Romans 7:6Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

What does Paul mean here? This must be disclosed so that we will not be troubled whenever we meet such an expression.

When Adam sinned, says the Apostle, his body became mortal and subject to passions. Many natural infirmities appeared in it. It became a stubborn and unbridled horse.

But when Christ came, through baptism He made the body lighter for us, lifting it on the wing of the Spirit. Therefore the struggles set before us are not the same as those of the ancients, for the way was not so easy then.

For this reason Christ requires of us not only to be pure from murder, as was required of the ancients, but even to be pure from anger. He commands us to abstain not only from adultery, but also from a lustful look.

He commands us not only not to break oaths, but not to swear at all. He commands us to love not only friends, but also enemies. In all other things He appointed longer paths of training for us.

In case of disobedience, He threatens Gehenna, showing that what He demands is not left to the zeal of those who struggle, as are virginity and non-possession. Rather, it must necessarily be fulfilled.

What Christ commanded is necessary and obligatory, and the one who does not fulfill it is subject to the severest punishment. Therefore He also said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 5:20).

Whoever does not see the kingdom will inevitably fall into Gehenna. Therefore, just as Paul said above, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace" (Rom 6:14), so now he says, "so that we should serve in the renewal of the Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter."

Now it is not the condemning letter, that is, the old law, but the Spirit who helps. Therefore among the ancients it seemed most astonishing if anyone preserved virginity. Now this has spread everywhere throughout the world.

Then only a few men despised death. Now, in villages and cities, there are countless companies of martyrs, not only of men but also of women.

Although the Apostle places the law below the law of faith, he does not condemn it. For now, he says, we have been torn away from the law so as to serve the law of faith. It gives us saving help, which the old law could not give.

This is so that, while serving the old law, we should not seem to cheapen grace. The law is called old not because it produces evil. Its oldness is a sign of time. It grew old and passed out of use (2 Cor 3:3).

The law of the Spirit is the law of faith. Since faith is in the soul, it is grasped not by works, but by the heart. Reason itself understands that believing is natural.

Faith is not grasped by the eyes or handled by the hands. The good things for which we hope are not visible and earthly, but spiritual.

The old law was written on tablets of stone. The law of the Spirit is written spiritually on the tablets of the heart, so that it may be eternal. The letter of the old law is erased with time.

There is also another interpretation of the law of the Spirit. The former law restrained from evil deeds. The new law teaches that we must not sin even in our heart. It is called the law of the Spirit because it makes the whole man spiritual.

The Apostle set the Spirit in contrast to the letter, and the new to the old. By the letter he indicated the law, and by the word old he indicated the law's abolition.

For God also says by the mouth of Jeremiah: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt" (Jer 31:31-32).

Therefore the Prophet also showed the difference, and showed that with the appearance of the new covenant the old covenant must be set aside.

Having said this, the divine Apostle, as one filled with spiritual grace, foresaw that some heretics would turn this into an accusation against the Old Covenant and attribute the old law to some other God. Therefore he necessarily presents objections and gives answers.

The difficulty of fulfilling the law in the strictness of its literal meaning led to condemnation. Many Old Testament righteous ones already understood this. They sought justification not in works of the law, but in inward purity of heart (Ps 50:18-19; Hos 6:6; Mt 23:23).

From condemnation there came deliverance through the spiritual understanding of the law and through the demand for the soul's disposition toward doing good. Therefore the Apostle says elsewhere: "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor 3:6).

"Now" points not only to the ordering of salvation in the Lord, but more to each person's reception of it. The Apostle appeals to experience, as though saying: look at what is in you, and judge. For saving grace is always present in true believers, together with its fruits.

"We have been released from the law," katērgēthēmen, means we have been annulled, done with it, loosed from it. The thought is this: we no longer have need of the law.

The law was given to restrain the passions by the strictness of prescriptions and by fear of temporal and eternal punishments. It succeeded in doing this, but it did not remove the passions themselves. Even under it they remained in the heart and drew one toward lawlessness.

Those under the law are like a child. A child stretches out his hands toward something harmful. His mother strikes his hands, and he hides them. Yet he keeps looking at the thing toward which he stretched out his hands.

If his mother were not striking his hands, he would certainly seize the harmful thing. This is what he does as soon as he sees that his mother is not present. So also those under the law, being drawn by passions, reached toward what was contrary to the law.

By fear of judgment the law restrained these attempts. As long as the memory of this was alive, those under the law held back from unlawful deeds. Yet they did not cease to sympathize with them and desire them.

As soon as this memory departed, unlawful deeds immediately followed. Such is the general character of life under the law. "But now," says the Apostle, it is entirely different. We no longer need such a guard and restrainer. We have been annulled and freed from it.

Why? Because there is no longer in us that for whose restraint it was set over us. In us there is a new principle of true, spiritual life.

"Having died to that by which we were held" means having died to what held us. What held us? Selfhood, or self-pleasing. It was joined to the sweetness present in the sinful passions born from it.

This held us in its bonds, not allowing higher aspirations to arise, and suppressing them when they did arise. God's grace, through faith in the Lord, takes up its dwelling in true Christians through the mysteries.

By awakening complete self-denial, it mortifies selfhood. By granting a living sense of higher blessings, it beats back sinful sweetness. In this way it frees us from what held us before the reception of grace.

Here we die to what held us, and what held us dies in us. But this is only one side: "having died." In material nature death is the negation of life: the living thing ceases to live.

In spiritual life, dying is not the cessation of life, but the birth of new principles of life that cast aside the former ones. Self-denial kills selfhood, or self-pleasing. What then follows? Nothing? No, not nothing.

One who has denied himself, or cut off self-pleasing within himself, does not enter some emptiness. At the very time he denies himself, he clings to God. At the very time he kills self-pleasing within himself, he feels born anew within himself zeal for pleasing God.

Likewise, when the sinful sweetness present in the passions is cut at the root, the taste of higher spiritual blessings is born at the same time. This sweetness cannot be compared with any sinful sweetness. Indeed, the former departs precisely because the latter enters.

All this is produced by divine grace, which regenerates unto new life. Thus believers in the Lord, having died to what held them, are at the same time made alive by spiritual principles opposite to it.

Instead of self-pleasing, there is zeal for pleasing God. Instead of sinful sweetness, there is ineffable spiritual sweetness that drowns out the sweetness of sin. The presence of these principles makes believers live no longer for themselves, but for God, finding joy and sweetness in this.

This is what the Apostle expresses when he says: "so that we may serve God in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." By "newness of spirit" he means the presence in us of these new principles of spiritual life.

They are formed by God's grace and act within us. By "oldness of the letter" he means the prescriptions of the law: do not do this, do not touch that. Now, he says, we are so disposed that we can serve God according to promptings proceeding from within, from the renewed spirit.

We do not serve according to indications from without. These latter were necessary before, but now they are superfluous. We have been released from the law by the very fact that, of ourselves, we both wish and can do everything required by the law.

The Apostle called this serving God because in Christ Jesus everything proceeds from God and everything returns to God, insofar as everything is also accomplished by Him.

Let us note that many commentators unjustly refer the words "by which we were held" to the law. In their translations they make rearrangements that confuse the Apostolic words, and still more the concepts. Our commentators understand not the law, but sin, by the name of what held us.

We cite Chrysostom's words: "But how have we been released? In this way: the old man, held by sin, died and was buried. The Apostle expressed this by saying, 'having died to that by which we were held.' By this he as if said: the bond by which we were held has been given over to corruption and has fallen apart. Thus the one holding us, that is, sin, has nothing left to hold." So also Theophylact, Oecumenius, and others.