[7:1] Certainly you will understand what I am about to say, my friends, because all of you know about law. The law rules over people only as long as they live.
[7:2] A married woman, for example, is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if he dies, then she is free from the law that bound her to him.
[7:3] So then, if she lives with another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is legally a free woman and does not commit adultery if she marries another man.
[7:4] That is how it is with you, my friends. As far as the Law is concerned, you also have died because you are part of the body of Christ; and now you belong to him who was raised from death in order that we might be useful in the service of God.
[7:5] For when we lived according to our human nature, the sinful desires stirred up by the Law were at work in our bodies, and all we did ended in death.
[7:6] Now, however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit.