But now we are delivered from the law
From the ministration of it, by Moses; from it, as a covenant of
works; from its rigorous exaction; from its curse and
condemnation, all this by Christ; and from its being an
irritating, provoking law to sin, through the corruption of
nature, by the Spirit and grace of Christ; but not from obedience
to it, as in the hands of Christ. The Vulgate Latin version, and
some copies read, "from the law of death"; and the Ethiopic
version renders it, "we are loosed from the law, and are
delivered from the former doctrine"; the doctrine of the legal
dispensation.
That being dead;
not sin, but the law: in what sense believers are dead to the
law, and that to them, (See Gill on Romans
7:4).
Wherein we were held:
as a woman is by the law to her husband, or as persons guilty,
who are detained prisoners; so we were "kept under the law, shut
up unto the faith", as in a prison, ( Galatians
3:23 ) ; Now the saints deliverance from the law through the
abrogation of it, that losing its former life, vigour, power, and
dominion, is not that they may live a loose licentious life and
conversation, but that they
should serve
the Lord their God without slavish fear, and with a godly one,
acceptably, in righteousness and holiness, all the days of their
lives; and their Lord and Master Jesus Christ, who is King of
saints, lawgiver in his church, and whose commandments are to be
observed from a principle of love, in faith, and to his glory;
yea, even the law itself, as held forth by him, as the apostle
says in the close of this chapter, "with the mind I myself serve
the law of God", ( Romans 7:25 ) : the
manner in which this service is to be, and is performed, is,
in newness of Spirit;
under the influences of the Spirit of God, the author of
renovation, of the new creature, or new man created in us, in
righteousness and true holiness; and from a new heart, and new
Spirit, and new principles of life, light, love, and grace,
formed in the soul; and by walking in "newness of life", (
Romans 6:4 ) ,
or by a new life, walk, and conversation:
and not in the oldness of the letter;
not in the outward observance of the law of Moses, which is the
"letter"; not indulging the old man, or walking after the
dictates of corrupt nature; nor behaving according to the old
former course of living: on the whole it may be observed, that a
believer without the law, being delivered from it, that being
dead to him, and he to that, lives a better life and conversation
under the influence of the Spirit of God, than one that is under
the law, and the works of it, destitute of the grace of God; the
one brings forth "fruit unto death", ( Romans 7:5 ) , the other
serves the Lord, "in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of
the letter".