Original Meaning

THE NEGATIVE EFFECT of the Mosaic law has been a recurring motif in Romans. Paul has argued that possession of the law did not improve Israel’s situation before the Lord. For it is not possession of the law but obedience that counts, and Israel failed to fulfill the law (2:12–13, 17–24). As a result, the law is unable to justify a person (3:20, 28). In fact, the overall impact of the law on Israel has been negative: It stirs up consciousness of sin (3:20), brings wrath (4:15), and increases trespass (5:20). If Christians are to be free from sin, they must therefore also be taken out from under the law’s binding authority (6:14–15).

In 7:1–6 Paul gathers up these points into a section that directly addresses the negative effects of the Mosaic law and its relationship to believers. Arising directly from the “not under law, but under grace” contrast of 6:14–15, these verses assert that Christians have been set free from the binding authority of the Mosaic law (7:4, the center of the paragraph). Verses 1–3 lead up to this central point with a general principle and illustration; verses 5–6 provide further explanation and elaboration.

Much of what Paul says in this paragraph parallels chapter 6: As believers “die to sin” (6:2) and are set free from it (6:6), so they “die to the law” (7:4) and are set free from it (7:6). As freedom from sin leads to serving God and producing fruit pleasing to him (6:18–22), so freedom from the law leads to serving “in the new way of the Spirit” (7:6) and producing “fruit to God” (7:4). These parallels may suggest that 6:15–7:6 is a single, two-staged, exposition of the new life that freedom from sin and the law produces.1 But it is better to view chapters 6 and 7 as somewhat parallel arguments about the believer’s relationship to two of the key powers of the old regime: sin and the Mosaic law.

This section begins with a general principle: “The law [nomos] has authority over a man only as long as he lives.” Paul’s “do you not know” formula suggests that this principle is one his readers are familiar with (see comments on 6:16).2 Indeed, he claims to be speaking to “men who know the law.” Some interpreters think Paul signals a shift in audience here. He has focused on all Christians in Rome in the letter thus far (see 1:7), but now turns to Jewish Christians, the ones who have intimate acquaintance with the Mosaic law.3 Others suggest that nomos here refers to secular, Roman law, or to law as a general principle.4

But nomos refers to the Mosaic law throughout this context. This does not mean, however, that Paul addresses only Jewish Christians. Many of the Gentile Christians in Rome had probably been “God-fearers,” that is, Gentiles sympathetic to Judaism but without becoming converts. They would have known the Mosaic law as well as Jewish Christians. Paul may well then be alluding to a maxim of the rabbis: “If a person is dead, he is free from the Torah and the fulfilling of the commandments.”5

Verses 2–3 are sometimes taken as an allegorical illustration of verse 4. The woman whose husband dies, freeing her from the “law of marriage,” is like the Christian who “dies to the law.” As the death of her husband allows her to marry another man, so the Christian’s death to the law allows him or her to “belong to another,” Jesus Christ. But to make the allegory work, some juggling with the parallels has to be done. In the illustration it is the death of the husband that brings freedom, but in the application the believer, not the law (= the first husband), dies. Various more or less ingenious attempts to make the allegory work have been proposed, but it is simpler to think of verses 2–3 not as an allegory but as an illustration of the point of verse 1 with some application to verse 4. Paul simply wants to show that a death can indeed bring freedom from the law; at the same time, he hints that such freedom can also lead to a new relationship.

In verse 4, the heart of the paragraph, Paul draws an inference from verses 1–3: Believers have suffered a death in relationship to the law, a death that frees them from the law and enables them to enter into a new relationship. The imagery of dying to something means the same thing it did in 6:2, 10, namely, release from bondage. Believers have not only been released from bondage to sin, they have also been released from bondage to the Mosaic law. This release was accomplished through “the body of Christ”—probably a reference to Jesus’ death on the cross.

