10. God’s law and Christian discipleship
Romans 7 is well known to most Christian people because of the debate it has provoked about holiness. Who is the ‘wretched man’ of verse 24, who gives us a graphic account of his inner moral turmoil (15ff.), cries out for deliverance, and then immediately appears to thank God for it (25)? Is this person regenerate or unregenerate? And if the former, is he or she normal or abnormal, mature, immature or backsliding? The different schools of holiness teaching are obliged to come to terms with this chapter.
But it is never wise to bring to a passage of Scripture our own ready-made agenda, insisting that it answers our questions and addresses our concerns. For that is to dictate to Scripture instead of listening to it. We have to lay aside our presuppositions, so that we can conscientiously think ourselves back into the historical and cultural setting of the text. Then we shall be in a better position to let the author say what he does say and not force him to say what we want him to say. It is of course legitimate to seek secondary applications to contemporary questions, but only after the primary task of ‘grammatico-historical exegesis’ has been done with care.
If we come to Romans 7 in such a mood of meekness and receptivity, it becomes evident at once that Paul’s preoccupation is more historical than personal. He is not answering questions put to him in a Christian holiness conference, but rather struggling with the place of the law in God’s purpose. For the ‘law’ or the ‘commandment’ or the ‘written code’ is mentioned in every one of the chapter’s first fourteen verses, and some thirty-five times in the whole passage which runs from 7:1 to 8:4. What is the place of the law in Christian discipleship, now that Christ has come and introduced the new era?
Before coming to Romans 7, however, we need to ask what Paul has written so far about God’s purpose in giving the law. Paul’s reply is expressed in almost entirely uncomplimentary terms. To be sure, the person ‘who does these things will live by them’ in theory. But in practice no human being has ever succeeded in obeying the law. Therefore it can never be the way of salvation. Instead, the law reveals sin (3:20), condemns the sinner (3:19), defines sin as transgression (4:15; 5:13; cf. Gal. 3:19), ‘brings wrath’ (4:15) and was even ‘brought in so that the trespass might increase’ (5:20). As a result, God’s righteousness has been revealed in the gospel altogether ‘apart from the law’ (1:17; 3:21a), although the law helped to bear witness to it (1:2; 3:21b). And sinners are justified by God, not through obeying the law but through faith in Christ (3:27). Such faith upholds the law (3:31) by assigning to it its proper function. Abraham himself illustrated this principle, since the way he received God’s promise was ‘not through the law . . . but through the righteousness that comes by faith’ (4:13f.). This contrast shows that the whole gospel vocabulary of promise, grace and faith is incompatible with law.
So far, then, almost all Paul’s allusions to the law have been negative. The law reveals sin, not salvation; it brings wrath, not grace. And these references culminate in what to Jewish ears must have appeared his shocking statement that Christian believers are ‘not under the law, but under grace’ (6:14f.). It is the springboard into Romans 7, which begins with similar statements that we have ‘died to the law’ (4) and so have been ‘released from the law’ (6). How dare the apostle be so dismissive of God’s law? We have only to read Psalms 19 and 119 to sense the enormous pleasure which godly Jews derived from the law. It was to them ‘more precious than gold, than much pure gold’, and ‘sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb’. How then could the apostle denigrate it as promoting sin rather than righteousness, and death rather than life? How could he proclaim freedom from it? What did he mean that we are ‘no longer under the law’? Was he declaring it to be abolished? His words must have sounded like a clear call to antinomianism.
Moreover, Paul’s teaching is by no means of purely historical interest. For the advocates of the so-called ‘new morality’, which was first proclaimed in the 1960s, are still around today. They maintain that the category of ‘law’ has been abolished for Christians and that the only absolute left is the commandment of love. There are also contemporary holiness teachers who declare similarly that the law has no place in the Christian life. In support of their position they quote both ‘Christ is the culmination of the law’ (10:4) and ‘you are not under the law’ (6:14f.), as if these statements meant that the moral law has been withdrawn. What Paul writes in Romans has direct relevance to this debate.
Whenever we come across a negative statement, however, we cannot interpret it until we discern with what it is being contrasted. For example, if you were to say to me, ‘You’re not a man’ without adding any positive counterpart, you could be insulting me (meaning ‘but you’re a baby or a pig or a demon’), or you could be flattering me (meaning ‘but you’re an angel’). Similarly, on my return from a recent visit to the USA, I remarked to a friend, ‘I haven’t had a bath for a month.’ Before he had time to express disgust at my lack of personal hygiene, however, I added, ‘But I’ve had a shower every day.’
What, then, did Paul intend when he described Christians as being ‘not under the law’? He used this expression in two different letters and contexts, and so in two different senses. He also clarified the meaning of each by the contrasting phrases he added. In Romans 6:14f. he wrote that ‘you are not under the law, but under grace’. Here the contrast between law and grace indicates that he is referring to the way of justification, which is not by our obedience to the law, but by God’s sheer mercy alone. In Galatians 5:18, however, he wrote that ‘if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law’. Here the contrast between law and Spirit indicates that he is referring to the way of sanctification, which is not by our struggling to keep the law, but by the power of the indwelling Spirit. So for justification we are not under law but under grace; for sanctification we are not under law but led by the Spirit.
It is in these two senses that we have been ‘freed’ or ‘released’ from the law. But this does not mean that we have been divorced from it altogether, in the sense that it has no more claims on us of any kind, or that we have no more obligations to it. On the contrary, the moral law remains a revelation of God’s will which he still expects his people to ‘fulfil’ by living lives of righteousness and love (8:4; 13:8, 10). This is what the Reformers called ‘the third use of the law’.
We are now ready to summarize three possible attitudes to the law, the first two of which Paul rejects, and the third of which he commends. We might call them ‘legalism’, ‘antinomianism’ and ‘law-fulfilling freedom’. Legalists are ‘under the law’ and in bondage to it. They imagine that their relationship to God depends on their obedience to the law, and they are seeking to be both justified and sanctified by it. But they are crushed by the law’s inability to save them. Antinomians go to the opposite extreme. Blaming the law for their problems, they reject it altogether, and claim to be rid of all obligation to its demands. They have turned liberty into licence. Law-fulfilling free people preserve the balance. They rejoice both in their freedom from the law for justification and sanctification, and in their freedom to fulfil it. They delight in the law as the revelation of God’s will (7:22), but recognize that the power to fulfil it is not in the law but in the Spirit. Thus legalists fear the law and are in bondage to it. Antinomians hate the law and repudiate it. Law-abiding free people love the law and fulfil it.
