Romans Ch 7 Sunday School

Released From the Law

Romans 7:1–3 ESV

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

When Paul therefore claims that he has “died to the law,” he means that he has been released from the binding authority of the law of Moses.

Douglas J. Moo

Romans 7:4 ESV

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.

Galatians 5:18 “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

Colossians 2:14 “by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

*Being divorced from sin, or freed from it legally, by death. We are no longer obligated to it, the law, but are free to be joined to another.

Romans 7:5 ESV

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.

Romans 8:1–2 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

The condemnation that our sins deserve has been poured out on Christ, our sin-bearer; that is why “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1)

Douglas J. Moo

Romans 7:6 ESV

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

2 Corinthians 3:6 “who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

*Jesus became sin to break the stranglehold that it had over us. The power of sin was in The Law. Jesus’ act of love on the cross fulfilled the law, being the perfect sacrifice, he accomplished what the law could not. Freeing us from it’s penalty, he made atonement on our behalf, and reconciled us to himself.