4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Paul has just used a picture from everyday life. A married woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. If he dies, she is released from that law. She is free to marry someone else, and nobody calls her unfaithful for it. The bond was real, and then death ended it.

Then he applies the picture, and it is worth reading slowly, because he twists it in a way we do not expect.

"you also died to the law through the body of Christ"

Notice who dies. In the illustration, the husband dies and the wife goes free. Here, we are the ones who died. The law did not get abolished. It did not fade away or turn out to be a mistake. Paul will spend the rest of this chapter insisting the law is holy, righteous and good. What changed is our position in relation to it. We died, and death ends a legal claim.

And it happened "through the body of Christ." Not through our effort to be better. Not through a private decision to stop trying so hard. Through a body, on a cross, at a particular hour. This is the same argument as chapter 6 said with burial: something already happened to us in Christ, before we felt anything or fixed anything.

Paul does not stop at freedom. He almost never does. He tells us what the freedom is for, and the first thing he names is not a life change. It is a person.

"that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead"

That is the point of the marriage picture. A widow is not set free so she can be alone. She is released from one bond so she can enter another. Paul is saying we were not rescued into independence. We were rescued into belonging.

This matters, because most of us hear "free from the law" and quietly imagine the absence of something. No more rules. No more scorekeeping. Nobody watching. Paul means something warmer and more demanding than that. You have been joined to a living Person. Your life is no longer organised around a standard you are trying to meet. It is organised around someone you belong to.

And look at how he identifies him: "him who was raised from the dead." Paul could have said Christ, or the Lord, or the Son. He chooses the title that says this husband will not die. The first bond ended at a grave. This one has already been through the grave and come out the other side. There is no second widowhood coming.

Then the purpose behind the purpose.

"in order that we might bear fruit for God"

Fruit is a quiet word, and Paul chose it carefully. Fruit is not manufactured. Nobody assembles a grape. A branch does not strain to produce; it stays joined to the vine, and in time fruit appears because of what it is connected to.

That is the whole logic of these three verses in one image. Belonging comes first, fruit comes second, and the order cannot be reversed. We do not bear fruit in order to belong to him. We bear fruit because we belong to him.

Which is worth sitting with, because so much of our spiritual effort runs the other way. We try to produce something good enough to prove we are really his. Paul says the fruit is the evidence of the union, not the price of it.

Verse 5 looks back at the old life, and it is a hard verse.

"when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death"

Aroused by the law. Paul is saying something uncomfortable and true: the rule itself stirred up the wanting. Anyone who has been told not to touch something knows this. The command lands, and suddenly the thing is interesting in a way it was not a minute ago. That is not the law's fault. It is ours. A good rule meeting a heart in the wrong condition produces resistance rather than obedience.

So the old life had fruit too. That is the part we skip. Paul does not say the old life was barren. He says it bore fruit for death. Something was always growing. Something always is. The question was never whether our lives produce; it is what they produce, and who is served by it.

Which is why willpower alone was never going to work. If the rule itself wakes up the wanting, then more rules cannot be the cure. You need a change deeper than the rules can reach.

"But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code."

Two words carry this verse. "But now" — the same hinge Paul keeps returning to in this letter, marking the line between what we were and what God has done. And "released" — not excused, not exempted, but let go of a bond that genuinely held us.

Then notice the word he does not drop: serve. Released, and still serving. Freedom here is not the end of obedience. It is a new way of obeying, and Paul draws the contrast plainly.

The old way is the written code. Something outside you, telling you what to do, with no power to help you do it. It can inform you and it can accuse you, but it cannot change what you want.

The new way is the Spirit. Someone inside you, doing the work the code could never do — shaping the wanting itself. The demand is not lowered. The source of the obedience moves.

This is the difference between a man keeping a rule he resents and a man doing what he genuinely loves. From the outside the two can look identical. Inside they are nothing alike, and only one of them lasts.

Many of us are living as Christians on the old terms. We believe we are forgiven, and we still relate to God like an employee whose file is being reviewed. We measure the week. We assume the distance we feel is a verdict. We try harder, and the trying wears us out, and we call that faithfulness.

Paul would ask a simpler question. Who do you belong to?

If you are in Christ, the bond that measured you has ended. You did not sign a better contract. You were joined to a Person who is alive and will stay alive, and everything good that grows in your life from here grows out of that.

So today, where are you still serving in the old way — doing the right thing while inwardly keeping score? And what would change if you stopped asking whether you have done enough, and started with the fact that you already belong to him?

You are not working to earn a place with Christ. You are already his, and the fruit will follow.

All glory to God — forever and ever. Amen. 🤍

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