Audio commentary on this verse

Note 3 at Ro 7:2: Paul likened our death to sin, which he had explained in Ro 6, to the laws governing a marriage relationship. The husband is our "old man," the wife is the soul and body part of us, or our personality, and the binding civil and moral code that enforces a marriage is like the Old Testament Law.

We, the wife, were enslaved to a wicked husband, the old self. In Old Testament times, the Law gave the wife no option of divorce. The man could divorce his wife (De 24:1), but the wife could not divorce her husband. Therefore, the only hope a woman could ever have of being delivered from that situation was that her "old man" would die. Then she was delivered from that moral and civil code that kept her from having relationship with someone else.

Likewise, we were in bondage to the old self. We wanted out of the relationship, but we were by nature slaves to sin (Eph 2:3). The Old Testament Law only made the situation worse. It strengthened the control of the old self over us. The Law actually empowered sin, or our wicked husband, against us (see note 4 at Ro 3:19).

Then Jesus entered the scene. He took the old self with Him to the cross, and when He died, the old self died too. But Jesus rose from the dead, and the old self didn't. Now we are free from the old self and the Law that bound us to it so that we can be married to Him who is risen from the dead.