Romans 7 King James Version (KJV)
1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
I have two questions as regards this passage 1. Who is the "husband" in that passage? 2. What is the meaning of the words "married to another"
Paul says that the link between "those who know the Law" (v. 1) -- Jews -- and the Law (given Moses) was done away with by the death of the "husband." Paul says of a wife that "if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband." (Romans 7:2.) "As long as the man (anthropos) lives" (v.1), i.e., the husband lives, the law formed by their marriage binds the two. But the "law of her husband" is thus "loosed" or "abrogated" by the death of the husband.
Paul's Greek in verse 2 meant the Law has been "rendered null and void" by the death of the husband in the marriage covenant that established the Law. (See Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (1988) at 270.) Paul means "you are released from the Law as to its demands and penalties...." (The Epistle ... to the Romans; with notes by H.J. Ripley (edited by Henry Jones Ripley) (1857) at 73.)
Paul says this particular husband's death killed off the Law between the parties. It is clear in Paul's illustration that the one who dies is the "anthropos" (man) -- the "husband."
First, Paul says the Law binds the husband and wife as long as the "anthropos (man) lives." Finally, in Romans 7:3 Paul specifies who died in the relationship: "if her husband be dead, she is free from that law;...." Paul is not talking about the wife dying in order to make his point. Paul is only talking about the husband / the anthropos (man) having died whose death then effectuates dissolution of the Law.
Henry explains that by the death of the husband in Paul's lesson, this frees us from the Law, making the Law dead to us (as this husband's death brought about). As a consequence, we are "free from" our "master" -- the husband who died. Henry explains:
Our second marriage is to Christ: and how comes this about?.... We are dead to the law ...[and] have no more to do with it than the dead servant, that is free from his master, hath to do with his master's yoke.
Locke concurs that it was the death of the husband that Paul envisions as what supposedly frees us from the Law, not the death of the woman (or the death of the Law):
" ye have been made dead to the law," the phrase here used to express that freedom, seems to refer rather to the 1st verse, where he says, "the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth," implying, and no longer, rather than to the two intervening verses, where he says, "not the death of the woman, but the death of the husband, sets the woman free," of which more by and by. (John Locke, Works of John Lock (1823) Vol. 8 at 311.)