Romans 7

1. Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath 2 dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is 3 bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is 4 loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married 5 to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free 6 from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Where- 7 fore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should 8 be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth 9 fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the 10 law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered 11 from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of 12 spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. 13 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by 14 the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, 15 taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For 16 without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the com- 17 mandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to 18 life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, 19 and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and 20 good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it 21 might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the command- 22 ment might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am 23 carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; 24 but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law 25 that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I 26 know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with 27 me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do 28 not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no 29 more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do 30 good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I 31 see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into 32 captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall 33 deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So 34 then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

WHEN the divine law, as interpreted and applied by Christ, reaches to the very depths of man’s consciousness of sin; when it sets before him its inviolable sanctity and its irreversible obligations; when it forces him against his will to test himself by its solemn and searching light; when it reveals the depths of his sin and guilt, far, far below the careless, worldly thoughts and feelings that usually engross and blind the soul; when sin by the commandment becomes exceedingly sinful, and is pictured in all its blackness upon the vivid, stainless background of the imperial rule of rectitude; and when this supernal light is flashed into all the recesses of the quivering and guilty soul with a brightness clearer than that of the noonday’s radiance—then, then it is that man comes to know himself, to know himself as a sinner not only against a holy law, but also against a holy God—to know the terrible power of his depravity and guilt as clinging to the very roots of his being. H. B. S.

When the aspiration after a purer, nobler life begins to rise within the breast, and the long-passive spirit rouses its energies to check the pride of evil, to force back and stay the current of unholy desire and passion; when the softening principle of divine love and grace begins to thaw the icy coldness of a godless heart, then it is that the soul becomes aware of the deadly strength of sin. Nor is it only in the first struggles of penitence that sin is revealed in its true character to the soul. With every increase of spirituality, whatever of evil remains in it becomes more repulsive to its keener sensibilities, more irksome to its aspiring energies. Faults and errors, unapparent or venial to its former consciousness, become in the higher stages of the spiritual life more and more odious; and in the purest and best actions more of evil is now discerned than formerly in the basest and worst. The quickened conscience feels the drag of sin at each successive step the more heavy; and as the believing spirit yearns with an intenser longing for the life of God, with a more indignant impatience does the cry break from the lip: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Caird.

PAUL’s view of the Christian life, throughout the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters, is that it consists of a death and a resurrection; the new-made Christian dies to sin, to the world, to the flesh, and to the law; this death he undergoes at his first entrance into communion with Christ. But no sooner is he thus dead with Christ, than he rises with him; he is made partaker of Christ’s resurrection; he is united to Christ’s body; he lives in Christ, and to Christ; he is no longer “in the flesh,” but “in the spirit.” C.

