Notes for Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
FREEDOM FROM THE LAW
Romans 7: 1—8:4
INTRODUCTION
The third great privilege of the believer (unfolded in Romans 7) is freedom from the law.
But, someone may immediately object, how could freedom from the law possibly be regarded as a Christian privilege? Surely the law was the law of God and one of the Jew’s most treasured possessions? In Romans 9:4 'the giving of the law’ is included among the special favours bestowed upon Israel. To speak of the law in a derogatory fashion, or to hail deliverance from it as a Christian privilege, would seem to Jewish ears akin to blasphemy. The Pharisees were incensed against Jesus because they regarded Him as a lawbreaker. As for Paul, a Jewish mob in the Temple precincts nearly lynched him because they believed he was 'teaching men everywhere against the people and the law and this place’ (Acts 21:28).
What then was Paul’s view of the law? Twice in Romans 6 he has written that Christians are 'not under law but under grace’ (verses 14, 15). Such a statement must have sounded revolutionary to his readers. What on earth did Paul mean? Was God’s holy law now abrogated? Could Christians afford to disregard it? Or had it some continuing place in the Christian life?
Such questions as these were no doubt commonplace in the apostle's day. And they are by no means of merely antiquarian interest today, because the law of Moses was and is the law of God. If we are thoughtful Christians, we need to know what place God's law should occupy in our lives today. Besides, in recent days the whole subject has come to the fore again, in the debate over the New Morality. The New Moralist is a kind of twentieth-century antinomian—one who sets himself against the law. He declares that the category of law is altogether abolished in the Christian life, that the Christian has nothing to do with the law and that the law has nothing to do with the Christian. We shall therefore find that the somewhat intricate arguments, which the apostle develops in Romans 7, speak with real relevance to our contemporary situation.
Attitudes to the law
By way of introduction it may help us to find our way through this difficult chapter if we think of the three possible attitudes to the law—attitudes represented first by the legalist, secondly by the libertine or antinomian, and thirdly by the law-abiding believer.
1. The legalist is a man in bondage to the law. He imagines that his relationship to God depends on his obedience to it. And as he seeks to he justified by the works of the law, he finds the law a harsh and inflexible taskmaster. In Paul’s vocabulary he is ‘under the law'.
2. The antinomian (sometimes synonymous with ‘libertine') goes to the other extreme. He rejects the law altogether, and even blames it for most of man's moral and spiritual problems.
3. The law-abiding believer preserves the balance. He recognizes the weakness of the law (Romans 8:3, ‘God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do’). The weakness of the law is that it can neither justify nor sanctify us, because in ourselves we are not capable of obeying it. Yet the law-abiding believer delights in the law as an expression of the will of God, and seeks by the power of the indwelling Spirit to obey it.
To sum up, the legalist fears the law and is in bondage to it; the antinomian hates the law and repudiates it; the law-abiding believer loves the law and obeys it.
Directly or indirectly, the apostle portrays each of these three characters in Romans 7. This is not to say he deliberately visualizes and addresses each of them in turn. But we can see their shadowy forms in this chapter as he overthrows the arguments of the legalist and the antinomian, and as he describes the conflict and the victory of the law-abiding believer.
The chapter in outline
It may help our understanding of the parts if we begin with a bird’s-eye view of the whole chapter.
1. In verses 1-6 Paul asserts that the law no longer exercises lordship over us. We have been delivered from its tyranny by the death of Christ. Our Christian bondage is not to the law or to the letter of the law, but to Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. That is his message to the legalist.
2. In verses 7-13 he defends the law against the unjust criticisms of those who want to be rid of it altogether, and who blame the law for man’s sorry state of sin (verse 7) and death (verse 13). Paul argues in this paragraph that the cause of our sin and death is not God’s law, but our flesh, our sinful nature. The law itself is good (verses 12, 13). It is in our flesh that there dwells nothing good (verse 18). So it is quite mistaken and unfair to blame the law. That is his message to the antinomian.
