Romans 7

     It would be wise, I think, to forget about all the arguments as to whether Romans 7 is about the pre-conversion Paul, or the post-conversion Paul.  It is about the difference between Law and grace.  Paul’s argument flows out of all he has previously said and into chapter 8 as a continuum.  Read 4:13-15.  He makes the same point here and in chapter 8.          

7:1-6.  Paul speaks to believers who know the law (i.e., Jewish Christians) thusly:  The Law could not justify you when you were “married” to it, and it cannot sanctify you now that you are united to Christ.  Why live as though the Law were still your husband, when you and the Law died to each other on the cross with Christ?  You are now joined to him, and raised to new life in him.   The issue of this union should be bearing fruit for God (4). 

     Note the past tense in v.5, “…we were in the flesh.”  By sight we still are, but by faith we are no longer.  We are alive in the Spirit, joined to our true Husband, serving God in newness of life, and not in the oldness of the letter (6; cf. 1 Tim.1:8 ff.).

     7:7-8.  Paul illustrates the point he made in v.5.  The Law actually aggravates sin.  Trying to use the Law as a remedy for sin is doomed from the beginning.  It is a stirrer of the stagnant pond of depravity, so that the muck of sin which lies at the bottom of human nature might be made known.  And it must be made known.  Otherwise, we will never seek God’s mercy, and his true remedy for sin in Christ Jesus.  “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us”  (1 John 1:8). The Law is good.  Sin does not reside in the Law, but in us.  The commandment serves as a constant reminder of the lust within, and like a pressure cooker, the restraint causes the temperature to burn all the hotter.

     Paul’s use of the tenth commandment to illustrate this effect of the Law was not meant as a confession of a personal weakness.  Restraining evil is not the same as being good.  The tenth commandment neither demands nor forbids any outward action, but forbids a bad desire of the heart.  All actions forbidden by the other commandments are preceded by some kind of evil passion of the heart, which is just what the tenth commandment forbids.  This proves that the whole Law is spiritual (14).  This is also what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (e.g., see Mt.5:21-22, 27-28).

     7:9-14.  In Adam, Paul was once alive apart from the Law (cf.5:12-13).  But the Law, as with Adam, which was meant to save him, proved to result in Paul’s death.  The good commandment was used as an opportunity for sin to deceive and kill him (11).  Though the Law is holy and righteous and good, the Law can only expose the tragedy of sin, and can never cure it.  It brings arrest, conviction, and death. 

     7:14-25.  We would be in despair were we under Law.  We are in a spiritual battle with what remains of the old man.  “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”  (Mark 14:38; Gal.5:17-18).  The new man in us joyfully concurs with the Law (22).  We who live by faith are not at war with the Law, but with the sin that so easily besets us, the law of sin in our members.  Is there hope of freedom from this wretched condition?  “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (25).