1-6. The illustration obviously describes a great change—a dissolution of old connections and a formation of new ones; the government of the law and the espousal to Christ are manifestly contrasted, and the readers are pointedly warned of the duties that belong to that great and blessed engagement. Paul has established the two great characteristics of the new dispensation—the death to sin which heralds the life to righteousness, and the emancipation from sin which gives the Christian freedman to the service of his God. With both these great ideas—prominent and governing ideas in his view—he enters upon the passage under consideration. In reaching it, however, his mind passes through, and takes the tincture of, an important connecting notion, the notion of the “fruits,” the results in heart and habits, of the dispensations of law and grace. In the fourth and fifth verses it is said that we are “to bring forth fruit unto God” instead of “bringing forth fruit unto death”; and this blessed result is declared to follow upon the espousal in the allegory, upon our being “married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead.” This passage, then, confirms, repeats, all that has gone before; it does not alter its bearings or displace its relations. Like it, it speaks of a soul that once lived to sin and lived to bondage; like it, of a death which exalts the same soul to righteousness and to freedom. How then shall we dispose the personages of the allegory, to harmonize perfectly with itself and with all that precedes and follows it? Shall we not say that the Wife indeed, the subject of the mighty change, represents the Soul; that the deceased Husband, whose claim or power expires, symbolizes, not the Law, but the Principle of Sin to which the Law ministered, and to which so much of the preceding chapter describes the regenerate soul as “dead”—dead to sin because sin is dead? And when Paul describes the woman as “loosed from the law of the husband,” “free from that law,” and “answerably dead to the law,” shall we not plainly perceive that “the law” in the parable is not represented by the dead husband, but by “the law of the husband,” the matrimonial obligation, which kept the soul in bondage as long as sin was alive, but which ceases for ever when sin, the soul’s gloomy consort and tyrant, has expired? Under this interpretation all is complete and consistent. The law, by the universal principle of law, has dominion over the woman, as it has over all, as long as life lasts. But with death the obligation terminates; over her that is mystically dead the condemning ing law looses its stern control. How then is this death produced? The second and third verses purposely tell us, with a view to preparing the way for the new connection that is to follow that mysterious death. It is itself a result or necessary accompaniment of the death of the husband. Here is the momentous peculiarity of this case: the husband is the principle of sin, and the death of sin in the soul is the death of the soul unto sin. In this way, conformably to the apostle’s assumption in the first verse, the power of the law—that is, in the allegory, the old matrimonial bond—expires; in point of fact, by the simultaneous death of both the parties, but mainly (for this is the chief scope of the whole) by the death of the wife, as he had said above (so exquisitely harmonious is the management of the figure all through), “the one that is dead is freed from sin.” Thus is she freed from the obligation of her miserable bondage; she is enfranchised by him who has slain her accursed companion; through his victorious sacrifice, she is “dead to the law by the body of Christ.” The death of sin and unto sin liberates from the law and opens the way for the new and celestial union. The law bound the wretched soul in servitude to sin, for “the strength of sin is the law”—it gave sin its sinfulness and gave no power to escape it; nor could this terrible espousal to evil be broken in the nature of things and God’s providential dispensation, except by that decease of sin, which left the soul correspondingly “dead to sin,” “dead, then, to the law” (which can only govern the living), and free to form the new and sacred union. The main subject of the allegory, then, is not the death of the law, but the death of the soul to sin and the law; it is this which assimilates it to the reasoning it follows, and incorporates it in the mass and current of the apostle’s discourse. The interpretation which considers the deceased husband to be the conquered principle of sin is strongly confirmed by the form of expression in the fifth verse; while the sixth verse furnishes a proof that the two great subjects of life and service were never out of the apostle’s calculation through all this comparison, and hence as a proof how closely it is connected with the entire. Summing up the past discussion before he proceeds to a new one, he recalls again the two main characteristics of the gift of God which he had bound together in the illustration—the death to sin and the new service to Christ. “We are delivered from the law, that—namely, sin—being dead (or, ‘we being dead to that’) wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” Surely this, a professed inference from the passage we have discussed, evidences that that passage itself must contain these elements; must embody in one forcible example the fundamental doctrines of the spiritual death to sin as the great initial step in the Christian course, and the fruits of obedience to God as the manifestation of the spiritual resurrection.

4. You are dead to the law as a sole covenant of life, for it is “the ministration of death”; you are dead to it as a principle of life, for “the letter killeth” and “the flesh profiteth nothing.” To this law you are “dead” in being dead to sin; you stand in the same relationship to it as those whom men call dead, but who indeed are “alive unto God”—who, “through the grave and gate of death,” have passed into another world and a higher form of existence. The law—solitary and terrible—was as such an element in the old world of sin and weakness; it was the curse suspended over the head that could not stir to escape it. All perfect indeed, for it was a copy of the mind of God; but dreadful to behold, for it was above the strength of man. It was the presence of Jehovah in a world unworthy of him; and it consumed where it shone. To this frowning and fearful avenger you are dead, “the body of Christ” has wrought this glorious decease, the lightnings of heaven have fallen on Calvary and expired there, and you can now triumph by death as He has done! W. A. B.

6. “We are delivered from the law, that we should serve in newness of the spirit, not in oldness of the letter.” The spiritual man acts, not from the thought of external command or of external denunciation. He is a law unto himself. The impulses and instincts of “the divine nature,” of which the saved are “partakers,” make duty a necessity, labor a delight, obedience a spontaneous service, conformity to the law a privilege and a joy! T. B.

