ACC ~ Romans 7 v2

THE LETTER OF THE LAW MUST DIE. ORIGEN: The law of the letter must die so that, free at last, the soul may marry the spirit and receive the marriage of the New Testament. HOMILIES ON GENESIS 6.3.

MOSAIC LAW ILLUMINED BY THE GOSPEL. AMBROSIASTER: This law comes from the gospel, not from Moses or from human justice. For those who learned something from the guidance of nature and those who learned something from the law of Moses have both been made perfect by the gospel of Christ. COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES.

WHEN THE HUSBAND (LAW) DIES, THE WOMAN (SOUL) IS FREE. AUGUSTINE: Note how this analogy is different from the subject it refers to. Paul says that the husband dies, so that the woman, freed from the law of her husband, can marry whomever she likes. Paul compares the soul to the woman and thinks of the husband as the passions of sin which work in our members to produce the fruits of death, which are the offspring worthy of such a marriage. The law is given not to take away sin nor to deliver us from it but to reveal what sin is before grace comes. The result is that those who are placed under the law are seized by an even stronger desire to sin and sin even more because of the trespass. But in making this triple analogy—the soul as the woman, the passions of sin as the man and the law as the law of the husband—Paul does not conclude that the soul is set free when its sins are put to death in the way that the woman is set free when her husband is dead. Rather, he says that the soul itself dies to sin and is set free from the law in order that it might belong to another husband, who is Christ. The soul has died to sin, but in a sense sin is still alive. Thus it happens that although desires and certain encouragements to sin remain in us, we do not obey or give in to them because we have died to sin and now serve the law of God. AUGUSTINE ON ROMANS 36.

AS LONG AS THE HUSBAND (LAW) LIVES, SHE REMAINS BOUND. AUGUSTINE: The apostle says that as long as a man lives in sin he lives under the law, just as the woman lives under her husband’s law as long as he is alive. QUESTIONS 66.1.

THE LAW (HUSBAND) IS ALREADY DEAD. PELAGIUS: By analogy, Paul calls the commandment of the law a “husband” in order to demonstrate that, without the power to punish, the law (being already dead, as it were) cannot stop us (who have already been put to death) from going over completely to Christ, who has risen from the dead. For the law would quite rightly go on living in us if it could find something in us to punish. PELAGIUS’S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS.

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