3. Then in 7:14—8:4, he describes the inner conflict and the victory-secret of the believer. According to Galatians 5 the conflict is between ‘the flesh’ and ‘the Spirit’. In this passage the terminology varies. Now it is between ‘the mind’ and ‘the flesh’; now between ‘the law of my mind’ and ‘the law of sin which dwells in my members’; and now between ‘the law of the Spirit of life’ and ‘the law of sin and death’. It is summed up in 7:23, where Ί of myself’ am said to be the servant of two masters. With my mind Ί . . . serve the law of God’, I love it, and I want to keep it. But with my flesh, my old nature, ‘I serve the law of sin’. That is, if I am left to myself, even as a Christian, I am a helpless captive, the slave of sin, and unable to keep the law. But (8:4) God has acted so that ‘the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’. In other words, the Holy Spirit enables me to do what I cannot do by myself, even as a Christian. And that is Paul’s message for the law-abiding believer.
I think it is important to notice the burden of the apostle’s message to each of these three types. To the legalist, who is in bondage to the law, Paul emphasizes the death of Christ as the means by which we have been delivered from that bondage. To the antinomian, who blames the law, he emphasizes the flesh as being the prime cause of the law’s failure, and of our consequent sin and death. To the law-abiding believer, who loves the law and longs to obey it, he emphasizes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as the God-appointed means by which alone the righteousness of the law can be fulfilled in us.
I am going to entitle verses 1 -6 ‘the hardness of the law’, because this is what the legalist fears, regarding the law as his lord and ignorant of his emancipation; verses 7-13 ‘the weakness of the law’, because this is what the antinomian does not understand, imagining that its weakness is inherent, when actually it is in us who cannot keep it; and η : 14—8: \ ‘the righteousness of the law’, because this is what is fulfilled in the Spirit-led and law-abiding believer.
I. THE HARDNESS OF THE LAW (7:1-6)
Do you not know, brethren—for l am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only during his life? Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
Verse 1 begins: ‘Do you not know, brethren . . . that the law is binding on a person only during his life?’ The word for ‘binding’ is rendered in Mark 10:42 to ‘lord it over’, in the phrase ‘those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them’. It speaks of the imperious authority or lordship of the law over those who are subject to it.
The principle that Paul states in this first verse is one which, he says, would immediately be acknowledged by anybody who knows anything about law, whether Jewish or Roman. It is that the law is intended for the benefit of men on earth. It binds a person only during his lifetime. As an example of this general principle he chooses marriage, which is contracted between two persons until death parts them. Actually, the way Paul applies the principle of verse 1 presupposes an extension of it, namely that a law concerning a relationship between two people is binding only while both are alive. If either party dies, it ceases to operate. Thus in marriage, when one partner dies the other is free to marry again. Verses 2 and 3: 'a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.’ In the one case a married woman lives with another man and ‘incurs the stigma of adultery’ (J. B. Phillips), while in the other case she marries another man and she is not an adulteress. What makes the difference? Why does one remarriage make her an adulteress and the other not? The answer is simple: the second marriage is legitimate only if death has terminated the first. Death has released her from the law governing her former relationship, and so set her free to marry again.
After the principle (verse 1), and the illustration (verses 2, 3), comes the application (verses 4-6). It is this: just as death terminates a marriage, so death has terminated our bondage to the law. Verse 4: ‘Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.'
It was ‘the body of Christ' that died on the cross, but through faith-union with Him we have shared His death. Having been united with Jesus Christ through faith, it may be said that we ‘have died . . . through the body of Christ’. And since we have died, death has removed us altogether out of that sphere in which the law exercises lordship. The dread penalty for sin prescribed by the law has been borne—by Christ in our stead, or by us in Christ. Therefore, because the demands of the law have been met in the death of Christ, we are no longer under the law, but under grace.
In the husband-wife relationship it is the death of one which renders the other free to marry again. In the Christian life it is our own death (in Christ) which sets us free to marry again. We who were bound to the law have now died to it. So now we are free to be joined to Christ, with whom we not only died but rose again, in order to ‘bear fruit for God’. In the old life the fruit we bore was for death (verse 5); in the new we bear fruit for God.
What is plain in these verses so far is that becoming a Christian involves a complete change of relationship and allegiance. At the end of chapter 6 it was two slaveries set in contrast; here the Christian’s position is like two marriages, the first being dissolved by death, and so permitting the second to take place. We were, so to speak, ‘married’ to the law (our obligation to obey it was as binding as a marriage contract). But now we have been set free to marry Christ. It is a most remarkable illustration of the marriage metaphor, to indicate the reality and intimacy of our union with Jesus Christ.
That brings us to verses 5 and 6. Having contrasted the two marriages and their results (verse 4), Paul now contrasts the place of the law in them. Verse 5 describes our pre-conversion life (‘while we were living in the flesh’), and verse 6 our new life (‘but now . . .’). In the old life, the law was the means of arousing our sinful passions, and they led to our death. ‘But now’, verse 6, ‘we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive.'
Notice in verse 5 the complex of words which belong together—‘flesh’, ‘sin’, ‘law’ and ‘death’. Our sinful passions originate in the flesh, are aroused by the law, and end in death. But now we have been liberated from the law and its provocation.
If we are discharged from the law, what next? Take careful note of this: emancipation from the law does not mean that we are now free to do as we please. Far from it. Freedom from the law spells not licence but another kind of bondage: ‘so that’ (verse 6) we are slaves. We are indeed free from the law—but free to serve, not to sin. And our new Christian slavery is (literally) not in oldness of letter but in newness of spirit. This is the familiar contrast (found e.g. in 2 Corinthians 3:6) between the old covenant and the new, between the law and the gospel. The old was a ‘letter’, an external code written upon stone tablets outside us; the new covenant, the gospel, is ‘spirit’, for the Holy Spirit writes God’s law in our heart. This is our new bondage.
Before we leave this section we must look again at the question, Is the law still binding upon the Christian? The answer to that is, No and Yes! ‘No’ in the sense that our acceptance before God does not depend on it. Christ in His death fully met the demands of the law, so that we are delivered from it. It no longer has any claims on us. It is no longer our lord. ‘Yes’ in the sense that our new life is still a bondage. We still 'serve’. We are still slaves, although discharged from the law. But the motive and the means of our service have altered.
Why do we serve? Not because the law is our master and we have to, but because Christ is our husband and we want to. Not because obedience to the law leads to salvation, but because salvation leads to obedience to the law. The law says, Do this and you will live. The gospel says, You live, so do this. The motive has changed.
How do we serve? Not in oldness of letter, but in newness of spirit. That is, not by obedience to an external code, but by surrender to an indwelling Spirit.
Let me sum up this argument. We are still slaves. The Christian life is still a bondage of a kind. But the Master we serve is Christ, not the law. And the power by which we serve is the Spirit, not the letter. The Christian life is serving the risen Christ in the power of His indwelling Spirit.
II. THE WEAKNESS OF THE LAW (7:7-13)
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, l should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.’ But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me?
By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might he shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
Verse 5 seemed to make the law responsible for our sins and our death: ‘While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death/ The apostle now defends the law against such an unjust criticism to which he may have seemed to lay himself open. Notice his questions in verses 7 and 13: ‘What then shall we say? That the law is sin?' (verse 7). And ‘Did that which is good (i.e. the law), then, bring death to me?’ (verse 13). In other words, is God’s law responsible for my sin and my death? Let us look at these two questions and at Paul’s answers to them.
a. Is the law sin? (verses 7-12)
If we need to be delivered from the law in order to bear fruit for God (verse 4), does not this imply that the law is responsible for our sinful behaviour? Paul’s answer is a categorical ‘By no means!’ And he proceeds in the next verses to show the relation between the law and sin. The law, he says, does not create sin. If you are a sinner it is not the law’s fault. The relation between sin and the law is threefold.
1. The law reveals sin. Verse 7 : ‘If it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ’ So too Romans 3:20, ‘through the law comes knowledge of sin’.
2. The law provokes sin. It not only exposes it, but actually stimulates and arouses it, as we have already seen in verse 5. Verse 8: ‘Sin, finding opportunity (the word is used of a military base, a spring-board for offensive operations) in the commandment, wrought in me . . This is what the law does. It actually provokes us to sin. Now the way in which the law does this is a matter of everyday experience. Anyone who has driven on one of the motorways will be familiar with the peremptory traffic sign that says, ‘Reduce speed now’. And if I am not greatly mistaken the instinctive reaction of many of us is, ‘Why should I?’ That is the reaction that a law provokes in us. Or again, when we read a prohibition on a door, ‘Do not enter', ‘Private’, we immediately want to do what is forbidden us, because the commands and prohibitions of the law provoke us to the opposite. That is what Paul found with the tenth commandment prohibiting covetousness: ‘Sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness.’ So the law exposes sin and it provokes sin.
3. The law condemns sin. Verse 8b: ‘Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died (that is, I fell under the judgment of the law); the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me.’ Here the apostle may well be relating his own early experiences, how in childhood he was ignorant of the law’s demands, and so ‘in the absence of law’ (neb) was spiritually alive; but how later, maybe as a boy of thirteen (the age when a Jewish boy took on him the obligations of the law and became a ‘son of the commandment’), in his own graphic words (verse 9, neb), ‘when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died’ (under the law’s judgment). Or he may be summarizing the history of man, how God gave the law to reveal sin, even to provoke and increase it, and so to condemn it. At all events, the very law that promised life (saying, 'Do this and you shall live’— see Lv. 18:5) brought spiritual death to Paul, and, using the commandment as a base of operations, both deceived and killed him.
These, then, are the three devastating results of the law: it reveals, provokes and condemns sin. But the law is not in itself sinful. Nor does the law in itself cause men to sin. It is 'sin’, our sinful nature, which uses the law to make men sin, and so to bring them to ruin. In itself (verse 12) ‘the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good'.
The teaching of this paragraph is well summarized by the question of verse 7 and the affirmation of verse 12. Verse 7 : ‘What then shall we say? That the law is sin?’ Verse 12: ‘the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.’ This brings us to the second question.
b. Does the law then bring death? (verse 13)
It is quite true (verse 10) that ‘the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me’. But is Paul saying that the law itself is guilty of offering life with one hand and inflicting death with the other? ‘Are we to say then’ (neb), ‘that this good thing was the death of me?’ Is it the law's fault that I die? And again the apostle's answer is an emphatic ‘By no means!' Verse 13: ‘It was sin, working death in me through what is good . . Indeed, the ‘exceeding sinful' (av) nature of sin is seen in the way it exploits a good thing (the law) for evil purposes. But we cannot blame the law for this; we must blame sin.
Let me illustrate this. Take a criminal today. A man is caught red-handed perpetrating some crime, some breach of the law. What happens? He is arrested, brought to trial, found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment. As he languishes in his prison cell, he is tempted to blame the law for his imprisonment. And it is quite true that the law has convicted him and the law has sentenced him. But in reality he has no one to blame but himself and his own criminal offence. He is in prison because he has committed a crime. Of course the law has condemned him for doing it, but he cannot blame the law; he has only himself to blame.
Thus Paul exonerates the law. The law exposes sin, provokes sin, condemns sin. But the law cannot be held responsible for either our sins or our death. To quote Professor F. F. Bruce, 'The villain of the piece is sin’—that is, indwelling sin, the flesh, which is aroused by the law. These antinomians who say our whole problem is the law are quite wrong. Our real problem is sin, not the law. It is thus indwelling sin, our 'flesh’ or fallen nature, which explains the weakness of the law to save us. The law cannot save us, for the simple reason that we cannot keep it; and we cannot keep it because of indwelling sin.
III. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LAW
(7:14—8:4)
We know that the law is spiritual; hut I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil 1 do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For l delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
We have considered the hardness of the law, its unbending demands, from which we have been delivered by the death of Christ, so that we are not under the law any longer. We have considered the weakness of the law, which lies not in itself, but in us, in our flesh. We come next to the righteousness of the law, because now we are to see how the Christian believer first delights in the law in his mind, and then fulfils its righteousness by the power of the indwelling Spirit.
a. The question of Paul’s experience
Before we look at the text in detail, there is an important question to be considered. Let me approach it this way. There are two changes in the section beginning with verse 14.
1. A change of tense in the verbs. In the previous paragraph (7-13) the verbs are predominantly in the past tense (aorists), and they thus appear to refer to
Paul’s past experience. Thus, ‘sin sprang to life and I died’ (verse 9, neb); ‘sin . . . killed me’ (verse 11); ‘Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin . . .’ (verse 13). These are all verbs in the past tense. But now from verse 14 onwards the verbs are in the present tense, and thus seem to refer to Paul’s present experience. Verse 14: Ί am carnal.’ Verse 15: ‘ I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’—present tenses.
