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Romans 7 (ESV)
1 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.
7 What then shall we say?
That the law is sin?
By no means!
Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.
For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.
For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me?
By no means!
It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
15 For I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.
For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
It is one thing for a believer to understand that his identification with Jesus Christ means that he has died to sin (6:2) and to count or reckon that to be true (6:11).
But it is something else for him to deal with the sin nature that remains within and its efforts to express itself in his thoughts and actions.
This is the internal conflict in the area of sanctification that every believer faces.
Verses 1–6 relate to 6:14, the intervening verses (6:15–23) being a digression raised by the question in 6:15.
Romans 6:14–23 (ESV)
14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then?
Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?
By no means!
16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations.
For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?
For the end of those things is death.
22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The statement that a believer identified with Jesus Christ in His death is no longer “under Law” (6:14) should not have surprised Paul’s readers because they were men who know the Law.
This statement should not be restricted to Jewish believers in the church at Rome because Gentiles also knew the principle that the Law has authority (kyrieuei, “rules as lord”; cf.
6:9; 14) over a man only as long as he lives.
This is a self-evident truth, which Paul then illustrated by marriage.
A married woman (lit., “the under-a-man woman”) is bound (perf.
tense, “has been bound and stands bound”) to her husband as long as he is alive.
But if her husband dies (in Gr., a third-class condition indicating a real possibility) she is released (perf.
tense, “has been and stands discharged”) from the law of marriage (lit., “from the law of the man”).
She is bound to him by marriage as her husband while he lives, and obviously his death frees her from that marriage.
Then Paul continued the illustration, pointing out that if a wife marries (lit., “if she comes to”) another man while her husband is still alive she is called (future tense, “shall be publicly known as”) an adulteress.
Conversely, on the death of her husband she is free from that marriage (cf.
7:2).
So she is not an adulteress if she marries (lit., “even though she comes to”) another man.
A widow who marries again is not guilty of adultery.
7:4–6.
In these verses Paul applied his illustration of marriage to a believer and the Law.
He said, You also died (lit., “you were put to death,” as was true of Jesus) to the Law.
Just as a believer “died to sin” (6:2) and so is “set free from sin” (6:18, 22), so he also died to the Law and is separated and set free from it (6:14; cf.
Gal.
2:19).
As a wife is no longer married to her husband when he dies, so a Christian is no longer under the Law.
This separation was through the body of Christ, that is, because of Christ’s death on the cross.
As a result Christians belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead (cf.
Rom.
6:4, 9).
This One of course is the Lord Jesus Christ.
In a sense believers are united to Him as His bride (Eph.
5:25).
God’s purpose in all this is in order that we might bear fruit to God (cf.
Rom.
6:22; Gal.
5:22–23; Phil.
1:11).
Only a person who is spiritually alive can bear spiritual fruit, that is, holy living (cf.
John 15:4–5).
A person who is married to Christ can bear spiritual progeny.
Paul moved from the second person plural (you) to the first person plural (we), including himself along with his readers.
The apostle continued, For when we were controlled by the sinful nature (lit., “For when we were in the flesh”; sarx often means sin nature; cf.
Rom.
7:18, 25) the sinful passions aroused by the Law were at work in our bodies.
This describes a believer before he was saved (cf.
6:19).
The Law by its prohibitions aroused sinful passions, as explained in 7:7–13.
In that sense unsaved Gentiles were “under” the Law.
Consequently their progeny was not “fruit to God” (v. 4) but fruit for death.
Sin, Paul repeatedly affirmed, leads to death (5:15, 17, 21; 6:16, 21, 23; 7:10–11, 13; 8:2, 6, 10, 13).
But now, being identified with Christ, believers are dead to the Law.
Like a widow released from marital obligations, so believers are released from the Law and its arousal to sin.
The purpose of this release “from the Law” is so that they may serve (a better rendering is “be slaves”; cf.
“slave[s]” in 6:6, 16 [thrice], 17–18, 20, 22) in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
The word “Spirit” may be “spirit” (lowercase “s”) to contrast with the written document, the Law.
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