Commentary on Romans 6.7–6.8

“Or do you not know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long as it lives? For the woman who is under a husband is bound to the law while the husband lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. Therefore, while the husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is with another man; but if the husband dies, she is freed from the law of the husband, so that she is no longer an adulteress if she is with another man. Therefore, my brothers, you too have been put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, who rose from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the vices of sins, which were through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, having died to that in which we were held, so that we serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.”

In the passages above, discussing faith and the law at length, he showed that in all things faith is to be preferred, namely the faith of those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. After this he added what their conversion too ought to be like, in the course of which he discussed both the sin of Adam and the righteousness of Christ; and he also argued about servitude and freedom, by which one either serves righteousness and is free from sin, or serves sin and is free of righteousness. Now, then, after a rather long digression, he returns again to the treatment of the law and of Christ, discussing such things as these in the present place; which, going over them little by little, we shall first try to open according to the sequence of the letter, and then also inquire, as we are able, what power each word has.

I speak, he says, to you who have knowledge of the law, … [the scan has lost text here] … joined, so too over the man who is under the law, so long as it lives and is in force, the law has dominion. But just as, if the husband to whom the woman had been subjected by the laws happens to die, the woman becomes free and is released from the husband’s power, so too he who is under the law, if the law happens to die, becomes free from the works of the law; and just as the woman who has been released from the laws of her former husband has the freedom to be joined to another husband, so he who lived under the power of the law, when he sees the letter dead, has power to be united to the living Word as to a husband. But if the woman wishes to leave her former husband while he is still living and be united to another, she will without doubt be called an adulteress. And this falls in like form on him who deserts the law as a living husband and is joined to another. These things, then, I speak, as I said, brothers, as to those who know the law, so that you may understand that you too have left the law as a dead husband. And its death came about through the coming of Christ and the assumption of his body, through which you have become another’s, that is, joined to another husband, namely to him who rose from the dead and no longer receives death, which that former husband, that is, the law, received. You, then, have now become the bride of that husband who rose from the dead; and therefore you ought to live according to his will, because we are no longer in the flesh but in the spirit, even if once, placed in the flesh, we were driven by the passions of sin and the flesh; and these passions, through the occasion of the law, bore fruit in our members, not for God but for death, for that death which God did not make. Now, then, as, when the husband dies, the woman is free and released from the law of the husband, so we too have been made free from the law which seemed to have dominion over us as a husband. To this law, without doubt, we too have died, and become strangers to its condition, in which we were held, so that from now on we may serve not in the oldness of the letter, as before, but in the newness of the spirit; which Spirit we have received from our Bridegroom as a wedding pledge, as he also says elsewhere: “who gave us the pledge of the Spirit.” This is the order of the words, and this the structure of the apostolic discourse.

But now, going over what has been said, let us discuss it point by point. “Or do you not know,” he says, “brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long as it lives?” Right at the beginning it has a hyperbaton, which is rendered thus: “Or do you not know, brothers, that the law has dominion over a man for as long as it lives?” and after this is rendered what was inserted in the middle: “For I speak to those who know the law.” And his saying, “I speak to those who know the law,” is like what he says a little later: “But we know that the law is spiritual.” And not Paul alone knew the law to be spiritual, but also those who were trained by him, who were, however, spiritual, of whom he says: “But the spiritual man examines all things.” For of the Galatians I cannot declare that they knew the law to be spiritual, of whom he says, “O foolish Galatians!”, unless perhaps they knew it when they had begun in the spirit; but they did not remain in this knowledge, because they were ending in the flesh. But the teaching of the apostles, and of those who were trained by them to teach, was such as to teach men to serve the law not in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit. And I think that not only the apostles, but also the prophets, and any who were wise then among the people of God, understood that the law is spiritual, although for the sake of the multitude they seemed to keep the fleshly observance too. Nor is this surprising, since Paul himself says: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews.” So, then, many among the former people made progress in spiritual knowledge and saw the glory of the Word of God, as Isaiah is written to have seen the glory of the Son of God, as John testifies when he says: “Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory.”

