3 Day Bible Reading Plan - “Married to Another”

Christianity is more a romance than a religion.

Day 1

• Featured Verse: Romans 7:1–3

  • Why do you think Paul chooses this particular example (remarriage after a husband’s death) to explain the law’s reach, rather than some other legal or social bond?

  • How do you interpret the idea that death dissolves a binding legal relationship, and what questions does that raise for you about how God deals with old covenants and new belonging?

  • As you sit with verses 1–3, what tension do you feel between remaining under a former authority and being set free to belong to another, and how does that tension speak to your own relationship to the law?

“While we were under the law, we could not come into the bonds of the new covenant,—the covenant of grace. But, through the death of Christ, we are dead to the law, and therefore we are set free from the principle and covenant of law, and we have come under the covenant of grace.” -Charles Spurgeon

Day 2

• Featured Verse: Romans 7:4–6

  • What does it mean that you died to the law through the body of Christ, and how does that death change the way you stand before God?

  • How do you understand the purpose of that death (that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead) and what does belonging to the risen Christ look like in your life?

  • What difference does it make to you that you have been released from the law by dying to what once bound you, rather than by the law itself dying or being discarded?

“He does not say, ‘The law is dead’… but you are dead to the law.” -Matthew Henry

“Believers being dead to the law, and the law dead to them… they are loosed from it, and may be, and are lawfully married to Christ, that they may bring forth the genuine fruits of good works… for the honor and glory of God.” - John Gill

Day 3

• Featured Verse: Romans 7:7–12

  • The commandment was intended to bring life, yet it brought death. Where have you experienced that reversal, and what does it reveal to you about both the law and your own heart?

  • Paul says sin seized the opportunity, deceived him, and through the commandment put him to death. How do you discern the difference between the holiness of the command and the deceit of sin working through it?

  • If the law is holy and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good, what does that force you to conclude about the real problem, and about where your hope cannot come from?

“The function of the law is not to enable a man to justify himself, but to show him that he can’t do it… The fundamental error of the Jews was to think that the law was a way of salvation. The law was never meant nor intended to be a way of salvation… it is to show the exceeding sinful character of sin.” -Martyn Lloyd-Jones