Directly or indirectly Paul refers to these three types in Romans 7. He does not portray or address them directly one by one, but their shadowy forms are discernible throughout. In verses 1–6 he asserts that the law no longer has ‘authority’ over us. By dying to it with Christ we have been released from it, and we now belong to Christ instead. This is his message for legalists. In verses 7–13 he defends the law against the unjust criticism that it causes both sin and death. He attributes these instead to our fallen nature. The law itself is good (12–13). This is his message to antinomians. In verses 14–25 Paul describes the inner conflict of those who are still living under the regime of the law. If left to ourselves in our fallenness we cannot keep God’s law, even though we delight in it. Nor can the law rescue us. But God has done what the law could not do, by giving us his Spirit (8:3–4). This is the experience of those who find their freedom in fulfilling the law.
These three paragraphs of Romans 7 may appropriately be entitled ‘Release from the law’ (1–6), in order to serve God in the Spirit; ‘A defence of the law’ (7–13), against the accusation that it causes sin and death; and ‘The weakness of the law’ (14–25), because it can neither justify nor sanctify sinners.
1. Release from the law: a marriage metaphor (7:1–6)
Paul begins this paragraph by addressing his readers affectionately as brothers and sisters and by asking them for the third time: Do you not know . . . ? Having questioned their understanding both of the meaning of baptism (6:3) and of the implication of slavery (6:16), he now asks if they know the limited authority of the law. There can be no doubt that the dominant theme of the paragraph concerns ‘release from the law’, since he uses this expression three times (2, 3, 6), and refers to the law in every verse. He assumes that they do know, since he adds in parenthesis that he is speaking to those who know the law, the Jewish law certainly and probably the Roman law as well.
a. The legal principle (7:1)
Paul lays down the principle which he assumes his readers know: the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives. The word for ‘has authority over’ is kyrieuō, which is rendered ‘lord it over’ in Mark 10:42. It expresses the imperious authority of law over those who are subject to it. But this authority is limited to our lifetime. The one thing which invalidates it is death. Death brings release from all contractual obligations involving the dead person. If death supervenes, relationships established and protected by law are automatically terminated. So law is for life; death cancels it. Paul states this as a legal principle, universally accepted and unchallengeable.
b. The domestic illustration (7:2–3)
As an example of this general principle Paul chooses marriage, and in applying it extends it. Death changes not only the obligations of the dead person (it is obvious that these are cancelled), but also the obligations of those survivors who had a contract with the dead person. For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive [or ‘until death parts them’], but if her husband dies, she is released from her marriage vows, indeed from the law that binds her to him (2). The contrast is clear: the law binds her, but his death frees her. Moreover, her release is complete. The strong verb used (katargeō) can mean to ‘annul’ or ‘destroy’. ‘The apostle is saying that the woman’s status as a wife has been abolished, completely done away. She is no longer a wife.’
So then, Paul now draws a conclusion, if she [a married woman] has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress [she ‘incurs the stigma of adultery’, jbp]. But if her husband dies, and she remarries, she is not an adulteress (3), because she has been released from that law which had previously bound her. What has made the difference? How is it that one remarriage would make her an adulteress, while the other would not? The answer lies of course in her husband’s death. The second marriage is morally legitimate because death has terminated the first. Only death can secure freedom from the marriage law and therefore the right to remarry. These references to death, freedom from law and remarriage already hint at the application which Paul is about to make.
c. The theological application (7:4)
Paul turns from human laws to the law of God. It too claims lordship over us while we live. Indeed, although without explicitly saying so, the apostle implies that we were previously married to the law and so under its authority. But as death terminates a marriage contract and permits remarriage, so we also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that we might remarry or belong to another (4a).
Two questions confront us about this death which we are said to have died. First, how did it happen? It took place through the body of Christ. It is impossible to believe that there is any allusion here to the church as Christ’s body. No, it was his physical body which died on the cross. But through our personal union with Christ we have shared in his death (as the apostle has argued in Romans 6), and we may therefore be said to have died ‘through’ his body. Second, what does it mean that we died to the law? The expression reminds us of the similar statement that we ‘died to sin’ (6:2). Indeed, they appear to mean the same thing. For if to die to sin means to bear its penalty, which is death, it is the law which prescribes this penalty. Therefore to die to sin and to die to the law are identical. Both signify that through participation in the death of Christ the law’s curse or condemnation on sin has been taken away. ‘The death to sin . . . is necessarily also a death to the law’s condemnation.’
There are, in fact, many parallels between Romans 6 (freedom from sin) and Romans 7 (freedom from the law). As we died to sin (6:2), so we died to the law (7:4). As we died to sin by union with Christ’s death (6:3), so we died to the law through the body of Christ (7:4). As we have been justified and freed from sin (6:7, 18), so we have been released from the law (7:6). As we have also shared in Christ’s resurrection (6:4–5), so we belong to him who was raised from the dead (7:4). As we now live in newness of life (6:4), so we now serve in newness of Spirit (7:6). As the fruit we reap leads to holiness (6:22), so we bear fruit to God (7:4).
The purposes of our dying with Christ to the law are now spelled out. The immediate purpose is that we might belong to another, namely, to him who was raised from the dead (4b). Every reader notices that Paul’s metaphor has undergone a shift with this statement. In the marriage metaphor the husband dies and the wife remarries; in the reality it is the wife (formerly married to the law) who does both the dying and the remarrying. Some commentators appear to enjoy poking fun at Paul for his supposed literary ineptitude. Nobody is more scathing than C. H. Dodd:
The illustration . . . is confused from the outset . . . Paul . . . lacks the gift for sustained illustration of ideas through concrete images . . . It is probably a defect of imagination. We cannot help contrasting his laboured and blundering allegories with the masterly parables of Jesus . . . Paul flounders among the images he has tried to evoke . . . We are relieved when he tires of his unmanageable puppets, and talks about real things.
But this kind of sarcasm is unfair, as is also the comparison with Jesus. We must allow Paul to be himself and do what he is intending to do. He is not writing a parable. But neither is he developing an allegory in which every detail of the picture corresponds exactly to something in the reality. His purpose is admirably served by the essence of his illustration, which is that death has secured our release from the law and our remarriage to Christ.
If the immediate purpose of our dying with Christ to the law is that we may now belong to Christ, the ultimate purpose is that we might bear fruit for God (4c). Some commentators believe that Paul is continuing his marriage metaphor, and that ‘fruit’ refers to the children of the marriage. By it Paul ‘unmistakably’ completes his metaphor, says Godet, and he accuses those who reject it as being guilty of ‘prudery’. Martyn Lloyd-Jones goes further and elaborates the parallel. He refers to Ephesians 5:25ff. and to the union of the church with Christ, which he portrays as mysterious, submissive, permanent, privileged and intimate. He goes on: ‘“Fruit” means children, the fruit of the marriage, the offspring . . . that are to be born.’ What is meant? It is ‘the fruit of holiness’, the fruit of the Spirit. He concludes that the law was impotent to do this. ‘But we are now married to One who has the strength and the virility and the potency to produce children even out of us’, that is to say, a life which is lived ‘to God’s glory and to God’s praise’.
