Romans 7:4Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Among men also, one who acts this way is not subject to condemnation. "But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband." Do you see how by this example he shows that the law has died?

Yet he does not say this in the conclusion. "While her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress." See how insistent he is in accusing those who violate a living law. Since the law has ceased to exist, one may replace it with faith without any fear, and without offending it at all.

"For while the law is alive," the Apostle says, "the wife is an adulteress if she belongs to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also" (Rom 7:3-4). He should have said, "Since the law has died, you are not guilty of adultery if you marry another husband."

But the Apostle did not say this. What did he say? "You have died to the law." If you have become dead, then you are not under the law. If a wife is not answerable after her husband's death, much more is she free from this when she herself dies.

Have you noticed Paul's wisdom? He proved that, according to the will of the law, one may be separated from the law and become the wife of another husband. The law, he says, does not forbid marriage to another after the first husband's death.

Indeed, how could it forbid this when even during the husband's life it allows the wife to marry another, if she has received a bill of divorce? However, the Apostle does not mention what chiefly served as the women's fault.

Although this was permitted, it was nevertheless not entirely free from blame. When the Apostle can win the victory by what is necessary and acknowledged by all, he does not seek superfluous proofs, for he has no need of them.

Thus it is remarkable that the law itself frees us from guilt in the case of departing from it. It is therefore the law's will that we should belong to Christ. The law itself has died, and we have died. The rights of authority have been destroyed twice over.

But the Apostle is not satisfied with this alone. He adds the cause. He did not simply mention death, but again added that the Cross accomplished this, and in this way made us liable.

He does not simply say, "You have been freed," but, "by the Master's death." For it is said: "You have died to the law through the body of Christ." He persuades not only from this, but also from the superiority of the second husband.

He adds, "that you may belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead." Then, lest they object, "What if we do not wish to marry another husband? The law does not regard a widow who enters a second marriage as an adulteress, yet neither does it compel her to a new union."

To prevent them from saying this, the Apostle proves that we ought to desire the new union because of what Christ has already done for us. He expressed this more clearly elsewhere, saying, "You are not your own," and, "You were bought with a price."

Again he says, "Do not become slaves of men" (1 Cor 6:19-20; 1 Cor 7:23). Again, "One died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them" (2 Cor 5:14-15).

He meant the same thing here when he said, "through the body." Then the Apostle persuades by lofty hopes, saying, "that we may bear fruit to God." Then you bore fruit to death, but now to God.

Notice, then, how he commanded them to leave the shadow of the law and rather take refuge in grace in Christ. Yet the Spirit-bearing man was not unaware that some would certainly say, or begin to reason, that the fathers had therefore strayed from the right way and from life.

They would say that the law helped them in nothing, and that the glory of their way of life had perished. For if the desire to be under the law is out of place, and yet this was the goal of the ancients' life, would it not be true to say that they strayed from what was fitting?

Therefore he who has Christ in himself enters the contest (cf. 2 Cor 13:3). On the one hand, he skillfully appears to wish to speak together with those who lived under the law. On the other hand, by many means he turns them to this thought.

Since the circumstances of the time summon us to faith, we must not strive intensely to remain in the ancient customs. For this reason he says: "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?" (Rom 7:1).

This general definition applies both to every law and to those who are under the law. Although laws define what must and must not be done for all who are subject to the scepters of kings, they have force only among those who are still alive.

If someone under the law is released from life in the body, together with that life he has also put off the authority of the laws. For if he has ceased to sin, then with respect to him the law will in every case be inactive.

Thus the law truly has dominion over a man as long as he lives. We must then state the purpose of this argument. In it the Apostle sets forth two useful points.

We, he says, who have been buried with Christ through baptism and have died to sin, have come to be outside the law's authority, because we were transformed toward another life. But those who lived before the Savior's coming had not yet taken upon themselves intelligible death in Christ.

Therefore they lived for sin. For this reason the law ruled over them as over the living, just as a husband rules over his wife. A married woman, as long as her lawful companion still lives, will not be without blame if she joins herself to another.

But if he has died, he says, then she will be free from punishment, even if she wishes to arrange a new marriage lawfully (cf. 1 Cor 7:39). In the same way, I think, those who have not yet acquired the mortification of sin in Christ remain under the law justly.

They are as though still living in sin, for the law has authority over a man as long as he lives. But those who are already under grace in Christ have, through it, become dead to sin and deadened to the flesh, that is, to fleshly passions.

If they no longer conduct their works as those living in the world (Col 2:20), then they can order their life outside the law without accusation. For, as I have said, those justified through faith have died by the body of Christ and have become dead to the law.

It happened, therefore, that those who believe in Christ are freed from the law, because sin has been condemned. Sin, which is the devil, has been conquered by the body of Christ. It no longer has power over those who belong to Him who conquered it.

Because Christ was sinless, yet was killed as guilty, He conquered sin by sin, that is, the devil by his own sin. He condemned him and destroyed the punishment appointed for Adam's sin (Gen 3:1-24; Col 2:14).

When Jesus rose from the dead, He gave the pattern of a new life to those who believe in Him, so that the second death could not bind them. Therefore we have died to the law through the body of Christ.

Whoever has not died to the law is still guilty and cannot escape the second death. The one who abides in the grace of Christ belongs to God and is worthy of the promised resurrection.

