Romans 7:1-2

“ Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law), that the law hath dominion over a man for as long time as he liveth? For the married woman is bound by the law to her living husband; but if the husband have died, she is loosed from the law of the husband. ”

We are familiar with the meaning of Paul's question: Or are ye ignorant; it explodes the negation of the expounded truth by an indisputable truth. The meaning here is therefore: Or, if ye are afraid, in the work of your sanctification, to yield yourselves solely to this new master, grace, and think that ye cannot dispense with an external rule like that of the law, know ye not that...? The form of address: brethren, had not occurred, as Hofmann observes, since Romans 1:13. The apostle is about to have recourse to a more familiar mode of teaching than he had hitherto used in his Epistle; hence he approaches his readers addressing them by this title, which gives to what follows the character of a conversation.

In the parenthesis: for I speak to those who..., the for refers to the negative answer which is to be supplied after the question: are ye ignorant: “No, ye cannot be ignorant of the legal prescription which I am about to quote”...

We must avoid translating as if the article τοῖς stood before the participle γινώσκουσι : “ to those among you who know the law. ” The grammatical form proves that the apostle here, as well as by the word brethren, is addressing the whole of the church of Rome. This is one of the passages from which many conclude that this church was almost exclusively composed of Jews (Baur, Holtzmann), or at least of proselytes (De Wette, Beyschl.). Nevertheless, even Mangold allows (p. 73) that “this expression may apply also to Christians of Gentile origin, as the O. T. was received and read throughout the whole church as a document of revelation.” One might even go farther, and maintain that it would be superfluous to remind those who had been Jews that they are such as know the law. Very early the reading of the O. T. passed from the worship of the synagogue to that of the church. The Epistles addressed to the churches of the Gentiles prove to what an extent the apostles assumed their readers to be acquainted with the history and oracles of the O. T. St. Paul thus interrogates the Galatians, who certainly were not of Jewish origin (Romans 4:21): “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, understand ye not the law?”

Now, here is one of the articles of that law, which, spiritually applied, solved the question of the relation between the Christian and the law. The code, in case of death, allowed the surviving spouse to remarry. If, consequently, it is a fact that there was a death in the case of the believer, it follows, according to the law itself, that he is set free from the law, his former spouse. Such is the summary of the following verses.

So true is it that Romans 7:1 is still connected with Romans 7:14, and gives the development of the words of that verse: not under the law, that the term κυριεύειν, to be master, to have power over, is borrowed from that verse.

The term man, ἄνθρωπος, may designate either sex. In Romans 7:2, where the case of the female is specially in question, Paul uses another word (ἀνήρ) to denote the husband.

The subject of the verb ζῇ, lives, according to our translation, is, the man. The law bears rule over the individual man, so far as his civil relations are concerned, as long as he is in life. Some commentators (Or., Er., Beng.) understand as the subject of the verb lives, νόμος, the law. This would give the idea of the abolition of the law by the coming of Christ, in the sense of Romans 10:4. But this sense is incompatible with the following verse, where the word ζῶντι (to the living husband) reproduces the idea of ζῇ, liveth, from Romans 7:1, as well as with the antithesis: “but if the husband be dead. ” Besides, the idea of the whole passage is not that of the objective abolition of the law by the coming of Christ; the point in question is the believer's subjective emancipation from this external standard through faith in Christ's death. Philippi agrees with us in making ὁ ἄνθρωπος, man, the subject of the verb ζῇ, liveth; but he applies the notion of living to life in sin (Romans 6:2), to which faith in Christ has put an end (Romans 6:2-11). The meaning of these last words of the verse would thus be: “The law has only power over the man as long as he continues in his own life, in his natural state of sin; from the time he renounces it to enter into union with Christ, he is set free from the law.” Hence it would follow that Romans 7:1, instead of citing an example taken from the law, with the view of illustrating the thought of the passage, would itself express this thought. But it is impossible thus to separate Romans 7:1 from the sequel. The for of Romans 7:2 shows that the latter is only the explanation of the article of the law quoted in Romans 7:1. Besides, how could the reader have suspected this extraordinary meaning of the word live, which would here designate neither common life nor life in God? Finally, the words: “I speak to you as to those who know the law,” forbid us to take the following maxim as anything else than an extract from the law. The first three verses form a whole: the example, namely, taken from the code relating to conjugal life. Romans 7:4 will apply the general maxim contained in this example to the domain of religion.

Vv. 2. The maxim cited in Romans 7:1 is developed in Romans 7:2. The same law which renders the woman inseparable from the man as long as he lives, sets her free from this subjection as soon as he dies. In the first proposition the emphasis is on the word ζῶντι, living; in the second, on the words: if he be dead. The precept Deu 24:2 expressly authorized the marriage of a woman put away by her first husband with a second; and a fortiori, a new marriage after the first husband was dead. If, in the first proposition, the apostle does not speak of the case of divorce, it is because he is referring to the woman as the acting party, and because in any case it did not belong to the woman to put away her husband. The husband alone had the right to give a letter of divorce, Deuteronomy 24:1. The expression κατήργηται, literally: is annulled, has ceased to be, and hence, naturally, is freed from, is chosen to extend in a sense to the woman herself the notion of death, which applies in strictness only to the husband. The conjugal bond being broken by the husband's death, the wife dies also as a wife. Thus the formula of Romans 7:1, which seemed to apply only to the deceased, is found to apply likewise to the widow. She is dead (to the conjugal bond) in her dead husband. Some take the expression: the law of the husband, as meaning the article of the code concerning marriage, lex ad maritum pertinens. But it is more natural to understand by this law the legal power with which the husband is invested in relation to his wife.

The difficult question in this verse is why Paul takes as an example a wife losing her husband and free to remarry, rather than a husband losing his wife and enjoying the same right. For the two cases equally demonstrate the truth of the maxim of Romans 7:1. The fact that the law bound the woman more strictly than the husband, does not suffice to explain this preference. It is the application which Paul proposes to make of his example to the spiritual life which will give us the solution of the question. It shows, in point of fact, that Paul had in view not only the breaking of the believer's soul with the law (the first husband), but also its new union to the risen Christ (the second husband). Now in this figure of the second marriage, Christ could only represent the husband, and the believer, consequently, the wife. And this is what leads the apostle to take a step farther, and to attribute death to the wife herself. For Christ having died, the believing soul cannot espouse Him except as itself dead.