Other commentators have been very dismissive of this construction. James Denney and Charles Cranfield have both used the word ‘grotesque’ in relation to it, and James Dunn declares that it is ‘neither necessary nor appropriate’. Although I do not personally feel quite so negative, I do want to register some criticisms. First, it pushes Paul’s metaphor into an allegory, which his explicit development of it does not encourage. Second, it gives a forced interpretation of ‘fruit’ (karpos) when the word is not used in this sense in the New Testament (in spite of God’s original command to be ‘fruitful’), when other words for ‘children’ could have been used, and when already in the context ‘fruit’ has been used for ‘outcome’ or ‘benefit’ (6:21f.). Third, it depicts the individual Christian as married to Christ, whereas it is the church which is Christ’s bride, as Israel was the Lord’s.
At all events, whether or not ‘fruit’ means ‘children’, all are agreed that the result of being released from the law and joined to Christ is holy living, not antinomian licence. For becoming a Christian involves a radical change of allegiance. At the end of chapter 6 our two slaveries were contrasted. At the beginning of chapter 7 it is our two marriages, death dissolving the first and so permitting the second. Both metaphors speak of our new freedom to serve, which is the topic to which Paul now comes.
d. The fundamental contrast (7:5–6)
In the further contrast which Paul now paints between our old and our new lives (when we were . . . But now, reminiscent of 6:20, 22), he is particularly careful to point out the place of the law in each. In our old life, when we were in the realm of the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law [provoked to rebellion, as Paul will explain in verses 8–12] were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death (5). But now, by dying to what once bound us, that is, the law, we have been released from the law so that, in consequence, far from being free to sin, we are free to serve (as slaves). And our slavery to Christ is in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code (6). Or literally and more briefly, it is ‘in newness of Spirit and not in oldness of letter’.
The distinction Paul has in mind in this neat saying is neither between the so-called ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’ of the law, nor between the literal and the allegorical interpretations of Scripture, but between the old covenant which was one of ‘letter’ (gramma), an external code written on stone tablets, and the new covenant which is one of ‘Spirit’ (pneuma), for the new age is essentially the age of the Spirit, in which the Holy Spirit writes God’s law in our hearts.
We are now in a position to sum up the contrast contained in verses 5–6. It is a contrast between the two ages, the two covenants or the two dispensations, and so, since we have been personally transferred from the old to the new, between our pre- and post-conversion lives. In our old life we were dominated by that terrible quartet – flesh, law, sin and death (5). But in our new life, having been released from the law, we are slaves of God through the power of the Spirit (6). The contrasts are striking. We were ‘in the flesh’, but are now ‘in the Spirit’. We were held by the law, but are now released from it. We bore fruit for death (5), but now bear fruit for God (4). And what has caused this release from the old life and this introduction to the new? Answer: it is that radical double event called death and resurrection. We died to the law through the death of Christ (4a); now we belong to Christ, having been raised from the dead with him (4b).
So we return to the question whether the law is still binding on Christians, and whether we are expected still to obey it. Yes and no! Yes, in the sense that Christian freedom is freedom to serve, not freedom to sin. We are still slaves (6), slaves of God and of righteousness (6:18, 22). But also no, because the motives and means of our service have completely changed. Why do we serve? Not because obedience leads to salvation, but because salvation leads to obedience. And how do we serve? We serve in the new way of the Spirit (6). For the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the distinguishing characteristic of the new age, and so of the new life in Christ.
For our justification, then, we are ‘not under the law, but under grace’ (6:14f.), and for our sanctification we serve ‘not in oldness of letter but in newness of Spirit’ (6, literally). We are still slaves, but the one 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 the Spirit.
Having reached this point, Paul could have gone straight to Romans 8, which sets out in more detail the meaning of life in the Spirit. But he knew that his insistence on liberation from the law would have been so provocative to his Jewish readers that he must take time to anticipate and answer their objections. He does this in verses 7–25, which are really an interlude between Romans 7:6 and 8:1. He does not mention the Holy Spirit again throughout the rest of chapter 7.
2. A defence of the law: a past experience (7:7–13)
We have seen how negative most of Paul’s references to the law have been in the letter’s early chapters. Furthermore, verses 1–6 of Romans 7 celebrate our release from the law. These verses contain three strong ways of expressing this. First, we died to the law through Christ’s body in order that we might belong to him (4). That is, it is impossible to give our allegiance to the law and to Christ simultaneously. Just as a first marriage must be ended by death before a remarriage is permissible, so death to the law must come before commitment to Christ. Second, the law aroused our sinful passions, so that we ‘bore fruit for death’ (5). And this sequence of law-sin-death will have given Paul’s readers the distinct impression that he thought the law responsible for both. Third, we have now been released from the law in order to serve in the newness which the Holy Spirit brings (6). And this new Spirit-controlled life was impossible until we had received our release from the law.
All this is strong meat and strong language. The law is apparently characterized as barring marriage to Christ, arousing sin, causing death and impeding life in the Spirit, so that the sooner we gain freedom from it, the better. It must have sounded to some like full-blown antinomianism. Indeed, the Romans’ anticipated reaction prompts Paul to ask the ultimate antinomian questions: Is the law sinful? (7), and Did that which is good [the law] . . . become death to me? (13). That is, is the law responsible for both sin and death, and therefore so damaging in its influence that we should reject it altogether? Is that what Paul is teaching? To both questions Paul immediately responds with his emphatic negative: Certainly not! (7); By no means! (13).
We note that this is the second objection to his teaching to which Paul responds. The first was ‘Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? . . . Shall we sin because we are . . . under grace?’ (6:1, 15). The second is ‘Is the law sinful? . . . Did the law become death to me?’ (7:7, 13). The first is a question about grace: whether it encourages people to sin. The second is a question about law: whether it is the origin of sin and death. So the apostle defends both grace and law against his critics. In Romans 6 he has argued that grace does not encourage sin; on the contrary, it renders sin inadmissible, even inconceivable. In Romans 7 he now argues that the law does not create sin and death; on the contrary, it is our fallen human nature which is to blame for them.
More fully, in his treatment of the law (to which he has at last come) he performs a skilful balancing act. For he is neither wholly positive towards the law, nor wholly negative, but ambivalent. On the one hand, the law is indeed the law of God, the revelation of his righteous will. In itself it is holy, righteous, good and spiritual (12, 14). On the other hand, it is unable to save sinners, and its powerlessness is a major reason for every continuing inner conflict. This, then, is his double theme in the rest of the chapter: first our present section, ‘A defence of the law’ (7–13), followed by ‘The weakness of the law’ (14–25).
a. The identity of the ‘I’
As Paul develops his argument, we are immediately struck by the prominence of the personal pronoun. Both this paragraph (7–13) and the subsequent one (14–25) are full of the first person singular, ‘I’ and ‘me’. Indeed, the debate about Romans 7 is reduced in essence to an enquiry into the identity of this ‘I’.