Paul, then, speaks to those who know the law, that is, to those who know what in the law is the oldness of the letter and what the newness of the spirit; and he who knows this well knows without doubt that the law has dominion over a man for as long as it lives, as a husband over a wife; and as by the death of the husband the woman is freed from the law of marriage and receives the freedom to unite herself to another husband, so too the soul, whose husband is the law, when it has detected the oldness of the letter in the law, since “what grows old is near to destruction,” receives, the law according to the letter being as it were dead to it, the freedom to marry another husband, who is the spirit of the law: “And the Lord is the Spirit.” And what he said, “The law has dominion over a man for as long as it lives,” is referred not to the man but to the law. For he shows this in what follows too, where he says: “While the husband lives, she is bound to the law”; and … [the scan has lost text here] … “she is released from the law of the husband.”

But if these things are understood as said of the apostles or of those who believed from the circumcision, no question will be stirred; for it is clear that they had the law as a husband, under whose power they lived. But when the fullness of the times came, the law began to be weak in the flesh, and death followed the weakness; and if any had lived as a wife under the power of this husband, now that the letter is dead they marry the spirit by believing in Christ. But those who believed in the Lord from the Gentiles will not seem to have lived under the power of this husband, that is, of the law, nor to have had the word of the law as a husband. And Isaiah declares the testimony of this, that is, that those who are of the circumcision were under a husband, but those from the Gentiles without a husband, saying: “Rejoice, barren one who do not bear; break forth and cry, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband.” He says that the children of the desolate are many, more than of her who has a husband, because far more believed from the Gentiles than from the circumcision; and he shows that she who has a husband is the Synagogue, which has the law, but the desolate one, wandering and living without any power of law, is the multitude of the Gentiles, which was also barren, bearing the offspring of no lawful word. Here, then, the man who lives under the law is set down by the Apostle as a woman who is under a husband. And he sets down as the husband the word of the law, which husband, however, he calls dead, which is the word according to the letter … [the scan has lost text here] … the Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, interprets as the flesh of Christ. But when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, by his presence the earthly Jerusalem with its temple and altar and all that was done there was overthrown. Then her husband died, that is, the law according to the letter. Or is it not rightly said that in this respect the word of the law is dead, to which no sacrifices, no priesthood, no ministries of the Levitical order are offered? It cannot punish a murderer nor stone an adulteress; for the power of the Romans claims these things for itself. And do you still doubt whether the law according to the letter is dead? Every male does not go up three times a year to appear before the Lord; no sheep is slain at the festival of the Passover in the city which the Lord God is thought to have chosen; the sheaves of firstfruits are not offered, no oblation is celebrated; no leprosy, no uncleanness is purified. And can it be doubted in all these things that the letter of the law is dead?

Since, then, it has become clear through all these things that the former husband is dead, there is no transgression in being united to Christ as to another husband, just as it is no crime for a woman if, her former husband having died, she enters a second marriage. And for this reason he says: “Therefore, while the husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is with another man,” to show that the soul of a man too, if it has now come to Christ and been united to Christ as to a second husband, ought in no way to have living in it the oldness of the letter, which is as it were the former husband, lest perhaps, if it has him living in itself, it become an adulteress … [the scan has lost text here] … the body of Christ, in which body he bore our iniquities and carried our sins, and in which he stripped the principalities and powers, triumphing over them in himself. We must hasten, then, to this second marriage, which is far more blessed than the first.

And see whether perhaps even then the law was foreshadowing something of this kind, I know not what, when it commanded that a woman whose first husband had died, from whom she had not received seed (for he had been such as could not bear fruit), should be commanded to marry his brother. For the brother of the law of the letter seems to be the law according to the spirit, so that the woman may rather bear fruit from him. But these things will be inquired into more fully in their own places. Now, as we said, one must first die to the law of the letter, so that we may thus be joined to Christ, who rose from the dead. It may be, too, that this is to be understood not only of the law of Moses, which is according to the letter, but of every man; since it is certain that by whatever institutions, by whatever customs he is led, he is to be believed to live as under this law which he uses; to which law either he himself must die, or it must die to him, lest perhaps the soul, placed under another husband and coming to Christ, should seem not so much to enter his marriage as to become an adulteress, since it still lives by the laws of its former husband.

