Click HERE to return to main site

Commentary on the Book of Romans

1. Or do you not know, my brothers, (for I speak to learned ones of the Torah), that the Torah has authority over a man as long as he is alive,

2. As a woman who is bound by the Torah to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is freed by the Torah from her husband.

3. And if while her husband is alive she has intercourse with another man, she becomes and adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is freed by the Torah; and she is not an adulteress if she marries another. COMMENTS: Paul takes an illustration from Jewish Law. A woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive. She cannot marry another as long as he lives (unless he divorces her; she has no right to divorce) until her death.

4. And now, my brothers, you also are dead to the Torah in the body of the Messiah that you might be [married] to another who arose from the place of the dead, that you might bear fruit to Eloah. As far as the Torah is concerned we have died with Messiah and are freed from our former husband (sin) thus allowing us to be brides to Messiah.

5. For while we were in the flesh, the passions of sins that are in the Torah were working in our members, so that we would bear fruit unto death.

6. But now we are brought to an end by the Torah, and we are dead to that which was holding us, that we should serve from now on in the renewal of the spirit and not in the oldness of the writing. The Torah allows us to be brides either to YHWH or to sin. Since the Torah now regards us as freed from sin we can become brides to Messiah,

7. What therefore are we saying? Is the Torah sin? Absolutely not! But I did not learn sin except by the hand of the Torah. For I had not known covetousness except that the Torah said, Do not covet. Paul is concerned that his reader might misunderstand him and think that the Torah is sin and that therefore misunderstand his illustration as teaching that our previous bridegroom was the Torah which we are freed from in order to be bound to Messiah. Absolutely not! Paul says. Sin was our first love and former husband from whom the Torah regards us as being freed, but THE TORAH IS NOT SIN (it simply recognizes that we are married either to sin or Messiah) and sinsce the TORAH IS NOT SIN then the Torah is NOT our former husband and we are NOT freed from Torah to be joined to Messiah. In fact the Torah is the insturment that allows us to be married to either sin or Messiah. Without the Torah there is no marriage at all.