Our first and natural reaction (confining ourselves now to verses 7–13) is that this is a page from Paul’s pre-conversion autobiography. What he writes seems too realistic and vivid to be either a purely rhetorical device or the impersonation of somebody else. At the same time, his references are not so personal as to apply to him exclusively. They are general enough to include others. Consequently, from the early Greek Church Fathers onwards, many commentators have interpreted Paul’s experiences as being not only autobiographical but also typical, representative either of human beings in general or of the Jewish people in particular. The options are, then, that ‘I’ in this paragraph is Paul, Adam or Israel. And the key question is how the four events of verse 9 apply to each: (a) Once I was alive apart from the law; (b) . . . the commandment came, (c) sin sprang to life (d) and I died.
If Paul is describing stages of his own experience, then two reconstructions are possible. The first is that he is referring to his boyhood. In childhood innocence he was alive apart from the law; ‘the commandment came’ at his bar mitzvah when aged thirteen, in which he became a ‘son of the commandment’ and assumed responsibility for his own behaviour; then with his ‘dawn of conscience’ sin sprang to life; and adolescent rebellion caused his separation from God. That is, he died. It is a plausible scenario, except that a Jewish boy, circumcised on the eighth day and brought up as ‘a Hebrew of Hebrews’, could hardly be described as being ‘apart from the law’. On the contrary, it will have been instilled into him almost from birth. Perhaps therefore we should understand ‘alive apart from the law’ as meaning that he had not yet come consciously under the law’s condemnation.
The second possible reconstruction is that Paul is referring to his pre-conversion life as a Pharisee. In this case he was ‘alive’ in his own estimation, and untroubled by the law, since in regard to legalistic righteousness he was ‘faultless’. In order to describe what happened then, he set his pre-law and post-law situations in dramatic contrast. Apart from law sin was dead and he was alive, but when the commandment came, ‘there was a complete reversal’, for sin sprang to life and he died (8b, 9a). It was the tenth commandment which opened his eyes to his inner sinfulness, and so brought him to conviction of sin and spiritual death. The main difficulties with this suggestion are that ‘alive apart from the law’ is not the most obvious description of self-righteousness, and that we have no independent evidence of a spiritual crisis in Paul before his Damascus road encounter with the risen Lord.
So is Paul’s ‘I’ in reality Adam? Although many ancient commentators have understood Paul’s experience as typical of human beings, it is modern scholars who have drawn out the parallels between verses 7–11 and Genesis 2 – 3, and so between Paul and Adam. Ernst Käsemann goes so far as to state that ‘the event depicted [in verses 9–11] can refer strictly only to Adam’, that ‘there is nothing in the passage which does not fit Adam’ and that ‘everything fits Adam alone’. James Dunn makes a more moderate evaluation, although he sees the reference to Adam in verse 9 as ‘all but inescapable’, especially in this sense: ‘before the commandment came, life; after the commandment, sin and death’. And John Ziesler identifies the same pattern in Romans 7:7–13 and Genesis 2 – 3, namely ‘innocence, command, transgression, death’.
We may go even further than this and detect six parallel stages in the history of Adam and Paul. First, Paul’s once . . . alive apart from the law could correspond to the age of innocence in paradise. Second, the commandment came could refer to God’s command to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden. Third, Paul’s statements that sin sprang to life and seized the opportunity afforded by the commandment (8) could mean that ‘sin (the serpent) was in the garden even before human beings, but had no opportunity of attacking them until the command “you shall not eat of it” . . . had been given’. Fourth, Paul’s complaint that sin had deceived him (11) recalls Eve’s complaint that the devil had deceived her. Fifth, Paul’s awakening to his sin was due to the prohibition of covetousness (7f.), while the sin of Adam and Eve was similarly one of false desire. Sixth, disobedience to God’s commandment brought death to both Paul (9, 11) and Adam. Thus the sequence of law-sin-death, so prominent in Romans, is also evident in Genesis.
These parallels are striking. At the same time, we could also draw up a list of points that do not match. Paul is certainly not quoting from the Genesis story, for the only verbal parallels are the words commandment, deceived and death. It is not even clear that Paul is consciously referring to Adam and Eve, since he does not mention them. The most we have the freedom to say is that the two biographies (Adam’s and Paul’s) ran parallel.
So is ‘I’ Israel? This alternative is attractively commended by Douglas Moo. He points out, first, that the law throughout Romans 7 is the law of Moses, Torah, so that a reference to Adam centuries previously would be an anachronism, even if ‘what is true of Israel under God’s law through Moses is true ipso facto of all people under “law”’. Second, he says, ‘the coming of the commandment’ (9) ‘is most naturally taken as a reference to the giving of the law at Sinai’, including the tenth commandment against covetousness. Third, he suggests that the sequence of verses 9–10 (life – commandment – sin – death) could be describing Israel’s history in a personal ‘vivid narrative style’.
At the same time, Dr Moo recognizes that only Adam and Eve before the fall could accurately be described as ‘alive apart from the law’; and that all others have been from birth ‘dead in your transgressions and sins’. Conversely, Israel’s pre-Sinai period could be styled ‘alive without the law’ only in the sense of 5:13 that ‘sin was in the world before the law was given’, but that ‘sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law’. Dr Moo concludes by reminding us that ‘the individual Jew had a lively sense of corporate identity with his people’s history’, as when at Passover he rehearsed Israel’s story as having been his own, so that Paul may well have been identifying himself with Israel in their experience of the law. In this case, ‘egō [I] is not Israel, but egō is Paul in solidarity with Israel’.
Most commentators are understandably reluctant, when considering the identity of the ‘I’ in verses 7–13, to be compelled to choose between Paul, Adam and Israel, and several combinations have been proposed. For example, John Ziesler suggests that Paul’s use of the tenth commandment prohibiting covetousness as a pattern of sin’s relation to the law ‘enables him . . . to make a fusion between the giving of the Law at Sinai and the giving of the command not to eat in the Garden of Eden’. Yet it would be impossible to eliminate the autobiographical element altogether. Perhaps, therefore, Paul is both telling his own story and universalizing it. In brief, his experience (the sequence of comparative innocence, law, sin and death), though uniquely his own, is also everybody’s, whether Adam’s in the garden, Israel’s at the mountain or, for that matter, ours today.
b. The law, sin and death
We return now to the text of verses 7–13, and to the two questions which Paul asks, namely whether he is teaching that the law is the cause of sin and death.
Question 1: Is the law sinful? (7–12).
Must the law be identified as in itself ‘sinful’ in the sense that it is responsible for creating sin? After his emphatic response (Certainly not!), the apostle begins to dig into the relations between the law and sin.
First, the law reveals sin (7). He has already written that ‘through the law we become conscious of our sin’ (3:20). Now he writes: Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law (7a). This probably means both that he had come to recognize the gravity of sin, because the law unmasks and exposes it as rebellion against God, and that he had been brought under conviction of sin by it. In his case it was the tenth commandment prohibiting covetousness which convicted him. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’ (7b).
