You also died to the law (Rom 7.1-6)

Romans 7:1–6 speaks right into that anxiety, not to scold you, but to set you free.

Paul keeps using one word in Romans 7: law. And he doesn’t mean only the Ten Commandments, though they’re included. He’s talking about all of God’s commands in the Old Testament—moral, civil, ceremonial—the whole revealed will of God. Jesus summed it up perfectly: love God with everything in you, and love your neighbor as yourself (see Matthew 22:37–40). The law shows what love looks like in real life.

But Paul is addressing something deeper than a list of commands. The “law” can also become a way of relating to God: performance-based religion. The idea that if you obey well enough, God accepts you—and if you slip, you’re in trouble.

Here’s the problem: none of us keeps God’s law perfectly. Not externally, not internally, not consistently, not even with pure motives. Romans has already made that painfully clear: “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). The law can reveal what’s wrong, but it can’t heal what’s wrong. It’s like an X-ray: accurate, necessary, but not curative.

So what’s the alternative? Paul has been contrasting two approaches all along: the way of law and the way of grace. “A righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known” (Romans 3:21). And again: “You are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). That line raises a question many of us still ask: If I’m not under law, what place does God’s law have in my life now?

Romans 7 begins by correcting one deadly extreme: legalism—the belief that you’re saved by grace, but kept by your performance.

Paul’s illustration is simple. Laws only have authority over you while you’re alive (Romans 7:1). Death ends legal obligation. He uses marriage to make the point: when a spouse dies, the legal bond is broken, and a new relationship can begin (Romans 7:2–3). Then he applies it to your spiritual life: “You also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another” (Romans 7:4).

That phrase is everything: you died to the law through Christ.

When you became a Christian, you were united to Jesus. His death counts as your death. His resurrection life becomes your life. And that means the law no longer stands over you as a judge deciding whether you’re accepted or condemned. Jesus obeyed in your place, and Jesus bore the penalty in your place. Your standing with God is not built on your shaky performance but on Christ’s finished work.

And notice what Paul says next: you died to the law “that you might belong to another… in order that we might bear fruit to God” (Romans 7:4). You weren’t freed from the law so you could drift into spiritual independence. You were freed so you could belong to Jesus—like moving from an oppressive relationship into a loving one.

That changes how obedience works. Before, Paul says, we bore “fruit for death” (Romans 7:5). Even our efforts got tangled with sin and guilt. But now we “serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6). Same God. Same holiness. But a completely different engine inside you.

So what does this look like in practice?

It means you can stop asking, “Have I done enough for God to love me today?” and start asking, “Because God loves me in Christ, what does faithfulness look like today?” You still pray, still open Scripture, still gather with God’s people, still fight sin—but not to keep an irritable God off your back. You do it because you belong to a kind Savior who has already secured you.

If you’ve been flinching spiritually—expecting God’s anger every time you fail—Romans 7 invites you to heal. Don’t judge your new Husband by the old way of fear. In Christ, you are loved, held, and safe. And from that safety, real fruit grows.