What Marriage Mean in Romans, Chapter 7? 5-29-25

Freed from the Law

So many of the people of God try to mix the law with grace; it won’t work. There are principles from the Old Testament that can be used, but otherwise, mixing the law with grace is like mixing oil and vinegar; they do not mix.

I heard a leader use Romans chapter seven about marriage and because he did not have understanding, the people were kept in bondage. Read further into the message and you will understand what Paul is saying. That’s why it so important to see things from God’s perspective.

Message: 

Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives.

But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.  So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. 

Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter (Romans 7:1-6).

In essence Paul is saying that the law says one thing about marriage and divorce, but being married to Christ frees us from that law. We have divorced the LAW and are MARRIED to Christ. It is important to understand the difference between the law and grace. In Paul’s writing, he was comparing the natural with the spiritual.

What did Jesus say about divorce? The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”  And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’  and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  

So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. ”They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.  And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

So, if one compares these scriptures they don’t connect, support, or relate to each other when it comes to divorce.

I pray that we all will come to a better understanding of God’s Word. That is the only way we

can minister effectively.

His handmaiden, Betty A. Burnett ~ burnettministries.org