Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? 2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. 3 So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man. 4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. 7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

A newly opening waterfront hotel in Florida was concerned people might try to fish from the balconies, so they put up signs saying, “NO FISHING FROM THE BALCONY.” Over the first few months of being open, the hotel had constant problems with people fishing from the balconies, with lines getting tangled and sinker weights breaking windows and bothering people in rooms below. Hotel management finally solved the problem by simply taking down the signs. No one fished from the balconies after that because no one was presented with the thought or idea to fish from the balconies. Because of our fallen human nature, the law can work like an invitation to sin. When we think about what we are not supposed to do, it often makes us want to do it all the more. We see the same thing in American history. We know the Prohibition Act of 1919 didn’t stop drinking and, in many ways, made drinking more attractive because of our human desire to break boundaries set by any form of authority. Once God draws a boundary for us, we are immediately enticed and tempted to cross that boundary, which is no fault of God or His boundary but the fault of our sinful hearts. In his book 'Confessions,' Augustine, the great theologian of the ancient church, described how this dynamic worked in his life as a young man: "There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One stormy night, rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears – not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in the theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law? The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing.”

In Romans 6, Paul taught us we are not under the law but under grace, then explained the practical implications of what that meant. In Chapter 7, building upon those ideas, Paul now explains more completely what it means that we are no longer under the dominion of law, which was a major concern for early religious Jews and as well as the Gentiles being influenced by them. The ancient Greek wording here has no word “the” before law, meaning that Paul speaks of a principle broader than the Law of Moses. This law includes a much wider principle communicated by creation and by conscience known as Natural Law, which also comes from God and has dominion over man. Paul makes the important point that death ends all previous obligations and contracts. A wife is no longer bound to her husband if he dies because death ends that marriage contract. In Romans 6:3-8, Paul carefully explained that we died with Jesus and we also rose with Him. Now he explains that we also died to the law, and therefore, the law has no legal hold on us. Some might think, “Yes, we were saved by grace, but we must live by the law to please God." Here, Paul makes it plain that believers are dead to the law as long as it represents a place of right standing before God. When the old man died, so did the previous contracts and obligations we were under. The law (or works) is no longer an option as a way of salvation or even as a way to please God because, without faith, we cannot please God. We are not free from the law, so we can live for ourselves. We are free to be joined to Jesus in faith and bear fruit for God. Our freedom is not given so we can stop serving God but so that we can serve Him better and more fully. We cannot be both bound to the law and bound to Christ, which is a place many Christians find themselves in. They want a relationship with Christ and to live under his grace, but also to live for good works not as an outflow of the love of God, but as a means of earning salvation and right standing in God to cover up any transgressions. It is a shame that many people serve either sin or self-righteous legalism with more devotion than those who claim to serve God.

Someone reading Paul's words might think, "Surely there is something wrong with the law!” But no, the law is good because it reveals sin to us. There is no flaw in it, only flaws in us. The law is a tool like an X-ray machine; it reveals what is there but hidden. You can’t blame an X-ray for the brokenness it exposes. In another way, the law sets the “speed limit” so we know if we are going too fast. We might never know that we are sinning in many areas if the law didn’t show us specifically our error. Paul describes the twisted dynamic where a warning may become a rebellious call to action because of our sinful hearts. This shows how great the evil of sin is; it can take something good and holy, like God's law, and twist it to either promote evil or to become a means of salvation itself. In a sense, the law became twisted into an idol instead of an altar pointing to God. Sin does that; it warps love into lust and an honest desire to provide for one’s family into greed. It isn’t the law that deceives us, but sin that uses the law as a reason for rebellion. This is why Jesus said, you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). The truth makes us free from the deceptions of sin. One of Satan’s greatest deceptions is to get us to think of sin as something good that an unpleasant God wants to deprive us of. But God shows us how to look to him instead of fixing our eyes on the temptations of this world. God warns us to stay away from sin, and He warns us to flee from something that will kill us and separate us from him. In this way, God acts as the ultimate loving father because everything He does, even what is painful, is for our ultimate good.