Freedom from the Law.^* 1Are you unaware, brothers (for I am speaking to people who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over one as long as one lives? 2Thus a married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law in respect to her husband.^a 3Consequently, while her husband is alive she will be called an adulteress if she consorts with another man. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and she is not an adulteress if she consorts with another man.

4In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to the one who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5For when we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, awakened by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death.^b 6But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.^c