Romans 7:4

Therefore, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit to God.

Here we see that in Paul’s analogy, we represent the woman who was married to a man who died. Let’s think a little bit about what this means.

It is important to remember that Paul has been talking about two different families of mankind. One is from Adam and the other from Jesus. I believe that this same concept is being developed here but with an emphasis. The emphasis here is our relationship to the Old Testament Law.

When Jesus died, you could say that He died with Adam in Himself. We were in the family of Adam and had no way to escape death because of sin but because Jesus died with Adam in Himself, we were released from our relationship with Adam’s family. You could say we were “married” to Adam and that Jesus died as Adam. This released us from our “marriage” to Adam.

I believe that “marriage” is a symbol of The Law. We are released from serving The Law because Jesus died as Adam. Not only that, Jesus raised again and we were raised with Him. We are now married to Jesus, not to Adam. The Law represents the relationship we had with our old husband. We shouldn’t act as if our old husband is still living when he isn’t. To do that would be to live in a very strange way. We read more about this strange way of living as Paul describes it in this chapter.