Paul starts chapter seven by noting that the law is binding only on the living. I take a little detour by talking about that legal concept.

Romans 6:23 is one of the more well-known verses in the Bible, and for good reason. Paul encapsulates first first six chapters of Romans in this one verse, writing that we earn death by sin, or we can accept the free gift of eternal life from Jesus Christ.

Paul now talks about the good fruit we get from loving God, and how that fruit leads to sanctification. We talk about sanctification and how we grow more like Jesus over time.

Paul asks what type of fruit were our lives producing when we were slaves to sin. We talk about the link between this verse and Jesus's instructions to identify false prophets by their fruit.

Paul continues his streak of excellent use of logic in verse 20, pointing out that when we were sinners we were free of righteousness, setting up a coming point that we should now be free of sin. But today we talk about that word that we translate to "righteousness."

Paul starts verse 19 by acknowledging that he's trying his best to find an analogy our flawed human minds can understand, and then hammers the point that while our prior sin led to more sin, our new righteousness leads to sanctification.

Paul sums up his point by making clear that we are no longer slaves of righteousness, but slaves of righteousness. We talk about the words Paul uses here and how they were used in the gospels too.

Paul thanks God in verse 17 that the pattern of sin has been replaced in our hearts by the "standard of teaching" or the "pattern of teaching," depending on the translation. We talk about what that teaching is, and how it is so much better than following the pattern of sin in this world.

We are hard-wired to worship. That's a fact. The question is whether we will worship things of this world, or God. We talk about what comes of worshipping things of this world.

Paul sets up the next eight verses to close our chapter six with another question--one that tweaks the question asked in verse one of chapter six. We'll answer that in the coming days, but we give a short answer today.