Notes of Readings by F. W. G.: Romans 7

This is the necessary completion of Chap. 5. We find here the connection between sin and the law. People would say the strength of righteousness is the law. The apostle says it is the strength of sin. Paul takes up the question of law here, to look at it from the side of experience, how it works. In Galatians he takes it up from the divine side, how God gave it. Thus He brings into prominence the four hundred and thirty years between the promise and the law, which the latter could not therefore add to nor disannul. Entirely apart from it, the promise of blessing to the world was in Abraham and his seed, in Christ, and on the principle of faith. Law came in by-the-bye, to be a handmaid to the gospel, as Hagar to Sarah, and to raise the question of what man is, and shut him up to blessing through another.