Ever since Bishop Krister Stendahl first used the expression, it has been fashionable to speak of Paul before his conversion as having had a ‘robust conscience’, in contrast to the ‘introspective conscience’ of the West. The ground for this judgment is that he described himself when a Pharisee as having been ‘faultless’ in regard to righteousness under the law. But is this an adequate basis for declaring Paul’s pre-conversion conscience ‘robust’? The ‘righteousness based on the law’ in which he claimed to be blameless was surely an external conformity to the law. But covetousness (epithymia) is internal – a desire, a drive, a lust. Indeed it is a form of idolatry, because it puts the object of desire in the place of God. Paul could well have obeyed the other nine commandments in word and deed; but covetousness lurked hidden in his heart, as did other evil thoughts of which Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. So it was the prohibition of covetousness which opened Paul’s eyes to his own depravity. The rich young ruler was another case in point. Paul’s pre-conversion conscience, therefore, was neither ‘robust’ nor morbidly ‘introspective’. That is a false polarization. Instead, his conscience was performing its healthy, God-intended function, especially when confirmed by the Holy Spirit. That is, it was convicting him of sin.
Second, the law provokes sin (8). Having already said that ‘[our] sinful passions [were] aroused by the law’ (5), Paul now writes: But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead (8). Aphormē (‘opportunity’) was used of a military base, ‘the starting-point or base of operations for an expedition’ (BAGD), a springboard for further advance. So it is that sin establishes within us a base or foothold by means of the commandments which provoke us. This provocative power of the law is a matter of everyday experience. Ever since Adam and Eve, human beings have always been enticed by forbidden fruit. This strange phenomenon is called ‘contra-suggestibility’, ‘the propensity some people have to react negatively to any directive’. For example, a traffic signal says ‘stop’ or ‘slow down’, and our instinctive reaction is, ‘Why should I?’ Or we see on a door the notice ‘private – do not enter’, and we immediately want to cross the forbidden threshold.
Augustine gives us a good example of this perversity in his Confessions. One night at the age of sixteen, in company with ‘a gang of naughty adolescents’, he shook a pear tree and stole its fruit. His motive, he confesses, was not that he was hungry, for they threw the pears to the pigs. ‘I stole something which I had in plenty and of much better quality. My desire was to enjoy not what I sought by stealing, but merely the excitement of thieving and the doing of what was wrong.’ ‘Was it possible’, he asked himself, ‘to take pleasure in what was illicit for no reason other than that it was not allowed?’
In all such cases the real culprit is not the law but sin which is hostile to God’s law (8:7). Sin twists the function of the law from revealing, exposing and condemning sin into encouraging and even provoking it. We cannot blame the law for proclaiming God’s will.
Third, the law condemns sin (9–11). We have already looked at verse 9 and asked whether its four stages – I was alive apart from the law, the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died – are intended as a description of Paul, Adam or Israel. Our conclusion was that they refer primarily to Paul, but to Paul in solidarity with both the human and the Jewish race. Through this personal experience, he continues, I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death (10). In other words, the law condemned him. To explain this further, Paul first repeats the sentence from verse 8 that sin seized the opportunity afforded by the commandment (he mentions ‘the commandment’ six times in these verses because it is the role of the law which he is explaining), and adds that sin first deceived me (presumably by promising blessings it could not deliver) and then through the commandment put me to death (11). So all three of these verses (9, 10 and 11) speak of the commandment in relation to death; they anticipate verse 13, in which Paul will make clear that what caused his death was not the law but sin which exploited the law.
Here, then, are the three devastating effects of the law in relation to sin. It exposes, provokes and condemns sin. For ‘the power of sin is the law’. But the law is not in itself sinful, nor is it responsible for sin. Instead, it is sin itself, our sinful nature, which uses the law to cause us to sin and so to die. The law is exonerated; sin is to blame. The teaching of this paragraph is summarized neatly in the question of verse 7 and the affirmation of verse 12. Question: Is the law sinful? (7). Affirmation: So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good (12). That is, its requirements are both holy and righteous in themselves and also good (agathos), meaning ‘beneficent in their intention’. This brings Paul to the objectors’ other question about the law.
Question 2: Did the law become death to me? (13).
Certainly verse 10 seemed to implicate the law as being responsible for death, stating that the commandment which ‘was intended to bring life actually brought death’. So was the law guilty of offering life with one hand and inflicting death with the other? Did that which is good, then, become death to me?
The apostle answers this second question as he has answered the first, with his emphatic mē genoito, By no means! The law does not cause sin; it exposes and condemns it. And the law does not cause death; sin does. Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognised as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death [viz. the law], so that [this was God’s intention] through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful (13b). Indeed the extreme sinfulness of sin is seen precisely in the way it exploits a good thing (the law) for an evil purpose (death).
In answer to both questions, then, Paul has declared that the culprit is not the law (which has good intentions) but sin (which misuses the law). Verses 8 and 11 are closely parallel. Both describe sin as seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, either to produce sin (8) or to bring about death (11). Take a criminal today. A man is caught red-handed breaking the law. He is arrested, brought to trial, found guilty and sentenced to prison. The criminal cannot blame the law for his imprisonment. True, it is the law which convicted and sentenced him. But the criminal has no-one to blame but himself and his own criminal behaviour. In a similar way Paul exonerates the law. ‘The villain of the piece is sin’, indwelling sin which, because of its perversity, is aroused and provoked by the law. Those antinomians, who say that our whole problem is the law, are quite wrong. Our real problem is not the law, but sin. It is indwelling sin which accounts for the weakness of the law, as the apostle will go on to show in the next paragraph. The law cannot save us because we cannot keep it, and we cannot keep it because of indwelling sin.
3. The weakness of the law: an inner conflict (7:14–25)
Having defended the law in verses 7–13 as not responsible for sin or death, Paul now proceeds to show that nevertheless the law cannot be responsible for our holiness either. The law is good, but it is also weak. In itself it is holy, but it is unable to make us holy. This important truth lies behind the whole final section of Romans 7. It sets out the hopeless struggle of people who are still ‘under the law’. They are right to look to the law for moral guidance, but wrong to look to it for saving power.
As we turn to this passage, what immediately catches our attention is that, although he retains the personal ‘I’, Paul changes the tenses of all his verbs. He has been using the past tense: ‘Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came . . . I died’ (9). This was his past, pre-conversion experience. But now suddenly his verbs are in the present tense: ‘what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do’ (15). It sounds like his present, post-conversion experience. This would be the natural interpretation of the personal pronouns and the present tense. But is this really the Christian apostle who is describing his own continuing painful conflict between what he wants and what he does, between desire and performance? Or is he impersonating somebody else?
Before studying the text, it is essential to probe the identity of this ‘I’.
a. Is this ‘I’ regenerate or unregenerate?
