Free to Serve – Romans 7:1-6
Bethel Baptist Church – David Rising
Romans 7:1-6; October 25, 2026 – Sunday AM
Free to Serve
As followers of Jesus Christ, we have been set free from the dominating power of sin in our lives. No longer slaves of sin, we are now slaves of Christ and our desire now is to please our Master, the Lord Jesus.
This mindset should be the normal pattern of thought for every believer. After all that Jesus has done for me, what else should be my thoughts but to honor and please Him in everything I think and do.
In our study of Romans, we have seen Paul teach us plenty. Some of it we have understood. Other things may still be in the queue.
Starting in Romans 6, we have seen Paul raise some interesting questions that flow from a particular truth he proclaimed. Here is the logical flow of those things:
Truth: After God gave the Law, sin increased. The law brought guilt and judgment. But at the same time, God’s grace super-increased (5:20-21). The increased offense brought about more of God’s grace.
Proposal: So should we continue in sin that grace might abound? (6:1)
Answer: NO! Our union with Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection makes this absurd and also impossible. Our old man was crucified with Jesus and we now live a new life to God. We died and thus have been freed from sin. (6:2-10).
Truth: Sin shall not have dominion over us, because we are not under law but under grace (6:15).
Proposal: Should we sin because of this? Will not the absence of law as the framework of life create an environment that encourages sin?
Answer: NO! If we still pursue a life of sin, we place ourselves under the mastery of sin and are essentially slaves of sin again which leads to death. Our new birth set us free from sin and we are now slaves of righteousness. Our life now is a life pursuing holiness with the ultimate end everlasting life. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is where we ended last week, the end of Romans 6.
Today, as we begin Romans 7, we see Paul probe the topic of the law and how a believer’s relationship to the law changed because of Christ. He is essentially going back to Romans 6:15 and explaining further this idea of what it means to be under law. Or, more technically, what it means not to be under law. Pray.
For those of us who are not Jews, and for those in Paul’s original audience who were Gentiles, this discussion about the law may seem distant. We did not grow up within the Jewish community and did not have the Mosaic Law as our framework for living.
And yet, the subject of the law has been prominent in Romans 1-6, being mentioned 25 times in those chapters. It came up specifically in chapter 2 with reference to Gentiles. Paul spoke about Gentiles by nature doing the things in the law, even though they did not have the law – the Mosaic Law.
Paul’s discussion today about law will lead to another truth, proposal, and answer in verse 7ff, which we’ll see next week.
Notice now our first verse for today, 7:1:
7:1 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?
1. The Law Applies to Those Who Are Alive (7:1)
For the third time in Romans, Paul uses this phrase “do you not know (ἀγνοεῖτε).” He seems to think the readers should already know this. This is the Greek word from which we get our English word ‘agnostic.’
Paul uses this phrase 10x in 1 Corinthians. That makes sense because he is dealing with a church that had major problems.
Paul used this question in 6:3, 6:16, and now here.
His rhetorical question makes the simple point: law applies to someone only while they are alive.
Paul is speaking about more than law simply applying; he speaks about the law having dominion over, having a ruling power over.
In 6:14 Paul told us that sin shall not have dominion over us, because we are not under law but under grace.
Romans 6:15-23 made clear this does not mean we simply do whatever we want. If we continue to present ourselves to sin as a willing instrument, we will be sin’s slave. Rather, we must present ourselves to God.
I think the context of Romans 7 is the Mosaic Law as a whole, and Jewish Christians in particular since he adds that parenthetical note about speaking to those who know the law. That makes sense to me.
The illustration Paul used for this discussion in chapter 6 was slavery. Now he uses the illustration of marriage.
Law has dominion over a person as long as they are alive. That’s his point.
As long as we live in NY, those laws apply to us. As long as we live in the US, those laws apply to us, regardless of what some people say in our day.
Why now does the Mosaic Law not apply? What changed? Paul will illustrate this by using the analogy of marriage:
2. Illustrated by the Law of Marriage (7:2-3)
2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.
Verse 2 makes a basic statement that we understand – the law of marriage applies to the couple as long as they are both alive. In this illustration, the focus is the woman. She is bound by law to remain as the wife of her husband so long as he continues to live.
This is simple to understand. Paul makes the same basic statement in 1 Corinthians 7:39. Marriage binds two people together. Two become one. It is a beautiful thing, illustrating the unity of Christ to His church.
But what if the husband dies? She is then free from the law of that marriage. Why? Because the husband is dead.
By the way, this is not necessarily a text that gives us a comprehensive teaching about marriage. It does, however, emphasize the important principle about the intended permanence of marriage.
