1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? (Romans 7:1 KJV)
William Burkitt’s Commentary
As if Apostle Paul had said, “You Jews, who study the law and are well acquainted with it, cannot but know that the law of God hath power over a man to require of him exact, perfect, and perpetual obedience, and to accuse, condemn, and bind him over to the curse for the least breach and violation of it; and all this as long as he liveth under the law, and is not freed from the malediction of it by faith in Christ”
Learn hence, 2. That the law of God, in the force and strength of it, and as considered in itself, is a very hard lord and master, exacting perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience to its commands and binding sinners over to the curse for the least transgression and violation of it.
Learn, 2. That Jesus Christ has freed all believers from the rigour of the law, from the curse of the law, and from the irritation of the law: that is, from the power which is in the law, to stir them up in sin through the corruption of their own hearts and natures.
Blessed be God! we are by Christ freed from and dead to the law as a covenant of life, but we are under it and may we all our days sit under the shadow of it with great delight as an eternal rule of holy living.