Text -- Romans 7:1-5 (NET)

The Believer’s Relationship to the Law

7:1 Or do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law is lord over a person as long as he lives? 7:2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the marriage. 7:3 So then, if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she is joined to another man, she is not an adulteress. 7:4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you could be joined to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, to bear fruit to God. 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful desires, aroused by the law, were active in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Rom 7:1

¹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.

² sn Here person refers to a human being.

NET Notes: Rom 7:2

¹ tn Grk “the,” with the article used as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

² tn Grk “husband.”

sn Paul’s example of the married woman and the law of the marriage illustrates that death frees a person from obligation to the law. Thus, in spiritual terms, a person who has died to what controlled us (v. 6) has been released from the law to serve God in the new life produced by the Spirit.

NET Notes: Rom 7:3

¹ tn There is a double connective here that cannot be easily preserved in English: “consequently therefore,” emphasizing the conclusion of what he has been arguing.

² tn Grk “the,” with the article used as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

NET Notes: Rom 7:4

¹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.

² tn Grk “that we might bear fruit to God.”

NET Notes: Rom 7:5

¹ tn That is, before we were in Christ.

² tn Or “sinful passions.”

³ tn Grk “our members”; the words “of our body” have been supplied to clarify the meaning.