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I am looking at this wondering what the reason is that Paul used this phrase. I believe there is something important behind it if I take the time to look for it and listen to the Spirit.
Since I can see that he is beginning this part of the letter targeted more specifically to Jewish Christians who have a cultural and theological background very much like his own, I think he may be setting them up to see a much clearer view of the gospel that he is trying to convey to them. Evidently one of the reasons for this letter in the first place is to correct misunderstandings about God and about salvation that were brought into the church from their past thinking and reasoning. We are in just the same situation today and need to understand these truths more clearly just like they did.
I try to put myself in the mind of a Jew in that day who has converted to Christianity. While parts of that attempt may not work so well due to my lack of intimate knowledge of the their culture, it also may be easier for me than for many others since I was also brought up in a legalistic religious environment very much like those Jews. So it is easier for me to put on those clothes and look out of their eyes at life than it would be for someone who identifies more with the first group Paul is addressing from Romans 1.
So in that position my natural response would be to say, “Well of course, Paul, you are reinforcing what we have been insisting on all along. As long as we are alive we must keep the Law. We have been uncomfortable with all your talk about grace and your lax attitude toward the Law that we see in your preaching, especially with the Gentiles who need a lot more discipline in their lives. Yes, the Law absolutely has jurisdiction over us for as long as we live. So what are you trying to say here?”
From this point Paul leads the legally acute mind into the subject of marriage and adultery which had long been a hot topic of debate in Jewish religious circles. They might wonder what answer Paul is about to offer to a debate that had not been conclusively resolved for hundreds of years by the brightest minds in Judaism. But Paul does have a new take on this subject like anything they might expect, but what he is targeting is what it really means to live as a genuine Christian in relationship to the inner sinful nature constantly taking control of our imagination and hijacking our behavior. It was this very problem of our sinful nature and its overwhelming desires that had fueled these debates on marriage and divorce for all those years and the solution that Paul puts forward is so radical that at first it is shocking.
What he says is that the Law should be followed to the letter – absolutely! And the way it should be followed is to invoke the provision of Law that declares complete freedom for the surviving spouse when one of the married partners dies. The implication suddenly becomes frighteningly clear – the only way to enter into real freedom requires that someone must die; there simply is no other option if you want to come into real freedom of heart.
But far more than offering what would appear to be a bizarre solution for a bad marriage under the Law, Paul is saying that all of us find our souls hopelessly stuck in a bad marriage to our sinful nature. We are in a forced marriage to a deadbeat spouse arranged for us by the fact that we were born as sons of the sinner Adam who got us all into this bad marriage arrangement. And once in the marriage there is no legally acceptable out for us except for someone in the marriage to die. But how can that take place in reality?
The whole chapter 7 of Romans is dealing with this very issue and the intense turmoil involved in it. But understanding this context explains the reason Paul used the phrase at the very outset, “Do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law)....”
