Released from the Law (Romans 7:1-6)

Question 3, Or do you not know, brothers that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?

This is a great passage that shows us that we have to keep in mind the purpose and intent of the author when reading scripture. In order to clearly understand what is being said in Romans 7:1-3, we must keep it connected to the paragraph before and the paragraph after because they paint the fuller picture of what he means in the story about marriage and adultery. 

A-Romans 6:20-23

Key words here are slaves to sin vs slaves to God, which speaks to what a person is loyal or bound to.

Also, fruit. In the first part it speaks of a way that produces fruit to death and unrighteousness, and the second parts speaks to fruit of righteousness that leads to eternal life. We will produce fruit consistent to the nature that we are lead by.

B-Romans 7:1-3

So, here we see our question for this week, “The law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?”

We considered who is the 1st husband, the 2nd husband and the woman in the marriage story?

What is the purpose that Paul is trying to get at?

C-Romans 7:4-6

It is here in verse 4, that we get clarification to what Paul is trying to accomplish by the marriage story.  

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order to bear fruit for God.

Here in the phrase “So that you may belong to another” gets as the purpose of the marriage story. It says, the other person is the one who has been raised from the dead, where we ask who is that? And we said Christ. So we can see the second husband is Christ. 

Then through the text “You also have died to the law through the body of Christ, we can answer who is the woman in the story? And we said, us. Also, who is the first husband, and we see the text as saying the law.

Now some of the challenges to the text is that the law did not die like the marriage story speaks in terms of the first husband. But it’s binding or authority on us died by the work of Christ. In Christ, we are freed from the requirement of the law because He has accomplished them for us on His behalf.

We are able to be joined to another because of what Christ has done. Death has set us free. 

Verses 5-6, speaks to how the law aroused sinful passions in us to drive us to bear fruit for death, but now that we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, we can serve in the new way of the Spirit and not the old way of the written code.

Here is the picture of the woman served her husband the written code for the hope of righteousness until Christ set her free from that way of finding righteousness and made a better way for her in the Spirit. The way of the Spirit gives her grace to desire righteousness and to purse the ways of God.