7Do you not know, brothers and sisters^q—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? ²For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him.^r ³So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress.^s But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law^t through the body of Christ,^u that you might belong to another,^v to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. ⁵For when we were in the realm of the flesh,^a^w the sinful passions aroused by the law^x were at work in us,^y so that we bore fruit for death.^z ⁶But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law^a so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.^b

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Footnotes

aIn contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit.

Cross references

qSee Ac 1:16; See 22:5; Ro 1:13; 1 Co 1:10; 5:11; 6:6; 14:20, 26; Gal 3:15; 6:18
r 1 Co 7:39
sSee Lk 16:18
tver 6; See Ro 6:6; 8:2; Gal 2:19; 3:23–25; 4:31; 5:1
u Col 1:22
v Gal 2:19, 20
wSee Gal 5:24
x Ro 7:7–11
y Ro 6:13
zSee Ro 6:23
aSee ver 4
b Ro 2:29; 2 Co 3:6