7-11. He gives an actual experience of his own; he states what none can deny, and what finds an echo in the history of a thousand souls. “The law is NOT SIN”; far be the thought. Yet (not “nay,” which obscures and blunders the whole) so near is the law to being sin, that the law first introduced me to sin—first made me acquainted with it. But how? I was in the habit of coveting. I did it, unconscious of any fault. But the law came in, became heeded by me, with its voice, “Thou shalt not covet”; and my coveting started up into sin, became sinful to me, and in my esteem. And, as we are ever prone to enjoy that which is forbidden, sin thus got life and zest for me, and I indulged in all manner of coveting, just because stolen waters were sweet, and sin wrought upon my human perverseness. Before this forbidding voice spoke within me, before the commandment “came,” I lived; was alive and well; enjoyed a kind of innocence and free will of my own; but after this, not I, but sin in me, lived and wrought its will. And the very prohibition which was for life, by waking up the sense of sin and the desire for sin, killed me, set me lusting for that evil which is death, and slew my free will and my former peace and joy. Yet notice that it was not the commandment itself, but sin, the sinful principle in me, awakened into life by the commandment, that thus killed me: and the commandment only brought out that which was there before, but latent and dormant: brought it out for good, and for the behalf and the life of the better and worthier “I,” the “I” in conflict with sin, the complex man, the “I Paul” of the time present. A.

9-11. Paul himself rested contented with his pharisaism and outward righteousness, until, by a serious application of the rule, he found that to be a merit of death which he had formerly reckoned upon as a plea for life. Not until the law came with its spiritual power did Paul look upon himself as a doomed and devoted malefactor, thankful for the offered pardon of the gospel, and humbly acquiescing in its proposals, and its ways for his acceptance with God. T. M.

Amiableness of natural character, correctness of moral deportment, strict integrity in our dealings with our fellow-men, are not the holiness which the law requires. In the believer these acts are the fruit of supreme love to God, entire submission of spirit to his sovereign authority, and apprehension of the beauty and blessedness of holiness. In the natural mind the very same acts are the fruit of self-love, desire of esteem, pride of character, self-righteousness. Hence these actions, good in themselves and wisely ordered for the preservation of the frame of society, are so far from being holiness in the eye of the heart-searching God, that they are often direct evidences of enmity to him, in those who perform them; and when the defects of all such obedience are exposed in the light of the holy law of God, the enmity will instantly discover itself. Goode.

Law constantly keeps in advance of our performance, and yet condemns us for not keeping up with it. With the august and awful splendor of its purity, it frowns upon our pollution, shames our inconsistencies, threatens our guilt. The farther we go in complying with its demands, the keener our sense of its perfection grows; the higher the standard rises, the clearer the command sounds, and the more hopeless our self-disgust and our agony become. There is no satisfaction there. Just in proportion as we come consciously under law, and law alone, we are wretched. It is warning, and nothing but warning. Paul’s wondrous spiritual insight saw that; and so he says, in his energetic phrase, that sin comes by the law; the strength of sin is the law; when the commandment came, sin revived. That is, by the law, the rule of right, comes a knowledge of transgression. No law, no violation of law—and so no accusing conscience. And the more law, that is, the more clearly you see the command, the more sin. This is logical; and it is experimental. F. D. H.

12. The Christian hath now nothing to do with the law as it thundereth and burneth on Sinai, or as it bindeth the conscience to wrath and the displeasure of God for sin; for from its thus appearing he is freed by faith in Christ. Yet he is to have regard thereto, and is to count it holy, just, and good; which that he may do, he is always to remember that he who giveth it to us is merciful, gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. Bun.

13. In what we call the moral world there is an element which is absolutely, intrinsically, wholly, and always bad. Its very name is, with emphasis, EVIL; we call it also vice, depravity, wickedness, and, in Scriptural language, it is named SIX. It is the Divine Law, amply and spiritually apprehended, that must expose the malignity of sin—displaying the essential nature and principle of “that abominable thing” (to make the true devil stand confessed), while it names or defines, generally and in detail, the things that are sin—the practical forms which it takes in doing its mischief among the creatures of God. It is this law, clearly and solemnly manifested and apprehended, that exposes the true quality of sin—shows it to be exceedingly sinful—its own name being the worst word that could be found to express its quality. J. F.

