Romans Commentary

IN the preceding chapter the Apostle had answered the chief objection against the doctrine of justification by faith without works. He had proved that, by union with Christ in His death and resurrection, believers who are thereby justified are also sanctified; he had exhibited and enforced the motives to holiness furnished by the consideration of that union; he had, moreover, affirmed that sin shall not have dominion over them, for this specific reason, that they are not under the law, but under grace. To the import of this declaration he now reverts, both to explain its meaning, and to state the ground of deliverance from the law. This, again, rendered it proper to vindicate the holiness of the law, as well as to demonstrate its use in convincing of sin; while at the same time he proves that all its light and all its authority, so far from being sufficient to subdue sin, on the contrary, only tend, by the strictness of its precepts and the awful nature of its sanctions, the more to excite and bring into action the corruptions of the human heart.

Paul next proceeds plainly to show what might be inferred from the preceding chapter. Although he had there described believers as dead to the guilt of sin, he had, notwithstanding, by his earnest exhortations to watchfulness and holiness, clearly intimated that they were still exposed to its seductions. He now exhibits this fact, by relating his own experience since he became dead to the law and was united to Christ By thus describing his inward conflict with sin, and showing how far short he came of the demands of the law, he proves the necessity of being dead to the law as a covenant, since, in the highest attainments of grace during this mortal life, the old nature, which he calls flesh, still remains in believers.

At the same time he represents himself as delighting in the law of God, as hating sin, and looking forward with confidence to future deliverance from its power. In this manner he illustrates not only the believer’s real character, but the important fact that the obedience of the most eminent Christian, which is always imperfect, cannot have the smallest influence in procuring his justification. He had proved that men cannot be justified by their works in their natural state. He now shows, by a reference to himself, that as little can they be justified by their works in their regenerated state.

And thus he confirms his assertion in the 3rd chapter, that by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified. He might have described more generally the incessant combat between the old and new natures in the believer; but he does this more practically, as well as more efficiently, by laying open the secrets of his own heart, and exhibiting it in his own person.

Ver. 1. — Know ye not, Brethren (for I speak to them that know law), how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?

Brethren. — Some have erroneously supposed that, by employing the term brethren, the Apostle was now addressing himself exclusively to the Jews who belonged to the church at Rome. He is here, as in other parts of the Epistle, addressing the whole Church, — all its members, whether Jews or Gentiles, being equally concerned in the doctrine he was inculcating. It is evident, besides, that he continues in the following chapters to address the same persons to whom he had been writing from the commencement of the Epistle. They are the same of whom he had affirmed in the preceding chapter, verse 14, that they were not under the law, which is the proposition he here illustrates. Brethren is an appellation whereby Paul designates all Christians, Gentiles as well as Jews, and by which, in the tenth chapter, he distinguishes them from the unbelieving Jews. Know ye not. — There is much force in this interrogation, and it is one usual with Paul when he is affirming what is in itself sufficiently clear, as in ch. 6:16; 1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19. He here appeals to the personal knowledge of those to whom he wrote. For I speak to them that know law. — This parenthesis appears to imply that, as they were acquainted with the nature of law, they must in the sequel be convinced of the truth of the explanations he was about to bring under their notice; and in this manner he bespeaks their particular attention. The law hath dominion over a man. — Man here is not man as distinguished from woman, but man including both men and women, denoting the species. This first assertion is not confined to the law of marriage, by which the Apostle afterwards illustrates his subject, but extends to the whole law, namely, the law of God in all its parts. As long as he liveth. — The words in the original, as far as respects the phraseology, are capable of being rendered, either as long as he liveth, or as long as it liveth. It appears, however, that the meaning is, as long as the man liveth; for to say that the law hath dominion as long as it liveth, would be saying it is in force as long as it is in force.

Ver. 2. — For the woman which hath an husband is bound by law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.

Ver. 3. — So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man she shall be called an adulteress, but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.

The Apostle here proves his assertion by a particular reference to the law of marriage. And no doubt this law of marriage was purposely adapted by God to illustrate and shadow forth the subject to which it is here applied.

Had it not been so, it might have been unlawful to become a second time a wife or a husband. But the Author of human nature and of the law by which man is to be governed, has ordained the lawfulness of second marriages, for the purpose of shadowing forth the truth referred to, as marriage itself was from the first a shadow of the relation between Christ and His Church. Some apply the term law in this place to the Roman law, with which those addressed must have been acquainted; but it is well known that it was usual both for husbands and wives among the Romans to be married to other husbands and wives during the life of their former consorts, without being considered guilty of adultery. The reference is to the general law of marriage, as instituted at the beginning.

