To Bare Fruit For Your Husband

(Romans 7:1-6) Or do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to those who know the law — that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 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.
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also 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. 5 For 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. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

As I am reading through my Bible this year, I am reminded of how the women of old longed to bear children for their husbands; and in this passage, the children would be the fruit that they longed to bare. A man and woman would be joined together, and with God's blessing, they would bare fruit.

Before the gospel comes to a person, they are unable to bare fruit for God (Galatians 5). The law says, "Thou shall not covet," and upon hearing that command, the non-Christian finds new passions of covetousness growing in his own heart. This is good, because it is one purpose for the law. So even though the law is good, it arouse sinful passions in the heart of man, which produces bad fruit, or in other words; no fruit for God.

The gospel kills. It crucifies a person on the cross with Jesus. When a person is dead, they are no longer under any law. Just like when two people are married, and the man dies, the law of marriage that bound the two people together is no longer binding upon the remaining alive woman. She is free to marry another. She is free to bare fruit for another man.

In this way, the Christian is now free from the law which condemned. The Christian has died to the law, and has been married to Jesus, and she is free to bare fruit for him. This means that every bit of godliness and righteousness that grows in her from now on, is fruit for Jesus. Every gospel seed she sows, is fruit for Jesus. Yet how do we as Christians know what fruit is pleasing to God, or what traits are defined as godliness, or righteousness? Well, they are found in the law. This is the second purpose of the law, to sanctify the Christian into the very image of the one they are now married to. The Christian is given the Holy Spirit, which enables the Christian to have a new heart, which longs to, and is now able (in part), to become obedient to the law.