Sin is not something which has penetrated into our nature from the outside; it is not learned like a lesson of evil, nor caught like an infectious disease. It has its springs in the very sources of our being. It can not be torn up by the roots. It can not be treated by any medicine which discipline, or education, or example can supply. There is one power, and one only, which can lay hands on the enemy with whom we are contending; and that power is the power that first made the soul itself. He who stands as it were behind the secret fountains from which our being issues, he and he alone can deal with this awful disease by which we are all afflicted; he and he alone can attack sin in the very citadel of its dominion, and win the victory which we could never win. Our justification must come from him, and therefore must begin with that which he puts into us, that movement of the heart and conscience, which we call faith; and can not come from the regulation and discipline of our habits and our deeds, which is what is meant by works. The regulation of the deeds is excellent, but it is still absolutely and always subordinate. F. T.

15,16. Those sins shall never be a Christian’s bane that are now his greatest burden. It is not falling into the water, but lying in the water, that drowns. It is not falling into sin, but lying in sin, that destroys the soul. If sin and thy heart are two, Christ and thy heart are one. Brooks.—Every child of God knows that he is justified by faith only: and that true faith necessarily begets holiness and good works. Yet in the knowledge of this truth many a gracious soul goes to work quite at the wrong end, and thereby loses both the privilege and comfort of looking as a sinner directly at Christ. The Scripture exhortations show us more what we ought to be than what any attain to. But try the secret workings of thy heart. Dost thou consent unto the law that it is good? Is sin thy grief and burden; and though it prevail again and again, dost thou strive and pray against it? If such be the workings of the heart, be assured that it proceeds from the blowings of the sweet Spirit of grace upon thy garden; and though the fruits and blossoms may be blown off by the nipping blasts of sin and temptation, yet there is life in the root, which will surely sprout out again, and endure unto everlasting life. Hill.

19. The godly man hates the evil he possibly by temptation hath been drawn to do, and loves the good he is frustrated of, and, having intended, hath not attained to do. The sinner, who hath his denomination from sin as his course, hates the good which sometimes he is forced to do, and loves that sin which many times he does not, either wanting occasion and means so that he can not do it, or through the check of an enlightened conscience possibly dares not do; and though so bound up from the act, yet the habit, the natural inclination and desire in him, is still the same, the strength of his affection is carried to sin. So, in the weakest sincere Christian, there is that predominant sincerity and desire of holy walking, according to which he is called a righteous person: the Lord is pleased to give him that name and account him so, being upright in heart though often failing. L.—The Christian has within him both flesh and spirit, yet he is not a double-minded man; he is often led captive by the law of sin, yet it never gets dominion over him; he can not sin, yet he can do nothing without sin. He does nothing against his will, yet maintains he does what he would not. Bacon.

20. It is one great work of the Spirit of God to make us feel this distinctness between us and the evil which is in us. The good and the evil are no longer in a state of blind contradiction, but of distinct, self-conscious opposition. The renewed man knows that he has an adversary, but, for his comfort, he knows also that this adversary is not his very self, but another, so that, if he resist him, he will flee from him; he knows that the power which that other exercises over him is a usurpation, and that it will be a righteous thing for God to cast out him who obtained that power by fraud and violence. T.

21,22. Whoever he may be that is speaking, he says in one verse, “I would do good”; in another, “I delight in the law of God”; and surely these are expressions which never yet came with truth from unhallowed lips, that never could come from any but a renewed heart. Besides, this complaint itself marks the character of him who uttered it. It designates one hating sin in a very extraordinary degree, and striving against it with every power of his soul; and Paul himself was a man of this class. We infer, therefore, that the apostle is describing his own feelings in this passage, and consequently right feelings, exactly those feelings which in a world like this we should expect to find in a partially renewed mind. And he speaks here not merely as a Christian, but as a very experienced Christian; as one arrived at a state of rare maturity in grace, a state in which sin appears to the mind, as it appears to the divine mind, an intolerable evil, a thing so hateful that the very remains of it are not to be endured; they must be got rid of, at all events they must be controlled and counteracted, or the heart will break. And the holiest will be the most willing to take this view, and never so ready to look at it in this light as in their holiest hours. C. B.—Was not this Paul’s malady, When I would do good, evil is present with me? But know once, that though thy duty is to eschew evil and do good, yet thy salvation is more surely founded than on thine own good. That perfection which answers justice and the law is not required of thee: Thou art to walk, not after the flesh, but after the spirit; but in so walking, whether in a low or high measure, still thy comfort lieth in this, that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, as the apostle begins the next chapter after his sad complaints. So then mourn with him and yet rejoice with him, and go on with courage as he did; still fighting the good fight of faith. L.

