Romans 7:4

ὥστε καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐθανατώθητε τῷ νόμῳ : the inference is drawn rather from the principle than from the example, but καὶ ὑμεῖς means “you as well as the woman in the illustration,” not “you Gentiles as well as I a Jew”. The last, which is Weiss's interpretation, introduces a violent contrast of which there is not the faintest hint in the context. The meaning of ἐθανατώθητε is fixed by reference to chap. Romans 6:3-6. The aorist refers to the definite time at which in their baptism the old life (and with it all its legal obligations) came to an end. διὰ τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χτοῦ : Weiss rejects as opposed to the context the “dogmatic” reference to the sacrificial death of Christ as a satisfaction for sin; all the words imply, according to him, is that the Christian, in baptism, experiences a ὁμοίωμα of Christ's death, or as it is put in Romans 6:6 is crucified with Him, and so liberated from every relation to the law. But if Christ's death had no spiritual content if it were not a death “for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3), a death having the sacrificial character and atoning virtue described in Romans 3:25 f. there would be no reason why a sinful man should be baptised into Christ and His death at all, and in point of fact no one would be baptised. It is because Christ's death is what it is, a sin-expiating death, that it draws men to Him, and spiritually reproduces in them a reflex or counterpart of His death, with which all their old relations and obligations terminate. The object of this is that they may belong to another, a different person. Paul does not say ἑτέρῳ ἀνδρί : the marriage metaphor is dropped. He is speaking of the experience of Christians one by one, and though Christ is sometimes spoken of as the husband or bridegroom of the Church, there is no Scripture authority for using this metaphor of His relation to the individual soul. Neither is this interpretation favoured by the use of καρποφορήσωμεν; to interpret this of the fruit of the new marriage is both needless and grotesque. The word is used frequently in the N.T. for the outcome of the Christian life, but never with this association; and a reference to Romans 6:21 shows how natural it is to the Apostle without any such prompting. Even the change from the second person (ἐθανατώθητε) to the first (καρποφορήσωμεν) shows that he is contemplating the end of the Christian life quite apart from the suggestions of the metaphor. Christ is described as τῷ ἐκ νεκρῶν ἐγερθέντι, because we can only belong to a living person. τῷ θεῷ is dat comm God is the person interested in this result.