Romans Chapter 7
Let me draw an analogy that you Jews will understand from your knowledge of the Mosaic legal system. As general principle, a law remains in force as long as a person is alive. For instance, a wife is legally bound to her husband until he dies. After he dies, she is obviously free from her marriage commitment to him. However, if she is joined to another man while her husband is still alive, she is guilty of adultery. But again, if her husband dies, by law she is free to marry another man without being charged with adultery.
Now here's the application, dear friends. Again, you need to grasp the awesome impact of both the death and resurrection of Jesus. You have died to the Mosaic law through your identification with the crucified Christ (On the cross he embodied this law which was your first "husband"); so that you can be honorably "remarried" to Another Man- the resurrected Christ. Now you are free to bear the good fruit of being intimately joined in spirit to him.
Comments:
Paul uses another analogy as he continues to reinforce the radical change that has happened in the cosmos, the human story and in the very core nature of a person who has truly placed their faith in who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. There are various ways in various passages that this change in dominions or eras is described in the NT...grace vs. law; new creation vs. old creation; Christ vs. Adam; Spirit vs. flesh; new covenant vs. old covenant; faith vs. works...but they all refer to the same basic shift...though sometimes from different angles.
The death and resurrection of Jesus are sometimes juxtaposed in Romans, as in this passage. In his death, Jesus dealt conclusively with the sinful adamic nature and also the law (given through Moses) that the sinful nature was bound under and to. Then...in his resurrection, Jesus opened the way for our fallen nature to be miraculously transformed and made new by the power of the very same Spirit that raised him from the dead and also liberate us from any paralyzing sense of obligation to earn God's love and favor by living up to a complicated and demanding external code.
The risen Christ actually lives within us as our closest companion, friend and the pilot of our lives. He is not our co-pilot, rather, we are now sitting in the "second seat" of our lives...living in cooperative concert and interactive response to the resurrected Lord...who is pleased to express himself through the practical daily life that he has given each of us to live. Something shifts deeply within us when we become continually conscious that he is alive in us and we are alive in him.
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