The earliest Greek interpreters from Origen onwards rejected the view that Paul was referring to his own moral struggles. They could not accept that a regenerate and mature believer like Paul could describe himself as sold as a slave to sin (14), when he has just celebrated his transfer to another slavery which in reality is freedom (6:6, 17–18, 22). Could this Paul confess that he cannot do what he wants to do, while he does do what he hates (15)? Could it be Paul who cries out in great anguish and wretchedness for deliverance (24), apparently now forgetting the peace, joy, freedom and hope of the justified people of God which he has previously described (5:1ff.)? So these commentators concluded that Paul was impersonating an unregenerate person, at least until 8:1ff., and was describing the human being in Adam, not in Christ.
The Western church, however, followed Augustine, who first embraced the view of the Greek commentators but subsequently changed his mind, and then influenced the Protestant Reformers. Their view was that Paul is writing as a truly regenerate and even mature believer. Three characteristics of his self-portrait support this. The first concerns his opinion of himself. He calls himself unspiritual (14) and declares that good itself does not dwell in him, that is, in his sinful nature (18). But unbelievers are self-righteous and self-confident; only believers think and speak of themselves in self-disgust and self-despair.
Second, there is Paul’s attitude to the law. He not only calls it ‘holy, righteous and good’ (12), and spiritual (14), but also refers to it as the good I want to do (19). He states both that in my inner being I delight in God’s law (22) and that I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law (25). So here is someone who not only acknowledges the intrinsic goodness of the law, but who loves it, delights in it, longs for it, and considers himself enslaved to it. This is not the language of the unregenerate. For in the next chapter Paul declares that ‘the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God’ and that ‘it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so’ (8:7). Paul, however, feels love for the law, not enmity; and is submissive to it, not rebellious.
Third, consider Paul’s longing for final deliverance. His wretched cry (24) expresses desire rather than despair. He yearns to be rescued ‘from this body that is subject to death’, that is, out of this present state of sinfulness and mortality into a new and glorious resurrection body. Is not this an example of the inward ‘groaning’ of God’s people who are eagerly waiting for the redemption of their bodies (8:23)?
Such a person, deploring evil in his or her fallen nature, delighting in God’s law, and longing for the promised full and final salvation, seems to provide ample evidence of being regenerate and even mature.
Commentators still range themselves on both sides of this debate. A recent eloquent defence of the ‘unregenerate’ position is provided by Douglas Moo. He sees Paul as ‘looking back from his Christian understanding to the situation of himself, and other Jews like him living under the law of Moses’. What was decisive for him in reaching his conclusion was the contrast between Paul’s self-designation here as sin’s slave (14) and his statements in Romans 6 and 8 of Christian freedom.
Perhaps the most convincing statement of the alternative position has been provided by Charles Cranfield, who writes that these verses in Romans 7 ‘depict vividly the inner conflict characteristic of the true Christian, a conflict such as is possible only in the person in whom the Holy Spirit is active, and whose mind is being renewed under the discipline of the gospel’.
But neither position is wholly satisfactory. It would be as strange for unregenerate people to want ardently to do what is good as for regenerate people to confess that they cannot do it (15–19). How can a regenerate person, who has been set free from sin (6:18, 22; 8:2), describe him- or herself as still its slave and prisoner (7:14, 23–25)? And how can an unregenerate person, who is hostile to God’s law (8:7), declare that he or she delights in it (7:22)? There is an inherent contradiction here, which makes both extreme positions unacceptable.
Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones rejects both. Anyone who delights in God’s law ‘cannot possibly be . . . unregenerate’, and anyone who identifies as sin’s slave cannot possibly be a ‘fully regenerate’ person either. The wretched man’s cry is entirely incompatible with the profile of a Christian in the rest of the New Testament. He suggests, therefore, that the people Paul is describing are those who in times of revival are ‘brought under conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit’, feel themselves ‘utterly condemned’, struggle to keep the law in their own strength, but have not yet grasped the gospel. They are for a time ‘neither unregenerate nor regenerate’, for they experience ‘conviction but not conversion’. My hesitation in accepting this view is that what distinguishes the people Paul is depicting, indeed impersonating, is not the unusual situation of revival, but rather their peculiar relation to the law. Their anomaly was that, although they were Christian enough to delight in God’s law, they were not Christian enough to obey it. They were making the mistake of looking to the law, instead of to the Spirit, for their sanctification.
Professor Dunn believes that Paul is giving voice to his experience as a regenerate Christian, who had indeed died in Christ to sin and the law, but who has not yet fully shared in the resurrection. So he ‘is suspended (so uncomfortably) between the death and resurrection of Christ’. Consequently the believer’s ‘“I” is split, suspended between the epochs, divided between my belonging to Christ and my belonging to this age’. This is ‘the two-sidedness of the believer’s experience’, being simultaneously in Adam and in Christ, enslaved and liberated. And the piteous cry of verse 24 is for ‘escape from the tension of being suspended between the two ages’.
In response to this explanation, we must certainly agree that Christians are caught in the tension between the ‘already’ of the kingdom’s inauguration and the ‘not yet’ of its consummation, and that this tension can be painful. But is not the contrast between freedom and slavery too stark for them to be combined in the same person at the same time? Can we really maintain that all Christians are simultaneously ‘set free from sin’ and ‘sold as slaves to sin’? This is not a tension, but a contradiction.
If we go back to the beginning, and try to construct a profile of the ‘I’ of Romans 7:14–25, we come up against three stubborn facts which cannot be avoided. First, he is regenerate. If the unregenerate mind is hostile to God’s law and refuses to submit to it (8:7), then somebody who loves God’s law and longs to submit to it is regenerate. Second, although regenerate, he is not a normal, healthy, mature believer. For believers ‘used to be slaves to sin’ but now ‘have been set free from sin’ and have become slaves of God and righteousness (6:17ff.), whereas this believer declares himself to be still the slave and the prisoner of sin (14, 23). It is true that conflict between flesh and Spirit is normal Christian experience, and Reformed commentators have tended to identify Romans 7:14ff. with Galatians 5:16ff. Thus Calvin writes in his comment on verse 15: ‘This is the Christian warfare between flesh and Spirit, of which Paul speaks in Gal. 5:17.’ But is it? Galatians 5 promises victory now to those who walk in the Spirit; Romans 7, however, while expressing assurance of ultimate deliverance (25), describes only unremitting defeat.
Third, this individual appears to know nothing, either in understanding or in experience, of the Holy Spirit. Many commentators have paid insufficient attention to what Bishop Handley Moule called ‘this absolute and eloquent silence’ in Romans 7 about the Holy Spirit. He is mentioned only in verse 6. Since that verse characterizes the Christian era as the age of the Spirit, we would have expected this chapter to be full of the Spirit. Instead, Romans 7 is full of the law (mentioned, with its synonyms, thirty-one times). It is Romans 8 which is full of the Spirit (mentioned twenty-one times) and which calls the indwelling of the Spirit the authenticating mark of belonging to Christ (8:9). If then we are looking for a description of the normal Christian life we will find it in Romans 8; Romans 7, with its concentration on the law and its omission of the Spirit, cannot be held to describe Christian normality.
