Romans 7:2-6 reveals that Christ is the new Husband. As regenerated beings, both male and female believers have Christ as their Husband and are a part of His wife. Yet a great many believers, although they have been Christians for many years, may never have heard that they have Christ as their Husband. If we the believers do not know that we have Christ as our Husband, we are pitiful persons, for in effect, we are like widows, females who have lost their husbands. The word widow connotes pitifulness. A widow has been stripped and robbed of all her enjoyment; she has lost everything of the enjoyment of human life. Surely all genuine Christians have Christ as their Husband, yet it is pitiful that many of them do not know Him as their Husband.
Romans 7:2-4a says, “For the married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he is living; but if the husband dies, she is discharged from the law regarding the husband. So then if, while the husband is living, she is joined to another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man. So then, my brothers, you also have been made dead to the law through the body of Christ.” These verses show two husbands. The first husband (the old husband) is not the flesh or the law but the old man mentioned in 6:6, who has been crucified with Christ. The second husband (the new husband) mentioned in 7:2-4 is Christ.
Since our old man, who was the old husband, has been crucified with Christ (6:6), we are freed from his law and are joined to the new Husband, Christ, the ever-living One. As believers, we have two statuses. The first you in 7:4 refers to us in our old status as the fallen old man, who left the original position of a wife dependent on God and took the self-assuming position of a husband and head, independent of God. The second you in verse 4 refers to us in our new status as the regenerated new man, restored to our original and proper position as the genuine wife to God (Isa. 54:5; 1 Cor. 11:3), dependent on Him and taking Him as our Head. We no longer have the old status of the husband, for we have been crucified. We now have only the new status of the proper wife, in which we take Christ as our Husband, and should no longer live according to the old man, that is, no longer take the old man as our husband.
Because fallen man left his proper position as God’s wife and desired to be the husband, God gave him the law, which he cannot possibly keep. The law is intended not for the wife but for the husband, and the law was given not that it might be kept but that the old man might be exposed (Rom 7:5; 3:20; 5:20). Paul thus refers to the law as “the law regarding the husband” (7:2).
We all had an old husband, the old man. When we were baptized into the death of Christ, we were identified with Him in His death, in which our old man was crucified and died. Through the death of our old man, the body of sin was annulled. Since the law was intended for and given to the old husband, the old man, the death of the old man also has made us dead to the law through the body of Christ.