Romans · New Testament · Romans 7:1–6
No Longer Bound to the Law
The Story
Paul opens by appealing to something his audience — those who know the law — already understands: the law has authority over a person only as long as that person is alive. He then illustrates this principle through the law of marriage. A married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives, but if he dies, that law no longer applies to her — she is free to remarry without any charge of adultery. Paul then applies this illustration directly to believers and their relationship to the law: "So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead." The purpose of this release from the law is not freedom to live for oneself, but to produce fruit for God. Paul then describes what life under the law looked like before this death took place — the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in the body, and the result was fruit that leads to death. But now everything has changed. The passage closes with a clear and direct declaration of the new standing: "But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit."
The Message
The death that freed believers from sin in chapter 6 is the same death that freed them from the law in chapter 7 — union with Christ in His death ends both relationships. The purpose of this freedom is not lawlessness but a new and better union: belonging to Christ, the risen one, in order to bear fruit for God. The contrast Paul draws is not between obedience and disobedience but between two entirely different ways of relating to God — the old way of the written law, which stirred up sin and produced death, and the new way of the Spirit, which produces life.