“Since I am speaking to those who know the law, brothers and sisters, don’t you know that the law rules over someone as long as he lives? For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband. So then, if she is married to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. Then, if she is married to another man, she is not an adulteress. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another. You belong to him who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused through the law were working in us to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the newness of the Spirit  and not in the old letter of the law.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What should be the relationship of a follower of Jesus to the Old Testament law? That’s a question that has generated no small amount of controversy in the church over the centuries. In the last few years thanks in part to the often misunderstood position staked out by a particularly popular megachurch pastor it has been a rather hotter topic than it was a generation ago. From my reading, the New Testament authors—and especially Paul—are pretty clear on the question. Passages like this one are why. Let’s talk about why this isn’t what Paul is talking about here and why that matters so much to this particular debate.

The most powerful, entrenched aspects of any culture are not the ones that are trumpeted from the rooftops, but rather the ones that are assumed without an argument. You know that something has completely taken root in an organization or even an entire nation when it is no longer debated, but has become little more than just background noise that nobody pays much attention to any longer.

Why that matters here is because Paul is assuming something about the relationship between the Old Testament law and new covenant followers of Jesus in order to make another point. In assuming this in order to make a different argument, we are getting a glimpse of what Paul really thinks about the Law. We’ll get to that in just a second. First, let’s make sure we understand what he is talking about.

Paul has been talking about the relationship of sin to the Law and how and why the new life we have in Christ is something entirely different. The Law of Moses as given by God was a good thing. It was designed and intended to help the ancient Israelites understand where the boundaries were of a relationship with Him. Unfortunately, because of the intensely corrupting power of sin, once the Law was given, sin got ahold of it almost immediately and started transforming it from something life-giving, to something life-taking. It became a tool of condemnation rather than a road to a deeper relationship with God.

Here, Paul makes a turn and starts talking about how we can be free of the Law. The answer is the same way we are freed from sin: in Christ. In order to help us understand this, Paul uses the marriage relationship as an example. One of the things that makes an illustration really good is that it’s obvious. The connection between the thing you are using as an illustration and the thing you are trying to illustrate is so clear that anyone and everyone can make it with very little help from you. This one falls in that camp.

As Paul puts it, then, “For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband. So then, if she is married to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. Then, if she is married to another man, she is not an adulteress.”

Clear enough? There’s a pretty dim view of divorce and remarriage here as a general proposition, but we’re not going to get into that right now. The larger point is clear. If someone who is married gets involved with another person, that’s adultery. If someone was married, but their spouse has died, it’s not. It’s fornication unless they’re married, but it’s not adultery.

In the next trio of verses, Paul goes on to make his point. It’s like that with us and the law. “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another. You belong to him who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.”

Paul leans hard into that marriage illustration here. Because we place our faith in Christ and are made new in Him, we are owned by the law. Which law? Well, Paul was obviously talking with the Law of Moses in mind, but in truth, we are owned by whatever law to which we give ourselves. You have some standard by which you evaluate whether or not your behavior is morally in bounds. Everyone does. It may not be a very well-developed standard, but it’s likely more comprehensive than you realize. You know when you do something if that was the right thing to do or not. You know this pretty much every single time without having to think very hard about it. That means whether you can verbalize it or not, you’ve got a standard. To go back to Paul’s word, you’ve got a law. Apart from Christ, you are owned by that law. Now, you can switch intentionally from one law to another (which takes more effort than you might think), but given the broad similarity across all such laws, you are still owned by the law such that the illustration doesn’t break down on that point.

When we place our faith in Christ, though, we spiritually participate in His sacrificial death. That is, we die. Well, once we die, we are not bound to the law anymore. It loses all of its power over it. It is free to bond another into its stifling clutches and we are free to be bonded to another. In this particular case, we are bonded to the one who has set us free. Sticking with Paul’s language, we enter into a new marriage. We are the bride as part of the church and Christ is the bridegroom. And we have the pleasure in this new marriage of bearing fruit for God. Pushing this language just a bit further, as the bride of Christ, we can give birth to children who look like Him. By bearing Gospel fruit in our lives we make disciples who make disciples.

This is a far better situation than we had before. “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused through the law were working in us to bear fruit for death.” Honestly, I’ve never noticed before just how graphic Paul’s illustration here is, but there it is all the same. When we were – or are if you are still apart from Christ – bound to the law, as the bride of sin, you bear children that look like your spouse. Sin works through you to produce more sinfulness. You hurt people who hurt people. You lead those around you into sin by the choices you make and the example you set. It’s just a mess.

In Christ, this whole bad situation is brought to a halt. Things are set totally aright once again. “But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the old letter of the law.” That is, in Christ, our bond to the law has been broken. It has lost all of its power over us. We are not beholden to it any longer. We are bound only to our new bridegroom: Jesus.

That’s the illustration, but let’s come back around to where we started. Do you see the implications of this last part? In Christ, we are freed from the law. We are released from it, is the language Paul uses. We don’t have to keep it. That old relationship is broken forever when we are in Christ. When we accept Christ as Savior and Lord we step out of the old covenant and into the new one. Therefore, all of the requirements and expectations of the old covenant cease to have any authority over our lives. The Law of Moses is not the standard by which we live our lives any longer once we are in Christ. Keeping the Ten Commandments does nothing for your relationship with God. There are no more sacrifices to be offered. Dietary restrictions are meaningless to us now. Not a single one of those 613 laws have power over us.

When someone like Andy Stanley uses the language of unhitching our lives from the Old Testament, this is what he’s talking about. He doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to do with the Old Testament anymore at all. That would be silly. And if he really believed that, he wouldn’t keep preaching from it. In Christ, the power of the old covenant is broken. There is important wisdom in the Old Testament from which we can benefit mightily. There is incredibly valuable context that helps make the new covenant make more sense. There is information we need to better understand the character and nature of the God we serve. But the Law is not the standard we are expected to keep any longer.

In Christ we have a new law: the law of love. Love one another as I have loved you was the new commandment Jesus gave us. That’s the only expectation of our new bridegroom. Love like He did. Now, there are principles in the old covenant law that are consistent with that command and which are intentionally picked up by the New Testament authors and extended into the new covenant framework, but all of those are just applications of that one command, our one law. They are important applications that we dare not fail to apply because otherwise we will quickly find ourselves in violation of the one law we are expected to keep, but they aren’t for us what they were for those apart from Christ. In Christ we are free from that to live in Him. Let’s do it.