Dead to the Law by Christ's Body

 The following very helpful explanation of reality is from Norman Grubb's book The Deep Things of God:

"And this is what Christ did for us, making us 'dead to the law by His body' (Rom. 7:4). Being made sin for us, He died as sin-infected humanity: He arose as the new humanity who had died to sin, and this new humanity consists of all human beings who receive Him. He, then, who is the Living Law, becomes their life within, and lives the law within them. For them, therefore, the external law is buried. It is the old husband who has died in the crucified Christ, in Paul’s bold symbolism of Rom. 7:1-6, that we might be married to another, the risen Christ.

"For the believer, then, the new creation in Christ, the holy nation, the whole idea of response to external law has faded into thin air. That kind of duty life, that elementary grade of living, only has to do with us when we are in the bondage of self-centeredness and live the old life of self-effort, before we are born from above. In that condition, as we have seen, to preserve us from becoming fixed as devils, and to keep before our eyes the lode-star of godly living, for which we were destined, God gave us the dead formulas of a written law. Of course we could not keep them, nor wanted to, but confronted by them, if we were honest, we came face to face with our guilt (Rom. 3:19). The law had completed our elementary education: our graduation was our admission of guilt. We now pass out of the school of law for ever, into a new school—of faith.

"The fragments of law presented to us by Moses in His 'ministry of condemnation' now become the completed Law, lived as a life by the Law-Maker, Law-Giver and Law-Keeper within us, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:4). The fruits of the Spirit, born by the Spirit through the believer as vine through branch, are the law lived, and 'against such there is no law.'

"Christ had lived the law on earth by the Living Law within Him, the Father dwelling within Him. Christ had removed all claims of broken law upon us by being made a curse for us on the cross: Christ now lives the law in us by His indwelling presence. Nothing of outward law has any further claim on the believer, for it was only the shadow of THE law, while we walked in shadow-land. Now the substance has come, The Law itself in us: when that which is perfect is come, that which is partial is done away."