1 Or do you not know, brothers - for I speak to those knowing
the
Law - that the Law rules over the person for as much as the time of
life?
2 For the married woman is bound to her living husband by the
Law;
but if the husband should die, she is discharged from the Law of the
husband.
3 So then with the husband living she will be known as an
adulteress
if she becomes for another man; but if the husband dies, she is free
from the Law, so that she is not an adulteress having become for
another man.
4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were put to death to the
Law
through the body of the Christ, in order to become
for another, for him
having been raised from the dead, so that we might bear fruit for God.
5 For when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins that
(are)
through the Law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death;
6 but now we are discharged from the Law, having died to that
by
which we were bound, so that we might serve in newness of Spirit and
not oldness of letter.
My translation
Submitted by andrew on Wed, 05/11/2008 - 18:12.
This is the third of three ’Do you not know?’ questions. The
first two addressed the dilemma of sin and righteous: ’Or do you not
know (ē agnoeite)
that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus into his death were
baptized?’ (6:3); ’Do you not know (ouk
oidate) that to whom you present yourselves as slaves for
obedience, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, whether of sin to
death or of obedience to righteousness?’ (6:16). Now Paul asks about
the Law in a similar fashion: Or do you not know
(ē agnoeite), brothers, ...that the
Law rules
over the person for as much as the time of
life?’
He has in mind not Roman law or some general principle of law
but specifically the Jewish Law (see Dunn, Romans,
359-60). We should assume that at this point at least he is addressing
a community that had been in some sense under the Law (cf. 7:4), even
if it included Gentile converts who were never formally proselytes to
Judaism.
2-3 The legal example that Paul
provides is straightforward: the particular law governing marriage
remains in force only while the husband is alive; once he is dead, the
woman is free to marry another man.
The fact that he does not speak merely of a woman
being released to marry another man but introduces the possibility of
adultery suggests that he has in mind specifically the fruit of sexual
union. This is confirmed by verse 4: the believers in Rome have been
’married’ to another so
that we might bear fruit for God. The issue here, then, is
not simply that having died to the Law, the community in Rome is free
to be joined to Christ. It is that the community must die to the Law if
it is to bear fruit for
God rather than bear
fruit for death.
In other respects Paul’s application of the analogy
in verse 4
seems incoherent. The community appears first to be the husband who
dies (or is put to death),
then the woman who, having been released from the law that bound her to
her first husband, has become bound to the risen Christ. Dunn argues
that ’there is no compulsion in the illustration itself or in Paul’s
allusion to it to attempt an identification of the believer’s former
partner - sin, law, the old nature, or whatever’ (Dunn, Romans,
369). Through
the body of Christ means through the death of Christ (cf.
6:3-6, 8).
5-6 The
emphasis again is on the fruit of the union.
Under the Law, under the terms of the Old Covenant, the wrongheaded
passions of the Jews would result in death and destruction. It may help
to hear Paul’s argument against the backdrop of a passage such
as 4 Ezra 3:20-27, which offers, under the pseudepigraphal guise of a
lament on the Babylonian invasion, a post AD 70 Jewish reflection on
the failure of the Law to prevent the war and the destruction of
Jerusalem.
And yet thou didst not
take
away from them the evil heart, that thy Law might bring forth fruit in
them. For the first Adam, clothing himself with the evil heart,
transgressed and was overcome; and likewise also all who were born of
him. Thus the infirmity became inveterate; the Law indeed was in the
heart of the people, but (in conjunction) with the evil germ; so what
was good departed, and the evil remained. So the times passed away and
the years came to an end; and (then) thou didst raise up for thyself a
servant whose name was David; and thou commandedst him to build the
City (which is called) after thy name, and to offer thee oblations
therein of thine own. And after this had been done many years, the
inhabitants of the City committed sin, in all things doing even as Adam
and all his generations had done: for they also had clothed themselves
with the evil, heart: and so thou gavest thy city over into the hands
of thine enemies. (Charles)
Despite having the Law the
Jews transgressed, behaving no
better than Adam and his descendants (cf. 4 Ezra 4:23; 9:37). This
is exactly Paul’s argument in Romans, except that with the
benefit of hindsight the political outcome has become unambiguous:
because Israel failed to keep the Law, Jerusalem was given into the
hands of its enemies.