This, however, the Apostle again brings by another figure to the same sense of explanation. For he adds: “For when we were in the flesh, the vices of sins, which were through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, having died to that in which we were held, so that we serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” It appears in these words too, as we said above by the example of a certain comparison, that Paul passes from one chamber into another by uncertain and hidden steps. For when in the passages above he had argued about the law of the letter, which certainly seemed to belong only to those who had believed from the circumcision, now by a hidden turning he discusses the law of the flesh and the vices; without doubt so that this treatment may be seen to belong to other men too, not only to those who are of the circumcision. He says, then: “For when we were in the flesh.” And indeed, as far as the fact goes, he was certainly in the flesh when he said these things; but “when we were in the flesh,” that is, when we lived according to the flesh, “the vices of sins, which were through the law, were at work in our members.” What is this law through which the vices of sin work? Does the law of Moses, even if it is observed according to the letter, beget the vices of sins? But it is plain that he means that law in the members which resists the law of the mind, of which we treated before too, how the law came in by stealth so that sin might abound. This, then, is the law which in those who live according to the flesh makes the vices of sins abound to bear fruit for death. For that law is in our members for this, that, resisting the law of the mind, it may lead us captive to sin and offer these fruits to death.

“But now we have been released from the law, having died to that in which we were held.” From this law, then, in which we were held, we have now been released. Now: when? Without doubt when we died with Christ and were buried with him through baptism and crucified with him; and therefore he says: “We have been released from the law, having died.” For unless someone has died with Christ, he is not released from this law. I know that in other copies too it is written: “from the law of death, in which we were held”; but this, that is, “having died,” is both truer and more correct. And what he adds in the conclusion, “so that we serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter,” which without doubt seems to be said of the law of the letter, can be understood consistently in this way. Placed in the flesh and living according to the flesh, because of the vices of sins, which that law which was in our members nourished so that they bore fruit for death, we could not serve the newness of the spirit while that law of the members lived in us, or rather, while we lived according to it. But when Christ died for us, and we died to sin with him, we were freed through him from the law of sin in which we were held, and we can now serve the law of God; and serve it in the newness of the spirit, not in the oldness of the letter. For Christ did not draw us away from the law of sin so that we might serve the oldness of the letter, that is, so that we might receive circumcision and sabbaths and the other things which the oldness of the letter of the law contains; but so that we might keep the law of God in the newness of the spirit, that is, that from all that is written in it we may grasp the spiritual sense, as the Spirit grants; as the same Apostle says elsewhere, that a veil is laid on the face of Moses; but when someone turns to the Lord, the veil will be taken away. “For the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

I know, indeed, that some, understanding the newness of the spirit wrongly, have drawn it to this, that they say the Spirit is new, as though he had not existed before nor been made known to those of old; and they do not know that in this they blaspheme most gravely. For he himself is the Spirit in the law, he in the Gospel; he is always with the Father and the Son, and always is, and was, and will be, as the Father and the Son. He, then, is not new, but renews believers, when he leads them from old evils to new life and to the new observance of the religion of Christ, and makes them spiritual from carnal.

“What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Far from it. But I did not know sin except through the law. For I would not have known desire unless the law had said: You shall not desire. But sin, taking occasion, worked in me through the commandment every desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. And I was once alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment which was unto life was found for me to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did what is good, then, become death to me? Far from it. But sin, that it might appear as sin, through the good worked death in me …” [the scan has lost text here] … he transfers the name of law from one meaning to another by silent indications, with that purpose, as I think, with which the prophetic Scriptures too are composed, so that the things which those inspired by God speak should not be set out in the open for unpolished men, who bring as yet little either of faith or of study, and be handed over, so to speak, to be trampled under foot; but that, according to what we said above through a certain comparison, the mystery of his king might reach a few, and in a more hidden way.