Paul is looking at one aspect of marriage and is using it to illustrate his discussion about the relationship of the Mosaic Law to the New Testament believer.
And so verse 2 makes the basic point: the wife is bound to her husband as long as he is alive. If he dies, she is free.
3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.
Now the picture is a married woman who goes ahead and marries someone else while her existing husband is still alive. Paul says she now has two husbands.
She is then an adulteress – someone who breaks the law by committing adultery.
However, if the original husband dies, then she is not bound any longer by the law of marriage and she is free then to marry another and the result will not be adultery.
In all of our discussions and debates over divorce and remarriage, this is the easiest scenario to agree upon since it is crystal clear in scripture. If your spouse dies, you are free to remarry. The reason I said earlier this text is not a one-stop text to define all aspects of marriage is that it does not discuss divorce, which other passages do. That is a discussion and sermon for another time.
I think we can understand the point of verse 3: death releases the wife from the law of marriage, and thus she is free to remarry another without concern over breaking the law.
When there is a death, our relationship to the law changes.
That is his major point. Whether there are other points to be drawn from his use of the marriage illustration, theologians debate, but this one principle is very clear because it is easy to spot.
Paul now applies this illustration:
4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.
3. We are Free to Serve God (7:4-6)
This third point wording comes from verses 4-6. They go together.
Just as the husband has died in the illustration making the wife free from the law of that marriage, so now Paul says we have died to the law and our relationship to the law has changed.
Now this makes more sense if you are a Christian Jew reading this and thinking about Moses. But Paul does not say this only applies to Jews. It applies to all believers. For Jews, the Mosaic Law does not comprehend your ceremonial and moral guidance. For Gentiles, don’t seek to put yourself under the Mosaic Law.
We are not bound by the Law. Why? Because we died.
Verse 4 says we have died and are free to marry another.
Believers in Jesus are now married to Jesus, as it were. They may sound strange, but it is simply to use the illustration and apply it to the topic. It also is an extension of the picture we have painted about our union with Christ in chapter 6. Marriage is a union.
How did we die?
through the body of Christ.
This draws us back to the early verses in Romans 6 and our union with Christ.
Notice we have reference to Jesus’ death and resurrection in verse 4. We were united with Jesus in these matters.
Notice that verse 4 states believers have become dead to the law and this is stated in a passive voice. A passive voice explains something that has been done to us by someone else. It is not something that we initiated and accomplished ourselves.
Romans 6:2 states that we have died, and that was accomplished through our union with Christ. He is the One who died, was buried, and was raised again.
We died with Christ and that freed us from the power of the law and of sin. Verse 6 says we were delivered from the law. Verse 2 illustrates that the women is released from the law of her husband upon his death.
That release from the law enables us to be bound to Christ. Christ is our life, and we live for Him.
Notice that Christ is noted as the one who was raised from the dead. Our death to the law came through the one who was raised. In chapter 6, when we hear a similar comment we learned the implication of the resurrection: that we should walk in newness of life. The same truth is said here, but in another way.
Sticking with the analogy of fruit we saw used in 6:21-22, we hear it again: we have been united with Christ, having been freed from the law and sin, so that we should bear fruit to God.
In other words, amid all this confusing theology and discussion, the end result is freedom in Christ to bear fruit to our God. We are free to serve God. This is where our study should lead us, not to endless debates.
In verse 5, Paul adds an interesting perspective about the law and what it did for us before we died in Christ:
5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.
Paul speaks about a period of time when we were in the flesh, before we were justified by Christ, when we were living simply as a child of Adam.
Our mortal body has desires, and they call for our obedience. Here he calls them ‘the sinful passions’ (τὰ παθήματα τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν). This word for ‘passion’ is a word that can also be translated as ‘suffering’ and is in many contexts where Paul speaks, but here it is similar to lusts in verse 12.
Indeed, we could attest to the suffering we experience as we battle with our sinful desires and temptation.
Paul says that that our sinful passions were aroused, awakened, stirred up, by the law.
We might say: doesn’t that seem backwards? Is not the law a good thing? Doesn’t the law help us avoid sin?
Paul says that the law stirs up our desires and instead of obeying, we disobey and that action leads to bitter fruit and death.
We may be inclined to think that the law is a way to stop people from sinning and to help them be right with God. That certainly is how we might naturally think, but Paul says that law stirs us up our sinful passions.
In other words, we were already leaning in the wrong direction, and the law came along and pushed us over the edge. We know very clearly now that we have sinned. That sinfulness lead us to bear fruit unto death.
Paul is arguing in this passage that – praise God! – we have been released from that structure. The law no longer has that bind on us. Notice verse 6:
6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
Boil down verse 6 and the sentence is this: we have been delivered from the law…so that we should serve.