Ver. 4. — Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised, from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

In the illustration it was the husband that died, and the wife remained alive to be married to another. Here it is the wife who dies; but this does not make the smallest difference in the argument; for whether it is the husband or wife that dies, the union is equally dissolved. Dead to the law. — By the term the law, in this place, is intended that law which is obligatory both on Jews and Gentiles. It is the law, the work of which is written in the hearts of all men; and that law which was given to the Jews in which they rested, ch. 2:17. It is the law, taken in the largest extent of the word, including the whole will of God in any way manifested to all mankind, whether Jew or Gentile. All those whom the Apostle was addressing had been under this law in their unconverted state. Under the ceremonial law, those among them who were Gentiles had never been placed. It was therefore to the moral law only that they had been married.

Those who were Jews had been under the law in every form in which it was delivered to them, of the whole of which the moral law was the grand basis and sum. To the moral law exclusively, here and throughout the rest of the chapter, the Apostle refers. The ordinances of the ceremonial law, now that their purpose was accomplished, he elsewhere characterizes as ‘weak and beggarly elements,’ but in the law of which he here speaks he declares, in verse 22 of this chapter, that he delights.

Mr. Stuart understands the term ‘dead to the law’ as importing to renounce it ‘as an adequate means of sanctification.’ But renouncing it in this sense is no freedom from the law. A man does not become free from the law of his creditor when he becomes sensible of his in solvency. The most perfect conviction of our inability to keep the law, and of its want of power to do us effectual service, would not have the smallest tendency to dissolve our marriage with the law. Mr. Stuart entirely misapprehends this matter. Dead to the law means freedom from the power of the law, as having endured its curse and satisfied its demands. It has ceased to have a claim on the obedience of believers in order to life, although it still remains their rule of duty. All men are by nature placed under the law, as the covenant of works made with the first man, who, as the Apostle had been teaching in the fifth chapter, was the federal or covenant-head of all his posterity; and it is only when they are united to Christ that they are freed from this covenant.

What is simply a law implies no more than a direction and obligation authoritatively enforcing obedience. A covenant implies promises made on certain conditions, with threatenings added, if such conditions be not fulfilled. The language, accordingly, of the law, as the covenant of works, is, ‘Do and live;’ or, ‘If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments;’ and ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.’ It thus requires perfect obedience as the condition of life, and pronounces a curse on the smallest failure. This law is here represented as being man’s original or first husband. But it is now a broken law, and therefore all men are by nature under its curse. Its curse must be executed on every one of the human race, either personally on all who remain under it, or in Christ, who was made under the law, and who, according also to the fifth chapter of this Epistle, is the covenant-head or representative of all believers who are united to Him and born of God. For them He has borne its curse, under which He died, and fulfilled all its demands, and they are consequently dead to it, that is, no longer under it as a covenant. By the body of Christ. — That is, by ‘the offering of the body of Jesus Christ,’ Hebrews 10:10. Although the body is only mentioned in this place, as it is said on His coming into the world, ‘A body hast Thou prepared Me,’ yet His whole human nature, composed of soul and body, is intended. Elsewhere His soul, without mentioning His body, is spoken of as being offered. ‘When Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin,’ Isaiah 53:10. Dead to the law by the body of Christ, means dead to it by dying in Christ’s death. As believers are one body with Christ, so when His body died, they also died, Romans 6:3,4. They are therefore, by the sacrifice of His body, or by His death, dead to the law. They are freed from it, and done with it, as it respects either their justification or condemnation, its curse or its reward. They cannot be justified by it, having failed to render to it perfect obedience, Romans 3:20; and they cannot be condemned by it, being redeemed from its curse by Him who was made a curse for them. As, then, the covenant relation of a wife to her husband is dissolved by death, so believers are released from their covenant relation to the law by the death of Christ, with whom they died; for He died to sin, ch. 6:10, and to the law having fulfilled it by His obedience and death, so that it hath no further demand upon Him. Married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead. — Being dead to the law, their first husband, by their union with Christ in His death, believers are married to Him, and are one with Him in His resurrection. Christ is now their lawful husband, according to the clear illustration employed by the Apostle respecting the institution of marriage, so that, though now married to Him, no fault can be found in respect to their original connection with their first husband, which has been dissolved by death. To believers this is a most consoling truth. They are as completely and as blamelessly free from the covenant of the law as if they had never been under it. Thus the Apostle fully explains here what he had briefly announced in the 14th verse of the preceding chapter, ‘Ye are not under the law, but under grace.’ From the covenant of Adam or of works, believers have been transferred to the covenant of Christ or of grace. I will ‘give thee for a covenant of the people’ — all the redeemed people of, God.