2. A change of situation. In the previous paragraph Paul describes how sin sprang to life through the law and killed him; it finished him off. But in this paragraph he describes his fierce continuing conflict with sin, in which he refuses to admit defeat, but is an active combatant.
Now these two changes seem at once to suggest that what Paul is portraying in verses 7-13 is his pre-Christian life, and in verses 14®. his life as a Christian. Some commentators (from the Greek Fathers onwards) have rejected this view. They cannot conceive how a believer, let alone a mature believer like Paul, could describe his Christian experience in terms of such a fierce conflict—and indeed a conflict which he finds he cannot win. They argue therefore that this paragraph must describe Paul’s pre-Christian conflict.
Yet there are two traits in the apostle Paul’s self-portrait in this paragraph (14ff.) which led the Reformers, and have led most reformed commentators since, to be sure that these verses are actually the self-portrait of Paul the Christian. The first is his opinion of himself, and the second is his opinion of the law.
1. Paul’s opinion of himself. What is this? Verse 18: Ί know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh.’ Verse 24: ‘Wretched man that I am! ’ —and he cries out for deliverance. Now who but a mature Christian believer thinks and talks of himself like that? The unbeliever is characterized by self-righteousness, and would never acknowledge himself a 'miserable creature’, which is the neb version of ‘wretched man’. The immature believer is characterized by self-confidence, and does not ask who is going to deliver him. Only the mature believer reaches the place both of self-disgust and of self-despair. It is he who recognizes with limpid clarity that in his flesh dwells nothing good. It is he who acknowledges his wretchedness and appeals with faith for deliverance. So much for Paul’s opinion of himself.
2. Paul’s opinion of the law. First of all, he calls God’s law ‘good’ (verse 16) and ‘the good I want’ (verse 19). That is, he acknowledges that the law is good in itself, and he longs with all his being to obey it. Again, in verse 22, he says, Ί delight in the law of God, in my inmost self.’ This is certainly not the language of the unbeliever. The unbeliever’s attitude to the law is given us in Romans 8:7, namely that ‘the flesh’, our unredeemed human nature, ‘is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot’. Here, however, far from being hostile to the law of God, Paul says that he actually loves it. Paul’s hostility is reserved for what is evil. It is this he says he hates, while what is good he loves and delights in.
From these two points we deduce that the speaker in the last part of chapter 7 is a mature, believing Christian; a believer who has been given a clear and a proper view both of his own sinful flesh and of God’s holy law. His position is that in his flesh there is nothing good, whereas God’s law is the good that he desires. This is summed up in verse 14: ‘The law is spiritual; but I am carnal.’ We need to note the fact that ‘the law is spiritual’. We must never set the law and the Spirit in opposition to one another as if they were contradictory. They are not. The Holy Spirit writes the law in our hearts. What Paul contrasts with the indwelling Spirit is not the law itself but ‘the letter’, that is, the law viewed merely as an external code. Now let me repeat that anyone who acknowledges the spirituality of God’s law and his own natural carnality is a Christian of some maturity.
If this is so, however, why does Paul describe his experience in terms not only of conflict but of defeat? Why does he say not only that he wants to do good, but that he does not and cannot do it? The simple answer, surely, is this. In the previous paragraph (verses 7-13) he has shown that as an unbeliever he could not keep the law. In this paragraph (verses 14ff.) he shows that even as a Christian believer by himself he still cannot keep the law. He can recognize the goodness of the law, he can delight in the law, and he can long to keep the law, none of which was possible to him as an unbeliever. But the flesh, his fallen nature, which was his undoing before his conversion, leading him to sin and death, is still his undoing after his conversion—unless the power of the Holy Spirit subdues it (which is what he comes to later, in chapter 8). Indeed, an honest and humble acknowledgment of the hopeless evil of our flesh, even after the new birth, is the first step to holiness. To speak quite plainly, some of us are not leading holy lives for the simple reason that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. No man ever cries aloud for deliverance who has not seen his own wretchedness. In other words, the only way to arrive at faith in the power of the Holy Spirit is along the road of self-despair. No device exists to settle this issue for good. The power and subtlety of the flesh are such that we dare not relax one moment. The only hope is unremitting vigilance and dependence.
