Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary
Romans 7 - Introduction
(1) Tour experience of human laws helps here: you are aware that law rules a man so long only as he lives—for instance marriage binds the wife during the life of her husband; but after his death she is free to marry another. (4) So you were under the law, but you died with the Christ, by the death of His Body, and that was a death to the law, so that you became united to Another, to Him who was raised from death just in order that (in Him) we might bear fruit to GOD. (5) For when the flesh was the condition in which we lived, the sinful states which we experienced under the influence of the law were so operative in our members that we bore fruit only for death, (6) but in our present condition we have been freed from all influence of the law, we are dead in respect of that character in which we were held under its influence, so that we are now rendering our due service under the influence of a fresh action of spirit and not by an antiquated action of literal precept.
A new illustration enforces the argument of the preceding section that freedom from law does not imply freedom to sin. There is a change of allegiance which has its analogue in human laws. The change chosen as an illustration is that of the law of marriage. This suggests not only allegiance but a union which is productive of offspring. The old union is of the self with the flesh or the ‘old man’; under the influence of law that produced sin: the new union is of the self with Christ; it has been brought about by the self sharing the death of Christ, and consequently becoming united to His risen Life: this union involves as its product service to GOD under the inspiration of a fresh spirit. The progress in the main argument is in this emphasis on the new life as in Christ, developing Romans 6:11; Romans 6:23.
If the illustration is to be pressed, the conception must be that there is a persistent self, first wedded to a nature of flesh and, under law, begetting sins; then that nature dies, the self is freed from it and its law, and is wedded to Christ. In this union it brings forth the new fruit. So in Romans 6:6 it is not the self, but the old character that was crucified with Christ, ‘we,’ ‘ourselves,’ were set free. There is a distinction between the self and the character which the self assumes whether ἐν σαρκί or ἐν πνεύματι. Cf. Gifford and S.H., aliter Lft.