Romans 7 a study pt. 1

Romans 7 is, in my estimation, the best biography of the Christian life. Not a prefect peaceful life full of beauty, but a life of struggle, filth, of constantly dying to self, a grotesque life, not of glamor, but suffering. This is the first of a series on my study of Romans, my favorite book.


In 7:1-3 the wife is representative of the believer, whether they be a Jew or a Gentile, we are under the “husband” or Jesus, if humanity goes to another, adultery is committed, and thus we will die in our sins, and be eternal cast into Hell. However, if the “husband” dies we are free from our subjection to him. When Christ died on the cross the children of Israel, the elect, were freed from the law, and were made free to marry another, the risen Jesus. Thus giving salvation not in animal sacrifices to fulfill the law, but in the holy blameless sacrifice of Jesus, that set us free from the law of sin and death.
Therefore Romans 7:1-3 can be also read like this; or do you not know brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the wife, the elect, who has a husband, the Law of Moses, is bound by the law to the husband, Law of Moses, as long as he lives. But if the Law of Moses dies, she is released from the husband. So then if the elect, while still tide to the law, marry another the elect will be called adulteresses, but if the Law of Moses dies, the elect are free from the law, so that they are not adulteresses, though the elect marry another man.
In looking at this passage through these lenses one can see Christ’s purpose for coming to die. For if we go to Him while the law is still in place, a law that he set, we are adulteresses, but when He died the Law of Moses was fulfilled and the elect were free to “marry” another, the risen Jesus Christ. Thus when He says in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets, I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” The Law was not killed it is still what God uses to Judge the nations, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, but it is not what saves the elect anymore, we are saved by nothing more than the Blood of Jesus.
To explain in further more simplistic terms, Christ’s death on the cross effectively put away the law, by fulfillment, and made us “widowers” freeing us from our relations with the law. Upon which Christ’s resurrection gave us the newfound relationship of Jesus, and the grace of God. The law no longer gives us eternity, but the mere grace of God, by the faith that He gives, only by the person of Jesus Christ.