We have died to sin so as to no longer be bound to it as a slave, nor belong to it as a spouse. So also we have died to the law which is only binding as long as a person lives. Like a married woman released from marriage by the death of her husband, we are released from the law, having died with Christ, so that we may belong to the law no longer but to another, that is, to Christ who has been raised from the dead, and that we may bear fruit for God. This is the fruit that leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. When we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions were at work, by the law, to bear fruit for death, for the law by itself can only bring condemnation to sinners. But now we are released from the condemnation of the law, having died to sin and to the law (to its hold over us), which held us as captive and enslaved, and now we slave in the newness of the Spirit rather than in the oldness of the law.
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? May it never be!
We are released from the law as a wife no longer has any obligation to her husband who has died, because death voids the contract (makes it no longer binding). Through the body of Christ, we have died to the law so that we might belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God. We are released from having to either keep the law or die. We are reckoned in Christ to have kept it.
Sin seizes an opportunity produced by knowledge of the law in tempting me to sin. The commandment promises life, but because of mankind's slavery to sin, it only proves to be death to me (the law directs obedience and condemns disobedience). Sin seizes an opportunity through the commandment because it is through the commandment that knowledge of what is right and what is wrong comes, and sin then tempts when the knowledge of what is wrong comes to mind. Our sinful nature takes advantage of the law (turns its good purpose for evil). The commandment is holy and righteous and good, but through it sin deceives me and kills me.
What is this death that takes place? Not a literal death, nor the second death which is the ultimate fruit of unrepentant sin; rather, it is the sinner's understanding of his own precarious state before God: i.e., "I was ignorant of how guilty I was for rebelling against God's law, but when I learned what His commands were, I came to know what the law forbids and what I had done in disobeying it, and I became as one dead who had before reckoned myself alive. I saw myself as I was: dead in sin." I died. Apart from the law, I was once alive, but then the commandment came and sin came alive (to my understanding), and I died.
Now did the good commandment bring death to me? May it never be! Sin, hijacking the commandment, produced death in me through it, so that the distinction between what is good (the commandment) and what is evil (sin) might aggravate and show sin for the evil that it is, as well as increase its egregiousness in deserving destruction. The law was given, but it was sin that made death possible through it, that sin might be shown to be working death in me via that which is good. The function of the law in this fallen world is to bring forth understanding of the sinfulness of sin. The law does what it is supposed to do in revealing and condemning sin. Sin, through the function of the law, excites tempting desires in me, and through my disobedience to the law, accomplishes death in me. The law was never designed for me to keep it in order to be saved, but rather to make me despair of my own rampant sinfulness and the futility of trying to be righteous by works of the law (Rom 4:15). The law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin (set free, but still susceptible to my old master, Rom 6:6-7, 12).
And this susceptibility produces a war in me. More to follow.