How were we delivered from the law? By Jesus. His death, burial, and resurrection set us free.
Paul told us in Romans 6:14 that believers are not under law but under grace.
I was reminded this week in reading the gospel of John these words:
John 1:17 (NKJV) 17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Our focus in the church is Jesus, not Moses. Yes, we should study Moses and all the other OT writers, of course, and that study – if we continue into the NT – leads us to our Savior, Jesus.
Notice how Paul phrases our relationship to the law previously: having died to what we were held by.
This points to the law’s authority that once was the governing principle. Just as the woman was set free from the law of marriage, so we too were set free from the law that once held us.
We’ve been set free to serve in a new way.
so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
We have heard people talk about the ‘spirit of the law’ versus the ‘letter of the law.’ Maybe this is where that phrase originates. I didn’t check.
In both cases, we were serving God but now the way has changed. Most translations capitalize ‘Spirit’ because they interpret this to mean the Holy Spirit. KJV has lowercase, but they often don’t interpret with capitalizations.
This most certainly is a reference to the Holy Spirit and is a nod to the New Covenant that Jeremiah spoke about.
Paul already talked about the Spirit back in chapter 2 at the end when he spoke about a kind of circumcision that had meaning:
Romans 2:28–29 (NKJV) 28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; 29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.
This is a gross oversimplification, but over time many Jews added additional laws to ensure that the Mosaic Laws would certainly be fulfilled. Those laws took on a life of their own, and this is some of what we see Jesus and the disciples encounter in the NT.
What Jesus so often said was aimed at their motives, their hearts, because they had basically missed the point. While He was on earth, Jesus was making a difference in people’s lives – healing, forgiving sins, feeding – but so many of the Jewish leaders could only see violations of law.
For instance, in John 9 Jesus healed the man who was born blind but all the leaders could see was a violation of the Sabbath law. Jesus knew what He was doing because it was on the Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes (John 9:14). The Pharisees excommunicated him (9:34), but Jesus granted him new life (9:35-41).
That’s one way of thinking about the contrast here.
Another is the power behind obedience. I don’t think God built within the Mosaic Law, nor laws in general, the power that we need to carry out the obedience to that law.
Paul calls it the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. It is God’s Spirit who enables us to obey and produces in us this fruit.
The newness in our service is the work of the Holy Spirit. The oldness has its source in the letter of the law.
This is a difficult portion scripture to sort out, and so pardon me if I continue to have some clips from commentators. Schreiner notes:
The “oldness derived from the letter” is a commentary on verse 5, where the passions of sin were stimulated by the law. Thus as in Rom. 2:29 the “letter” refers to the OT law and its inability to effect righteousness apart from the Spirit. The letter refers to the commands (cf. 7:7) of the law that are unable to produce the righteousness demanded. The letter of the law demands but does not enable obedience. Moreover, the letter of the law actually kindles the desire to sin and produces more sin than if the law were lacking. The newness brought about by the Spirit, conversely, must involve the living of a new life in which “we bear fruit for God” (7:4) and “walk in newness of life” (6:4). The newness of the Spirit fulfills the old covenant promise that the new covenant would give people ability to keep the statutes and commandments of the law (Jer. 31:31–34; Ezek. 36:26–27).[1]
[1] Schreiner, T. R. (1998). Vol. 6: Romans. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (353). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Right about now as we try to comprehend Paul’s arguments and train of thought, we might be tempted to think that the real problem here is the law. He speaks about the ‘oldness of the letter’ and about being delivered from the law. He speaks about how the law stirs up our desires which leads to sin and death, and so forth. It seems as if the problem is the law.
Next week we’ll see how Paul addresses that train of thought with more important teaching we need to grasp in our fight with sin.
Application
1. Thank God for our freedom. If you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, then know once again that you have been fundamentally changed. You have been set free from the shackles of sin, of the law, of the condemnation of the law. You are united with Christ, married to another, as Paul says. Your world is no longer about you. It is all about serving our God, and bearing fruit to Him. That is the thrust of verses 1-4. If you do know Christ as your personal savior, then you do understand this, even if you don’t fully understand it. You recognize that something changed. What changed, is what Paul has been explaining. You have become dead to what once bound you, to what once condemned you. You are united to the One who died and was raised.
2. Serve the Lord. You and I are now free to serve Christ. Our goal in life is to bear fruit to God. So the question for each of us is this: what are we doing for the glory of God? How are we serving the Lord with the abilities and desires He has given to us? Not everyone can serve in a public way, but we can all serve the Lord through prayer, through caring, through encouragement, through many other ways.
3. Keep studying!