Picking up imagery from the illustration in verses 2–3, Paul notes an important result of being released from the law: Believers are able to be joined to Christ. Paul assumes a person cannot be bound to the law and to Christ at the same time. As in 6:14–15, he is thinking of the Mosaic law as a power that rules over the old regime. If one lives under its absolute authority, one cannot at the same time belong to Christ. One must first be released from the law’s authority and then one can be related to Christ.

What lies in the background of Paul’s teaching is his salvation-historical conception. The era of the law has come to an end with the redemptive work of Christ. To be “under the law,” then, means to be in that old era and to effectively deny that Christ, “the end of the law,” has come (see the Contemporary Significance section for elaboration and application of this). Last in verse 4, but by no means least, is the purpose for which we are freed from the law and joined to Christ: so that we can “bear fruit to God.” Practical works of service should flow from our new relationship.

In verses 5–6 Paul elaborates the salvation-historical background he has assumed in verse 4. We find here another of Paul’s “when”/“but now” contrasts. He describes life in the old era or old regime in verse 5. Basic to that life was the fact that we were “controlled by the sinful nature.” “Sinful nature” is the way the NIV translates Paul’s use of the word sarx (lit., flesh) in a negative, ethical sense. This word is hard to bring over accurately into English (see Bridging Contexts section on 8:1–13). The apostle uses sarx in these contexts to denote human existence apart from God—it has almost the same sense as the “world” in John’s writings. To be “in the flesh,” then, is to live in a world bounded by this life and its concerns: to make decisions and behave without any regard for God or for the spiritual realm.

The results of this kind of life are obvious: “sinful passions” and “death.” But, as Paul has insisted again and again in the letter, the law of Moses did not bring relief from the matrix of sin and death; instead, it made it worse. Those sinful passions, Paul claims, were “aroused by the law.” As he will explain in verses 7–12, God’s law arouses sin by stimulating rebellion. Thus, we can see why a person must be released from that law (v. 4) if he or she is to serve God.

This is precisely the situation in the new regime (v. 6): We have “died to what once bound us,” and 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.” “Written code” translates gramma (lit., letter). Paul has used the “letter”/“Spirit” contrast earlier in Romans (2:29), where, as we argued, gramma refers to the Mosaic law in contrast to the Holy Spirit. A few commentators want to give gramma a more nuanced meaning here, referring to the misuse of the law.6 But the context shows that it must refer to the same thing that nomos refers to. Paul shifts to gramma because it more clearly connotes the “outward” nature of the Mosaic law. Written on stone tablets, the law of God cannot change the human heart; only God’s Spirit can do that. Paul will develop this ministry of the Spirit in chapter 8.

Bridging Contexts

INTERPRETING THE ILLUSTRATION in verses 2–3. In our comments on 3:21–26, we noted the danger of abusing analogies by squeezing more meaning out of them than the author intends. Paul’s marriage analogy in verses 2–3 is a good illustration of this point. Readers of Romans have found more significance than Paul probably intended in two different ways.

(1) Some scholars, as we noted above, assume this illustration is an allegory. That is, Paul intends every detail to correspond with one of the theological points he makes in verse 4. As we also noted, this approach does not seem to work because the details of the illustration and its application do not correspond. But this difficulty has not dissuaded some interpreters from pursuing the allegorical approach. They are persuaded that a more nuanced understanding of verses 2–3 can maintain a close parallel with verse 4.

Many specific suggestions have been made. The most popular and certainly the most attractive is the one put forth by Godet. He considers the woman to stand for the “true self,” the first husband for the “old man,” and the second husband for “Christ.” What dies, therefore, is our “old man,” and because of its death the law no longer keeps us from entering a new relationship with Christ.7 The problems with this interpretation are apparent. Nothing in the text suggests that we should interpret the first husband as the “old man.” In fact, this interpretation of verses 2–3 does not really match up well with verse 4, the text that verses 2–3 are designed to interpret. These interpretations, and others like them, are the product of a blind insistence that every detail in the illustration must have a theological counterpart. But illustrations and analogies rarely “walk on all fours” (see Bridging Contexts section of 3:21–26). To insist they must is to add to the text what the author has not put there.

