The Bondage Of The Law
THE BONDAGE OF THE LAW
ROMANS 7:1-4
Paul takes an illustration from marriage …
The subject of chapter 6 is continued, under a new illustration. In the earlier passage the slavery was that of sin. Here the slavery is that of the Law. Very boldly, in view of the fact that he is addressing the Jews who must have formed a large element in the Roman Christian congregation, Paul stresses the nature and limitations of the Law.
He points out that law of any sort is master of a person only during life. Death cancels all contracts. A woman, bound by the legal contract of the marriage bond, is free to marry if that bond and contract are broken by her husband’s death. The illustration is only a rough analogy, for in its application it is the bonded person who himself “dies to the Law” in sharing mystically the death of Christ.
As Christians we must reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to the righteousness which is ours in Christ, so similarly we are to consider ourselves released from the Law by a form of death, the death we share with Christ, just as in Christ we share Christ’s new life—and death annuls all legal obligation.
To the Gentile and to the modern Christian the argument seems unnecessarily elaborate. To the Jew it was vital. The Law, since the exile, had meant everything. It had been the cement of their nation. And it had bulked largely in the experience of the previous two centuries, during which, growing beyond its wholesome function as conservator of Jewry and Judaism, it had overwhelmed all Jewish life. Paul knew the strength of the Law in personal experience. He also knew its power to daunt and to condemn. He is soon to speak about that in terms of theology and personal experience. He had also known a vast emancipation, and is urgent to share the liberty he had found with all who would listen to him. The Galatian church had demonstrated how difficult it was for Christians, who had truly believed in Christ, to cast off the tyranny of the outmoded Law. The letter to the Hebrews touched the same theme.
Meditation Philippians 3:4-10.