He says, then: “What then shall we say? Is the law sin?” Did you think, he says, that I was saying of the law of Moses that it is sin? Far from it, far from it. Let this suffice for both: that I am neither speaking of the law of Moses, nor saying of it that it is sin; but, “I did not know sin except through the law. For I would not have known desire unless the law had said: You shall not desire.” Understand, he says, of what law I am speaking, without which no one would know sin. Is it the law of Moses through which Adam knew his sin and hid himself from the sight of the Lord? Is it the law of Moses through which Cain knew his sin and said, “My sin is too great to be forgiven”? Or through which Pharaoh knew his sin and said, “The Lord is righteous, but I and my people are ungodly”? But if all these, and others without number, knew their sin before the law of Moses, it will without doubt not be the law of Moses of which the Apostle says, “I did not know sin except through the law,” and of which he says, “I would not have known desire unless the law had said: You shall not desire”; but it is that law of which we have often spoken, which is written in the hearts of men, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, and teaches each one what is to be done and what avoided. This, then, is the law through which a man knows his sin. Here he plainly says that the natural law is unknown to us for as long as, with the advance of age, … [the scan has lost text here] … we have known how to discern between good and evil, and have heard it from our conscience. For it speaks to us within the conscience and says: “You shall not desire.” But since this law is not always found in man, nor from the beginning as he is born, but for some time, while age does not yet allow it, he lives without this law, as Paul himself also confesses, saying, “And I was once alive apart from the law,” in that time when we lived without the law we did not know desire. He did not say, “I did not have it,” but “I did not know it,” as of something that existed, yet it was not known what desire was. But when reason came, and the natural law found its place in us with the advance of age, it began to teach us what things are good and to forbid us evil things. While it says, then, “You shall not desire,” which we did not know before, we learned from it that desire is evil.

“But sin, taking occasion, worked in me through the commandment every desire.” That law of which he says, “I would not have known desire unless the law had said: You shall not desire,” is itself also called the commandment. He says, then, that by occasion of this commandment, by which we are forbidden to desire, sin blazed up more violently in us and worked every desire in us. For in that in which the flesh desires against the spirit, that is, against the law which says, “You shall not desire,” it also opposes it and wages a kind of contest, so as not only to satisfy desire but also to overcome an adversary. This, then, is the occasion which he says comes from the commandment. For somehow things that are forbidden are desired more ardently; and therefore, although the commandment is holy and just and good (for what forbids evil is necessarily good), while by forbidding desire it rather provokes and inflames it, through the good it worked death in me. Yet the Apostle indicates in these words that the origin of sin arose from desire, since, when the law forbids, whether that of Moses, which says, “You shall not desire,” or also, as we explained above, the natural law, what is forbidden is sought the more contentiously. It must be known, indeed, that desire is set down here as blameworthy; but in many places it is also praiseworthy, as we showed above.

“For apart from the law sin is dead. And I was once alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment which was unto life was found for me to be unto death.” Nearly all of these things have already been fully treated above; so, lest we go over the same things too often, we shall briefly call to memory what was said. That sin is dead in us apart from the law, that is, before the rational sense grows strong within us through age, we showed when we also brought forward the example of the child striking or cursing his father or mother. In this, according to the law which forbids father or mother to be struck or cursed, sin seems to be done; but this sin is said to be dead, because the law is not yet present in the child to teach him that what he does is not lawful to be done. And it is certain that both Paul and all men once lived without this law, that is, in the age of childhood. For all alike in that time are not yet capable of this natural law. For otherwise Paul’s profession would not seem true of this. For how will Paul be proved ever to have lived without the law of Moses, when he confesses himself a Hebrew of Hebrews and circumcised on the eighth day according to the precepts of the law? But in the way we have said, he too once lived without the natural law, in childhood. In that time he did not say that sin was not in man, but that it was dead, and revived afterward when the natural law, arriving, began to forbid desire; which law raised sin as if from the dead. For this is the nature of sin: if what the law forbids to be done is done. Sin, then, reviving, “I,” he says, “died.” “I”: who? Without doubt the soul, which had done what the law forbade to be done; for “the soul that sins,” as the prophet says, “it shall die.” The commandment, then, which had been given unto life, namely that of the soul, to teach it the works of life, was found to have turned out for it unto death, since it does not so much flee forbidden things as seek them more ardently.

