. The time element this law rules man is “upon the whole period he lives” (literally). All societies are controlled by customs and rules even if they are not from western origin. A book on such is H. W. Warner, A Digest of South African Native Civil Case Law 1894-1957 (Capetown: Juta & Company, Ltd, 1961).

In the 2017 Book of Romans Quarterly, it is said by Don Neufeld in 1980: 65, “Again, given all else that Paul and the Bible say about obedience to the Ten Commandments, it doesn’t make sense to assert here that Paul was telling these Jewish believers that the Ten Commandments were no longer binding. Those who use these texts to try to make that point—that the moral law was done away with—really don’t want to make that point anyway; what they really want to say is that only the seventh-day Sabbath is gone—not the rest of the law. To interpret Romans 7:4, 5 as teaching that the fourth commandment has been abolished or superseded or replaced with Sunday is to give them a meaning that the words were never intended to have.”

(To be continued in the upload pdf)

Guide to Romans 7.pdf