(2) Another overinterpretation of this illustration is found more among laypeople than among scholars. In teaching Romans, I have found most people are not overly concerned with what Paul is teaching about the Mosaic law (which does not seem to be relevant to them). What they are interested in knowing is what verses 2–3 contribute to a biblical view of divorce and remarriage. Many insist that these verses prove that a remarriage on any other basis than the death of a spouse is adulterous. Whatever we think of the broader biblical teaching on this issue, these verses probably cannot be applied in this way. Paul is not concerned here to teach about marriage or divorce but is citing an example to prove a theological point.

With such a purpose, people often generalize about a situation in order to keep the analogy straightforward and simple. For instance, I have illustrated the internal basis of Paul’s ethics by likening the Christian to an airliner, which is guided to its destination by an on-board computer. All of us recognize that many airplanes are not, in fact, computer-guided, because they are too old or too small, or because the electronic system has failed. But these many exceptions do not detract from the force of the analogy. So Paul may well recognize circumstances in which a woman might not be an “adulteress” if she were to marry while her husband is still alive. Certainly both Roman and Jewish law (which Paul refers to in v. 1) allowed for remarriage after a legitimate divorce.

Letter and Spirit. Though obscured by the NIV, the end of verse 6 contrasts “the letter” (gramma) and “the Spirit” (pneuma). The sense Paul gives this contrast—the Old Testament law versus the new covenant gift of the Spirit—can be difficult to perceive because of the history and contemporary use of this contrast. Christian theologians in the Middle Ages applied the contrast to different ways of reading the Old Testament. The gramma referred to the literal, surface meaning, the pneuma to the deeper or allegorical meaning. We use this pair of terms in a similar way in modern parlance, when we speak, for instance, of someone who may have disobeyed “the letter of the law” but respected its “spirit.” It should be obvious that Paul gives little or no support to this application of the language in any of his uses of it (Rom. 2:29; 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:6–7). We need to put our modern use of the terminology to the side so that we can accurately understand what Paul means by it.

Contemporary Significance

CHRISTIANS AND LAW. The central claim of 7:1–6 is that believers have been released from the law. What does this mean in practice?

(1) Paul is not teaching that Christians are no longer responsible to obey a set of commandments. Note that the law Paul refers to is the Mosaic law, the Torah. He consistently uses nomos with this reference throughout Romans; in 7:7 he even quotes one of the Ten Commandments to illustrate the law he is talking about. When Paul says that we are “not under law” (6:14–15) or that we have been “released from the law” (7:6), what he means is that we are no longer under a specific form of God’s law, not that we are not under God’s law at all.

According to 1 Corinthians 9:19–21, Paul views the law of Moses as a subset of the law of God generally. Believers may not be subject to the law of Moses; but, Paul implies in that text, we are subject to “the law of Christ.” Most of us have heard of or seen these texts abused in the way we are warning about. Shortly after I became a Christian, I was involved in an extremist charismatic group on my college campus. Among other things, just about everyone in the group spoke in tongues at the same time in our public meetings—creating quite a Babel of sound! As a rather naive young believer, I questioned this practice at a meeting, citing Paul’s command to the Corinthians that only one person should speak in a tongue at a time and someone should interpret. I was firmly put in my place and told that we are “not under the law but under the Spirit.”

(2) Paul teaches that believers are still obliged to obey the commandments God has given them. He reminds the Corinthians that “keeping God’s commands is what counts” (1 Cor. 7:19). He also says that he himself is “under Christ’s law” (9:21). After proclaiming throughout Galatians that Christians are no longer under the Mosaic law, Paul warns them not to draw the wrong conclusions. God still expects believers to follow the command of love (Gal. 5:13–15) and to fulfill “the law of Christ” (6:2).