Since he called faith in the Lord a joining and a marriage, he consequently shows the fruit of the marriage and says, "That we may bring forth fruit to God." What is this fruit-bearing? That our members should become weapons of righteousness.

With great wisdom the Apostle proved that the law itself commands us to be joined to Christ. For, as was said, it did not forbid a wife, after the death of her first husband, to enter marriage with another. Then he also shows the difference.

The Apostle indicates the temporary character of the Mosaic Law by comparing it with a husband. After his death, the wife may freely marry again. This is all the more so because, according to the Apostle, we also have died in the person of Christ. Therefore we are doubly free from the law.

Being, in the higher sense, the husband of all who believe in God, Christ died in the body. By this He delivered all from the yoke of the law, that is, from the obligation to fulfill all the law's demands. But having risen from the dead, Jesus Christ appeared, as it were, again as husband.

Therefore all may freely regard the former conditions of their relation to God, those under the law, as abolished. They may freely enter into a new relation with Him, so as to have new and higher fruits of life.

The comparison of the Lord with a husband, and of believers with a wife, was customary in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ Himself also represented Himself in relation to the Church under the image of a bridegroom. Our Church glorifies Him as "coming forth from the tomb as a bridegroom."

In baptism the soul is joined to Christ as Bridegroom. As Bridegroom, Christ will also appear at His Second Coming. And blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching.

According to St. John Chrysostom, "the law itself has died, and we have died, and the law's authority over us has been doubly abolished." His Grace Theophan adds: "We were loosed from the law, yet at the same time we were joined to Christ the Lord. From one marriage we passed to another, and from one set of obligations to another. But why was it necessary to pass over, if this transition was not to free will, but to new obligations? Because in the new union we shall bring forth fruit to God."

Blessed Theodoret offers the same explanation: "In keeping with the example, the Apostle should have said, 'The law has died,' that is, has ceased to have force. Yet, condescending to the weakness of the Jews, because they greatly revered the law, and lest he give the heretics who attacked the Old Testament occasion to condemn the law, he did not say that the law had ceased. Rather, he says, 'We have died to the law in saving baptism.'"

One may allow that Saint Paul here intended also to make an application from the cessation of the law. In other words, the law has now died for you, has ceased, and has made you free. Yet he did not do this.

He left the readers to supply it themselves, since the matter was obvious. He fixed attention only on the application from this case, release from obligations when the wife dies. This gave him greater convenience for drawing out the truth that he wished to impress upon his disciples.

What mattered to him was not what had become of the one who had passed away. What mattered was what believers who had died to him must be, namely, "that they might belong to another." This is what he hastens to set forth.

Moreover, the ordinance of the law speaks of natural death, while in the application the discourse concerns moral death. This latter death is the severing of mutual relations. Therefore it is always reciprocal.

For the one who dies to something, that also dies to him to which he dies. Thus in the words, "you have died to the law," the other thought is also contained: the law has died for you. Mutual relations between you have ceased. You are free from the law.

"The law itself has died, and we have died, and the law's authority over us has been destroyed twice over" (Chrysostom).

That the Apostle wished to combine both in one expression may be inferred from the way he presents believers as having died to the law. "You died," he says, "to the law through the body of Christ," that is, through the coming of the Son of God in the flesh and through His death on the Cross. See Chrysostom.

By the power of this death the law has been cut off, and all believers die to everything former in holy baptism. The whole law was a shadow cast by the Lord who was to come in the flesh and die by death on the Cross.

The law is the shadow, but the body is Christ. When the body is before one's face, who pays attention to the shadow? It no longer occupies the mind, and everyone forgets it.

So also after the Lord's coming, the law is no longer needed. Its force has ceased and has been cut off, precisely by the Lord's death. By the power of this same death, believers also die in baptism, in which they are buried with the Lord.

If they die, then all their former relations are cut off. Consequently, their relations to the law are also cut off. They die to it as well.

From the Apostle's words it follows that believers die to the law by the very thing by which the law has died, or has ceased, for them. The law dies when they die to it through the body of Christ.

Thus the Apostle's expression only seems to suggest that it does not answer the course of the discourse. In the essence of the matter, he expresses exactly what is expected.

With the words, "you died to the law through the body of Christ," the application to the legal ordinance cited above is completed. The Apostle then hastens to the conclusion from this: "that you may belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead."

"That you may belong" is so joined with "you died" that both are presented as having taken place in one act. They died in order to belong to another, or they died because they gave themselves to another.

In baptism this is done openly: "Have you united yourself to Christ?" "I have united myself." Clearly, a new marriage is accomplished here. The soul is joined to Christ the Lord, freely and willingly, yet as decisively as death.

The words, "to Him who was raised from the dead," show that the words, "through the body of Christ," must be understood "of the Master's death" (Chrysostom).

The Apostle added them in order to recall what was said above: "that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might begin to walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:4).

He expressed this here also, only in other words: "that we may bear fruit to God." We have been loosed from the law. Yet at the same time and in one and the same moment, we were joined to Christ the Lord.

We passed from one marriage to another, from one set of obligations to another. But why was it necessary to pass over, when this passage was not into license, but into new obligations, from subjection to subjection and from service to service?

It was so that, in the new union, we might bear fruit to God. The former union did not make us fruitful. We were subject to it, yet bore no fruit. We were barren for God.

Now, having been joined to Him who rose from the dead, we have received in Him the power to bear fruit to God. This word is very strong and required confirmation: how is it that the law is barren?