false self--a false way of life--which had appropriated him
and held him captive. Only by being emancipated from the {238} 'old
man' could he come to live 'in Christ.' It is this transference from
the 'old man,' or old way of life, to the new, by means of a death that
St. Paul here describes under the figure of a second marriage. The
man's true self was as a wife married to 'the old man.' The old man
was nailed to Christ's cross (vi. 6)--that is, the old way of life was
put an end to, even with violence. Thus the wife, the human
personality, is, according to the law of marriage, free to contract a
second union with Christ, the second Man. This is one of the main
thoughts in St. Paul's mind.

But it is entangled with a second. The 'old man' was closely
associated with 'the law'--the law which had awakened it out of its
life of moral apathy by its stern reminders of the will of God. The
law had reminded, instructed, enlightened; but it could not give the
inward power needed to obey its requirements. It served but to bring
to light the tyranny of sin which made man incapable of yielding
obedience to the will of God; it even augmented its power by
stimulating it to opposition. The law therefore belonged purely and
simply to the old condition of moral impotence--the life 'in the flesh'
and not 'in the Spirit.' It fulfilled the {239} only function it could
fulfil in awaking the consciousness of sin. Thus to pass from 'the
life of the flesh' to 'the life in the Spirit' was to pass out of its
dominion. This is the other thought with which St. Paul is occupied in
the passage we are just going to read. This too he expresses with the
help of the figure of death. Human law only regards a living man.
Death acquits him from law by taking him out of the region where it
applies. Therefore, when a man dies with Christ to the 'old man,' he
passes out of the reach of the law which threatened the old man but had
no function beyond that.

Each of these two thoughts is quite distinct and clear; but they are
fused in the present passage. St. Paul begins with the second, to show
that the 'dead' Christian is free from the law (ver. 1; cf. vi. 7).
But marriage law is taken as an example of law, and by this link we
pass from the second thought to the first. But the second thought
requires the man's _self_ to die with Christ to escape from the region
of law. The first thought, on the other hand, requires the 'old man,'
or old