dead to law

Good morning brothers and sisters,
Today's reading makes an interesting argument we see other places in Paul's writing. He says that the law is holy and good, but at the same time, it encourages sin. He doesn't blame the law for this; instead he sees sin as taking advantage of an opportunity in the law. His example here is coveting (envy): he says he wouldn't know what it means to covet if the law didn't prohibit it. Sometimes we see this with kids: they do something purely because they know they aren't supposed to. We are sometimes drawn to behavior simply because it's forbidden.

Now that we're joined to Christ we have died with Christ to the law. We don't belong to the law anymore but to Christ. That means we follow Jesus in how we live and don't worry about what the law says. As it happens, since the law and Jesus both come from God there will be a lot in common between our behavior and what the law demands, but our actions will come from freedom, not the law.
blessings on your freedom,
Sam

Romans 7:1-12

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only during that person’s lifetime? 2Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 3Accordingly, 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. 4In the same way, my friends, you 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. 5While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.


7What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. 9I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived 10and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.