To sum up, the three significant features of the person portrayed in Romans 7:14–25 are that he or she loves the law (and therefore is regenerate), is still a slave of sin (and therefore is not a liberated Christian) and knows nothing of the Holy Spirit (and therefore is not a New Testament believer). Who then is this extraordinary person?
If we approach the question from the perspective of ‘salvation history’, that is, of the story of God’s unfolding purpose, the ‘I’ seems to be an Old Testament believer, an Israelite who is living under the law, including even the disciples of Jesus before Pentecost and probably many Jewish Christian contemporaries of Paul. Such people were regenerate. Old Testament believers were almost ecstatic about the law. ‘Blessed is the one . . . whose delight is in the law of the Lord.’ The Lord’s precepts give both ‘joy to the heart’ and ‘light to the eyes’. ‘I delight in your commands because I love them.’ ‘Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.’ This is the language of born-again believers.
But these same Old Testament believers who loved the law lacked the Spirit. And the penitential psalms bear witness to their inability to keep the law they loved. They were born of the Spirit, but not indwelt by the Spirit. He came upon special people to anoint them for special tasks. But the prospect of the Spirit’s continuous indwelling belonged to the messianic age. ‘I will put my Spirit in you,’ God promised through Ezekiel. And Jesus confirmed this: ‘He lives with you and will be in you.’ It seems accurate, therefore, to describe pre-Pentecost believers in terms of ‘love for the law but lack of the Spirit’. And even after Pentecost it appears that many Jewish Christians took time to adjust to the transition from the old age to the new. To be sure, they loved the law, but they were also still ‘under’ it. Even those who had grasped that they were ‘not under the law, but under grace’ for justification had not all grasped that they should also be ‘not under the law, but under the Spirit’ for sanctification. They had not yet come out of the Old Testament into the New, or exchanged ‘the old way of the written code’ for ‘the new way of the Spirit’ (7:6).
Hence their painful struggle, their humiliating defeat. They were relying on the law, and had not yet come to terms with its weakness. In order to emphasize this, Paul identifies with that stage of his own pilgrimage. He proclaims the impotence of the law by dramatizing it in the vivid terms of personal experience. He describes what happens to anybody who tries to live according to the law instead of the gospel, according to the flesh instead of the Spirit. The resulting defeat is not the law’s fault, for the law is good, although weak. The culprit is sin living in me (17, 20), the power of indwelling sin which the law is powerless to control. Not until Romans 8:9ff. will the apostle come to the indwelling Spirit as alone able to subdue indwelling sin. Before that, however, he will refer specifically to the law as ‘weakened by the flesh’, and will declare that God himself has done what the sin-weakened law could not do. He sent his Son to die for our sins in order that the law’s requirement might be fulfilled in us, provided that we live ‘not . . . according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ (8:3–4). Only when the gospel has replaced the law, and the Holy Spirit the written code, can defeat be replaced by victory.
If the ‘wretched man’ of verse 24 is typical of many Jewish Christians of Paul’s day, regenerated but not liberated, under the law and not yet in or under the Spirit, does Romans 7 have any application to us today? Or must we discard it as having historical interest only but no contemporary relevance? I want to suggest that there is both a wrong and a right way to apply this passage to ourselves. The wrong way is to regard it as a pattern of normal Christian experience, so that we all have to pass ‘through Romans 7 into Romans 8’. This would create a two-stage stereotype of Christian initiation, in which the Holy Spirit first regenerates us and only later indwells us, and in which defeat is the necessary prelude to victory. But that was a once-for-all, Old Testament–New Testament, ‘salvation-history’ development. God does not intend it to be repeated in everybody today. For we live on this side of Pentecost, so that the indwelling of the Spirit is the birthright and hallmark of all who belong to Christ (8:9).
The right way of applying Romans 7 – 8 is to recognize that some churchgoers today might be termed ‘Old Testament Christians’. The contradiction implied in this expression indicates what an anomaly they are. They show signs of new birth in their love for the church and the Bible, yet their religion is law, not gospel; flesh, not Spirit; the ‘oldness’ of slavery to rules and regulations, not the ‘newness’ of freedom through Jesus Christ. They are like Lazarus when he first emerged from the tomb, alive but still bound hand and foot. They need to add freedom to their life.
As we now turn to the text (14–25), it divides itself naturally into two paragraphs (14–20 and 21–25), both of which open with a positive reference to the law: We know that the law is spiritual (14), and in my inner being I delight in God’s law (22). The tragedy is, however, that the writer (or rather the half-saved person Paul is impersonating) cannot keep this law. Nor can it keep (or save) him. So both paragraphs set out the weakness of the law, which is attributed to sin.
b. The law and the ‘flesh’ in believers (7:14–20)
In this paragraph the apostle writes almost exactly the same things twice, presumably for emphasis, first in verses 14–17 and then in verses 18–20. It may therefore be helpful if we consider them together. Each of the two sections begins, continues and ends in the same way.
First, each begins with a frank acknowledgment of innate sinfulness. It is a question of self-knowledge: We know (14) and I know (18). And in both cases the self-knowledge concerns the flesh (sarx). Although the law is spiritual, the writer himself is unspiritual, ‘fleshly’ (sarkinos), still possessing and being oppressed by his twisted, self-centred nature (sarx), as a result of which he can also describe himself as sold as a slave to sin (14). Literally translated, the expression would be ‘sold under sin’. But because the verb pipraskō was used of selling slaves, and because of the preposition ‘under’ (suggesting the slave-master’s authority over his slaves), it seems reasonable to add the word ‘slave’. We have already noted the difficulty of reconciling this admitted slavery to sin with the freedom from sin, and slavery to God and righteousness, which Paul claimed for Christians in the previous chapter (6:18, 22). The continuing slavery to sin is easier to understand if the ‘I’ is a believer who is still under the law.
The corresponding statement of verse 18a is this: I know that good itself does not live in me, that is, in my sinful nature (sarx). This cannot be interpreted absolutely, meaning that there is nothing at all in fallen human beings which can be labelled ‘good’, since God’s image in which we are still made, although defaced, has not been destroyed, and since Jesus himself spoke of the possibility of even pagans doing good. Since the person Paul is describing goes on in the second part of the verse to say that he has the desire to do what is good (18b), it seems likely that the ‘nothing good’ of the first part of the verse alludes to his inability to turn the desire into action. It also means that everything ‘good’ in human beings is tainted with evil.
Those who are still under the law, therefore, although (being regenerate) they love it, yet (being also sarkinos, fallen) are enslaved, and so incapable of turning good desires into good deeds.
