The Christian is not bound by the Jewish religion
1 You, my friends, understand law. The law has power only while a person is alive.
2 The married woman, for example, is bound by law to her husband while he is alive; but if he dies, she is free from her obligations as a wife.
3 If she gives herself to another while her husband is alive, she will be an adulteress; but once the husband dies, she is free and if she gives herself to another man, she is not an adulteress.
4 It was the same with you, brothers and sisters: you have died to the Law with the person of Christ, and you belong to another, who has risen from among the dead, so that we may produce fruit for God.
5 When we lived as humans used to do, the Law stirred up the desires for all that is sin, and they worked in our bodies with fruits of death.
6 But we have died to what was holding us; we are freed from the Law and no longer serve a written law – which was the old; with the Spirit we are in the new.
7 Then, shall we say that the Law is part of sin? Of course not. How ever, I would not have known Sin, had it not been through the Law. I would not be aware of greed if the Law did not tell me: Do not covet.
8 Sin took advantage of the commandment to stir in me all kinds of greed; whereas, without a Law, Sin lies dead.
9 First there was no Law and I lived. Then the commandment came and gave life to Sin:
10 and I died. It happened that the Law of life had brought me death.
11 Sin took ad vantage of the commandment: it lured me and killed me through the commandment.
12 But the Law itself is holy, just and good.
13 Is it possible that something good brings death to me? Of course not. This comes from Sin that may be seen as sin when it takes advantage of something good to kill: the commandment let Sin appear fully sinful.
The Law without Christ makes humans divided
14 We know that the Law is spiritual; as for me, I am flesh and have been sold to sin.
15 I cannot explain what is happening to me, because I do not do what I want, but on the contrary, the very things I hate.
16 Well then, if I do the evil I do not want to do, I agree that the La w is good;
17 but, in this case, I am not the one striving toward evil, but it is sin, living in me.
18 I know that what is right does not abide in me, I mean, in my flesh. I can want to do what is right, but I am unable to do it.
19 In fact I do not do the good I want, but the evil I hate.
20 Therefore, if I do what I do not want to do, I am not the one striving towards evil, but Sin which is in me.
21 I discover, then, this reality: though I wish to do what is right, the evil with in me asserts itself first.
22 My inmost self agrees and rejoices with the law of God,
23 but I notice in my body another law challenging the law of the spirit, and delivering me as a slave to the law of sin written in my members.
24 Alas, for me! Who will free me from this being which is only death?
25 Let us give thanks to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!
So, with my conscience I am a servant of the law of God, and with my mortal body I serve the law of sin.
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Comments Letter to the Romans, Chapter 7
• 7.1 The last chapter presented Christ who frees us from sin and death and becomes our only master. Then Christians of Jewish origin could ask: What about the Law of the Old Covenant? Is it no longer of value? Was it not given by God himself?
You have died to the Law (v. 4). The Law was provisional: the time of the Law ended with the death of Christ. Here we find one of Paul’s great intuitions. The death of Jesus was seem ingly no more than a minor event in the troubled history of the Jewish people under Roman occupation. Yet it is more than a turning point, a rupture in the history of the world. Before that time was the era of a minor humanity; after it, the time when God could act and make himself known fully and clearly (Gal 4). The death of Jesus marks the death of ancient history. The Christian way of counting the years from the death of Christ is not one among other possibilities: it responds to a reality.
The baptized Jews are no longer obliged to follow all the commandments of this Law that was the supreme authority. Of course, many of the commandments deal with justice and mercy and are not to be neglected. Even so Christians are not left with a religion of commandments: faith in Jesus Christ, the only Savior, inspires all our actions.
We have died to what was holding us (v. 6). The Law of Moses, the great gift of God to Israel was part of a provisional stage, when humankind was not entirely free. The Christians of today see in the laws an indication of God’s will but reserve the right to act according to the criteria of their faith. No law or even religious decree can prevail over a well-informed conscience. An ordered life creates more beauty than any religious constitution could ever achieve.
See the same theme in 2 Cor 5:14: “if he died for all, then all have died.”
First there was no Law and I lived (v. 9). It would be erroneous to think that Paul is speaking about his own past. He is rather playing a role and speaks on behalf of Man (see commentary 5:12-14). The other actors in the drama are Sin, the Law and Death.
For the Jews the conclusion is clear: the Law with its commandments had no power to renew the human person.
• 14. Paul describes the situation of the per son who knows the commandments, but not the love of God. He is not a liberated person, but a divided one. Two opposing forces struggle within him; on one side the Law that tells him what to do, and on the other another law in his flesh, that is, in his nature. He is not really free.
There is something well disposed within human beings: the spirit; and something that resists the demands of duty: the flesh (see Mk 14:38). The flesh does not mean the body; this word designates what in us is weak in face of duty and God’s call to holi ness. See commentary on 8:5.
Our liberty is impotent when faced with sin, that is, it can do nothing against the forces of evil dragging down all humankind. Dullness of spirit in our fellow workers, family prob lems, the general spread of pornography, selfishness and consumerism: the flesh within us becomes an accomplice in all these evils.
In this chapter Paul continues to play the role of the one who still does not know Christ and remains divided and enslaved. The next chapter will deal with the opposition between the spirit and the flesh for those who believe in Christ. For them there is a solution to their conflicts: they live in peace. And so Paul ends crying out: who will free me…? Thanks be to God.