Before the coming of Christ, those who relied on the promise concerning Him, likewise partook of all the blessings of the marriage union with Him, and were therefore admitted to heavenly glory, though, as to their title to it, not ‘made perfect’ ( Hebrews 12:23) till He died under the law, and put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Till that period there was in the Jewish ceremonial law a perpetual recognition of sin, and of a future expiation, which had not been made while that economy subsisted. It was, so to speak, the bond of acknowledgment for the debt yet unpaid — the handwriting of ordinances which Jesus Christ, in paying the debt, canceled and tore asunder, ‘nailing it to His cross,’ Colossians 2:14, as a trophy of the victory He had accomplished.

Christ, then, is the husband of the Church; and, under this figure, His marriage relation to His people is very frequently referred to in Scripture.

Thus it was exhibited in the marriage of our first parents. In the same way it is represented in the Book of Psalm, and the Song of Solomon, and in the New Testament, where Christ is so often spoken of under the character of ‘the Bridegroom,’ and where the Church is called ‘the bride, the Lamb’s wife.’ What ignorance, then, does it argue in some to deny the inspiration and authenticity of the Song of Solomon, because of the use of this figure! f36 But though believers, in virtue of their marriage with Christ, are no longer under the law in respect to its power to award life or death, they are, as the Apostle says, 1 Corinthians 9:21, ‘not without law to God, but under law to Christ.’ They receive it from His hand as the rule of their duty, and are taught by His grace to love and delight in it; and, being delivered from its curse, they are engaged, by the strongest additional motives, to yield to it obedience. He hath made it the inviolable law of His kingdom. When Luther discovered the distinction between the law as a covenant and as a rule, it gave such relief to his mind, that he considered himself as at the gate of paradise. That we should bring forth fruit unto God. — One of the great ends of marriage was to people the world, and the end of the marriage of believers to Christ is, that they may bring forth fruit to God, John 15:4-8. From this it is evident that no work is recognized as fruit unto God before union with Christ. All works that appear to be good previous to this union with Christ are ‘dead works,’ proceeding from self-love, self-gratification, pride, self-righteousness, or other such motives. ‘They that are in the flesh cannot please God.’ ‘The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.’ We can never look upon the law with a friendly eye till we see it disarmed of the sting of death; and never can bear fruit unto God, nor delight in the law as a rule, till we are freed from it as a covenant, and are thus dead unto sin. How important, then, is the injunction, ‘Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,’ — and this applies equally to the law, — ’but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ Romans 6:11. ‘It is impossible,’ says Luther, ‘for a man to be a Christian without having Christ; and if he has Christ, he has at the same time all that is in Christ.

What gives peace to the conscience is, that by faith our sins are no more ours, but Christ’s, upon whom God has laid them all; and that, on the other hand, all Christ’s righteousness is ours, to whom God hath given it.

Christ lays His hand upon us, and we are healed. He casts his mantle upon us, and we are clothed; for He is the glorious Savior, blessed for ever.

Many wish to do good works before their sins are forgiven them, whilst it is indispensable that our sins be pardoned before good works can be done; for good works must be done with a joyful heart, and a good conscience toward God, that is, with remission of sins.’

Ver. 5. — For when we were in the flesh, the motives of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.

When we were in the Flesh, that is, in our natural state. — The flesh here means the corrupt state of nature, not ‘the subjects of God’s temporal kingdom,’ as paraphrased by Dr. Macknight, to which many of those whom the Apostle was addressing never belonged, flesh is often opposed to spirit, which indicates that new and holy nature communicated by the Spirit of God in the new birth. ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,’ John 3:6. In these words our Lord points out the necessity of regeneration, in order to our becoming subjects of His spiritual kingdom. The nature of man since the fall, when left to itself, possesses no renovating principle of holiness, but is essentially corrupt and entirely depraved. On this account, the word flesh here signifies man in his ruined condition, or that state of total corruption in which all the children of Adam are born. On the other hand, the word spirit has acquired the meaning of a holy and Divine principle, or a new nature, because it comes not from man but from God, who communicates it by the living and permanent influence of His Holy Spirit. Hence the Apostle Peter, in addressing believers, speaks of them as ‘partakers of the Divine nature.’ The motions of sins, or affections or feelings of sins. When the Apostle and the believers at Rome were in the flesh, the desires or affections forbidden by the law forcibly operated in all the faculties of their depraved nature, subjecting them to death by its sentence. Dr. Macknight and Mr. Stuart translate this our ‘sinful passions.’ But this has the appearance of asserting that the evil passions of our nature have their origin in the law.

