Audio commentary on this verse

Note 3 at Rom. 7:2: Paul likens our death to sin, which he had explained in chapter six, 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 man. In Old Testament times, the law gave the wife no option of divorce. The man could divorce his wife (Dt. 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 our old man. 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 man over us (see ref. n at v. 5). The law actually empowered sin or our wicked husband against us (see note 4 at Rom. 3:19, p. 757).

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