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.
For when we were in the flesh the passions of sins, which [were] by the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit to death;
Paul has just said that believers died to the law and now belong to the risen Christ. Here he looks back at what life produced before that.
The verse packs a chain into one sentence, and one writer counts the links:
The verse names four things that go together: flesh, law, sins, death. Long ago the law was laid on a people "in the flesh." All it did was stir into action the sin that always lies hidden in the flesh. So the law aroused the "motions" or "passions" of sins, and death followed as God's judgment on all. "Flesh" here is not our bodies, but the fallen nature which has its seat in our present bodies. Every unconverted person is "in the flesh"; that is, the flesh dominates them and characterizes their state.
The writers quote an older translation here: "when we were in the flesh." So where does that leave a believer now?
But what does the apostle mean by the expression, "When we were in the flesh"? He simply refers to a thing of the past — to a condition that no longer holds. Are believers, then, not in the flesh? Scripture emphatically says so. But does this mean that they are not in the body? Certainly not. They are in the body, as to the fact of their existence; but not in the flesh, as to the ground of their standing before God.
The past tense matters. It settles who Paul describes in the rest of the chapter:
This verse determines the character of the teaching that follows. You cannot say, "When we were in the flesh," unless you have been delivered from that state. You could not say, "When we were in London," unless you have left it… People often ask: is this part of chapter 7 the proper experience of a Christian? Certainly not. If it were, it would not have said, "When we were in the flesh." Yet it is, as we shall soon see, the experience through which most, if not all, Christians have passed. Others say it is the experience of the unconverted. That cannot be either, for the unconverted do not delight in the law of God in their inner being (v. 22). It is clearly the experience of a soul made alive, born of God, with a new nature that delights in the law of God in the inner being. But this person is still under law, and has not yet learned what deliverance by death is.
The verse links those passions to the law itself. One writer traces how that worked:
The passions that drove people to sin acted in that nature — the nature of a man living as a child of Adam. They met the barrier of the law. In it they found something that resisted them, and that resistance stirred up the will. The ban itself pointed out the evil which the flesh loved and which the law forbade. So these passions acted in the members to produce fruit which brought in death.
Anyone who has tried to reform himself by rules has felt it:
Has not every awakened conscience verified this in experience? Law laid down as a command upon the soul has not restrained sin: it has stirred up the motions of sins in self-will and rebellion. Man revolts, and sins more when he is sternly commanded to do this, or not to do that. And we also, while in the flesh, thoroughly resented anything imposed on us by force, and were emboldened to rebel.
The law is not just barren. It yields a crop, and the crop is the problem:
The law is barren toward God, but it is not only barren. Fruit there is, but not to God; it is "fruit for death"… We see why the law is fruitless, or worse: it produces the passions of sins — a strange alliance, as it might seem, between sin and law. But it is not alliance, it is opposition, as it must surely be. To the man in the flesh, the holy demands of the law only press claims that contradict the "mind of the flesh," which is enmity against God (Rom. 8:7). The flesh is only chafed and irritated. The law brings its state to light; it does not change it.
The verse looks back so that verse 6 can look forward — from one marriage to another:
We can look back on that condition as the time when sin reigned over us, and when we were married to the old husband… But now we are dead to the law. We are cut off from the yoke of the old husband as completely as death can make us. Now we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Under the control of the new Husband, Christ, we serve in the power of divine love, with which He has filled our hearts.
- State: "In the flesh" is not about having a body. It is the ground a person stands on before God, and every unconverted person stands there.
- Stimulus: The law met that nature but did not tame it. The ban itself pointed out the evil the flesh already loved, and the will rose against it.
- Sins: The law roused those passions, and they worked in our members. It brought the state to light; it did not change it.
- Harvest: There was fruit, but not for God; the man in the flesh bears fruit for death.
- Severed: The past tense carries the good news. That first marriage ended in death, and service now flows from love under a new Husband.
but now we are clear from the law, having died in that in which we were held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.
Paul draws a line between what a believer once was and what he is now. Death has broken the tie to the law, and a new service has begun. Two questions follow. What died? And what takes the place of the old duty?
Chapter 6 dealt with sin's mastery; this verse turns to the law's claim, and the same death answers both.
Another contrast meets us in verse 6: "while we were living in the flesh … But now." Having died with Christ, we are not only dead to sin, as chapter 6 presses home, but dead also to the law and so delivered from it. So we can now serve God in a completely new way. We not only do new things, but we do those new things in a new spirit.
An older English translation made it sound as if the law itself had died. The correction decides what service now looks like.
It is not that the "law" has died, as the King James Version wrongly translates, but that we have died. It should read, "having died in that in which we were held." The result is that we no longer serve God under a sense of legal obligation — that we must do this or that so God will be favourable to us. That would be "the oldness of the letter," which said, "Do this, and you will live."
The version above reads the same way: we died. But why could the law not die, and what set us free?
But notice: the same thing frees us from the law as frees us from the bondage of sin — the death of Jesus Christ. The law is not dead. How could it be? Whatever God gives cannot die.
Paul has just used marriage as his picture: death ends the bond. Here he turns the picture around.
It is certain that one cannot be under the authority of two husbands at once. One excludes the other. The law and the risen Christ cannot share authority over the soul. But 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.
Freedom from the law is never freedom from obedience. The verse gives the purpose of the release: "so that we serve."
The law is a ministry of death, and we died in the thing that held us. But this is how we found Christ, who has died, and died under the curse of the law. So we are set free in a new resurrection life — still to serve, for Christ our Lord has served and still serves. Would we want to be set free from that? No. We are freed to serve in newness of spirit, serving with joy of soul, no longer in the old drudgery and shallowness of the letter, pressed from the outside on unwilling hearts.
Two ways of serving stand side by side. One rests on enforcement; the other on a link to a living Person.
But to what purpose? It is that he should now serve God, not in the oldness of the letter, but in newness of spirit. That is, not as a matter of legal enforcement, but with holy, blessed liberty and delight, as one joined to the risen Christ and controlled by His holy love.
Where does the power for that service come from?
But now, since the death of Christ, believers are free from the bond with the law. They are in a bond with the risen Christ. In that bond the Spirit of God is the energy of service — a service acceptable to God. Serving in this way by the Spirit, they serve in newness of spirit. Their minds are no longer in rebellion against the authority of God; their hearts are in subjection to His grace.
It shows up in how a believer meets an ordinary disappointment.
For instance, if we plan a picnic, and a fearful storm comes on so that we cannot go, we accept the situation. We do not storm and rage and worry ourselves about it, but quietly accept the circumstances. Our will was to go, but there was another Will that we should not go, and the Higher Will is best. I subject my will to His and there is but one, for the will in me matches the will above. When it is like this with me I am walking in the steps of Jesus Christ. This is serving in newness of spirit.
- Death, not repeal. The law did not die; the believer died. God's standard stands, but its claim ends with the life of the one it governed.
- One husband. The law and the risen Christ cannot both rule a soul at once. Death ends the first bond and opens the way for a new one.
- Freed to serve. The release has a purpose. We are not freed from serving; we are freed to serve in a new way.
- New power. The Spirit of God is the energy behind that service. Rebellion gives way to a heart in subjection to grace.
- New spirit. The old written code presses duty on unwilling hearts. The new way of the Spirit is obedience out of delight — seen when my will matches His today.