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.
So that, my brethren, *ye* also have been made dead to the law by the body of the Christ, to be to another, who has been raised up from among [the] dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
The chapter opens with a picture from marriage law: death ends the bond, and only then is a new tie possible. Verse 4 applies that picture to believers. But the image shifts: we are the ones who die, and the new bond exists to bear fruit for God.
The illustration has the husband dying; the application turns it around. Writers stress that the law itself was never buried.
It is not that the law has died, we are dead; the image, so far, changes, but the bond is broken… and this is by the body of Christ. In His death, as we have seen, I reckon myself dead. The law was never abolished. Its principle was approved as being from God, and the law will judge those who have sinned under it.
This distinction is not a technicality. It decides how God delivers.
Notice, however, that the apostle carefully avoids the slightest hint that the law is dead. That is not how God delivers. The law lives to curse and kill all within its sphere. But we, by death with Christ, pass out of its power to touch us.
Why does Paul say "the body of Christ" and not simply "the death of Christ"?
Paul refers, we believe, to what it meant for our Lord to take the body prepared for Him, and so become a Man. He took that body so that He could suffer death, and so "the body of Christ" stands for His death. It is the same figure of speech we have in Colossians 1:22, which speaks of being reconciled "in the body of His flesh by His death."
So the release comes through an event outside us, not an effort inside us.
Romans 6:2 has declared that believers are "dead to sin." Romans 7:4 goes a step further, and declares them "dead to the law." "Dead" means dead in any case, and law can have no more to say to a dead man than sin can. The doctrine is simple: we are "dead to the law by the body of Christ" — not by physical death, nor by an experience of self-denial or self-mortification.
This standing holds whether or not the believer feels it. Failure sends the heart straight back to rule-keeping.
Remember: this condition in relation to the law is not a matter of experience. It is true of the one who is in Christ, because he is in Christ, whether he knows it or not… We all know the natural tendency of the heart when a man wakes up to see that he has failed before God. The thought at once is, what shall I do to please God? Efforts, strivings, and in effect putting himself under law to earn God's favour are all too often the methods used. All who have tried them can tell you the result.
The point of the death is the new attachment that follows it.
To use the language of the illustration, we die to one husband to be married to another. The great theme of both chapters 6 and 7 is that we have died; but it is in Christ's death that we have died. The expression "the body of Christ" sets out this death… A written law that is against us no longer controls our lives. We have now come under the control of a living Person who loves us.
What a wife may count on from a husband describes what the risen Christ supplies.
It has been pointed out that in the married relationship the wife can count on three things: the guidance, the love, and the support of her husband. To be associated with the risen Christ is to have His guidance, enjoy His love, and receive His support.
The first union was not barren. It bore the wrong crop.
The former marriage lasted its appointed time, and bore its fruits. Those fruits abounded while the husband lived. The Law came in so that the offence would increase. Contact with the Law brought the fruits of human nature to full ripeness. Fruit that ends in death. Such is man under Law — fruitful in sin that ends in death.
The second union sets a higher standard and supplies the power to meet it.
Now we are "married" to Christ, risen from the dead. The standard set is higher than it ever was under law. But an unlimited supply of the grace and power needed flows from Him, and so fruit for God becomes possible. As Husband, Christ is the source of all support, guidance, comfort and power.
The verse answers its own most obvious objection.
Here, again, we can see how lawlessness is checked. For if the Christian has become dead to the law, may he throw off all restraint and live as he likes? That cannot be, seeing he is married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead. In chapter 6 we were taught that Christians had changed master. Here, using the language of the illustration, we learn they have changed husbands.
- Death — The bond ended, but not because the law died; we died in Christ's death, and the law still stands to condemn everyone inside its reach.
- Body — "The body of Christ" names His death: the release is by an event at the cross, not by self-denial or self-mortification.
- Fact — Being dead to the law is true of everyone in Christ whether felt or not; striving to earn God's favour is a return to a dead marriage.
- Marriage — The freed one is not left single but attached to a risen Person, with His guidance, love and support in place of a written rule.
- Fruit — Under the first husband the crop was fruit unto death; under the second, an unlimited supply of grace and power makes fruit for God possible — which is why this freedom can never mean living as you like.