So both paragraphs, 7-13 and 14ff, emphasize that (whether we are believers or unbelievers, regenerate or unregenerate) indwelling sin, the flesh, is our big problem and is responsible for the weakness of the law to help us.
b. The text in detail
Verses 14-20. It is helpful to see that in this paragraph Paul says precisely the same thing twice over, no doubt for emphasis; first in 14-17, and then again in 18-20. These two sections are almost exactly parallel. So it may be best to look at them together.
1. Each section begins with a frank acknowledgment of our condition, of what we are in ourselves and of what we know ourselves to be.
Verse 14: 'We know that’, although the law is spiritual, Ί am carnal (the flesh still indwelling me and exerting its influence upon me), sold under sin' (neb, 'the purchased slave of sin'). That is what I am, even as a Christian, in myself. The flesh dwells in me and assaults me, and I am no match for it. Rather, in myself, and if left to myself, I am its slave, its reluctant, resistant slave.
Verse 18 also begins with what I 'know’. Ί know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh.'
This, then, is what I know (because the Holy Spirit has shown it me) about myself: that the flesh still dwells in me, that no good dwells in it, and that, even as a Christian, if I am left to myself it brings me into captivity.
2. Each section continues with a vivid description of the resulting conflict.
Verse 15, neb : Ί do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine.' That is, I do things against my will, things to which as a Christian I do not give my consent. The neb goes on, 'for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest’.
Verses 18 and 19 reinforce this: Ί can will what is right (and I do will it), but (in myself) I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.'
Let me stress again that this is the conflict of a Christian man, who knows the will of God, loves it, wants it, yearns to do it, but who finds that still by himself he cannot do it. His whole being (his mind and his will) is set upon the will of God and the law of God. He longs to do good. He hates to do evil—hates it with a holy hatred. And if he does sin, it is against his mind, his will, his consent; it is against the whole tenor of his life. Herein lies the conflict of the Christian.
3. Each section ends with a conclusion (couched in identical words) about the cause of a Christian’s personal, moral inability apart from the Holy Spirit.
In verses 16 and 17 Paul says, ‘Now if I do what I do not want’—if my situation can be summed up in the words Ί want, but I can’t’—then clearly it is not the law’s fault if I misbehave, because Ί agree that the law is good’. It is not even Ί that do it’, because I do not do it voluntarily, but rather against my will; ‘it is . . . sin which dwells within me’.
In verse 20 he gives the same conclusion, ‘Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.’
We may summarize the teaching of these two parallel sections thus. First comes our condition: I know myself to be indwelt by the flesh, which contains no good but (if I am left to myself) holds me captive. Next the resulting conflict: I cannot do what I want, but I do do what I detest. Finally the conclusion : if my actions are thus against my will, the cause is sin which dwells within me. All along, what Paul is seeking to do is to expose the no-goodness of our flesh, to convince us that only the Holy Spirit can deliver us.
Verses 21-25. In this section the apostle takes the argument a stage further. He has been giving a plain description of his condition and conflict. Now he expresses it as a philosophy, in terms of ‘laws’ or principles at work in his situation. The general principle is set out in verse 21: Ί find’—this is a sort of philosophical conclusion from my experience—Ί find it to be a law (or, “I discover this principle”, neb) that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.’
This general principle is now (in verses 22, 23) broken down into two separate laws, principles or forces which are in opposition to each other. Verse 23 names them as ‘the law of my mind’ and ‘the law of sin’. ‘The law of my mind’ is that Ί delight in the law of God, in my inmost self’ (verse 22). ‘The law of sin’ is a principle or power ‘in my members’ which Paul describes as being ‘at war with the law of my mind and making me captive’ to itself. ‘The law of my mind’ is a force ‘in my inmost self, my mind and my will, that simply loves the law of God. But ‘the law of sin’ is a force ‘in my members’, in my flesh, which hates the law of God. This is the philosophy of Christian experience. Our experience is that the good we want we do not do, while the evil we hate we do; the philosophy behind it is two laws in conflict, the law of my mind and the law of sin. Or, more simply, my mind and my flesh, my renewed mind and my old, unrenewed, unrenewable flesh. This conflict is a real, bitter, unremitting battle in every Christian’s experience: his mind simply delighting in God’s law and longing to do it, but his flesh hostile to it, and refusing to submit to it (as in 8:7).
