RELEASED FROM LAW
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Opening Prayer
Father God, thank you for the power of your Word—power to restore, to heal, power to save. Thank you for the peace, the hope, and the joy it gives me.
Read ROMANS 7:1—6
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
Romans
Romans 7
1 Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives?
2 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 that binds her to him.
3 So then, if she has sexual relations with 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 if she marries another man.
4 So, my brothers and sisters, 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 for God.
5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.
6 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.
Reflect
‘… count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’1 Praise God for what he has done for you through his Son.
It was this way, now it’s changed. In Saturday’s reading, Paul used the examples of slavery to sin and slavery to righteousness.2 Today’s verses pick up the idea of freedom from the law (‘the old way of the written code’), so that we might ‘serve in the new way of the Spirit’ (v. 6).
Paul illustrates his teaching with the example of marriage (vv. 1—3). The focus of his thought here is not with the rights and wrongs of marriage and adultery per se, but rather with the believer’s transition from law (the old master) to a new way (v. 4). His readers lived in a Jewish/ Christian culture where fundamental ideas and beliefs were grounded in Old Testament law,3 so Paul’s premises (vv. 1—3) were familiar to his listeners. The question is, how can believers legitimately be freed from the law and sin, which lead to death?
In marriage (according to Old Testament law), a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.4 Once he dies, she is released from the obligations of the law and can marry another man. In Christ, there is also a new regime: Christ has died for our sins, and we have died with him. We are now freed from the law and are bound to Christ—and, therefore, caught up in his resurrection. Whereas life under the old law confirmed our sinfulness and brought death, our being in Christ has released us from the law, ‘so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit’ (v. 6). Through Christ’s death and resurrection, we are set free ‘in order that we might bear fruit for God’ (v. 4). Is this meaning of Christ’s resurrection evident in our own lives?
Apply
How is the Lord calling you to serve others in ‘the new way of the Spirit’ (v. 6)? In your church? In your local or work community?
Closing prayer
Thank you, Lord, for having set me free—free to choose what is right and pleasing to you. When I am sorely tempted, please help me stand firm in that truth and turn away from evil.
1 Rom 6:11 2 Rom 6:17, 18 3 e.g., Gen 2:24; Exod 20:14 4 Matt 19:3—9.
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