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

Romans 7:1-6
English Standard Version

Released from the Law
7 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

4 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 that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

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Paul, speaking to the Jewish Christians here who know the Law, asks them if they understand that the Law is only binding on those who are alive?  He uses a different covenant--the covenant of marriage--to make his point.  A married woman is free from her vows and allowed to remarry without committing adultery if her husband precedes her in death.  However, if she marries another man, or even "lives with" or "sleeps with" another man while her husband is still alive, then she is an adulteress.  If her husband dies, she is free from the "law" (that is the covenant) of marriage.  She is free to marry another man without breaking the covenant.

Paul then extends this example to say that the Law is covenant made with our old man and that the old man dies when we are crucified with Christ and are born again in what we would call regeneration.  See Colossians 3:5-10 and 1 Peter 3:18.  So, the Law no longer has any power over us because the covenant was broken when the old man was put to death.  That does not mean that there is no place for obedience to the commands of God as a Christian and we do not continue in sin--Paul has already made that point, but we now obey out of love instead instead of obligation and we act in accordance with the Law because of an internal change that makes us into the image of the Son of God, hopefully so that the exact imprint of His nature can be seen as the Holy Spirit lives in and through us.  Since the Law is an extension of God's character, nature, and will, then it should naturally be the very thing the "new man" desires to do.  Where the flesh was in constant opposition to the Law, the Spirit will love the Law.  So then we see this in Galatians 5:22-23 where Paul says, "​22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."