1Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over a person as long as he lives?2For a married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husband.3So then, while her husband is alive she will be called an adulteress if she belongs to another man; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is not an adulteress if she belongs to another man.4Therefore, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.5For while we were living in the flesh, the passions of sins, which came through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.6But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were held, so that we serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.