Nigerian gospel music minister John Olumayowa unveils his latest hymn, “Dead to Law,” which was not planned. It was born.
In the days following a deep encounter at the cross, during a time of spiritual formation under the ministry of Brother Gbile Akanni of Peace House.
I passed through what I can only describe as an evacuation. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, I came to understand, not merely as doctrine but as lived reality, the death of the old man and the birth of the new creation. I knew the moment it happened.
I knew what died. And I knew what rose in its place.
“Dead to Law” came as the fruit of that encounter.
The theological ground of this hymn is drawn from the seventh chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, verses one through four.
Paul presents a legal argument of staggering clarity: the law has dominion over a man only as long as he lives.
A man who is dead is beyond its reach. For as long the inherited sinful nature – that old Adamic man — is still alive, will therefore make the bearer subject to the law and all of its consequences.
Paul draws the picture of a marriage: a woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but his death dissolves that legal claim and she is free to be joined to another. So it is with the believer.
At Calvary, the old man died with Christ. The legal hold of sin’s nature was broken — not amended, not weakened, but ended.
And in the newness of resurrection life, we are now joined to Christ in a union that the law cannot touch.
Every line of this hymn is a deliberate return to that cross. It was written to be a compass — a song that pulls the believer back, again and again, to the finished work of Christ.
Not as a theological exercise, but as a living reality to be inhabited. If Christ tarries and the generations that follow us are still contending for this truth, my prayer is that ‘Dead to Law’ will serve them as a weapon and an anchor, as it has served me.
This hymn belongs at the intersection of revelation and worship — where what is known in the mind becomes what is sung in the spirit.
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