Yet it moves me in these words how he said that sin was dead and revived. For it seems that nothing can be called dead except what once lived and afterward lacked life. And this very word “revived” teaches not life newly given but former life restored; for the word “revived” signifies to have lived again. If, then, sin is said to have revived in the soul, how do those, from this word of the Apostle in which he says, “And I was once alive apart from the law,” bring in the doctrine of metensomatosis, which teaches that the souls of men were first in cattle or birds or fish, and so came to men, and that for this reason the Apostle said, “And I was once alive apart from the law,” as one who, before he came into this human body, had lived in that order, for example, of birds or animals, where there was no law? How, I say, will they be able to answer this, when he says that it was not something newly arisen in the soul, but sin that was dead, that revived? And it is certain that he who revives once lived. The soul, then, will never be seen to have been in that order where sin without law could neither have existed nor lived. Let these things be said against those who drag the Apostle’s words into an impious doctrine. But we say that this death of sin was given by the kindness of God at the time when we lived without the law.

And if, when the commandment comes, which is holy and just and good, sin revives in us and kills us (“for sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me”), it is no accusation of the commandment that he says the occasion by which sin killed me came from the commandment; but this is the sequence of this saying. That is called law which teaches what ought to be done and what avoided; and what it says is to be avoided it must teach of what kind it is, so that through this it may be avoided more easily. For no one can avoid what he does not know. If, then, someone, taught by the law what kind of thing it is that he ought to avoid, does not so much avoid it as do it, he will seem indeed to have received, by occasion of the law, the knowledge of the thing not to be done; but the law did not teach him for this purpose, that he should do what he ought not and die, but that he should not do it and live. So, then, “sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” Or certainly, since he said, “Sin deceived me through the commandment and through it killed me,” he may here have called the author of sin himself “sin,” of whom it is written, “The serpent deceived me”; or else he has made a person of sin, which seemed to deceive man by occasion of the commandment, so as to make desire sweet, and the soul, while it delights in the sweetness of desire, by transgressing the commandment which said, “You shall not desire,” died.

But lest anyone should lay this to the charge of the commandment of the law, that by occasion of the precept the soul was deceived and killed by sin, the Apostle adds and says: “So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.” For the commandment is good and the law is holy; for it commands good things and enjoins the observance of good things. “Did what is good, then,” he says, “become death to me? Far from it.” He refutes the objection that necessarily arises, and says: it is not that the good of the law and the commandment brought death upon me; “but sin,” he says, “that it might appear how wicked it is, through the good brought death upon me.” For the commandment is good when it is kept; but if it is not kept, it will necessarily be evil to him who has lost the good. Sin itself, then, becomes a sinner beyond measure by occasion of the commandment. We said above too that he has, as it were, made a person of sin, and says of it that sin itself, of whose person he speaks, has become a sinner beyond measure by occasion of the commandment. For there is less sin if you commit what is not forbidden; but if you commit things forbidden and prohibited, you are a sinner beyond measure, so to speak, since you have not only committed what you ought not, but have also transgressed a precept. And as for our saying “sin a sinner,” we preferred to accept a fault of language rather than not express the Apostle’s sense fully: because in the Latin language the noun “sin” (peccatum), which is declined in the neuter gender, constrained us; but in Greek it is feminine; and therefore we called it a sinner (peccator), whereas there it can be called a sinner in the feminine (peccatrix).