But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter. [These verses set forth the change in state and habit which results from our change of husbands, or the different fruitage of our lives, as suggested in Romans 7:4. As Christians, a different fruitage is expected from that which our lives bore under the law; for before we became Christians, when we were governed by our fleshly nature, the sinful passions--passions which prompted us to gratify them, and which led us to sin if we did gratify them, and which we discovered to be sinful by means of the light of the law--lusted and worked in our bodily members to bring forth the fruit of death: but now we are released from the dominion of our husband (the law), having severed the tie that bound us to him by dying in the person of Christ, our representative, so that now we serve God with our new, regenerated spirit (an inward power), and not in the old-fashioned manner, which was by obedience to a written precept (an external power).]

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Old Testament