The community in Rome has
been discharged from the Law by its
close identification with the death of Jesus, who was repudiated by the
rulers of Jerusalem, who became accursed according to the Law, who
anticipated in his own body the destruction that would come upon the
people as a whole. But because they have severed their dependence on
the Law, because they no longer look to the Law for their justification
as God’s people in a time of eschatological crisis, they are in a
position to serve in
newness of Spirit.
1 Or do you not know, brothers - for I speak to those knowing the Law - that the Law rules over the person for as much as the time of life?
2 For the married woman is bound to her living husband by the Law; but if the husband should die, she is discharged from the Law of the husband.
3 So then with the husband living she will be known as an adulteress if she becomes for another man; but if the husband dies, she is free from the Law, so that she is not an adulteress having become for another man.
4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were put to death to the Law through the body of the Christ, in order to become for another, for him having been raised from the dead, so that we might bear fruit for God.
5 For when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins that (are) through the Law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death;
6 but now we are discharged from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we might serve in newness of Spirit and not oldness of letter.
This is the third of three ’Do you not know?’ questions. The first two addressed the dilemma of sin and righteous: ’Or do you not know (ē agnoeite) that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus into his death were baptized?’ (6:3); ’Do you not know (ouk oidate) that to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness?’ (6:16). Now Paul asks about the Law in a similar fashion: Or do you not know (ē agnoeite), brothers, ...that the Law rules over the person for as much as the time of life?’
He has in mind not Roman law or some general principle of law but specifically the Jewish Law (see Dunn, Romans, 359-60). We should assume that at this point at least he is addressing a community that had been in some sense under the Law (cf. 7:4), even if it included Gentile converts who were never formally proselytes to Judaism.
2-3 The legal example that Paul provides is straightforward: the particular law governing marriage remains in force only while the husband is alive; once he is dead, the woman is free to marry another man.
The fact that he does not speak merely of a woman being released to marry another man but introduces the possibility of adultery suggests that he has in mind specifically the fruit of sexual union. This is confirmed by verse 4: the believers in Rome have been ’married’ to another so that we might bear fruit for God. The issue here, then, is not simply that having died to the Law, the community in Rome is free to be joined to Christ. It is that the community must die to the Law if it is to bear fruit for God rather than bear fruit for death.
In other respects Paul’s application of the analogy in verse 4 seems incoherent. The community appears first to be the husband who dies (or is put to death), then the woman who, having been released from the law that bound her to her first husband, has become bound to the risen Christ. Dunn argues that ’there is no compulsion in the illustration itself or in Paul’s allusion to it to attempt an identification of the believer’s former partner - sin, law, the old nature, or whatever’ (Dunn, Romans, 369). Through the body of Christ means through the death of Christ (cf. 6:3-6, 8).
5-6 The emphasis again is on the fruit of the union. Under the Law, under the terms of the Old Covenant, the wrongheaded passions of the Jews would result in death and destruction. It may help to hear Paul’s argument against the backdrop of a passage such as 4 Ezra 3:20-27, which offers, under the pseudepigraphal guise of a lament on the Babylonian invasion, a post AD 70 Jewish reflection on the failure of the Law to prevent the war and the destruction of Jerusalem.
Despite having the Law the Jews transgressed, behaving no better than Adam and his descendants (cf. 4 Ezra 4:23; 9:37). This is exactly Paul’s argument in Romans, except that with the benefit of hindsight the political outcome has become unambiguous: because Israel failed to keep the Law, Jerusalem was given into the hands of its enemies.
The community in Rome has been discharged from the Law by its close identification with the death of Jesus, who was repudiated by the rulers of Jerusalem, who became accursed according to the Law, who anticipated in his own body the destruction that would come upon the people as a whole. But because they have severed their dependence on the Law, because they no longer look to the Law for their justification as God’s people in a time of eschatological crisis, they are in a position to serve in newness of Spirit.
See also: