Romans 7:1-6
7 Now, dear brothers and sisters[a]—you who are familiar with the law—don’t you know that the law applies only while a person is living? 2 For example, when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. 3 So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries.
4 So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. 5 When we were controlled by our old nature,[b] sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.
Earlier this year I went to Berlin and realised as I arrived in my hotel room that my plug adapter was broken. I had so much work to do and needed my phone to navigate the city. There was no way that I could achieve everything that I needed to without the ability to connect my devices to power. My map, my wallet, my tickets were all on my phone! With no charge, my phone is just an expensive paper weight.
Paul uses a different metaphor in Romans 7:1-6, but he’s making the same essential point: our fruitfulness is always a question of connectedness. Trying to produce spiritual fruit by our own power is like a phone trying to charge itself. We require an external power source.
In this passage, Paul compares our relationship with the law to a marriage. Under the old arrangement, we were bound to the law like a wife to a husband—and that relationship could only produce one thing: death. Why? Because the law, good as it is, could only expose our sin. It aroused sinful passions within us (v.5). It showed us the standard but gave us no ability to reach it.
But then something dramatic happened: we died.
Not physically, but through Christ’s body on the cross (v.4). When he died, we died with him. And just as death releases a person from the marriage covenant, our death with Christ released us from our old relationship with the law. The marriage that could only produce death has ended.
But here’s where the gospel gets beautiful: we didn’t just die. We were raised. And in being raised with Christ, we’ve been “married to another—to him who was raised from the dead” (v.4). We’re now connected with the living Christ himself.
And this changes everything. All the potential in us in unlocked through that connection.
Notice what Paul says: we were released from the law “so that we might bear fruit for God” (v.4). Our connection with Christ isn’t just about being declared righteous. It’s about being joined to the source of life itself—the one who can actually produce fruit in us and through us. We spend a lot of time thinking about what Jesus saved us from but so often miss what he saved us for.
Think about what this means practically. That patience you’re trying to manufacture? That love you’re straining to produce? The impact you’re working to generate? They’re not the result of trying harder or following the rules more carefully. They’re the fruit of being connected to Jesus. They flow naturally from a living relationship with so much life that he rose from the dead.
This does not mean that we no longer need to have disciplines or to work for anything. It is realising that being full of life isn’t about trying harder - it’s about staying connected. It’s about abiding in the one who was raised from the dead, letting his resurrection life flow through every part of who you are.
How is your connection with God?
In what areas of your life are you still trying to produce spiritual fruit through willpower and religious duty rather than connecting with Christ?