Second, each of the two sections of this paragraph continues with a vivid description of the resulting conflict (15 and 18b–19). After confessing that he does not altogether understand his own actions (15a), and that he has desires for good which he cannot carry out (18b), the writer summarizes his inward struggle in negative and positive counterparts. On the one hand, what I want to do I do not do, and on the other, what I hate I do (15b). Similarly, I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing (19). He is conscious of a divided ‘I’. For there is an ‘I’ which wants the good and hates the evil, and there is an ‘I’ which acts perversely, doing what is hated and not doing what is wanted. The conflict is between desire and performance; the will is there, but the ability is not.
Surely this is the conflict of regenerate people who know, love, choose and long for God’s law, but find that they cannot do it by themselves. Their whole being (especially their mind and will) is set upon God’s law. They want to obey it. And when they sin, it is against their reason, their desire, their consent. But the law cannot help them. Only the power of the indwelling Spirit could change things; and that will come later.
Third, each section of this paragraph ends by saying (in almost identical words) that indwelling sin is responsible for the failures and defeats of the person under the law whom Paul is impersonating (16f. and 20). Both verses contain a premise and a conclusion. The premise is stated in the phrase if I do what I do not want to do (16a, repeated in 20), drawing attention to the radical difference between will and deed. Then the first conclusion is I agree that the law is good (16b) and the second is that it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me (17, repeated in 20). Who, then, is to blame for the good I do not do and the evil I do? This is what Paul makes clear. It is not the law, for he declares its holiness and goodness three times (12, 14, 16). Besides, in wanting so ardently to do good and avoid evil, he is thereby endorsing and approving the law. So the law is not to blame. But neither, Paul goes on, am I myself responsible, the authentic ‘I’. For when I do evil I do not do it voluntarily. On the contrary, I act against my better judgment, my will and my consent. It is rather the sarx, sin living in me, the false, the fallen, the counterfeit ‘I’. The real I, ‘I myself’, is the ‘I’ which loves and wants the good, and hates the evil, for that is its essential orientation. Therefore the ‘I’ which does the opposite (doing what I hate and not doing what I want) is not the real or the genuine ‘I’, but rather a usurper, namely ‘sin living in me’ (17, 20), or sarx (18). In other words, the law is neither responsible for our sinning, nor capable of saving us. It has been fatally weakened by the sarx.
c. The double reality in believers under the law (7:21–25)
Having given a graphic description of inward conflict, as he identifies with believers under the law, Paul now summarizes the situation in terms of their double reality, even though this is not the complete story, since still the Holy Spirit is not yet included in it. He describes this double reality four times in four different ways, as the two egos, the two laws, the two cries and the two slaveries.
First, there are two egos: So I find this law [‘I discover this principle’, reb] at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me (21). The contrast between the ‘I’ who wants the good and the ‘I’ beside whom the evil lies is more obvious in the Greek sentence by reason of the repetition of emoi, meaning ‘in me’ or ‘by me’. We might paraphrase it: ‘When in me there is a desire to do good, then by me evil is close at hand.’ Thus the evil and the good are both present simultaneously, for they are both part of a fallen yet regenerate personality.
Second, there are two laws: for in my inner being [that is, in the real regenerate me] I delight in God’s law (22). It is the object of my love and the source of my joy. This inner delight in the law is also called the law of my mind (23), because my renewed mind approves and endorses God’s law (cf. 16). But I see in addition another law, a very different law, which is at work in me. This Paul calls the law of sin which is continuously waging war against the law of my mind and making me its prisoner (23). Thus the characteristic of ‘the law of my mind’ is that it operates ‘in my inner being’ and ‘delights in God’s law’, whereas the characteristic of ‘the law of sin’ is that it fights against the law of my mind and takes me captive. Once again, this is the condition of the person who is still under the law; it is the Holy Spirit who is missing.
Third, there are two cries from the heart. One is What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? (24). The other is Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (25a). The former is not so much ‘a heart-rending cry from the depths of despair’ as a cry of longing, which ends in a question mark, while the latter is a cry of confidence and thanksgiving, which ends in an exclamation mark. Yet both come from the same man, who is a regenerate believer, who laments his corruption, who yearns for the final deliverance at the resurrection (indeed, ‘groans’ in waiting for it, 8:23), who knows the impotence of the law to rescue him, and who exults in God through Christ as the only Saviour, although again the Holy Spirit is not yet introduced. The two cries are almost simultaneous, or at least the second is an immediate response to the first. It anticipates the declaration of Romans 8:3–4 that God has done through his Son and Spirit what the law was powerless to do.
Fourth, there are two slaveries. So then, Paul concludes, I myself [autos egō, the authentic, regenerate I] in my mind am a slave to God’s law, for I know it and love it and want it; but in my sinful nature [in my sarx, my false and fallen self, uncontrolled by the Spirit] I am a slave to the law of sin (25b), on account of my inability by myself to keep it. The conflict is between my renewed mind and my unrenewed sarx. The conflict in Galatians is different because there it is the Spirit who subdues the sarx.
Those who think that the ‘I’ of Romans 7 is an unregenerate unbeliever, who reaches the depths of wretchedness and despair in crying out for rescue, and who then immediately announces his salvation in the second cry which counters and cancels his first, find verse 25b an impossible anticlimax. It is embarrassing to the point of being intolerable, since it expresses a continuing slavery to the law of sin. The only way they can find to solve their problem is to do violence to the text (though with no manuscript support whatever) and to change the order of the verses, putting verse 25b before the cry of verse 24.
But verse 25b stands stubbornly there in all the manuscripts, and we have no freedom to erase it or move it. Moreover, it comes as an appropriate conclusion if the whole passage describes the continuing conflict within Old Testament believers. The two egos, two laws, two cries and two slaveries together constitute the double reality of people who are indeed regenerate but who are still living under the law. Indwelling sin masters them; they have not yet found the indwelling of the Spirit. Nor has Paul yet referred to it.
When we are seeking a reasonable application of Romans 7 to ourselves today, we are likely to find verses 4–6 to be crucial. For these verses set the two orders or ages and covenants or testaments over against each other in sharp contrast as the old way and the new way. Both are called ‘service’, but the old was characterized by ‘letter’ (a written code), while the new is characterized by ‘Spirit’ (his indwelling presence). In the old order we were married to the law and controlled by the flesh, and we bore fruit for death, whereas as members of the new order we are married to the risen Christ and liberated from the law, and we bear fruit for God. We need then to keep a watch on ourselves and others, in case we should ever slip back from the new order into the old, from a person to a system, from freedom to slavery, from the indwelling Spirit to an external code, from Christ to the law. God’s purpose is not that we should be Old Testament Christians, regenerate indeed but living in slavery to the law and in bondage to indwelling sin. It is rather that we should be New Testament Christians who, having died and risen with Christ, are living in the freedom of the indwelling Spirit.