It is this conflict which leads us repeatedly to utter two apparently contradictory cries: ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me . . .?’ (verse 24) and Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (verse 25). The first is a cry of despair, the second a cry of triumph. But both are the ejaculations of a mature believer, who bemoans his inner corruption of nature and longs for deliverance, and who exults in God through Jesus Christ as the one and only Deliverer. Moreover, the deliverance he longs for is not just self-control here and now; it is also deliverance ‘out of (as the Greek preposition means) this body of death’, when he dies, and especially when he is clothed with a new and glorious body on the last day.
I do not myself believe that the Christian ever, in this life, passes for good and all out of the one cry into the other, out of Romans 7 into Romans 8, out of despair into victory.1 No. He is always crying for deliverance, and he is always exulting in his Deliverer. Whenever we are made conscious of the desires and depravity of our fallen nature, and of the irreconcilable conflict between our mind and our flesh, we long to be rid of indwelling sin and corruption, and we cry out: ‘Wretched man that I am (for that is what we are and always will be)! Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ But then at once we answer our own anguished question, and with a cry of triumph thank our God for His mighty salvation. For we know that He is the One who can subdue our flesh now by His Spirit; and He is the One who on the last day, at the resurrection, will give us a new body, set free from indwelling sin.
Now in the last verse (25) Paul sums up with beautiful lucidity the double servitude to which the Christian is liable; with my mind—with all my heart and soul, we might say—I serve the law of God, but with my flesh—until, and unless, it is subdued by the Spirit —I serve the law of sin. But no man can serve two masters simultaneously, and whether I serve the law of God or the law of sin depends on whether my mind or my flesh is in control. So the question now is, How can the mind gain ascendency over the flesh?
That brings us to the beginning of chapter 8 and to the gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit who in the latter part of chapter 7, although never far away in the background, has not once been named. This is in fact the progression of thought from Romans 7 to Romans 8. The conflict at the end of Romans 7 is between my mind and my flesh. The conflict at the beginning of Romans 8 is between the Holy Spirit and the flesh, the Holy Spirit coming to my rescue, allying Himself with my mind, the renewed mind He has given me, and subduing my flesh. It is the same conflict, but it is differently viewed and it has a different outcome. According to 7:22, the believer delights in the law of God, but in himself cannot carry it out because of indwelling sin. According to 8:4, however, he not only delights in, but actually fulfils the law of God because of the indwelling Spirit.
Chapter 8:1-4. In verses 1 and 2 the apostle steps back and surveys the whole Christian landscape. He portrays together the two great blessings of salvation which we have if we are ‘in Christ Jesus’. Ίn Christ Jesus’ (verse 1) there is no condemnation. Ίn Christ Jesus’ (verse 2) ‘the law of the Spirit of life (or the life-giving Spirit) . . . has set me free from the law of sin and death.’ In other words, salvation belongs to those who are in Christ Jesus (who are vitally united to Him by faith), and salvation is deliverance from both the condemnation and the bondage of sin. Further, when the apostle writes that there is no condemnation for those in Christ because the Spirit has set us free from the law, he is not making our sanctification the cause or ground of our justification; but rather its necessary fruit. It is as if he is saying: ‘We know that in Christ we are no longer condemned but justified, because in Christ we have also been set free.' The two belong inseparably together.
But how is this twofold salvation made available to us? Verses 3 and 4 tell us. In verses 1 and 2 the scope of salvation is stated: no condemnation, no bondage. In verses 3 and 4 the way of salvation is unfolded: we are told how God effects it.
Indeed, the first thing to note is that God has done it. Notice verse 3: ‘God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.' We have seen all along that the law’s impotence is not intrinsic. Its weakness is not in itself, but in us, because of our flesh. Because of our flesh, we cannot keep the law. And because we cannot keep it, it cannot save us. It can neither justify nor sanctify us. So ‘God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do’.
