If anyone ever read this article four years ago, it’s undergone a massive change. Since that time, my understanding of this passage has changed, and as a result, this article has also changed.
It was a passage that puzzled me at the time, and I came to some tentative conclusions, but I’ve now come to different ones.
I mentioned this in my original post, but one of the problems in this passage is Paul’s use of the same metaphor to illustrate two different points. Unfortunately, that usage is not consistent.
In this passage, Paul talks about our relationship with the law and with God.
In doing so, he uses the illustration of marriage in which a husband dies and his wife is freed from the law which didn’t allow her to marry another man while her husband was alive.
As a result, she goes ahead and gets married to another person.
Here’s what I originally wrote, describing my inner thought process as I tried to figure this passage out:
“So, we died to the law. That means we are the husband and the law is the wife, right?
No, that can’t be right. Because Paul says with the husband gone, the wife is free to marry Christ.
The Law marries Christ? No, Paul says we marry Christ.”
“So is the law the husband, and we are the wife? No, because the law doesn’t die; we die.”
Ultimately, the problem comes down to the fact that Paul doesn’t intend us to push his metaphor too far.
There are certain points he wants to make and you have to kind of go with his flow even if his use of the metaphor is a little inconsistent.
So what do I think now?
Here’s Paul’s primary point: Death breaks the power of the law over a person.
So in the case of marriage, a husband’s death breaks the power of the law of marriage over a wife.
As long as the husband was alive, she could not be joined to another. But now with her husband’s death, she is no longer bound by the law and she can marry another man.
In our case, we were under a different law: God’s law.
This law told us what was right and wrong. More, it told us that if we sinned, we would be condemned.
But because all of us have sinned, we could not be joined to God. We were separated from him by our sin.
But then, in Christ, we died.
We read this in chapter 6, that when Christ died on the cross, we died with him. Jesus then raised us as new people (Romans 6:3-7).
Baptism is a picture of this.
The water is a picture of the grave. And as we go down into the water, it shows us a spiritual reality.
Our old self, the one that was living for himself or herself, the one that was in rebellion against God is now dead.
Instead, we are raised a new person: a person who loves God, who wants to follow him, who wants to live for him.
More importantly, through the Holy Spirit, we have God himself living in us, giving us those desires and the power to live out those desires.
So now that we have died with Jesus, God’s law no longer has power over us.
Our relationship with God is no longer based on keeping that law. It’s based on the grace of God and the work of Jesus on the cross.
Now, the law can no longer condemn us for our sin, because Jesus took our punishment for us.
The law can no longer separate us from God because of our sin. Rather, in Jesus, we have been joined to him.
I don’t think the picture of Jesus and the church being a groom and bride is an accident.
As his church, we are now joined to Jesus, and we bear fruit for him. Not literal children, of course, but fruit that causes his kingdom to grow as we share his love and his gospel to those around us.
That is definitely a truth to meditate on and rejoice in.
Moment to Moment (Bible blog) 