Romans 7:1–6 (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? 2 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. 3 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.
4 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. 5 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. 6 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.
In much the same way as Paul argued from death to life and from one slave master to another—that we are no longer obligated to sin, to bear fruit unto unrighteousness and death but to bear fruit unto righteousness and eternal life—he argues here from covenantal ties.
God’s Law has declared marriage a sacred institution, a covenant between a single man and a single woman before the eyes of God that makes them as if they were one flesh. To break that sacred covenant by marrying another is to commit adultery, literally to “mix seed” (Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18).
In much of the ancient Pagan world, adultery could only be committed by women. But God’s Law as delivered to the Jews made it clear that both the man and the woman were culpable for the act (Leviticus 20:10-21). Jesus again clarifies further in Matthew 5:27-31 what constitutes adultery.
Paul argues that in the same way that a woman is free to remarry after her first husband dies, so we have died to the Law (or it is dead to us) via our union with Christ’s death so that we can belong to him now through his resurrection. As a proverbial husband to us while we were alive in the flesh, the Law only aroused our sinful passions and they being aroused worked to bear unrighteous fruit in our members (physical bodies) which only led to death.
But now, being released from our former husband (the Law) because we died to that which held us captive (recall the slave analogy), we serve (God) in the new way of the Spirit (Acts 2:33 Cf. Ephesians 1:13) and not in the old way of the written code (Law).
To be clear, Paul’s analogy of the Law must be kept in its proper context. The Law is still the revelation of God’s holy character and is not nullified in that sense. It is nullified, however, in that we are no longer under its dominion, to be motivated by its precepts, since it only did the opposite in our fallen natures (provoked us to break it).
Now we are motivated by the Spirit of God who opens our eyes of understanding and transforms our dispositions so that we are motivated to please God out of the sincerity of our new grace-filled hearts (Ezekiel 36:26-28).
well said