For Paul’s Jewish readers, the Law was a force for good, helping God’s people avoid and deal with sin. But here he says (shockingly) that we have died to the Law (v 4) as to sin (6:2,11). For the Law is weakened by our ‘fleshiness’ and twisted by sin, which abuses it to arouse sinful passions (v 5). Is this something you recognise within yourself: the thrill of doing something you know you shouldn’t?

Paul’s negativity towards the Law led some Christians to reject it completely – yet in tomorrow’s passage he defends it (see v 12). And in verse 6 he says we are released from the Law ‘so that we can serve in the new way of the Spirit’. Christians must still serve God (or ‘bear fruit’, v 4) – but out of freedom, having been set free from the Law and given righteousness as a gift, not as an attempt to earn it for ourselves.

The question is, how do we serve? Or, to put it another way, where in the Bible has God shown and told us what a holy life looks like?

Reflect today on what it means to ‘die with Christ.’¹

We enter a challenging chapter in this book, revolving around the concept of ‘law’. Paul stresses that believers have died a death and experienced a resurrection in Christ (v 4). He uses an illustration from marriage (vs 2,3): when a spouse dies, the surviving spouse is set free from the bonds and obligations of marriage. In the same way, the believer who was previously bound to the Law has died to the Law through the death of Christ and has entered a new reality. We are in the new realm of the Spirit (v 6), bound to the one who is risen from the dead (v 4) and so able, because of his life, to bear fruit. We now serve in a new way (v 6) – but we do still serve. We do not live without direction and constraints, but these come not from the Law but from Christ himself who fulfils and completes the Law.

The Law, contained in the ‘old way of the written code’ (v 6) – ie written in the Hebrew Scriptures – is here viewed negatively, reflecting Paul’s own experience. For him, to die to the Law was a form of joyful release from a bondage (v 6). Other Jewish believers would say (then and now) that the Law should not be seen so negatively but should be celebrated. For them, the Law is not burdensome but a delight and a joy providing a framework for the good life: ‘The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul’.² Paul has more to say on this, but here he points to the power of written laws to bring us into condemnation, exposing our moral inability to overcome our sinful passions, making things worse (v 5).

God’s saving work in Christ marks a new beginning, a new reality and a new way.

‘I have come that they may have life’.³ 

¹ Rom 6:8  ² Ps 19:7  ³ John 10:10