For this, let us remember, is the point and bearing of the passage. It puts before us, with its imagery at once so grave and so benignant, not only the mystic Bridal, but the Bridal as it is concerned with holiness. The Apostle's object is altogether this. From one side and from another he reminds us that _we belong_. He has shewn us our redeemed selves in their blessed bondservice; "free from sin, enslaved to God." He now shews us to ourselves in our divine wedlock; "_married to Another_," "_bound to the law of_" the heavenly Husband; clasped to His heart, but also to His rights, without which the very joy of marriage would be only sin. From either parable the inference is direct, powerful, and, when we have once seen the face of the MASTER and of the HUSBAND, unutterably magnetic on the will. You are set free, into a liberty as supreme and as happy as possible. You are appropriated, into a possession, and into a union, more close and absolute than language can set forth. You are wedded to One who "_has and holds_ from this time forward." And the sacred bond is to be prolific of results. A life of willing and loving obedience, in the power of the risen Bridegroom's life, is to have as it were for its progeny the fair circle of active graces, "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control." Alas, in the time of the old abolished wedlock there was result, there was progeny. But that was the fruit not of the union but of its violation. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For when we were in the flesh,= in our unregenerate days, when our rebel self,[105] the antithesis of "the Spirit," ruled and denoted us, (a state, he implies, in which we all were once, whatever our outward differences were,) =the passions,= the strong but reasonless impulses, =of our sins, which= passions =were by means of the Law,= occasioned by the fact of its just but unloved claim, fretting the self-life into action, =worked actively in our limbs,= in our bodily life in its varied faculties and senses, =so as to bear fruit for death.= We wandered, restive, from our bridegroom, the Law, to Sin, our paramour. And behold, a manifold result of evil deeds and habits, born as it were into bondage in the house of Death. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But now,= now as the wonderful case stands in the grace of God, =we are= (it is the aorist, but our English fairly represents it) =abrogated from the Law,= divorced from our first injured Partner, nay, slain (in our crucified Head) in satisfaction of its righteous claim, =as having died (ἀποθανόντες[106]) with regard to that in which we were held captive,= even the Law and its violated bond, =so that we do bondservice in= the =Spirit's newness, and not in= the =Letter's oldness.=