Married to the Risen One
Paul uses the strangest analogy to explain why the Christian is free from the law — and bound to Christ.
Today's Verse
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.
Romans 7:4
Historical Context
Paul writes to the church at Rome around A.D. 57, likely from Corinth, near the end of his third missionary journey. He has not yet visited Rome, and the letter is his most careful, extended presentation of the gospel — sent ahead of him to a congregation he hopes will support his mission to Spain.
The Roman church was mixed: Jewish believers who knew the Law of Moses from childhood, and Gentile converts who did not. This tension runs underneath the whole letter. In chapter 6 Paul has just insisted that grace does not license sin. Now in chapter 7 he turns to a related question that would trouble any thoughtful Jewish Christian: if we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, what is our relationship to the Torah — the Law that God himself gave at Sinai?
Paul answers with a legal analogy his readers would immediately grasp. In both Jewish and Roman law, marriage bound a wife to her husband until death. Only death dissolved the bond. To take another husband while the first still lived was adultery; after his death, remarriage was honorable and free.
Paul's point is not primarily about marriage — he is using it as a picture. The Law is not evil (he will defend it vigorously later in the chapter). But the believer's relationship to it has been fundamentally changed by union with the crucified and risen Christ. Something has died. Something new has begun. To Jewish believers wondering whether they had abandoned Moses, and to Gentile believers wondering whether they should take Moses on, Paul explains what has actually happened to them in Christ.
Reflection
Paul's analogy is startling: you were married to the Law, and that marriage held you fast. Not because the Law was a cruel husband — it wasn't — but because the Law could only command, never enable. It exposed your sin and demanded righteousness you could not produce. The harder you tried, the more your sinful passions were stirred up, bearing fruit for death.
Then something happened. You died. In the body of Christ, on the cross, you died to that old marriage. And now — Paul's language is tender and staggering — you belong to another. You are married to the risen Christ.
Think about what that means. Your standing before God no longer depends on your performance of a written code. It depends on your union with a living Person who cannot die again. The bond cannot be broken because the Bridegroom cannot perish. He was raised from the dead, and you are his.
This is not license. Paul is not saying we may now sin freely. He is saying the opposite: the old arrangement produced fruit for death; this new union produces fruit for God. A wife who loves her husband does not need a legal code to make her faithful. She serves in the new way of the Spirit, from the inside out.
If you have been living the Christian life as endless striving — trying to earn what has already been given, terrified that one failure will end the marriage — hear Paul again. You died. You were raised with Christ. You belong to him. Live like it. Bear fruit not to secure his love, but because his love has already secured you.
For Reflection
Where in your walk with Christ are you still living as though married to the Law rather than to the risen Lord?
Prayer
Risen Lord Jesus, we thank you that we belong to you — not by our striving, but by your death and resurrection. Forgive us for the times we live as though we must earn what you have already given. Fill us with your Spirit, that our obedience would flow from love, not fear, and that our lives would bear fruit for our Father's glory. Keep us faithful to you, our true and eternal Bridegroom. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Image: Follower of Hans Memling, File:Follower of Hans Memling - Birth, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ triptych - 1510-20.jpg, c. 1510 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.