Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Romans · About this commentary
Released from the Law
Romans 7:1-6
1 Or don’t you know, brothers (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long as he lives? · WEB
A marriage illustration turns on which party dies, and the discharge from the law is for the purpose of a second union that bears fruit.
Or don't you know, brothers (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long as he lives?
The principle is legal bedrock: jurisdiction ends at death. Chapter 6 applied it to sin's mastery Romans 6:7; this chapter applies it to the law's claim, and the illustration is a marriage: the woman that has a husband is bound by law to the husband while he lives, but if the husband dies, she is discharged. While he lives, another union is adultery; once he dies, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she is joined to another man Romans 7:3.
The application swaps the parties, and the swap is the theology: therefore, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead Romans 7:4.
In the illustration the husband dies; in the application the believer does — made dead to the law through the body of Christ, in the same co-crucifixion chapter 6 established Romans 6:6. The law did not die; nothing in the letter buries the law, which remains holy, and righteous, and good Romans 7:12. The believer died out from under its jurisdiction — and the release, crucially, is not into singleness. It is a remarriage: joined to another, the risen one, and the stated purpose of the new union is that we might produce fruit to God. The first marriage's tragedy was its barrenness of the right fruit; verse 5 states why: the sinful passions which were through the law worked in our members to bring out fruit to death. Law wedded to flesh gestated death — not the law's fault, as the next paragraph will insist, but the flesh's Romans 8:3.
And verse 6 states the result with the letter's careful contrast: we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
Serve — the discharge is not from service but from the old mode of it. The letter, the written code standing outside the person, could command and condemn; the Spirit writes within Romans 2:29. Same God, same righteousness, new power — which is precisely the covenant promise the prophets had on file Romans 8:4.
settled What this mark means