Romans 7: 1-6 - Outline and Summary

 

Paul shows that just as a married woman is released from her obligation to her husband when he dies and is free to marry another, even so the believer, through the death of Christ, has died to the law (and is therefore discharged from it’s demands) and is now joined to Christ that he might bring forth fruit for God.

(Romans 7:1-6)

 

•        Paul begins by calling to his readers’ minds a principle of law with which which they would be familiar - namely that death changes one’s relationship to the law.

 

–      Romans 7:1-3 - Do you not know, brothers-- for I am speaking to men who know the law-- that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

 

•        Paul then applies this principle (that death changes one’s relationship to the law) to the death they died in Christ, showing that:

–      Just as a woman whose husband who has died is

•         No longer under obligation to her first husband

•         Free to marry another

–      So we who have died in Christ

•         Are no longer under the Law

•         Belong to Christ who is not dead (having been raised)

 

–      Romans 7:4-6 - So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

 

 

 

 

•       Romans 7:4-6 - So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

 

•        Notice the contrast between belonging to Christ and being under the Law:

–       Under the Law (the “written code”) our sinful nature used the Law to arouse our sinful passions so that we bore fruit deserving of death (sin)

–       In Christ we serve in the new way of the Spirit bringing forth fruit that is pleasing to God