Married to Another

“Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.”

Romans 7:4 · NKJV

Paul reaches for a marriage picture here rather than a management picture.

Dead to the law does not mean the law was bad. It means the law was never able to give life, and your relationship to it ended at the cross. Through the body of Christ. His body, given, closing an arrangement you could never have closed yourself.

Many believers live like a spouse who keeps the old marriage contract in a kitchen drawer. They do not mean to, but when they fail, they pull it out and read the terms again: do this and you will live, fail and you are guilty. Paul says that contract ended in a death. You are not married to the rulebook anymore, and you are not living in an arrangement where every failure is a breach of terms. You are married to a risen Christ who loves you, and love does not keep a copy of the terms to use against you.

And the purpose is not freedom for its own sake. It is union. Married to Him who was raised from the dead. Fruit comes from that union the way it always has in Scripture, out of life shared rather than pressure applied.

You are joined to a risen Person, not bound to a written code. Fruit grows out of that.

Go deeper: Written on Stone →