In Romans 7 Paul has discussed the dominion of law: how that so long as man lives he is under its dominion (Romans 7:1). By his illustration (which he identified as “the law of the husband”), he showed that the only way man becomes free from the Law dominion is to become dead to it. He then recorded the great principle that “we are dead to the law by the body of Christ that we should be joined to another, even to him who hath been raised from the dead” (Romans 7:4). These words were intended for Jewish brethren. The Gentiles were never under the Law of Moses to be freed from its dominion.
Paul remarked that while the Law was just, holy, and good, it was through the law that knowledge of sin came to him (Romans 7:7). The impulses and desires of which Paul wrote (coveting, Romans 7:7) were among the needs the physical body has: food, rest, etc. Those needs can be filled legitimately, but those desires can be focused on fulfillment through unlawful measures and, when fulfilled, we sin, separating ourselves from God.
There was a time in our lives when we were “alive” spiritually. Paul described that time when he wrote: “I was alive apart from the law once but when the commandment came, sin revived (sprang to life) and I died” (Romans 7:9). We are innocent and free from sin when we are born, but as we grow there comes a time in our normal lives when we recognize that certain deeds which we have done are sinful, and thereby having done them we have separated ourselves from God.
In verses 11-24 Paul describes this state of man. Some think Paul was describing his present state, but that was not the case. He described himself as he was in the past before he became a Christian. There is a warfare in man between the desire to do good, but also desire to gratify our desires by sinful means. Paul wrote, “We know that the law is good, but I am carnal, sold under sin” (Romans 7:14). Such was not the state in which he was born; such was his state when sin had accomplished its end in his personal life. He had sinned. He wrote, “For that which I do I know not; for not what I would, that do I practice, but what I hate, I do.” The sinner does not always realize what he is doing; i.e. the consequences of his deeds. He may recognize the deed but not the actual nature of it. Jesus prayed for those who crucified Him, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” They certainly knew they had nailed a man to the cross, but they did not realize just who that man was — the Son of God. The good struggles with the bad: “For not what I would, that I do” — the good side of man doesn’t want to violate God’s law, to displease Him, but the natural desires become focused on its sinful desire and overrules the good desires of the man. In this state Paul hated what he practiced.
Verse 22 thus describes the frustrations of the inner man: “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.” Such helplessness and despair burst forth with the exclamation, “Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). These words reek with the despair of the sinner who does not know God.
However, Paul did know the Lord and he had a ready answer to his plaintive question. He wrote, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I of myself, serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin” (Romans 7:25). Let none suppose that one can serve God with his heart while his body pursue its own desires. Paul did not teach that. The desires of the flesh must be subject to the will of God.
There is a division in the text at this point (a division made by men) dividing the material which follows in another chapter. That division was made right in the middle of a conclusion the apostle had made. He added, “There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2).
Jim McDonald