For the married woman is bound by law to her husband so long as he is alive; but if the husband should die, she is clear from the law of the husband
Paul turns from sin to law. He argues from a case every reader knows: marriage. Which partner has to die before a believer can belong to Christ? And what happens to God's law?
What is true of the wife is meant to teach us what is true of anyone God has placed under law.
The case of the married woman illustrates this principle. The marriage tie cannot be broken, and it pictures a law that cannot be broken either. As long as the husband lives the woman is bound by law to her husband. If the husband dies she is free from the law of her husband; he has no more dominion over her. Death breaks the bond. She is free to marry another. This establishes the great principle: if God gives a law to man, God Himself forms a bond between the law and those under it, and nothing but death can end it.
Paul could have made the same point from the man's side. Why the wife?
So death is the grand principle, with law as with sin. It is an admitted and universal truth. It was fitting to take up the woman and not the man. Paul is dealing with our responsibility to do the will of the Lord, and it is above all the woman's place to obey her husband. But this, as he shows, is quite separate from the law, which simply deals with man alive in the flesh.
In the illustration the husband dies. When Paul applies it, the death lands on the other side.
In our case the law does not lose its force (that is, its rights over us) by its dying, but by our dying. It reigns over us only while we live. It is with this destruction of the bond by death that the apostle began. The husband died, but in the application our dying annuls the bond. We are then dead to the law by the body of Christ, for we have to do with a Christ risen after His death. We now belong to Him who is risen from the dead, so that we should bear fruit for God. But we cannot belong to the two at once.
Freedom from the law is not a verdict against the law.
Still, the law is good in itself, and we must always guard that. It would be blasphemy to speak evil of it as God's law. … The law is not dead. It is still in full force against the unrighteousness of the man who is under it; but I have died under it. The law has condemned me, and spent its full curse on me in Christ.
A wife cannot hold two husbands at once, and neither can a believer.
In the same way the believer cannot, so to speak, have two husbands. He cannot be alive in the flesh, married to the law (under law), and also be married to Christ. No doubt people say it must be so — that you must have both the law and Christ. But we are not explaining what people say. We are explaining Scripture. God tells us we cannot have Christ and law. Only death frees a wife from the old husband, and only death frees us from the old husband, the principle of law.
The illustration is drawn from real law, so it carries real weight for married life.
Romans 7:1-2 rightly gives the legal side of this matter… It is clear that only death rightly does away with the marriage bond. Any other dissolving of the bond is abnormal. Yet it could be allowed to one partner if the other was guilty of breaking the bond in effect by sexual immorality (Matt. 19:9).
Release is not the goal. The freed woman marries again, and so does the believer.
At the beginning of this seventh chapter of Romans we have the two husbands. At the end of the sixth chapter we have the two masters. The principle that delivers us from the old husband is the same principle that delivers us from the old master… The only door of deliverance is the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. And once delivered, the only way to stay in holiness, fruitfulness and happiness is to live to God as belonging to the One who has come out of death, raised from among the dead.
- Bond — God's law holds a person the way marriage holds a wife: a real, binding tie that nothing but death can dissolve.
- Death — Death is the one principle that ends the claim; the same death that frees from sin frees from law.
- Reversal — In the illustration the husband dies; in the application we die, by the body of Christ.
- Law — The law itself has not died and is still good; it stands in full force against those still under it.
- Remarriage — Freedom is for a new Husband. We belong to the risen Christ, and that union bears fruit for God.
so then, the husband being alive, she shall be called an adulteress if she be to another man; but if the husband should die, she is free from the law, so as not to be an adulteress, though she be to another man.
Paul argues from marriage, a law every household understands: a wife is bound while her husband lives, and death ends the bond. The real question is not remarriage, but whether the law can still hold a person who belongs to Christ.
The illustration turns on a wife attaching herself to a second man while the first is still alive. One writer notes that this verse is not about divorce:
The case here is belonging (not being "married") to another man while the tie still holds. Then she is guilty of adultery — but not if the husband is dead. Divorce is not the question. The question is acts of sin while the marriage still holds. This is clear.
The Greek behind the phrase is broader than a wedding. One writer compares the wording of the older King James Bible (the Authorised Version) with a newer rendering:
In Romans 7:3-4 the newer reading, "be joined to," is better than the too definite "married" of the Authorised Version. The Greek matches the Hebrew here, as in Hosea 3. "To be, or belong to" is the literal and exact sense.
The verse says the second tie is impossible while the first stands. For the believer, the two who claim him are the law and the risen Christ:
It is hard to imagine a heavier blow to the common idea that the Christian is put under the law as his rule of life. Two husbands are intolerable. Not only is the law not the actual husband, but the apostle will not hear of Christ and the law. It must be Christ alone.
Writers press the same charge Paul uses here — adultery:
So the first husband, the law, is done with. We are married to a risen Christ. We cannot in any sense or form be under the authority of two husbands at a time. That is adultery.
The figure and its application do not line up point for point, and this is where readers stumble. In the picture the husband dies; in the reality, the wife does:
When Paul applies his illustration of the wife and the husband (vv. 1-3), our first husband is clearly the law. The confusion comes from not noticing how the figure changes when he applies it. In the picture, the woman is free to marry another man after her husband dies. In our case it is not the husband — the law — that dies, but we ourselves who die.
This matters, because the other reading is dangerous. Writers reject the idea that the law itself died:
To say the law died leads toward lawlessness. To say the Christian died to law (Galatians 2:19; Colossians 2:20, Colossians 3:8) is sound and basic truth.
Release from the law's claim is not the same as cancelling the law. Death limits its authority; it does not destroy it:
The law is not cancelled. It is still in force "for the lawless and disobedient," and so on. But its authority is gone for men who are dead, and the Christian has "died to the law through the body of Christ."
The freedom Paul describes does not leave the woman on her own. She goes free so she may belong to another, and that new union has a purpose:
God's aim is not to keep the rule of the law in place. Far from it. The clear purpose and effect of grace is to bring the Christian (even if he was a Jew before) out of the old relationship into a completely new one, founded on the death of Christ. From now on he belongs to Him alone, who is risen from among the dead. And this is so that he may glorify God by fruits acceptable to Him.
- Bond — Marriage holds a wife only while her husband lives. Joining another man before that is adultery. Death alone ends the tie.
- Death — In the picture, a death breaks the bond. In the application, the believer dies, not the law. Read it the other way and you open the door to lawlessness.
- Rivalry — Law and the risen Christ cannot both rule one person. A woman cannot have two husbands.
- Limit — The law is not cancelled. Its authority does not reach a dead person. It still stands over the lawless.
- Fruit — Release is not the goal. Belonging to Christ, raised from the dead, is the goal — so that we bear fruit for God.