7 ¹ Do you not know, brethren - for I am speaking to those who know the law - that the law is binding on a person only during his life? 7 ² Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 7 ³ Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

7 ⁴ Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. 7 ⁵ While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 7 ⁶ But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.