Just what this “law of Christ” might be is not clear from Paul’s teaching. Some interpreters think it consists only in the example of Christ. Others think it is simply the command that we love our neighbors as ourselves. But the many commandments in Paul’s own letters, along with the plural “commands” in 1 Corinthians 7:19, suggest a broader interpretation: the example of Jesus and the commands he and his apostles issue as a guide to the Spirit-filled life. As we will see in chapters 8 and 12, Paul stresses that Christian obedience is the reflection of the Spirit’s work in transforming our minds and hearts. But commandments are needed to guide that transforming work. God has therefore given us in the New Testament specific commands to direct our conduct and to show us when we are straying from his moral will.

(3) A third matter arises inevitably from the first two points: What role does the Old Testament law have in this “law of Christ” that governs Christians? Perhaps the most popular answer among evangelical Christians stems from the Puritan tradition. Puritan theologians made a basic distinction between two different functions of the Mosaic law. On the one hand, it was a “covenant of works” that God established between himself and Israel. God gave Israel his law and demanded that they obey it; if they did not, they would die. On the other hand, the law functioned as a revelation of God’s moral will.

Applying this distinction to Paul, the Puritans concluded that when Paul said that believers are no longer “under the law” or that we are released from it, he means that we are no longer under the law as a covenant of works. That is, the law no longer has power to condemn us for our sins. But we are still under the law as a revelation of God’s moral will. To be sure, we need no longer obey the civil and ceremonial law, for those parts of the law have been fulfilled in Christ. But an important, indeed a basic, component of the “law of Christ” is the moral law of the Old Testament, manifested especially in the Ten Commandments.

A large swath of contemporary evangelicalism is the heir to this Puritan tradition. We may not use the same terminology they did, but the view of the Mosaic law is similar. This position, however, rests on two distinctions that are not as clear in Paul as we may think they are. The first is the distinction between the law as revelation of God’s will and law as covenant of works, or, to phrase it another way, between the commanding function of the law and the condemning function of the law. Paul does not clearly distinguish these. In fact, in texts like 1 Corinthians 9:19–21, it is clear that not being “under the Mosaic law” means “not being under its commands,” for the issue there has to do with the way Paul behaves. In other words, it is hard to maintain that being “under the law” in Romans 6:14–15 and being “released from the law” in 7:6 do not include the commanding element of the law.

Equally questionable is the time-honored distinction among the civil, ceremonial, and moral law. Some interpreters use these distinctions to argue, for instance, that Paul is claiming in 6:14–15 and 7:4, 6 only that believers are no longer obliged to obey the civil and/or ceremonial parts of the law. But Jews certainly did not divide up the law in this way, and evidence from the New Testament that early Christians did is slim.

We conclude, then, that we cannot restrict Paul’s claim that believers have been “released from the law” to a certain function of the law or to certain parts of the law. The believer has been set free from the commanding authority of the Mosaic law—period. What this means in practice is that no part of the Old Testament law stands any longer as a direct and unmediated guide to Christian living. Like a person who is free from the laws of the state of Indiana because she has moved to Illinois, so Christians are free from the law of the old covenant because we now belong to the new covenant.

Does our freedom from the Old Testament law include even the Ten Commandments? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that those commandments as part of the Mosaic law no longer stand over us. But no in the sense that the teaching of nine of the ten commandments is explicitly taken up by New Testament authors and made part of the “law of Christ.” (The one commandment that is not taken over is, of course, the Sabbath command.) What all this means in practice, then, is that we should look to the New Testament for those commandments that express God’s moral will for us as new covenant Christians. Its teachings, properly interpreted, are to be obeyed. But this does not mean that we should no longer read the Old Testament law. It remains God’s Word, given, as all Scripture, for our enlightenment (2 Tim. 3:16).

Moreover, although the new covenant believer does not stand directly under Old Testament law, that law itself serves an important function in helping us understand our obligations. New Testament teachings are informed by the Old Testament law. For instance, the New Testament prohibits porneia—unlawful sexual conduct. But what is included in such illegitimate sexual conduct? The New Testament writers never spell it out because the scope of this conduct has been defined clearly in the Old Testament law. Thus, we continue to read the Old Testament law as a guide to our interpretation of New Testament law.8