How has He done it? He has done it through His Son (verse 3) and through His Spirit (already named in verse 2, and now again in verse 4). Through the death of His incarnate Son God justifies us; through the power of His indwelling Spirit He sanctifies us.
We must now look more closely at this marvellous ministry of God’s Son and of God’s Spirit.
First (verse 3), God sent His Son, ‘his own Son’. ‘In the likeness of sinful flesh’ is a significant expression. Not ‘in sinful flesh’, because the flesh of Jesus was sinless. Nor ‘in the likeness of flesh’, because the flesh of Jesus was real. But ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’, because the flesh of Jesus was both sinless and real. God also sent His Son ‘for sin’. The words (peri hamartias) may be general, indicating that He came to deal with the problem of sin. Or they may be specific and refer to His death ‘as a sin offering’ (rsv margin), since they frequently bear this sense in the Greek Old Testament.
The way in which Jesus Christ died ‘as a sacrifice for sin’ (neb) is explained in the remarkable phrase which follows: ‘he (God) condemned sin in the flesh.’ That is, in the flesh of Jesus—real flesh, sinless flesh, yet made sin with our sins (2 Cor. 5:21)—God condemned sin. He condemned our sins in the sinless flesh of His Son who bore them.
And why did He do it? Not just that we might be justified (although indeed ‘there is . . . now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ precisely because in Christ Jesus God condemned sin), but rather (verse 4) ‘in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’. This verse is of very great importance for our understanding of the Christian doctrine of holiness. It teaches us at least three major truths:
1. That holiness is the purpose of Christ’s incarnation and death. We are specifically told that God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (the incarnation) and condemned sin in the flesh (the atonement), in order that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. God condemned sin in Christ, so that holiness might appear in us.
2. That holiness consists in the righteousness, the ‘just requirement’, of the law. This is what it is called in verse 4, which is therefore one of the most uncomfortable verses in the New Testament for the ‘New Moralists’ who say that the category of law is abolished for the Christian. Far from being abolished, God sent His own Son for this purpose, that its righteousness might be 'fulfilled’ in us. Thus law-obedience, which is not and cannot be the ground of our justification, is seen to be its fruit.
3. That holiness is the work of the Holy Spirit, for 'the just requirement of the law’ is fulfilled in us only when we 'walk . . . according to the Spirit’. We have seen that nearly the whole of Romans 7 is devoted to the theme that we cannot keep the law because of 'the flesh’. Therefore, the only way to fulfil the law is to 'walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’, by His power and under His control.
These three vital truths about Christian holiness tell us why we should be holy, what holiness is, and how it may be attained. The reason for holiness is the coming and the death of Christ. The nature of holiness is the righteousness of the law, conformity to God’s will expressed in His law. And the means of holiness is the power of the Holy Spirit.
In summing up, we must glance back over this long and intricate passage which we have been studying (7:1—8:4). I entitled it ‘Freedom from the law’. I might equally have called it 'Fulfilment of the law’, because the passage teaches both truths. It began (7:1-6) with a statement of the Christian’s discharge from the law (verse 6, 'now we are discharged from the law’). It ends (8:4) with a statement of the Christian’s obligation to keep it ('that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us’). Moreover, both our discharge and our obligation are attributed to the death of Christ (7:4; 8:3, 4)! 'But this is an intolerable contradiction’, someone may say. 'How can I be at the same time both free from the law and obliged to keep it?’ The paradox is not hard to resolve. We are set free from the law as a way of acceptance, but obliged to keep it as a way of holiness. It is as a ground of justification that the law no longer binds us (for our acceptance we are ‘not under law but under grace'). But as a standard of conduct the law is still binding, and we seek to fulfil it, as we walk according to the Spirit. To understand what this means, and how to walk according to the Spirit, we must now study the next section of Romans 8.
Notes for Chapter 3
1 Those who believe that God’s purpose for us is to exchange the conflict of Romans 7 for the victory of Romans 8 must find the last sentence of chapter 7 a big stumbling-block, for immediately after the cry of exultant thanksgiving Paul reverts to the conflict and concludes with a summary of it: ‘So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.’