The Apostle does not mean what, in English, is understood by the passions, but the working of the passions. Which were by the law, rather, through the law. — Dr. Macknight translates the original thus, ‘which we had under the law.’ But the meaning is, not which we had under the law, but that were through the law. The motions of sin, or those sinful thoughts or desires, on our knowing that the things desired are forbidden, are called into action through the law. That it is thus natural to the corrupt mind to desire what is forbidden, is a fact attested by experience, and is here the clear testimony of Scripture. With the philosophy of the question we have nothing to do. Why or how this should be, is a question we are not called to resolve. Thus the law as a covenant of works not only cannot produce fruits of righteousness in those who are under it, but excites in them the motions of sin, bringing forth fruit unto death. Did work in our members. — The sinful desires of the mind actuate the members of the body to gratify them, in a manner adapted to different occasions and constitutions.

Members appear to be mentioned here rather than body, to denote that sin, by the impulse of their various evil desires, employs as its slaves all the different members of the body. To bring forth fruit unto death. — In the same way as bringing forth fruit unto God is spoken of in the 4th verse, so here the Apostle speaks of bringing forth fruit unto death, that is, doing works which issue in death. Death is not viewed as the parent of the works. It is the desires that are the parents of the works. This is contrasted with fruit unto God, which does not mean that God is the parent of the fruit, but that the fruit is produced on God’s account.

Ver. 6. — But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein were held; that we should serve in newness of sprit, and not in the holiness of the letter.

But now we are delivered from the law. — This does not import merely that the Jews were, according to Dr. Macknight, delivered from the law of Moses, but that believers are delivered from the moral law, in that sense in which they were bound by it when in unbelief. Christ hath fulfilled the law, and suffered its penalty for them, and they in consequence are free from its demands for the purpose of obtaining life, or that, on account of the breach of it, they should suffer death. Mr. Stuart paraphrases thus: ‘No longer placing our reliance on it as a means of subduing and sanctifying our sinful natures.’ But ceasing to rely on the law for such a purpose was not, in any sense, to be delivered from the law. The law never proposed such a thing, and therefore ceasing to look for such an effect is not a deliverance from the law. That beings dead wherein we were held. — By death, whether it be considered of the law to believers, or of believers to the law, the connection in which they stood to it, and in which they were held in bondage under its curse, is dissolved. All men, Jews and Gentiles, are by nature bound to the moral law, under its condemning power and curse, from which nothing but Christ can to all eternity deliver them. Dr.

Macknight translates the passage, ‘having died in that by which we were tied,’ and paraphrases thus: ‘But now we Jews are loosed from the law of Moses, having died with Christ by its curse, in that fleshly nature by which, as descendants of Abraham, we were tied to the law.’ But this most erroneously confines the declaration of the Apostle to the Jews and the legal dispensation. That we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. — This is the effect of being delivered from the law. The Apostle here refers to the difference in practice between those who were married to Christ, and those who were still under the law. A believer serves God from such principles, dispositions, and views, as the Spirit of God implants in hearts which He renews. Serving in the spirit is a service of filial obedience to Him who gave Himself for us, as constrained by His love, and in the enjoyment of all the privileges of the grace of the new covenant. Believers have thus, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, become capable of serving God with that new and Divine nature of which they partake, according to the spiritual meaning of the law, as His children, with cordial affection and gratitude. It is the service not of the hireling but of the son, not of the slave but of the friend, not with the view of being saved by the keeping of the law, but of rendering grateful obedience to their almighty Deliverer.

Serving in the oldness of the letter, respects such service as the law, by its light, authority, and terror, can procure from one who is under it, and seeking life by it, without the Spirit of God, and His sanctifying grace and influence. Much outward conformity to the law may in this way be attained from the pride of self-righteousness, without any principle better than that of a selfish, slavish, mercenary, carnal disposition, influenced only by fear of punishment and hope of reward. Serving, then, in the oldness of the letter, is serving in a cold, constrained, and wholly external manner. Such service is essentially defective, proceeding from a carnal, unrenewed heart, destitute of holiness. In this way Paul describes himself, Philippians 3, as having formerly served, when he had confidence in the ‘flesh,’ as he there designates such outward service. Serving in newness of spirit and in oldness of the letter, are here contrasted as not only different, but as incompatible the one with the other.