Lesson 14: Released from the Law – 7:1-6
 1 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?
2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.
3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4 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.
5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

We continue in this chapter with the important teaching that Jesus has set us free from following the Law. Our verses today use the picture of a marriage to show us the meaning of this freedom.

Many people today, however, still believe we must follow the Law anyway because they are God’s rules, and God does not change. They insist that it is still wrong to lie or cheat or steal or murder; therefore, the Law is still something we must follow in principle. In this they are right. But these verses do not say we are set free from sin – they say we are set free from the Law.

In the Old Testament, the Law was given as a way of dealing with sin, as a way of ridding ourselves of sin. But God knew when He gave it to us that people would never be able to get rid of sin through the Law. This did not mean God was cruel to give us the Law if He knew it could never get rid of sin.


God gave the Law so people would understand how completely impossible it is for a person to try to get rid of sin by something we do or do not do (see Galatians 2:16 which quotes Psalm 143:2). Then how could people in the Old Testament be saved? They were saved the same way we are – by faith. Their understanding of faith could not be as complete as ours is today because we are able to understand what Jesus accomplished on the cross for us. Their faith had to be that the shedding of blood brought cleansing from their sin. They had to believe that God’s solution for this sin was enough, even if it did not seem fair that an innocent animal would die in their place.

Grace through faith in Jesus is God’s permanent way of dealing with sin. Jesus paid the final price for all sin – past, present, and future – with His blood shed on the cross. His was the last sacrifice ever needed for sin (Romans 6:10). Where the Old Testament believer had to bring an animal for a sacrifice (Exodus 29:10-24 and Hebrews 13:11-13), we only need to repent and confess our sin (1 John 1:9).

When we say we must follow the Law to please God, we trample on Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross because we are then insisting what Jesus did to forgive our sin was not enough (Hebrews 10:29), that there is still something we must do to be forgiven.

*How would your life be different if you no longer had to follow the rules of the Law, and only follow Jesus instead?