It is not to be supposed that Christians ever have any experiences in this world that are wholly pure, entirely spiritual, without any mixture of what is natural and carnal. The beam of light, as it comes from the fountain of light upon our hearts, is pure, but as it is reflected thence it is mixed; the seed, as sent from heaven and planted in the heart, is pure, but as it springs up out of the heart, is impure; there is commonly a much greater mixture than persons for the most part seem to have any imagination of. Edwards.

Grace and nature both act in a regenerate man, and both at once. Nature only acts in an unregenerate man. So that, though sin be directly contrary to the Christian’s walk, and as regenerate he hates it and can not commit it, yet the old nature in a believer can never love holiness. Hence that continual, never-ceasing war in a child of God between flesh and Spirit, sin and grace, the law in the members and the law in the mind. The law of grace must finally triumph over the law of sin. During this desperate combat all the believer’s confidence is in

Christ, in whom he is always “complete,” and in whom he has such a righteousness as neither the law, sin, death, hell, nor the grave can sully or find fault with. Paul did not talk about the remainder of indwelling sin: his complaints were of “a body of sin,” a “law in his members warring against the law in his mind.” I feel, by sad experience, that my own nature, which I carry about with me here below, is earthly and selfish; but I know, by infallible truth, that my own nature, which is in Christ, is perfectly pure and holy, “without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” A believer is imperfectly a new creature in himself: perfectly a new creature in Christ. Hill.

24,25. He complains of himself and he rejoices in Christ almost at the same instant. He is comforted in the very midst of his wretchedness. Nay, in one sense, he owes his comfort to his wretchedness. It sends him to his God. It brings him near that blessed Comforter, in whom is treasured up a ready and full relief for all his sorrows. Look on him as he stands alone, he is “of all men the most miserable”; view him as leaning on his beloved Lord, and there is not a being out of heaven so happy. “Sorrowful yet always rejoicing, having nothing and yet possessing all things,” his whole life is a glorious paradox. “I thank God,” he says, and says it often, and says it joyfully, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ my Lord. He has given me deliverance. Sin lives in me still, but he does not suffer it to reign.” Turn then to the blameless Paul, to him of whom, after his conversion to God, the Holy Ghost hast not left on record one sin or one folly. What says his experience? It tells you that there may be conflict in a pardoned heart; and it tells you more—that there may be in that very heart, amidst all its conflicts, a sense of forgiveness, a triumphant assurance of pardon. It tells you that a man may groan under a sense of sin, and yet look on himself as an heir of glory. C. B.

The Progress of Grace.—The awakened soul sees the evil of sin, the spirituality of the law, and the holiness of God. In these views he can behold nothing but wrath and condemnation before him. He resolves upon better obedience. The Spirit discovers to him more and more the law’s spirituality. His very best actions fall short of its infinite demands: all he does, all he is, all he has, is tainted with sin. Then the Spirit shows him that the gospel looks for no goodness in the creature, and that it gives a free welcome to all sorts and degrees of sinners, without exception; that, as no holiness foreseen in him could move God to love him and give him his grace, so no sins in him could induce God to hate him and to deny him that grace. In proportion as these discoveries are made to him, all the

objections which self-righteousness and unbelief can bring fall, like so many Dagons, before the mighty truth, that “Christ died for the ungodly.” From these views spring a sincere desire of obedience, hatred of sin as such, and desire and purpose to forsake it. Hill.

them all hush, takes away the occasion of their working, and lays the soul at the foot of God. Bun.—With patience wait. Though we may not be responsible for moods, we are for the way in which we act under them. When all our endeavor fails, we are to fall back on hope, and when hope begins to faint, there is still left to us “quiet waiting.” So full of resources is the grace of God, that, as each lower deep of trouble opens, a new power in the Christian life can be created to meet it. “Quiet waiting” is that which, in other parts of the Bible, and especially in the New Testament, is termed patience. It is the part of hope to seek the future; it is the duty of patience to rest calmly in the present, and not to fret—to be satisfied to be where God appoints, and to suffer what God sends. It is fitly placed after hope, because it follows it in the natural course of an educated Christian life. Hope belongs to youth; patience is the lesson of maturity. Ker.