Apart from the Law, Sin Is Dead

When a king governs his people, there is a constitution; and while a husband and wife are both living, their marriage binds them to each other. Just as the law has authority over a person only for as long as that person lives, so when a spouse dies, the marriage loses its legal force.

The law cannot save anyone. It was given so that people, seeing themselves in its light, would come to know that they are sinners and turn to Christ, who would atone for that sin. Yet the Jews did not grasp this purpose and sought to achieve salvation by their own works, and that very effort became a sin that stood in the way of grace.

Those who have died to sin with Jesus Christ are no longer ruled by the law. There is no need to live the life of faith under a sense of guilt, bound by rules of one’s own making, whether early morning prayer or offerings. To live freely by grace in Christ is the purpose for which God gave the law.