Romans 7:25

I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord,.... There is a different reading of this passage; some copies read, and so the Vulgate Latin version, thus, "the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

I thank God; who hath already delivered me from the slavery and dominion of sin; so that though it wars against me, I still resist it, and, by the strength of Christ, do frequently overcome it, . So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin: this is the conclusion the apostle maketh of this experimental discourse. q.d. So far as I am renewed, I yield obedience to the law of God; and so far as I am unregenerate, I obey the dictates and suggestions of the law of sin. Objection. No man can serve two contrary masters. Answer. The apostle did not serve these two in the same part, or the same renewed faculty; nor did he do it at the same time, ordinarily; and for the most part he served the law of God, though sometimes, through the power of temptation and indwelling corruption, he was enforced, against his will, to serve the law of sin.

25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. Ver. 25. I thank God, &c.] The Grecians being delivered but from bodily servitude by Flaminius the Roman general, called him their saviour; and so rang out, Saviour, saviour, that the fowls in the air fell down dead with the cry. How much greater cause have we to magnify the grace of Christ, &c. So then, with the mind, &c.] The stars by their proper motion are carried from the west to the east; and yet by the motion of obedience unto the first mover, they pass along from the east unto the west. The waters by their natural course follow the centre of the earth, yet yielding to the moon, they are subject to her motions; so are saints to God’ s holy will, though corrupt nature repine and resist. Grace is the prince in the regenerate soul. The will may sometimes be drawn away from the king and fly to the enemy, as David fled to Achish for fear; yet when he went abroad to fight, he killed the Philistines in the south country, and he carried still a loyal heart to his king; so in this case. A ravished woman vexari potest, violari non potest, may be vexed, but not violated. We read of one that (when she could not otherwise help herself) thrust her shears into the belly of an unclean bishop that would have forced her.

(25) It has been released. It is Jesus our Lord to whom the thanks and praise are due. Though without His intervention there can only be a divided service. The mere human self serves with the mind the law of God, with the flesh the law of sin. I myself.—Apart from and in opposition to the help which I derive from Christ. The abrupt and pregnant style by which, instead of answering the question, “Where is deliverance to come from?” the Apostle simply returns thanks for the deliverance that has actually been vouchsafed to him, is thoroughly in harmony with the impassioned personal character of the whole passage. These are not abstract questions to be decided in abstract terms, but they are matters of intimate personal experience. The deliverance wrought by Christ is apparently here that of sanctification rather than of justification. It is from the domination of the body, from the impulses of sense, that the Christian is freed, and that is done when he is crucified to them with Christ.

Verse 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ] Instead of ευχαριστωτῳΘεῳ, I thank God, several excellent MSS., with the Vulgate, some copies of the Itala, and several of the fathers, read ἡχαριςτουΘεου, or τουΚυριου, the grace of God, or the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; this is an answer to the almost despairing question in the preceding verse. The whole, therefore, may be read thus: O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ANSWER-The grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus we find that a case of the kind described by the apostle in the preceding verses, whether it were his own, before he was brought to the knowledge of Christ, particularly during the three days that he was at Damascus, without being able to eat or drink, in deep penitential sorrow; or whether he personates a pharisaic yet conscientious Jew, deeply concerned for his salvation: I say, we find that such a case can be relieved by the Gospel of Christ only; or, in other words, that no scheme of redemption can be effectual to the salvation of any soul, whether Jew or Gentile, but that laid down in the Gospel of Christ. Let any or all means be used which human wisdom can devise, guilt will still continue uncancelled; and inbred sin will laugh them all to scorn, prevail over them, and finally triumph. And this is the very conclusion to which the apostle brings his argument in the following clause; which, like the rest of the chapter, has been most awfully abused, to favour anti-evangelical purposes. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God] That this clause contains the inference from the preceding train of argumentation appears evident, from the αραουν, therefore, with which the apostle introduces it. As if he had said: "To conclude, the sum of what I have advanced, concerning the power of sin in the carnal man, and the utter insufficiency of all human means and legal observances to pardon sin and expel the corruption of the heart, is this: that the very same person, the αυτοςεγω, the same I, while without the Gospel, under the killing power of the law, will find in himself two opposite principles, the one subscribing to and approving the law of God; and the other, notwithstanding, bringing him into captivity to sin: his inward man-his rational powers and conscience, will assent to the justice and propriety of the requisitions of the law; and yet, notwithstanding this, his fleshly appetites-the law in his members, will war against the law of his mind, and continue, till he receives the Gospel of Christ, to keep him in the galling captivity of sin and death." 1. THE strong expressions in this clause have led many to conclude that the apostle himself, in his regenerated state, is indisputably the person intended.

25. I thank God] Here first light is let in; the light of hope. The “redemption of the body” shall come. “He who raised up Christ” shall make the “mortal body” immortally sinless, and so complete the rescue and the bliss of the whole man. See Romans 8:11.through Jesus Christ our Lord] “In whom shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). He is the meritorious Cause, and the sacred Pledge.So then, &c.] The Gr. order is So then I myself with the mind indeed do bondservice to the law of God, but with the flesh to the law of sin. On “the mind” here, see note just above, last but one on Romans 7:23. On “the law of sin” see second note ibidem.—“To do bondservice to the law of God,” and that with “the mind,” can only describe the state of things when “the mind” is “renewed” (Romans 12:2).—What is the reference of “I myself”? (for so we must render, and not, as with some translators, “The same I”). In strict grammar it belongs to both clauses; to the service with the mind and to that with the flesh. But remembering how St. Paul has recently dwelt on the Ego as “willing” to obey the will of God, it seems best to throw the emphasis, (as we certainly may do in practice,) on the first clause. Q. d., “In a certain sense, I am in bondage both to God and to sin; but my true self, my now regenerate ‘mind,’ is God’s bondservant; it is my ‘old man,’ my flesh, that serves sin.” The statement is thus nearly the same as that in Romans 7:17; Romans 7:20.The Apostle thus sums up and closes this profound description of the state of self, even when regenerate, in view of the full demand of the sacred Law. He speaks, let us note again, as one whose very light and progress in Divine life has given him an intense perception of sin as sin, and who therefore sees in the faintest deviation an extent of pain, failure, and bondage, which the soul before grace could not see in sin at all. He looks (Romans 7:25, init.) for complete future deliverance from this pain; but it is a real pain now. And he has described it mainly with the view of emphasizing both the holiness of the Law, and the fact that its function is, not to subdue sin, but to detect and condemn it. In the golden passages now to follow, he soon comes to the Agency which is to subdue it indeed. See further, Postscript, p. 268.

I thank God - That is, I thank God for effecting a deliverance to which I am myself incompetent. There is a way of rescue, and I trace it altogether to his mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ.

25. I thank… through Jesus Christ—Of course this verse declares that Christ was the deliverer from this carnal and deadly incubus.