Dead to the Law

Romans 7:4-6
4Likewise, 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. 5For 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. 6But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

As I was reading this morning in Romans, I was following Paul's line of thought and this stuck out to me. I'm not exactly sure why, but it did.

The "likewise" at the beginning of verse 4 looks back at the previous statements where he speaks of how a woman who is married is set free from the law of marriage when her husband dies so she is free to marry another. If she were to have relations with another while her husband was still alive she would be an adulteress, but once he is dead, she is free to marry another. "Likewise," Paul points out, people who are joined to Christ have died to the law through him.

See what is written again, "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." If you or I believe in Jesus Christ, we have died to the law through him. As he died, those who belong to him died as well. When a person dies, their legal obligations in life cease. So also, those who die with Christ, die to the legal obligations of the law.

What are these obligations? They certainly are not the one that have to do with how we are to live. It is not like are now allowed to do whatever we want even if it is considered sin by the law. I say that is the case because to do so would be to live like we did before being joined to Christ. As verse 5 points out, "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." Before dying with Christ, we were living our sinful passions. Even more than that, the end of verse 4 shows that the purpose of this death to the law, is that by belonging to another, that is to the risen Jesus Christ, we might bear fruit to God. That is, that we might live as God desires his people to live, not in sinful passions, but in holiness.

So what are these obligations? It seems to me that the obligations of the law that those who believe are freed from, are those that require that we face the punishment our sins deserve. The obligations that to live we must keep the law perfectly, or we will face the punishment of not only death in this life, but eternal death, another way of saying eternal punishment for our disobedience and high treason against the infinite God.

Thanks be to God, for those who believe, those obligations of the law have been removed in Christ, so we can now live in him. That means we are no longer under the power of our sinful passions, we are no longer captive to them, but are now freed to live by the power of the Spirit in such a way that we bear fruit for God.

The practical application for this is that if you have real faith in Jesus Christ, you can now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live in a way that says no to sin and yes to how God calls us to live in the Bible. Sin and the passions that are stirred up in you by sin when you are told you cannot do something by the law, no longer has the upper hand. Now you, if you believe, belong to Christ. You can say no to sin, not because you are stronger, but because Christ is in you by the Spirit who makes you able to do what is right for God.