As mentioned earlier, verse 6 brings in the contrast between the “once” and the “now.”

We are free (the same verb used in verse 2) translates an aorist passive (literally “we were set free”), which points to a specific time in the past, perhaps to the act of confession at baptism. Again the understood agent of the passive voice is God, “God set us free.” In some languages this may be expressed as “God untied us from the Law” or even “God erased the Law as far as we were concerned.”

The pronoun, that which, refers to the Law, “to the Law which.” We died to that which once held us prisoners (that is, the Law) must be expressed in essentially the same way as in the second sentence of verse 4, that is, died, as far as the Law is concerned.

Held us prisoners may be rendered as “caused us to be prisoners,” “locked us up,” or “tied us up,” or, metaphorically, “put chains on us.”

In Greek this verse is one sentence, and the second sentence of the Good News Translation represents a clause which in Greek introduces the conclusion. The transition between these two sentences may be introduced by “as a result,” “hence,” or “therefore.”

The object of the verb serve is God: no longer do we serve (God). Paul now contrasts the two ways of rendering service to God. It may be that the compound phrase in the old way of a written law is not clear for the reader. It is perhaps better to take written law in apposition with the old way, and so to understand the phrase to mean “in the old way that was made possible for us by the written law.” The same may be said of the second phrase, in the new way of the Spirit; this may be rendered “in the new way made possible by the Spirit.” A few translations understand Spirit to refer to man’s own spirit (Jerusalem Bible “in the new spiritual way” and New American Bible “in the new spirit”), though most commentators understand it to be a reference to the Holy Spirit.

The relations between the term way and the corresponding expressions a written law and the Spirit must in some languages be made more explicit—for example, “the old way, that is, the way which the written law told us we should live.” The new way of the Spirit may be “the new way, that is, how the Spirit causes us to live.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1973. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .