Romans 7

CHAPTER VII

Deliverance from the Law, chapter 7

The description of this third effect of our justification by faith extends to the end of this chapter. There is no reason for closing it at v. 24 and combining v. 25 with chapter 8, or for dividing v. 25 and combining its second half with chapter 8.

In the preceding chapters Paul has repeatedly spoken of law; in chapter 2 he let the very law which the moralists make their gospel and their hope for men’s reformation convict these moralists themselves, compare further 3:20, 21, 31; 4:13–15; 5:20. All of these references to law are now combined, and we have the entire doctrine regarding law with reference to our justification presented as a whole. In particular we should note 3:21, “apart from law”; 4:14, the heirs are not “those of law” (people of law); and 5:15, we are “not under law.” Chapter 7 now describes our deliverance from law.

This description is highly dramatic. Paul uses himself as an example of what law does to a man; not some other man but himself he makes the corpus vile for his demonstration. This chapter is intensely personal, in the highest degree psychological, furnishes Paul’s own inner biography, and thus becomes as gripping as nothing of a didactic nature could possibly be. No rationalist, no modernist will ever understand this chapter. It is not written for them, chapter 2 regarding the moralists is the truth for them; after that has done its work, then apply 3:20–4:25, and then chapter 7. This seventh chapter is written for genuine Christians who really know what contrition is from the fact of having experienced it and by still experiencing it. They will see themselves in Paul and will do it without difficulty.

The pathological theology of those who confuse or confound law and gospel as do the legalists and the perfectionists is not strange and should not confuse or disturb us. We do not expect them to see this truth. The cure, of course, is not outward application of arguments, which fail to reach the source of the trouble, but the inward application of the law and of the gospel to the conscience and the heart until the normal experience of the power of both is achieved as it was achieved in Paul, in the Roman Christians, and in all others who have not merely heard about contrition and justification by faith but have the genuine experience of both in their own souls.

Romans 7:1

1 In 6:15 Paul says, “we are not under law” and then explains that this does not imply license to sin in some way or other. After this is clearly understood, the whole matter of the Christian’s deliverance from law must be set forth, for this is one of the fundamental effects of the righteousness of faith in Christ Jesus. Paul treats it after he has presented the deliverance from the power of sin (chapter 6) and before he discusses the control of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and in our lives (8:1–17). That this is the proper place for treating law is evident from 5:20: law came in after sin in order to increase the fall, to show the full damage which the sin had wrought (3:20). We are now told how law does this.

Or are you ignorant, brethren—for I am speaking to you as understanding law—of the fact that the law lords it over the man (only) for so long a time as there is life? For the married woman stands bound to the living husband by law; but if the husband dies, she stands discharged from the law regarding the husband. So then, while the husband lives, she will be held an adulteress if she becomes joined to another husband; but if her husband dies, she is free from this law so that she is not an adulteress on being joined to another husband.

Everybody who knows anything at all about law knows all of this. It is not even a matter of Christian knowledge alone. Everywhere law is binding only for life and not beyond that. “Or are you ignorant” (6:3) means that this is an elementary matter; and the parenthesis, “for I am talking to you as people understanding law,” explains that any such will at once grasp the truth that law never extends its jurisdiction beyond death.

It is incorrect not to distinguish between νόμος without an article and ὁνόμος with the article and to let both or at least the latter refer only to the Jewish law and then to make the deduction that the great majority of the Roman Christians were former Jews and to add the statement that the few Gentile Christians that belonged to the Roman congregation knew the Jewish law from their acquaintance with the LXX. The argument that, for instance, a person who lived in Athens but did not like the Athenian laws might move to Sparta or to Susa or elsewhere, is specious. He would still find law, law that bound for life and not longer. He would also find the very law regarding marriage, which Paul uses as an example, that holds a woman to only one husband. The whole Roman world had this law; it was no more specifically Jewish than it was specifically Roman. “You who understand νόμον,” means “law in general,” whatever is of the nature of law. The statement “that ὁνόμος controls τοῦἀνθρώπου” means that the thing that is law (generic) controls the person (again generic) i.e., the human being.

The proposition is entirely general and not in any way restricted to the Mosaic law. The adverbial antecedent is incorporated in ἐφὅσονχρόνον, and the phrase is written in its unabbreviated form (R. 733, 978).

The fact that “brethren” refers to all of the Roman Christians and not merely to the former Jews found among them need scarcely be stated; also that γινώσκουσι applies to all of them and not only to certain ones who understand law. Such a restriction would require the use of the article with the participle; and even if the article were used, this would not necessarily restrict. When Paul says that he is addressing the Romans as those who understand law he is not using irony or flattery or praise. Pagan Rome was famed for law as Greece was famed for art. Many in the congregation were not native Romans. Why, then, the praise (sincere) or the flattery (insincere) that as Romans these Christians know law; or the irony that in reality they know little about law?

Nor is there a comparison as though other churches were less acquainted with law. Paul intends to use an ordinary example taken from the general field of law, and the point of this example is one that everybody who knows anything at all about law understands, namely that all law and every law relinquishes its control at the time of death.

We should note the fact that now for the first time since 1:13 Paul again addresses his readers as “brethren” and again in v. 4, after a very brief interval, more fervently as “my brethren.” It cannot be without a reason that since writing 1:13 Paul felt no impulse for such an address until he reaches this chapter on “law.” Comparing the other seven instances in which this address is used, it is easily seen that it always marks some special concern on Paul’s part, sometimes in connection with a fervent admonition, sometimes in connection with a subject that is close to Paul’s heart, which he feels it necessary to impress upon his hearers beyond other subjects. The latter is the case here where he comes to speak with regard to our deliverance from law. We feel how startling it sounds when we are told in 6:14, 15 that we are “not under law,” it is far more startling than to be told that salvation is ours in Christ (chapter 5) or that we are dead to the sin (chapter 6). Presently Paul will use even his own personal experience with regard to law (7:7, etc.). He has referred to a personal experience only once before (3:7) and then only very incidentally.

We know how legalism in some form or other still persists in the minds of Christians. With “brethren” and then “my brethren” Paul puts his arm around the Roman Christians in order to draw as near to them as possible with the great assurance that the justified are, indeed, delivered from law. He starts very objectively with a most lucid illustration. Already this makes the matter clear, and already here we are made to feel his deep concern for our full apprehension of the vital fact that by being under grace all remaining under law is ended.

Romans 7:2

2 Γάρ does not introduce a proof as though anyone needed to have it proved to him that law controls only during this life and not beyond; “for” = for instance and introduces an example. And from the countless examples that offer themselves Paul selects one that serves his purpose best, for it is itself so clear and matches so well the spiritual reality which he wants to put into the right light. Additional examples might also have been cited; one is, of course, enough. The only point to be noted is that the application which Paul wants to make requires an example in which the pertinent law concerns two closely connected persons and not merely one person; upon the death of one of these two persons who are bound together by law the control of that law automatically ends.

“The married (ὕπανδρος, the regular term) wife stands bound (perfect tense with extension to the present) to the living husband by law,” dative of means. Certainly not only by Jewish but equally by Roman, yea by barbarian law. It is beside the point to introduce divorce, for the tertium comparationis deals only with what law does and does not do and not with how men at times many abuse or violate law.

One may ask why the woman is selected as the example and not the man. One might say that the sex is immaterial, that the man could also serve as an example. But that is a rather modern view. The woman is a better example because she held a position inferior to the man in the Roman world. Even according to Jewish law she was legally bound to a husband more than he was bound to her, for he could rid himself of her by simply handing her a bill of divorcement, but she was not granted a like privilege. The point of comparison desired is thus strongly brought out by the status of a wife who is bound by law to her living husband. In that status she was “under law” in the fullest sense as we were “under law” before grace freed us (6:14, 15).

But a wife is by law bound only to her living husband. In case her husband dies (condition of expectancy, considering such a case), the wife “stands discharged from the law regarding the husband,” objective genitive. The perfect tense has the same present extension as “stands bound,” for both deal with the woman’s status. The argument regarding κατήργηται is pointless; it is the very verb Paul wants even to its passive voice. Her husband’s death abolishes the wife, wipes out, puts out of effect her wifehood so that it is no more operative. Formerly her status came under this law dealing with husbands; now she is no more under the law, she stands discharged from it, is no more bound by it.

The statement that the illustration is faulty because her release from this law ought to be effected by her death instead of by her husband’s death, since in the application Paul makes of it we die, removes the entire illustration and makes it cease to illustrate anything regarding our status which was changed from being under law to being under grace. This statement would turn Paul’s simple illustration into a complex allegory or a parable; and after the change has been effected, it complains that the illustration is not fitting and charges Paul with maltreating it so as to make it fit in spite of its unfitness.

This idea of allegory has led to strange interpretations. One is that already in v. 1 “lives” is allegorical and means, “lives in his old sinful life”! Another is that Paul intended to say that it was really the law that died although he did not like to state this so frankly. But the law never died; the one that binds wives to their husbands is tremendously alive to this day, and so is the law that binds sinners under its curse and control. The point of the illustration is the escape from law, the woman’s escape from one special law that illustrates our escape from law in general. Another idea is that because husband and wife become one in marriage, the wife in a manner dies with her husband’s death and thus escapes the law regarding husbands.

The illustration is nullified when an allegorical death is introduced. Paul speaks of a real death, an exceedingly common kind: a husband dies, and that death puts his wife into an entirely new status. And this is due to the principle that is inherent in all law, namely that law never reaches beyond a person’s life. The law in regard to husbands does not reach beyond a husband’s life. Paul uses this law as an illustration, not to show that it releases the dead husband who, of course, enters another world, but to show that it releases his widow who may now marry again. To see an “inconcinnity” in this and to seek to remove it by resorting to allegory and the like, or to cast reflections on Paul’s thinking, is an admission that one has not caught the point of Paul’s illustration.

We must note the generic articles: “the wife,” “the husband,” like “the law” and “the ἄνθρωπος or person” in v. 1.

Romans 7:3

3 With ἄραοὖν (see 5:18) Paul brings out the point of this illustration about which he is concerned, that the husband’s death sets the wife free from the law that held her while she was his wife. “So then” presents this point as a deduction. Her status as one who is bound is this: “while her husband lives, she will be held an adulteress if she belongs to another husband,” χρηματίσει is used in the later sense of “will be called.” This future tense is not gnomic (R. 876) nor an imperative future as in legal commands. It is the regular future indicative in the apodosis of a condition of expectancy. It is the law that will call and thus regard this wife an adulteress. There is no need to say what the law will do to her in the way of penalty, for the example does not deal with a transgressing woman but with one who lets the law keep her within the prescribed bounds. Γίνομαι with the dative means, “to belong to”; the aorist γένηται indicates actuality. The law would call her “an adulteress” in the sense of a bigamist.

All this is ended the moment the husband dies: “but if the husband dies (aorist to indicate the single brief act), she is free from the (this) law so that she is not an adulteress (bigamist) on belonging to another husband,” γενομένην is the aorist like γένηται. Τοῦ with the infinitive is consecutive and states result and not purpose (R. 1090), for the example deals with a widow who remarries, the condition of expectancy visualizing such a case. However, this result cannot well be epexegetical (R. 1002, 1087) because it is the entire result and not an explanation of some other statement of result. It is the result of her being free from the law that once held her that she is now not an adulteress when she takes another husband. The law pays no attention whatever to her, has no hold on her for now doing something to which this law before objected. She is, indeed, free from that law. It is pointless to say that she is by this law bound as she was before from taking a third man as her husband, for this view only places the woman back to the point where the illustration starts.

The point of comparison is the relation of this woman to the law regarding husbands, a relation that is annulled by her husband’s death. Formerly she was under that law, now she is not under it but wholly free from it. In order to understand any illustration its tertium comparationis must be clearly distinguished otherwise a confusion ensues. The tertium as we have stated it is extremely valuable for what Paul has in mind: a person may be entirely set free from a law without an overthrow of that law, a revoking of that law, without anarchism, antinomism, rebellion against that law; yea, a person may be thus set free without an effort or an act of his own, he may be altogether passive, his release being accomplished by the death of another person who stood in a certain relation to the one set free. Of this nature is our freedom from the law. It is not in the least wrong or questionable.

The fears of all legalists are unwarranted. Let them look at this woman! This valuable tertium is at the same time so exact because it refers to a death, one that ends one relation to open up another and to do that in the most legitimate way. So we Christians, no longer under law, are now in a most blessed new relation: under grace (6:14, 15). Paul’s illustration is perfectly chosen.

Romans 7:4

4 And so, my brethren, also you on your part were rendered dead to the law through the body of Christ so that you were joined to another, to him who was raised up from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins, those (stirred up) by means of the law, continued to be active in our members to bear fruit for the death. But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were being held fast, so that we slave in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter.

Here ὥστε is simply ὡς plus τέ, “and so” (R. 999) and not “wherefore”; only a likeness and not a deduction is expressed, for what the married woman experiences in no way proves what happens in the case of us Christians. The death of the woman’s husband freed her from the law so that she could marry another; the death of Christ freed us from the law so that we now belong to another, namely to the risen Christ. In both cases, of course, the death had to be that of a person who was so connected with another as to effect the liberation by this means alone. In the woman’s case her marriage to her first husband connected her with the liberating death; in our case justification by faith makes the connection with Christ’s liberating death.

Paul states this connection at once: “also you on your part were rendered dead to the law through the body of Christ.” This means, “You on your part were set free from the law by Christ’s death” just as is the wife by her husband’s death. Paul writes, “you were rendered dead” (passive) instead of, “you were set free,” because he had to mark our connection with Christ, for only those who are connected with him (through justification by faith) have this and the other spiritual benefits. It is essential to mark this connection with Christ, for his death frees no one who does not have this connection just as the husband’s death frees no woman save the wife connected with him. “Were rendered dead” only repeats “was crucified,” “were entombed,” and “we died” in 6:2–8, and properly changes the latter into the passive to denote the present connection in which only we receive deliverance from the law. It is “through the body of Christ” that this deliverance is wrought (Heb. 10:5, 10), and this means “through Christ’s death,” to suffer which he had his human body. So the dead body of the husband freed his wife from that one law.

Confusion results when our being rendered dead is paralleled with the husband’s death, or when, because of our being rendered dead, the widow is likewise regarded as being dead although only her husband died. This confusion results when Paul’s simple illustration is made an allegory. But this disappears when we hold to the tertium and refuse to be moved beyond it onto the deeper explanations which are allegorical.

The εἰςτό with the infinitive does not express a purpose but an actual result. The aorist infinitive = definitely belongs to another. This one is designated as “the one who was raised up from the dead” (this phrase is explained in Matt. 17:10; Mark 9:9; etc.). Christ is so designated for the simple reason that in the phrase “through Christ’s body” his death has just been mentioned, and it is the living Christ to whom we Christians belong, the Christ whose resurrection attests the all-sufficiency of his death and atonement. To a Christ who died and remained dead one could belong only ideally, in memory, not actually and really; such a belonging would be like the widow’s memory of her dead husband. But Christ was raised up and dies no more (v. 10), and to him we belong in fullest actuality.

When Paul adds: “in order that we may bear (the aorist: actually bear) fruit for (unto) God,” he drops the illustration of the woman and shows this by turning to a new and a different figure. For this bearing fruit is borrowed from trees and fields and has nothing to do with marriage as being productive of children. Hence also the fruit is borne “for God” and not “for Christ,” not as a woman bears children for her husband. In the illustration there is no implication about children such as the inference that the woman had none by her first husband but did have some by the second. In the Scriptures our spiritual marriage to Christ is never extended so as to include offspring.

What Paul would make plain is the fact that being under law left us worse than barren as far as fruit of good works that are pleasing to God is concerned while under grace we at last did and do produce this blessed fruit. For the great delusion with reference to the law is that the law produces good works. That is why we have so many legalists, moralists (chapter 2), reformers, and the like. They think it is fatal to relinquish the law, fatal to the production of good works. The opposite is true: it is fatal to good works to cling to the law, for the law never produced a single good work. It works wrath (4:15), it increases the fall (5:20), it works realization of sin (3:20) but never a good work. This entire seventh chapter was written to expose the fallacy of relying on law as a producer of good works; we now see what it does produce.

Here Paul begins and states that our death to the law, our deliverance from the law, our belonging to the risen Christ, these and these alone effect the purpose that we truly and actually (aorist) bear fruit to God. The fact that this is stated in a subordinate clause should not lead us to think that this is only a subordinate and minor thought. It is characteristic of Paul and of other Greek writers to use an attached subordinate clause in this way. Here the case is more than plain because the proposition of this minor clause is at once elaborated at length. If he were writing English, Paul could have said: “The great purpose of this is that we bear fruit for God.”

We note the change from “you” to “we,” which is made without the least emphasis. This is done because a new subject is introduced, fruit-bearing, and Paul now speaks also of himself. The idea that with “you” and with the address “brethren” Paul referred only to the Jewish Christians in Rome, because they alone had been under the law, and that with “we” he now includes also the Gentile Christians since they, too, are to bear fruit, is answered by the fact that Paul himself belonged to the Jewish Christians and thus should have said “we” in place of “you” and should not have classed himself with the Gentile Christians. This also answers the idea that only Jewish Christians had been “under law” (6:14, 15, no article), and that “the law” is the Mosaic law.

Since “brethren,” “my brethren,” and “you” refer to all the Romans, and “we” adds only Paul to them (see this same change from “you” to “we” in 6:14, 15 and elsewhere), all are said at one time to have been under the law, all had been delivered from the law through Christ. Under what save law had these Gentile Christians been? Were the Gentile Christians not delivered from the law? Shall we cancel or forget that the work of the law is written in the hearts of the Gentiles and that by nature they do the things of the law? Also that their consciences are upset because the law disturbs them? see 2:14–16. “The law” is often used with the generic article (so in v. 1 and here in v. 4); “law” is always qualitative, and both may at times refer to the same thing. Just what each term includes as far as any specific code of law is concerned the context of each passage alone determines and not the use of either word alone.

Romans 7:5

5 What fruits did “the law” (generic, everything that is law, that of Moses included) produce in the way of fruit? Only fruit “for death”! Here 5:20 is expounded. “For” elucidates by pointing to the negative, to the state “when we were (still) in the flesh, unconverted, not justified, not delivered from the law; this is followed by the positive, our release from the law (v. 6). “In the flesh” = in our natural state of sin, “the flesh” is here the opposite of “the spirit.” This phrase needs no elucidation since it belongs to current Christian conceptions and language. What about fruit in that former state? Why then “the passion of the sins, those (stirred up) by means of the law, continued to be active in our members to bear fruit for (unto) death.” Fruit? Well yes—“for death”! That is the only fruit—if you wish to call it so—that is produced through the medium of “the law” (Mosaic or any other).

But here we see why the law produces only such awful fruit. Here we have the psychological effect of the law. We do not regard this as the adjectival genitive: “the sinful passions” (R., W. P. and others), for this would require the singular and even then would lack assurance. Nor is the genitive appositional: “the passions that are the sins,” for παθήματα, which is a vox media, is fourteen times used by Paul only in the evil sense (M.-M. 473). No, the sins have these passions. This word denotes the reprehensible effects and stirrings that are forced upon us by our sins and drives us on and enslaves us. These passions literally carry us away (C.-K. 841).

“Lusts” (ἐπιθυμίαι) are our sinful desires which we follow of our own accord without compulsion and gladly gratify (see 6:12, also 1:24). The article τά is repeated so as to make “through the law” modify “the passions.” “The passions through the law” are those that arise in us through the medium (διά) of the law. It is folly to think that the law kills the passions, it does the very opposite; the law is the medium for them. Aroused by this medium, “they were active in our members,” the imperfect expresses continuousness. In 6:13, 19 we see how the sin always wants to use our bodily members; the passions of the sins, each one of each sin, do the same. Man is a bodily creature, and the forces active in him automatically affect his bodily members.

It is startling to hear that these passions of our sins are being mediated by the law and thus made energetic in our members; but the fact is only too true all legalism to the contrary notwithstanding. Set up the law over unregenerate men, and not only their lusts but also their passions, as if irritated thereby, become the more active. The law seems to stir the fire so as to make the flames flare up in the fagots. When Paul elsewhere speaks of the police power of governmental law for the restraint of criminals (1 Tim. 1:9, 10) for whom the sword of the government is a terror (Rom. 13:3, 4), this in no way conflicts with what he says here and elsewhere about the law stirring up the passions, for only the terrors of penalty restrain the criminal passions, restrain but do not eradicate and even restrain only to a degree and not always.

Since under the application of the law the passions actually did bear fruit for death, εἰςτό denotes result: “so as to bear fruit for the death” (i.e., the power of death with the article, repeatedly used since 5:12). As “the sin” and ὁΘεός have been contrasted, so here “the death” and “God” are contrasted, the one being destructive, the other saving. Both datives are indirect objects. To bear fruit “for God” is to lay good works at his feet for his glory and his honor; to bear fruit “for the death,” i.e., for the power of eternal death, is to make this death our god in our subservience to bring sins and crimes as offerings to him, to glorify this monster. To speak of “the death” so as to parallel it with “God” emphasizes the enormity of the relation involved. To bear fruit to the death obviously cannot refer to the marital fruit of children, yet this idea is attributed to Paul.

Romans 7:6

6 Formerly the law did nothing but stir up our passions, “but now,” Paul says, “we have been discharged from the law” (the Greek using the aorist to indicate the past fact, the English preferring the perfect), discharged “in having died to that in which we were being held fast” (imperfect, durative). As the wife was discharged from the one law, so we were discharged from the law as such. The circumstantial participle describes this discharge from the subjective side, from what happened in us when the discharge was effected: we then died to that in which we were being held fast; ἐνὧ = τούτῳἐνᾧ.

But what is this to which we died, this that was holding us fast? Some find the antecedent in “the law,” but Paul has already said in v. 4 that “we died to the law,” and if the law were now again referred to, the participial clause would be rather tautological, would say too little. Others go back to “the flesh” which reference is still less satisfactory. One must note, “in which we were being held fast.” This is not a prison but the slavery of which Paul speaks in the very next clause and of which he has said a good deal from 6:12 onward. “So that we are slaving” follows at once. Since we are dead, unresponsive to the old tyrannous slavery, even the law can no longer stir up our passions; and in this way we were discharged from the law.

On hypotactic ὥστε see R. 1000, and B.-D. 391, 2 and 3, and note that the New Testament has only two examples of the old classical construction where the indicative indicates actual result, for ὥστε with the infinitive, which was once restricted to result that necessarily or naturally follows, has in the Koine expanded so as to include actual result. Since it is an undeniable fact that Paul and the Roman Christians are serving in newness of spirit, we regard this infinitive as expressing actual result: “so that we are serving” (R. V.). The A. V.: “that we should serve,” indicates purpose and is incorrect. In 6:4 we have ἵνα (purpose): “in order that we may get to walk in newness of life”; see that passage for the meaning of “newness.” The slaving “in oldness of letter” is gone; we now slave “in newness of spirit.” The fact that we are still slaving as slaves we have seen in 6:16–22, also that this is a voluntary slavery of emancipated slaves in expectation, not of death, but of life everlasting, thus a joyous, blessed slavery. No more needs to be said regarding that point.

“Newness” and “oldness” are put into direct contrast. So also are the genitives “of spirit” and “of letter,” both without the article, hence in this contrast both are qualitative. Our own spirit is referred to and not the Holy Spirit of whom Paul speaks at length in 8:1, etc. This newness is our new state and status, a newness of life (6:4) that is due to deliverance from sin (6:22) and from the law. Since it is contrasted with our former state “in the flesh” (v. 5), this is “newness of spirit,” the direct opposite of “oldness of letter.” These terms are practical compounds: “spirit-newness,” “letter-oldness,” the genitives being qualitative. The Christian’s spirit is set free in order to serve God of its own accord.

It is called “the new spirit,” “a new heart,” “a heart of flesh” (living, responsive) over against “the stony heart” (unresponsive as a stone), Ezek. 36:26, 27; 11:19; it responds: “I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart (in the midst of my bowels, Hebrew),” Ps. 40:8; Jer. 31:33. Paul himself defines in v. 22: “I take delight regarding the law of God according to the inner man” (i.e., the spirit); and in v. 25: “I myself with the mind slave for God’s law.”

The fears of the legalists and the moralists that the gospel deliverance from the law means lawlessness, license to break God’s law and to run wild in sin and crime, is due to a misunderstanding of what both the law and the gospel work. Already in 3:31 Paul has said: “Do we then abolish law through the faith? Perish the thought! On the contrary, we establish law.” In what other way can newness of spirit serve God in its new liberty than by doing his will freely and joyfully? And his will is revealed in his law which this newness of spirit uses as its servant and its guide instead of as a slavish master such as it could only be when we were in the flesh.

The use of οὐ instead of μή makes the contrast stand out sharply (R. 1095): “and not in oldness of letter,” not in the former state and status that belonged only to a literal, outward, compelling code of law. This γράμμα should not be restricted to the Mosaic code. Let us also note the absence of the article. “Letter” = any legal code of moral law, of course, that of Moses but any other just as well. “Letter” is “written law” (Vorschrift, law fixed by writing, C.-K. 266), and this emphasizes the essential point of our former state: all that could be done for us was to write the law in an outward way and thus impose it upon us as a master and threaten us with penalties for each breach. In 2 Cor. 3:3 Paul makes this clear: “Written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart.” That was the trouble with the oldness. It was mere ink, mere stone tables, mere laws outwardly imposed, not change inwardly, no new heart or spirit. Man was not inwardly changed, and all that his old sins and passions did was to rebel against the laws imposed on him which only increased his sin and his guilt and only made him obey outwardly at best or because of a dread of the imposed penalties. That was bondage, hopeless bondage, its end was death (6:21).

This is abolished for the Christian. But not by leaving him “in the flesh” and just cancelling all law. When was the law cancelled, its ink erased? Let no one say that the spirit of the law remains and not its letter, its spiritual and not its literal sense. The law never has a double sense; its one spiritual meaning is conveyed by the written letter and in no other way even as the written word conveys the spiritual sense of the gospel. The oldness of the mere outward letter which confronted the flesh and was unable to do anything but to aggravate that flesh and then to damn it the more was unable to create a new heart and to liberate the spirit into newness of life (6:4), this is gone for the Christian, removed for him by Christ’s death when by faith he died with him (6:3–11). see 8:3, 4.

Then we died to the law (v. 4), to this oldness of letter. Then this newness of spirit was created in us, a complete revolution of our relation to law and letter of law. Then we were no longer “under law” as a tyrant but in living, blessed obedience to God, in newness of spirit “for sanctification” (6:19, 22), in our spirit and heart using law and its letter as our servant.

It remains to be said that this newness of spirit filled the hearts of all the Old Testament saints as it does those of the New Testament. To deny it involves the claim that none were saved in the old covenant (but see chapter 4 on Abraham and David and on Abraham’s fatherhood) or that there were two ways of salvation, one by means of law, the other by means of gospel. Both assumptions are manifestly not tenable.

Romans 7:7

7 Now there follows the famous section on the law, which elaborates as does no other portion of Scripture what alone the law is able to do, namely to reveal sin by aggravating it to reveal itself as being “exceedingly sinful” (v. 13). So little is the law able to remove sin. Even in the regenerate man, in the conflict between his flesh and his spirit, it is not the law that brings victory but Jesus Christ, our Lord. This is the section that helps us to understand fully how we are delivered from the law, how we died to the law (v. 4), how we are no longer “under law” (6:14, 15), and how the two agree: deliverance from sin and from the law (we having died to both). All this sin which is so damnable, all this law which brings forth this sin and damns it, fail to damn us, for Christ delivers us (v. 25). “There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (8:1).

While everything is wrong with regard to our sin, nothing is wrong with regard to the law and its just condemnation of our sin. The law would be wrong and do wrong if it did not condemn our sin. It is this damnation from which we are delivered, the damnation that lies in the sin as such and is brought to light and pronounced damnable by the law. This combines the sin and the law and makes our deliverance one from both although the sin alone is execrable and the law wholly excellent. Moreover, this deliverance includes liberation from the domination of both. When there was only law over us, we were abject slaves who were driven on and on in sin, and the end was death (6:21); but when Christ, grace, and the gospel are over us although sin, condemned by the law, remains in our members, our spirit is freed to newness of life. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of the sin and the death” (8:1). So we now most truly walk, not after the flesh, but after the spirit (8:4).

The introductory remarks to this chapter state what is necessary to be known regarding Paul’s use of his own experience in this section.

What, then, shall we say? The law (is it) sin? Perish the thought! On the contrary, I would not have realized the sin except through law. For, on the one hand, I would not know coveting if the law would not say, Thou shalt not covet! On the other hand, having received an impetus, the sin by means of the commandment wrought out in me all (manner of) coveting; for apart from law sin is dead.

Now I was alive apart from law at one time; but the commandment having come, the sin got alive, and I died. And there was found for me the commandment, the one (intended) for life, this very one for death. For the sin, having received an impetus through the commandment, completely deceived me and by means of it killed me. And so the law at least (is) holy, also the commandment (is) holy and righteous and good.

As in 6:1: “What, then, shall we say?” refers to a judgment; while: “What then?” in 6:5 refers to a course of action. Here again, as so frequently, commentators find an objector, who tries to refute Paul by reducing his doctrine to absurdity but who is himself miserably defeated. Every now and then this objector is introduced as asking a question and then resting until he sees another opportunity. But he does not exist. Paul has said, “We died to the sin” (6:2), and, “We are dead to the sin” (6:11); then, “You were made dead to the law” (7:4). Whether his readers at once noticed it or not, this sounds as though the law, too, is something bad.

So he has also spoken of having been freed from the sin (6:21) and then of having been discharged (freed) from the law (7:6). This has the same sound. For the sake of the matter concerned Paul clears up this point, and he does this the more gladly since it enables him to show just how the sin operates on the sinner when it is able to use the law, and just what the effect of law is in connection with the sin and the sinner.

Paul might have written in calm, didactic fashion: “Now the law is not sin but helps to make the sinner conscious of his sin.” Catch something of his lively, active spirit which employs question, answer, exclamation, and then personal experience, so that this entire section is charged with vitality and energy. “The law (is it) sin?” The omission of the copula lends virility. Identity is not implied, for then the predicate would have the article, ἡἁμαρτία, and subject and predicate would be convertible (R. 768). The question asks only whether the law has the character of sin, is something sinful and bad, to be classed with sin. “The law” with its article is again generic and is not to be restricted to the Mosaic law code alone. The very idea that the law should be considered as sin is preposterous: “Perish the thought!” (see 3:4).

“On the contrary (ἀλλά implying an emphatic no), the sin I would not have realized (the object is placed emphatically forward) except through or by means of law.” The condition is one of past unreality, the protasis being compressed into εἰμή (“except I had realized it through law”). The apodosis might have had ἄν, but in the Koine this particle is often omitted; but this omission does not add strength. Paul implies that he did come to a realization of “the sin,” and that he could not have done so except through the medium or the help of law.

The presence of the article with “the sin” and its absence with “through law” are vital for the sense. “The sin,” used since 5:12, is practically a personification. See all that it does in these verses: it gets a start, it works something, it becomes alive (gets active), it kills, it thoroughly deceives, it dwells in one, etc. It is a terrific power. Clearly distinguished from “the sin” is the anarthrous “sin” of which no such acts are predicated. Our versions blur this distinction; but in the English the article is not so used. So here in the Greek also “the law” (generic, all that is law, the entire concept) and “law” (qualitative, something that has the nature of law) are distinct.

Here, for instance, Paul says only that he had to have “law” to bring him to a realization of the terrible sin power. He goes on to tell how one section of law did it, did it, not by showing him some “sin” or other, but by making him experience the full deadliness of the whole sin power.

Τέ corresponds to δέ (v. 8), the force of which we approach with our cumbersome “on the one hand”—“on the other hand.” Paul says that he would not even now know what coveting is if the law had not said, “Thou shalt not covet!” The condition is one of present unreality: εἰ with the imperfect and the imperfect with ἄν (ἄν is again omitted, and the second pluperfect ᾔδειν is always used as an imperfect). Note the advance: the whole sin power is not realized except through law—the one sin of coveting is not even understood as sin except through the law’s specific command against coveting. Why our versions translate this sentence as a condition of past unreality, which would call for aorists, we are unable to say. From what Paul would not have realized in the past he advances to what he would not know at present; from γινώσκειν, full realization, to εἰδέναι, mere understanding (the former = a relation of the realizing subject to the object realized; the latter = only that the object comes within range of the person and thus is only known, C.-K. 388); from “the sin” to one type of sin; from law in general to one specific commandment of the law. No; the law is not sin, it leads us to know and to realize what sin actually is.

In a simple and a most natural way Paul begins to use his own experience when he makes the relation of law and sin plain in order to show we are delivered from both. No emphatic or contrasting ἐγώ is as yet needed. What is plain from the start is the fact that Paul’s personal experience is offered only because it is typical of what has happened and continues to happen in the case of Christians in general. Otherwise there would be no sense in Paul’s obtruding his own experience. Our individual experiences may differ in minor details, but they do not differ in the essentials here sketched. It may not be just the commandment about coveting that first strikes so deeply into our consciousness; it may be some other commandment.

When Paul uses himself as a corpus for dissection he lifts us above the abstract into actual life, into viewing our own actual life ad experience. This is not a justification for the impropriety with which not a few among the preaching fraternity obtrude their “I,” “I,” “I” in sermons, which is not even good taste: “The text I have chosen”; “the book I read recently”; and little stories about “I” and even about “my wife!”

In regard to ἐπιθυμία see 6:13 and compare πάθημα used in 7:5: “sinful desire for something,” hence “lust.” The German has the word Begierde which matches begehren which is used in the Ninth and the Tenth Commandment, whereas we use “thou shalt not covet,” and so must here translate the noun “coveting” (instead of “lust”) in order to make it match these commandments. Paul uses only: “Thou shalt not covet (lust after)” and does not name any of the objects mentioned in the two commandments. He does this because, whatever the object, it is the lusting that constitutes the sin. He takes this example from the law because coveting is one of the great sins, the source of some of the greatest crimes (remember Ahab’s coveting Naboth’s vineyard with all that resulted!) and yet a sin that is so generally not recognized as a sin.

In “thou shalt not covet” we have the imperative future of legal language (R. 943). Paul had been a Jew and thus refers to the Mosaic commandment. But the deduction that only a Jew could have the experience which he had, and that only the Mosaic code could produce such an experience, is untenable. Why ignore 2:14–16, the work of the law written in the hearts of Gentiles, their testifying conscience, their reasonings accusing and only at times excusing in view of the judgment to come? “Law” in general produces the realization of the sin power. In the case of inferior types of law this realization will naturally be less perfect. Paul’s perfect case illustrates what law is and does in all lesser cases. And when conversion results, former pagans always advance from what they have experienced with whatever they had of law to contact with the perfect law of God, for the gospel is always preached in conjunction with this divine, perfect, and universal law of God.

Romans 7:8

8 Luther has an excellent definition of “law”: “Everything that reproves sin is and belongs to the law, the peculiar office of which is to reprove sin and to lead to the knowledge of sin.” The Ten Commandments are only an epitome of the law. Even the passion and the death of Christ are law insofar as they exhibit the sin and the sins that inflicted suffering and death on Christ. Γάρ in v. 7 extends also to v. 8. In fact, v. 7b to 11 set forth how Paul was brought to the realization of the sin power by means of law (v. 7a). On the one hand, he now knows what coveting or lust is; on the other hand, instead of being crushed by the law which forbids the lust of coveting, this terrible sin power was stirred into frightful activity. It received an impetus (ἀφορμή is more than a pretext, “occasion,” or even start), an actual impelling, and thus by means of this very commandment which said, not to covet, actually worked out (aorist) in Paul all coveting (with abstract nouns πᾶς without an article = both “all” and “every,” the distinction being immaterial, R. 772). All and every kind of coveting this sin power now produced in Paul, did it by means of (διά) this very prohibition of the law.

Once having become conscious of this prohibition, the sin took hold of it and stirred Paul to all kinds of new violations. By means of this poker in the hands of the sin the slumbering fire in Paul was stirred up to shoot out all its flames. It was like prodding a sleeping lion and making him rage forth to tear and to rend.

The A. V. construes: “taking occasion by the commandment” as in v. 11; the R. V.: “wrought through the commandment.” The latter is better but not because λαμβάνειν is construed only with ἐκ, παρά, ἀπό; for δαί may well state the means of receiving, and the other prepositions may state only whence one receives. Here ἡἁμαρτία separates the phrase from the participle so that it is next to the main verb, in front of it for the sake of emphasis. Paul explains by adding that apart from law (note, not merely “the law”) sin (note, not “the sin”) is dead. “The sin” as a power came into the world (5:12). Any “law” stirs it up and makes it show its power in producing “sin,” motions and acts that have the quality of “sin.” Apart from anything like “law” such “sin” lies dormant or, to put it more strongly, lies dead; but touch it with something like “law,” and you will make it alive.

The story of Eve is often introduced at this point but with little justification. It is saying too much to assert that already at this place where he is describing his own case Paul had her in mind. “The sin” was not yet in the world when Eve was induced to sin. In Paul’s case this was different, he was in the power of “the sin” from the start. It may be misleading to parallel Paul and Eve too closely. “Apart from law sin is dead” does not fit Eve’s case.

Romans 7:9

9 Δέ continues to recount Paul’s experience: “Now I was alive apart from law at one time.” We at once see that this intends to match: “Apart from law sin is dead.” There was a time in Paul’s life when he was “apart from law,” when sin was quiescent in him, dead as he says, and when he was alive (imperfect which already implies that something happened to end this state). All was quiet in Paul, the quiet before the storm. There was “sin” (in general), but it was quite dead and did not at all disturb Paul. And so (using a contrasting term) Paul “was alive,” he went on quite securely and was not even being disturbed.

To what time of his life does Paul refer, and what kind of living was this? Our dogmaticians help us with their distinction between three states: the status securitatis, the status sub lege, and the status regenerationis. Paul is speaking of the first. He was quite secure amid all his sin and his sinfulness. He lived in the sense that the deathblow had not yet killed him (v. 11). He sat secure in the house of his ignorance like a man living on a volcano and thought that all was well.

Many think that Paul refers to the period of his childhood, the sunny years before religious questions troubled him. Some even designate the twelfth year as the limit of this period since at this age Jewish boys were held to observe the outward requirements of the law. But such fixing of time is unwarranted. The days of false security extended far beyond Paul’s childhood. At what time the crash came we cannot say, for we cannot say when the commandment not to covet finally struck home in Paul’s conscience and precipitated the blazing forth of all kinds of coveting. Even then, we may say, Paul kept working back into his old security, only to be routed out of it again and again.

His description is only a summary. So today before the law really penetrates their conscience with one of its spears, men live on in security with their sin. Their worldly ideas of morality protect them. Conscience is hushed, and even when the law’s thunders reach them, they succeed in stopping their ears and in feeling secure again.

Paul’s security was doomed to extinction: “the commandment came.” It arrived for him as God’s own prohibition. The aorist participle states only the fact, and this does not imply that the commandment came just once, and that its full effect was accomplished at one stroke. The result was that “the sin (not some ‘sin’ but this whole power of sin) got alive, and I died.” The roles were reversed and became even worse, for not only “sin” ceased to be dead but “the sin,” and so Paul died, his former living was brought to an end.

There is no need for a discussion regarding ἀνέζησεν, as to whether it means “got alive” or “got alive again”; it may mean either and here evidently means the former (B.-P. 84; C.-K. 475, etc.). From the status securitatis Paul was transferred into the status sub lege. But Besser is right, this living without law, this coming of the commandment, this becoming alive of the sin extended through the entire period until Paul’s conversion. This includes the “I died.” The end came during Paul’s three days in Damascus. The sin struck him dead with blow upon blow, again and again, after every rally to get back into the old security until that final “sweat bath of conscience” when this death under the law gave way to another death in that Paul died both to the sin and to the law—then he reached the status regenerationis.

The same process, of course with varying degrees of intensity and clarity, is witnessed today in men who are in similar circumstances. We may, however, add that in addition to the way of escape just indicated two other ways are open to the sinner: either utterly to repudiate the law and to sear the conscience or to take the plunge into despair and perhaps suicide.

The fact that Paul recites a chapter from his own inner biography should be clear, likewise that he brings out the main features that are typical in the case of Christians who have come to conversion in mature life. Nothing indicates that Paul’s I is unreal, that he is describing, not his own experience, but that of Judaism, or his own only as typifying that of Judaism, this reaching back to Adam, that he thus writes only historically: 1) paradise, 2) the coming of the Mosaic law, finally 3) the deliverer Christ.

Romans 7:10

10 Paul experienced a strange anomaly: the very commandment that was intended for life in his case turned out to be one for death. This was tragic, indeed. Lev. 18:5: “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them.” Luke 10:28: “This do, and thou shalt live.” But alas: “There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not,” Eccles. 7:20. And the law that is intended for life produces death: “Cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them,” Gal. 3:10. Μοί is the ethical dative; nothing need be supplied with the two εἰς phrases (no οὗσα) since the first is attributive, the second adverbial. The first “for life” denotes purpose, the second “for death” result.

Romans 7:11

11 It was not a fault of the law or, specializing, of the commandment, which is the substance of the law, that it was found so deadly for Paul. For it was not really the commandment that killed him but “the sin,” i.e., the sin power (5:12) and not some “sin” or other. Paul restates v. 8 and advances the explanation as to how the sin received an impetus by means of the commandment and adds that the sin “completely deceived me” (ἐκ in the verb) and in this way “by means of” (διά) the commandment did the killing by which Paul died.

It is here and not already in v. 8 that a reference is made to Eve; for here Paul uses the same verb that he employs in 2 Cor. 11:3, which is borrowed from Gen. 3:13, “beguiled,” completely deceived, and indicates that what the serpent did to Eve when he slew her with his lying (John 8:44) “the sin” repeated in the case of Paul when it slew him. But the similarity must not be stressed beyond this act of deception. In Eve’s case it was the serpent trying to introduce “the sin” (5:12); in Paul’s case it was “the sin” that had already been introduced, already had Paul in its power. In Eve’s case Satan first introduced “the death” (5:12), i.e., the death power; in Paul’s case his being killed and his dying were a different thing, namely the loss of his former security, the realization that “the death” had him in its grip.

In Eden the deception was effected “through the commandment”: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden?” “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” Gen. 3:1, 5. The sin power still uses the commandment to deceive and to slay us when it stirs up lust, desire, and all manner of sin in us and destroys our false security, but the lying deception is varied to suit our condition who are already sinners. The commandment is lyingly made to appear as a disagreeable obstacle to the gratification of our desires, to our “free self-expression,” to “living our own lives.” Forbidden fruits are sweet, and the commandment which forbids them is thus used as an impetus by the sin power to make us reach out for these fruits just because they are forbidden. Hid from us by the lying deception are the consequences that, once tasted, these fruits turn to ashes in our mouth, or that we can escape the bitter results as little as all the millions that have tried it, or that we can atone for our passions by doing some good. Even pagan wisdom knew of this deception. Ovid writes: “The permitted is unpleasing; the forbidden consumes us fiercely.” Again: “We strive against the forbidden and ever desire what is denied.” Note Eph. 4:22: “deceitful lusts”; Heb. 3:13: “deceitfulness of sin.”

Romans 7:12

12 “And so,” ὥστε, as in v. 4; solitary μέν is restrictive: as far as the law is concerned. R. 1152 says, “no contrast stated,” he should rather have said that one is implied: the sin is mightily unholy. The moment we see how the sin operates with the law, it becomes perfectly clear that the law is not sin (v. 7), and that our deliverance from the law is not at all similar to our deliverance from the sin; the whole trouble is with the sin, and but for the sin there would be no need for the law, nor would law of any kind ever be able to harm us. Even as it is, “the law is holy” because it is the expression of God’s holy will, the reflection of his holy being: “Ye shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy,” Lev. 19:2.

So also “the commandment is holy,” any part of the law, one such part having been cited in v. 7. To specify thus is to emphasize the meaning of “the law.” The additions “righteous” and “good” naturally apply also to “the law.” Together with “holy” they bring out the complete opposite of the predication that the law might ever be classed as “sin” (v. 7), i.e., something sinful. “Righteous” = in harmony with the divine norm of right, sealed with the approval of God as the Judge, for he himself issued the commandment. “Good” = ethically excellent and precious, including wholesome and beneficial, for the commandment warns us away from condemnation and death “unto life.” It is only “the sin” that uses the law and the commandment as a means (διά) “for death” to us.

Romans 7:13

13 But this produces another puzzle for the fallacious logic to which our finite minds are ever inclined. Did the good, then, get to be death for me? Perish the thought! On the contrary, the sin (got to be death for me) in order that it might be made to appear as sin by working out death for me by means of the good, in order that the sin by means of the commandment might get to be exceedingly sinful.

Since the good law and the killing power of sin came together in Paul’s case, this fact might confuse our thinking as to which brought death to his state of security. The instrument is never the cause or the agent. Paul’s very wording of the question shows what the answer must be; for no good thing can in any sense get to be death for anybody; only “the sin” (= the sin power) can become death for us. Hence also the exclamation: “Perish the thought!” see 3:4.

The neuter singular adjective with the article, here τὸἀγαθόν (in 2:4, τὸχρηστόν), is used in the classic fashion by Paul and by the author of Hebrews as an equivalent of the abstract noun, this is a use that was current also in the higher Koine (B.-D. 263, 2; R. 763). The context indicates what is referred to, here it is “the law” and “the commandment,” “the good” summing up what is predicated of them as being “holy, righteous, and good.” Did the good become “death” to me? means “death” in the sense of v. 9, “I died,” and of v. 11, “the sin killed me,” thus the death of the security in which Paul had been living. This is neither spiritual nor eternal death, for Paul had never been spiritually alive, and eternal death sets in at the close of the earthly life. This death of false security which Paul died was the evidence of his spiritual death, the forewarning of his coming eternal death. “Became” death is a strong way of stating the effect as much as to say that, when the law struck Paul, the law itself turned into death as far as he was concerned.

Ἀλλά, “on the contrary,” involves a strong denial, and ἡἁμαρτία leaves out the predicate and thus takes all the emphasis to itself: “the sin, the sin alone”—became death to me. And this it did for the very purpose of being made to appear as sin by working out death for me by means of the good, namely death to my security. “The sin—as sin,” first we have the article to indicate “the sin power” that did the death-dealing, then no article to express the predicate “sin” which states the nature and the quality of this power. The second aorist passive subjunctive φανῇ implies God as the agent who wanted the sin to be made to appear as sin; for it was God who sent the law to reveal what the sin power that had come into the world (5:12) really is. It was he who set this sin power to working out death to Paul “by means of the good thing,” i.e., the law and the commandment.

Some say that the sin “abused” the good law. How could there be abuse when God sent the law for the very purpose of revealing what “the sin” is, namely “sin” and nothing but “sin”? Moreover, God sent the law for this purpose because men were sinners and because he intended to leave them under no delusion on that score. The participle κατεργαζομένη modifies the subject implied in φανῇ; it should be construed with the purpose clause and not with the main clause. Do not place a comma before διά.

The second ἵνα clause is appositional to the first and restates in fuller form what the first contains. It does not state a second or an additional purpose, one that goes beyond the first. “In order that the sin might be made to appear as sin by working out death in me through the good thing,” this, stated in other words, means, “in order that it might get to be exceedingly sinful, this sin by means of the commandment.” The emphasis lies in this repetition of “the sin” coupled with “by means of the commandment,” this subject being placed at the very end. “In order that it might be made to appear sin” = “in order that it might get to be exceedingly sinful.” The sin power is referred to. Paul was to see what it really is, that its very nature is utterly “sin,” and he was to see and to feel it when this sin power got to be in his own person “exceedingly sinful by means of the commandment,” i.e., by means of working out in him all manner of coveting (lust), v. 8. The sin power was to reveal itself by making all the sin in Paul come to the surface, come into plain view. This the sin did “by means of the commandment” as explained in v. 8 and as repeated here.

Several things deserve notice. The sin power is vicious in itself and drives men to sin in every way. It uses any and all means for doing this and thus also the good law of God by arousing antagonism to it and outbreaks against it. The sin power simply destroys until its victims are eternally wrecked. It destroys the sinner’s security, but only to bind him the more hopelessly in its power by demanding all his members for its tyrannical slavery (6:13a, 16, 18). It thus gets abject slaves, whose very conscience becomes seared and useless, and some of them are crowded into despair.

The good law only makes the sin power stand out the more as being utterly evil. Black is blacker when it is set against white. Of himself the sinner only sinks more deeply into the blackness and only hates the whiteness of the law. Yet God sends his holy, righteous, and good law and reveals the sin power for what it is for an ultimate purpose of his own, the one connected with his gospel. He never sends the law alone but always in addition to the gospel in order that contrition may be wrought and with it faith, and thereby the sinner be saved. Chapter seven does not develop this part of the subject in detail.

It brings out only the essential point that the law alone has no saving power, that the vicious sin uses the good law for destroying us in that the good law condemns all sin, and that thus our deliverance from the sin power (chapter 6) includes our deliverance from the law and its condemning power (8:1–3).

Only when the sin is thus made to appear what it is and the sinner is made to feel in himself what it is can the deliverance through Christ and the gospel be wrought. As long as the false security lasts, this cannot be done. The law added to the sin brings on the death of this security. This often takes time, in Paul’s case it took a long time. Moralism and all legalism only foster and increase the false security (chapter 2). The Pharisees are the outstanding example, but all moralists of every type are included.

They are led to feel so secure by their outward obedience to the law or to such law as they have and are thus blinded to the real purpose for which the law came in (5:20; 3:20). Held in this blind security, they never attain the deliverance from the sin and from the law which Christ came to bring. This chapter shows what 3:31 means: “we establish law,” not as moralists and as legalists establish it, but as God does when he makes the sin appear as sin in order to bring us Christ’s deliverance from the sin and the law.

Romans 7:14

14 When the apostle now continues the narration of his personal experience with the law by changing from the historical tenses of past time to present tenses in v. 14–23, is he still speaking of his former unregenerate state, or is he now speaking of his experience after his regeneration? The history of the exegesis of this section is highly instructive. The older Greek fathers thought that Paul continues to speak of his unregenerate state. Augustine thought likewise until the controversy with Pelagius opened his eyes. Due to their semi-Pelagianism the Romanists followed the Greek fathers. The Reformers followed the later view of Augustine and deepened it.

Due to their view of holiness the Pietists followed the old Greek fathers and thus, as in other respects, prepared the way for the moralizing rationalists. The descendants of the latter, like the later Romanists and the Pietists, adhere to this view. Our Confessions quote this section repeatedly as proof for the doctrine that the flesh still adheres to the regenerate, and the best, later commentators fully agree with this view.

“Nevertheless the old Adam clings to them (the believers) still in their nature and all its internal and external powers. Of this the apostle has written in Rom. 7:18, etc.”—“And in Christians this repentance continues till death, because through the entire life it contends with sin remaining in the flesh, as Paul, Rom. 7:14–25 testifies that he ‘wars with the law in his members,’ etc.” C. Tr. 965 and 489, and the index references to other passages from Rom. 7. All Pelagians and all semi-Pelagians (and they include all who minimize sin’s corruption), who find some measure of good left in fallen man, must eliminate whatever contradicts this view. On the other hand, all Pietists (and this includes all perfectionists and all holiness sects), who elevate personal sanctification above justification, do the same. They cannot admit that a man like Paul still battles with his flesh and his sin.

As for rationalists, from the days of their exegete Paulus onward, they plainly show that they do not understand either a miracle or anything like a personal experience of grace. There are a few who straddle the question which divides the commentators by saying that the tenses must not be stressed, that “technical terms such as regeneration” must not be introduced, that Paul himself leaves them out. But this does not solve the problem.

All men who have had no experience of regeneration, and most of those whose experience is pathological will not understand Paul, and we should not expect this of them. While Paul elaborates, what he says agrees with all else that the Scriptures say regarding the flesh that is still left in us after conversion and regeneration. It has been well pointed out that he who wrote 1 John 3:9, and 5:18, first wrote John 1:8 and carefully included himself.

For I know that the law is spiritual, but I am made of flesh, having been sold under the sin. For what I am working out I do not acknowledge; for not what I will that do I practice; but what I hate that I perform. But if what I do not will, that I perform, I consent to the law that it is excellent. Moreover, now no longer do I myself work it out but the sin that dwells in me.

Let it at once be said that this entire chapter with all its self-analysis is written from the standpoint of a regenerate man, whose experience is normal and not pathological. This is highly important because so many have false views about conversion and regeneration with the result that their own self-analysis is not normal even as their experience itself is abnormal, and that these persuade others to accept their pathological views and experience because they regard them to be sound and healthy. Whoever shares a degree of rationalism or of perfectionism or of revivalism is incompetent to understand what Paul here reveals regarding himself.

From v. 7 through to v. 25 and beyond we have the singular “I”; here alone we should have “we” if οἴδαμεν is the correct reading and not οἷδαμέν. Plausibility is in favor of the singular, and one can well understand how Paul’s frequent use of “we know” in other places drew οἷδαμέν together into one word so as to read “we know” also in this place, so that practically all the texts have it. An argument against the reading “I know” cannot be drawn from the position of μέν after this verb as though knowing would then be contrasted with being so that εἰμὶδέκτλ., ought to have followed; for the two particles do not place single words into contrast but the entire two statements: what Paul knows regarding the law and what he himself is. The matter of the correct reading is a minor point since, of course, what Paul knows about the law’s being spiritual is known equally to Christians in general. In v. 18, however, the singular οἷδα appears.

It is entirely correct to say that the divine law is “spiritual” because of its origin as coming from God’s Spirit, because of its precepts, its rewards, and the like even as Paul calls it “holy,” etc. “for life,” not “for death.” Here, however, the thought concerns itself about our experience with the law, we being the opposite of “spiritual,” namely “fleshly,” made of something that cannot be spiritualized in this life. The point lies in this contrast save that now it is carried a step farther: first the law in glaring contrast to our lust and our sin; now the law in contrast to the seat of this lust and this sin, our fleshly being. The presence of the law reveals also this our fleshiness. For the correct reading is σάρκινος and not σαρκικός although a few texts have the latter and it seems to contrast more exactly with πνευματικός, for both words would then end in -κος. The ending -νος denotes substance and = σάρξὤν, being flesh, “fleshy,” fleischern the ending -κος denotes quality and = κατὰσάρκαὤν, being according to flesh, “fleshly,” fleischlich, (R. 965, 986; B.-D. 113, 2). The former says more than the latter, for it includes the latter: anything that is flesh naturally would be according to flesh; which shows the inexactness of B.-D. who says that the text reads “fleshy” but the sense is “fleshly.” Paul says that the spiritual quality of the law reveals not only his fleshly quality but what underlies this quality, in what this quality inheres, his being flesh.

His self-analysis is correct, for in what would or could fleshly quality inhere except in flesh and fleshy substance? This, too, shows that he is now speaking of his regenerate state even as the present tenses now begin. There would be no point in saying that in his unregenerate state he was sarkinos, for, of course, in that state he was nothing but flesh. The important point is that even now, in his regenerate state, he has flesh. He does not say that now, too, he is nothing but flesh and fleshy; for in v. 17 he says, “in me, that is in my flesh,” i.e., not in me as a whole and altogether but only in that part of me which is still flesh. To let flesh and fleshy refer to the physical body, composed of flesh and blood, as Zahn understands σαρκινός, is to misunderstand Paul’s thought, especially when “the entire man” is said to be “flesh” in this sense. “Fleshy,” which includes the idea of “flesh” (not of blood!) is to be understood ethically exactly as is “spiritual”; it is the old man, the old nature, that is still in us after our conversion.

As a Christian, Paul is not wholly rid of his flesh, and that is what causes this entire conflict with the spiritual law of God, which he would obey in all things but finds himself hampered in obeying by the presence of his flesh. This is the daily experience of all of us.

“Having been sold under the sin,” i.e., the sin power (note the article), with its perfect tense reaches back into the past and extends forward to the present. “Sold” recalls all that Paul has said in 6:16, etc., about the old slavery to the sin power: “slaves were we to the sin” (6:20). But he had already added, “we were emancipated for the righteousness,” and “having been emancipated from the sin” (6:20, 22). He was sold to the sin before he was even born (5:12); he was emancipated when he was converted. As mistaken as it is to make this emancipation absolute, so unwarranted is it to make the present force of “having been sold” absolute. The latter is done by those who claim that regenerate Paul could never say of himself that he is still sold under the sin power, that he could say this only of his past unregenerate state, and that therefore also these verses speak only of that past state. The emancipation still left flesh in Paul, and the flesh that was still left was no better flesh than it had been before; in it dwelt no good thing, and in it and by it Paul was still sold to the sin. We are not left to figure this out for ourselves, for with γάρ Paul himself explains at length just what he means by his till being “fleshly” and in what respect and to what degree he is still “sold under the sin.”

Romans 7:15

15 “For what I am working out” (the same verb is used regarding the sin in v. 8, the participle in v. 13), i.e., actual deeds that I execute. “I do not acknowledge,” οὐγινώσκω in the intensive sense, which is aptly defined as noscere cum affectu et effectu. Matt. 7:23: “I never knew you”; John 10:14, 15: “I know my sheep, and am known of mine—the Father knoweth me, I know the Father.” It means to know with affection, with appropriation, with acknowledgment; “allow” in the A. V. tries to convey this thought but tends toward a different connotation. Paul does not say that he is unconscious of these deeds, that he acts blindly or involuntarily, that he is hurried into wrong action and does not realize what he is doing. On the other hand, he does not sin deliberately, for that would involve the loss of regeneration. Οὐγινώσκω means that the sinful things he finds himself doing in spite of himself look strange and foreign to him; he, indeed, sees them in himself and knows that he is guilty of them, yet they seem to him as if another than himself is doing them. This is what makes him feel like a slave who is acting under foreign compulsion, a foreign power having hold of him.

It is almost needless to say that only a regenerate man is able to feel and to speak thus concerning himself. The unregenerate man possesses no such duality. His compunctions are those of remorse when the painful consequences of his sins find him out; then his conscience blames him. It at best blames him also for failure to live up to the moral standards he admires and approves; but he can never look at his evil deeds as not being really his own, because they are wholly his own. His inner self has never been detached from them by a spiritual emancipation (6:20, 22).

Another γάρ explains how it comes about that Paul does not acknowledge his own sinful acts: “for not what I (really) will, this do I practice, but what I (really) hate, this I perform.” “Wish” is too weak a rendering of θέλω which denotes “will,” and “what I will” is the θέλημα, the thing willed (words in -μα = result, R. 151). This that Paul wills is in harmony with God’s law, and Paul’s own will determines to do it; but he fails. On the other hand, “what I hate,” what the law condemns, and what Paul’s heart thus regards with aversion he performs instead of leaving it undone. These are the simple facts put into elementary language. This is a great anomaly. It explains, however, why Paul does not acknowledge these sins that he still finds in himself as being truly his very own and as the genuine expression of himself.

When he says that he does what he really does not will, this must not be stressed to mean that these acts are involuntary; for no act is done without the will willing the act. And we must note that the three verbs, κατεργάζομαι, πράσσω, and ποιῶ denote recurrent acts and nothing less; and Paul predicates them of himself: “I do them.” Sin and the flesh are not found only in the physical body. In the unregenerate they are in the will and fill and dominate this completely. In the regenerate the spirit and not the flesh dominates the will, but not perfectly, not wholly. It is the spirit that wills the good and that hates any sin. But the remnant of the old flesh that is still present ever and again interferes with the will, and it is this that makes the Christian sin in one way or in another to his own grief and dismay.

Paul’s words must not be stressed to mean that he never does what he wills, never avoids what he hates. These present tenses are only iterative and not absolute. Often, as here, πράσσω and ποιῶ are used in the same sense.

Romans 7:16

16 Paul points out what should not be overlooked when he speaks thus of himself: “But if what I do not will, that I perform, I consent to the law that it is καλός, morally, spiritually excellent” even as stated in v. 12 and 14a. It is plain that Paul seconds the righteousness which the law requires and abominates the sin which it forbids. Again, only the regenerate man can say this of himself. As long as he does he remains regenerate, for as long as he thus agrees with God’s law, so long he will continue in daily contrition and repentance, and the Holy Spirit “daily and richly forgives all sins to me and all believers,” which also is one purpose that the law is to aid in accomplishing.

Romans 7:17

17 Δέ adds something that is somewhat different: “Moreover, now no longer do I myself work it out, but the sin that dwells in me.” This explains the duality that has thus far not been brought out. It is involved in v. 15, 16, in Paul’s doing what he does not will but hates and thereby consenting to the law that condemns his own doing. Paul’s personality itself is not divided, there are no two opposing ἐγώ in him, which would be unthinkable. Even when in common parlance we speak of a better self in some person we do not mean that two actual selves exist in him. This duality in Paul is the presence of an extraneous power in him beside his own ἐγώ: “the sin dwelling in me,” i.e., the sin power mentioned so often before. This dwells in Paul, it does not possess and control him entirely, it is only lodged in him.

It still maintains itself in him but is not really a part of him, it is a foreign element that has not yet been dislodged and expelled. Such is the duality.

Νυνί is neither temporal nor logical (like “therefore”), it does not draw a conclusion but is to be taken together with δέ as introducing the other plain fact that must be noted. The first is that Paul really agrees with the law, and now the second is that, not he in his own real personality does these things that disagree with the law, but this sin power. Throughout, from 5:12 onward, we have noted that “the sin” has been almost personified; this is also done here. Driven out of the capital, this usurper maintains himself in the outlying territory and does his damage. He would like to become complete master again and exercise unrestricted tyranny but cannot as long as the ἐγώ is controlled by the Spirit. “No longer I myself” (emphatic ἐγώ) refers back to the former time (v. 7–13) which ended with Paul’s conversion and regeneration. The duality is explained.

Romans 7:18

18 Once more Paul begins with οἶδα, “I know,” just as he did in v. 14. He explains this strange duality in himself still further (hence γάρ) by repeating with amplification and thus specifying still more closely the dual condition that is due to the presence of the flesh in him. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good; for to will is present with me, but to work out the excellent is not, for not what good I will do I perform, but what base I do not will, that I practice. But if what I do not will, that I perform, no longer am I myself working it out, but the sin dwelling in me.

From what Paul constantly sees in himself he is able to say, “I know” this duality in myself. In v. 17 he distinguishes “no longer I myself” from “the sin dwelling in me.” Now he distinguishes “in me” from “in my flesh.” Hence we should not suppose that the sin dwells in him in the sense of having possession of the whole house. The sin power is “in him” indeed, but only “in his flesh,” which certainly does not mean only in the physical body but in the old sinful nature that is still left in the regenerate. It has been well said that no unregenerate man could speak thus of his flesh, for such a man is all flesh and not merely so in part.

The Greek places the negative with the verb: “good does not dwell,” whereas we place it with the noun: “no good dwells”—“good” in the sense in which the law is good (v. 12), morally and spiritually beneficial. The flesh still left in us is wholly bad and thus affords a place for the sin power to dwell. The evidence for the total absence of anything good in the flesh is the simple fact that it is easy for Paul to will the morally and spiritually excellent but not easy to bring it to completed action (κατεργάζεσθαι). The singular of the neuter adjective is substantivized: τὸκαλόν as in v. 13 τὸἀγαθόν, which see. Καλός is used regarding the law in v. 16. Paul agrees that the law is morally and spiritually beautiful, noble, excellent; therefore he finds it easy to will “the excellent” included in the law, to will it of his own accord as the expression of his own real spiritual and regenerated self, but working this out into deed he finds not at all easy. Παράκειται = “lies at hand,” is ready to hand, i.e., easy to do.

Romans 7:19

19 It is not easy for the simple reason that “not what good I will, do I perform, on the contrary, what base I do not will, that I practice,” thus restating v. 15 in other simple words. The antecedents “good” and “base” are drawn into the relative object clauses. Ἀγαθόν is used as being synonymous with καλόν, and the opposite is κακόν, “what is base” in the sense of inferior morally and spiritually. It is significant that Paul does not here use πονηρόν, “what is actively and viciously wicked.” See the difference in C.-K. 556: “wicked” indicates the dangerous effect; “base,” the quality. A cowardly soldier is a bad soldier, his quality is not what it should be (κακός), but he is not a wicked soldier (πονηρός). On the antonyms see C.-K. 557 and 577. Regenerated Paul predicates of his flesh only that it makes him do “what is bad,” good-for-nothing morally and spiritually and thus opposed to the excellent law and the excellence it requires.

He does not predicate “what is wicked,” viciously opposed to the good law, etc. The latter would mean that the flesh had again gained complete control. In other words, while the flesh is still in Paul, its virulence and its violence are reduced to making him do only what is good-for-nothing and bad or base in that sense.

Here, too, the present tenses are only iterative and not absolute. Paul describes only one side and not the whole; only where he fails and not where he succeeds. The latter follows in chapter 8.

Romans 7:20

20 So he once more arrives at what he states in v. 17, namely that no longer “I myself,” ἐγώ in my own proper person, carry out this baseness, but the sin power that dwells in me, in my flesh. This restatement is intended for emphasis, hence the wording of v. 17 is retained. Paul deplores most deeply the continuance of the flesh in himself because it still affords lodgement for “the sin,” yet it surely meant much for him to be able to write: “no longer I myself,” no longer my own real person as was the case before my regeneration.

Romans 7:21

21 With ἄρα, denoting correspondence, Paul recapitulates and sums up the entire wretched condition he has been sketching. I find, then, for me, as willing the law in order to perform the excellent, that for me the base is present. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man but see a different law in my members, campaigning against the law of my mind and making a war-captive of me to the law of the sin, to the one that is in my members.

It is Meyer who deserves full credit for properly translating and construing v. 21: Es ergibt sich mir, waehrend auf das Gesetz mein Wille gerichtet ist, um das Gute zu tun, dass mir das Boese vorliegt. This, indeed, sums up the whole matter: willing the law in order to perform its excellence, Paul discovers that for him the bad is present. The object of τῷθέλοντιἐμοί is τὸννόμον, the object being made emphatic by its forward position; ποιεῖντὸκαλόν, an infinitive of purpose, is necessarily added in order to repeat that Paul’s willing actually intends to perform the morally and spiritually excellent which is the substance of God’s law. The ὅτι clause is the one object of εὑρίσκω, showing what Paul finds while he wills God’s law to do its excellent bidding. With the exception of the preamble “I find then,” every word is only a repetition of words already used.

Only two unacceptable views need our attention. The first is found in our versions, namely that the law which Paul finds operative in himself is, “that the base is present for him.” “The law” is not “God’s law” but a certain norm or principle that is contrary to it. Τὸννόμον is made the object of εὑρίσκω, and ὅτι is regarded as appositional. Not a few, however, see that “the law” must be God’s law as in v. 7, 8, 12, 14, and that it cannot suddenly be “a rule” or “norm.” Meyer also sees that the presence of what is base cannot be called a law in any sense because it is only a fact, eine tatsaechliche Erscheinung and no more. The plea that in v. 23 νόμος is used in the modified sense is answered by the fact that Paul there writes, “a different law” (no article).

A second view is this: “I find then, the law (namely God’s) for me willing to do (it) to be the thing that is excellent because for me the base is present.” Τὸκαλόν is made predicative to τὸνόμον and is separated from ποιεῖν. Aside from this and other objections, the strange thing is the curious sense that Paul finds the law so excellent because the base is present for him, as if this presence of baseness caused his finding God’s law to be excellent. But the reverse would be true, the moral excellence of God’s law would cause Paul to find the baseness of what is still present for him. But the idea of causation is not suggested by the context.

Romans 7:22

22 With γάρ, followed by δέ, Paul explains 1) his willing the law to perform its excellence: “for I delight in the law of God,” etc.; 2) his finding the baseness still present in himself: “but I see a different law in my members,” etc. Συνήδομαι simply means, “I delight in,” the object being in the dative because of σύν (M.-M. 607); and it is unwarranted to state that it always means, “I delight with,” or to speak about its “instrumental associative case” (R. W. P.) and the fact that the law is here personified and so rejoices, or, since the law neither rejoices nor grieves, that the verb means, “with joy at something or somebody, to enter or stand in fellowship with it or him.” “I rejoice in the law” is only a little stronger than the statement found in v. 16: “I consent to the law.”

Up to this point we have had only “I” to express Paul’s inner personality; we have it again in the verb ending συνήδομαι but now with the clarifying modification “according to the inner man.” This is the immaterial part of man, the spirit and soul, the real ἐγώ, which is distinguished from “the outer man,” from the body and its members. 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16. Regeneration and renewing begin in the inner man, and Paul’s delight in the law is evidence that he is regenerated. It is not correct to state that the inner man also delights in the law of God while he is still in the unregenerated state. To say that the sin is only in the flesh is to overlook the fact that the whole inner man is flesh until regeneration is wrought, and that even after regeneration the inner man needs constant renewal and cleansing from what remains of the old flesh. How the unregenerate inner man reacts to the commandments that happen to strike him especially v. 7–13 has stated most clearly.

Romans 7:23

23 But while Paul thus delights in God’s law he says: “I see another law in my members, engaged in campaigning against the law of my mind and engaged in making me a war-captive by the law of the sin, the one (as just stated) that is in my members.” As an onlooker, watching his own bodily members as though they were at a distance from him, he sees this strange. different law and its hostile activity against him. Like a king in his fortified capital he sees the dispossessed usurper out in the more distant territories of his realm, carrying on a campaign once more to possess himself of the center and capital, to rule the whole empire.

When Paul calls this “a different law” (ἕτερον, not merely ἄλλον or “other”), this is more than verbal correspondence with “the law of God”; for as the latter is the holy, righteous, and good expression of God’s will (v. 12), so the former is the base expression of the will of the sin power which, since 6:12–14, has been contrasted with God as being the king who wants to rule us and our members in opposition to God. From “the sin” in the role of such a king we have been liberated through Christ (6:17–23); hence this law, this expression of the will of “the sin,” can do no more than “engage in campaigning against us and engage in making us war-captives.” These are only present participles which state what goes on and not what is actually accomplished. It is important to note that these are not aorist participles.

“A different law in my members” names the territory where this law is lodged and operates, “in Paul’s bodily members.” This different law, he says, wars against “the law of my mind” to make me (in my entire person) captive “to the law of the sin, to the one that is in my members.” Some find three different laws here, which together with God’s law makes four. But we have only two laws: 1) God’s law and this = the law of my mind, my inner man having adopted that law; 2) “another law,” said to be “in my members,” and this = “the law of the sin (power), the one (law) that is in my members.” The former is called “the law of God” because of its connection with God and “the law of my mind” because of its connection with my mind. “My mind” is in contrast with “my members” and at the same time matches “the inner man” to which the mind belongs in contrast with the members which constitute the outer man.

Νοῦς is “mind” in the sense of power to think and apprehend moral and spiritual things, das intellektuelle Organ des sittlichen Triebes, C.-K. 764. The nous dwells in the “heart” and is a function of what the Greek understands by heart. The nous and the pneuma are never identical in the New Testament, the former always remains the organ of the latter, the latter the bearer of the former. This answers the claim that Paul’s ideas have their source in the pagan mystery cults (see 6:5 regarding these) with their god νοῦς who bestows the νοῦς on his chosen as a heavenly gift, these cults confusing νοῦς and πνεῦμα.

As the one is “the law of God,” so its opposite is “the law of the sin” (of the sin power); the one expresses the will of God, the other the will of the sin power that has come into the world (5:12). After conversion the law of God becomes for me “the law of my mind,” for I appropriate it and make it inwardly my own. But Paul does not say that “the law of the sin” is or remains “the law of my members”; twice he says that this law is only “in my members.” In the first place, while “my mind” and “my members” are contrasted, they are not on a par, for the members do not think and act like the mind, cannot own like the mind. In the second place, the law of the sin is “in” my members only as a strange and an extraneous power that abuses them, makes them disobey the law of my mind which they really ought to obey. Conversion threw the law of the sin out of my mind and left this law only in the outer territory of my members.

In 6:12 we have explained the connection of “the sin” with “our mortal body,” our bodily members (see 6:12, third paragraph). These members are still animated by the ψυχή or life, and the sin power thus operates in them. We cannot connect the sin with only matter of which our members are composed, or, which is the same, let “my flesh” (v. 18) mea matter (“flesh and blood”). Such ideas become confusing. All the sinning of the Christian goes back to his will, and his flesh is likewise in his soul and his will; so also the sin power still has an inner hold in his soul and thus alone is able to make the animated members sin. Yet the real ἐγώ is freed, the spirit is joined to Christ and made dominant; the inner hold of the sin is only partial and gets weaker as sanctification proceeds and is left to show itself only in the lower part, in the members. These are affected the more easily because they are surrounded by an outward sinful world, contact with which is inevitable and constant.

Romans 7:24

24 Paul has made his confession of sin in which every normal Christian who reflects on his own real condition will join. Paul’s regenerated ἐγώ speaks from start to finish. Now comes the climax. Wretched I! Who will rescue me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The nominative is often used as a vocative. “Wretched I!” is not an expression of despair but of the deepest feeling of distress because of what Paul sees still going on in his members. By crying for a deliverer from all of it Paul admits that he himself is not able to win the battle. He keeps the figure begun in v. 23 with the participles “engaged in campaigning and in making war-captive” and thus asks: “Who will deliver me?”

There is a good deal of discussion in regard to ἐκτοῦσώματοςτοῦθανάτουτούτου as though this means “from the body of this death.” Some who note that it means “from this body of death” do not understand why it could not mean the former even linguistically. Zahn clears up matters. The genitive is attributive like an adjective only stronger, and for this reason such genitives never have a pronoun or some other modifier that make them definite, for they would then cease to be adjectival. “The body of death” is one concept, and this concept is modified by “this,” τούτου. Paul has not spoken of some peculiar death of his body that is different from some other death. “This body” is also not figurative but refers to Paul’s literal body even as he has been speaking of its “members.” He has already called it “our mortal body” (6:12). It is such because it is “the body of the sin” (6:6), and he has shown us how “the sin” still operates in its members (7:23) by keeping up this disreputable ownership.

Numerous are the examples that have a pronoun: Ps. 41:10, “my man of peace”; Obadiah 7, “thy confederates”; Isa. 56:7, “thy prayer house.” In these instances the LXX retains the genitive whereas in most other cases it substitutes the adjective in good Greek fashion. Matt. 19:28, “thy glorious throne”; 26:28, “my new covenant blood”; Col. 1:20, sein Kreuzesleib; 1:22, sein Fleischesleib; Phil. 3:21, “our vile body,” “his glorious body”; Heb. 1:3, “his power word”; etc. As pronouns are added in this fashion, so also are demonstratives: Deut. 30:10, not the LXX’s, “the book of this law,” but, “this book of the law”; Ezra 5:17, “this house of God,” also 6:7, 8, 12; Acts 5:20 = “these life words”; 13:26 = “this salvation word.” Naturally, instances with the demonstrative are less numerous than those with pronouns. Compare R. 497 with two examples of the demonstrative.

The deliverance for which Paul longs is not riddance of his body as such but riddance of what makes his body with its members subject to death through the sin power that is still working in his bodily members. The future, “who will deliver me,” looks for this deliverance as something that is yet to come.

Romans 7:25

25 Dramatically Paul answers his own distressing question: “I thank God through Christ Jesus our Lord!” which means, “I thank him through Christ as the one who will indeed deliver me!” Significantly he thanks God through Christ and uses the full soteriological name of the Mediator (see 1:4), his person (Jesus), his office (Christ), his relation to us Christians (our Lord); for this deliverance for which he thanks through Christ will be effected through him and him alone. When and how this will take place is reserved for later statement in 8:11, 17, 21, 23.

Paul does not say that he already has this deliverance. It has been confused with our deliverance from the guilt of sin in justification. This has led to the mistaken idea that Paul is here dramatizing his past unregenerate state. This converts Paul into a show actor.

Accordingly, then, I myself with the mind keep slaving for God’s law but with the flesh for sin’s law.

This is the situation that remains until the glorious day in which the deliverance shall be effected or rather completed (8:11, etc.). The duality remains. “With the mind” Paul serves “God’s law” which he has for this reason also called “the law of my mind” (v. 23); yet “with the flesh” (“my flesh,” v. 18) he serves “sin’s law” (“the law of the sin that is in my members,” v. 23). Paul’s contrite lament will continue as long as he remains in this earthly life; yet it is offset by the great assurance of hope and final complete deliverance: “the liberty of the glory (glorious liberty) of the children of God,” “the ransoming of our body” (8:21, 23). When Paul uses δουλεύω with reference to his mind, this is only a repetition of this verb as found in v. 6: “to serve as a slave (as one bound) in newness of spirit.”

Ἀυτὸςἐγώ emphasizes only the subject “I myself” (R. 686) and is not equivalent to ὁαὐτός, “the same.” It implies no contrast with either Christ or anyone else. The view that it refers to Paul by himself before his regeneration, apart from God and Christ, is in accord with the supposition that the whole of v. 14–24 describes Paul in his unregenerate state, the conflict between his better and his worse nature. What Paul says is: “I my own self” still serve in this double way. He does not thereby contradict v. 20, for here, too, he clearly distinguishes between his “mind” and his “flesh,” and he has made it very plain that his “I” is connected with the latter in a way in which it is not connected with the former.

We disagree with the attempt to suggest for the question: “Who will deliver me?” the answer: “No one will.” And so we disagree with the attempt to turn ἄρα into interrogative ἆρα: “Do I myself, then, serve” etc.? again with the answer: “I do not.” We also refuse to begin a new chapter or a new paragraph with v. 25b: ἄραοὖνκτλ. This connective completes the paragraph v. 14–25 and plainly does not yet turn to a new train of thought. “Sin’s law” is as terse as “God’s law,” one is as definite as the other, each is made so by its genitive.

The deliverance from the law consists in this, that “with the mind we serve God’s law,” “serve in newness of spirit” (v. 6). We do so freely, of ourselves. No more does the law with its commandment stir up our lusts to work them out into deeds and then to slay us with its curse and its condemnation (v. 7–13). This is the slavery that has passed. Our ego freely wills God’s law and does not will the evil of the sin power, its evil law. On the contrary, we deplore the fact that we still have the flesh, that the sin still dwells and works in the flesh, that it still tries to enslave us by means of the body and our members.

Our deliverance is not complete in this respect that the law of God is only in our will and mind where we freely serve it, but not yet equally in our members so that they, too, freely join in such service. But this restriction is only temporary. Our contrite deploring and our cries for full deliverance already show that. The chief part of the deliverance has been accomplished, the remainder will follow. Hence the jubilant cry: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Hope beckons us. The goal will soon be reached. Thus Paul has prepared us for the great eighth chapter which describes how this goal will be reached: 1) the Spirit leads us to live in the spirit until our mortal bodies are at last quickened and we are glorified: 2) the Spirit leads us through tribulations in hope, and nothing shall be able to prevent us from attaining the goal.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

M.-M. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan.

C.-K. Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. Dr. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.

B.-D. Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neu-gearbeitete Aufiage besorgt von Albert Debrunner.

B.-P. Griechisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, etc., von D. Walter Bauer, zweite, etc., Auflage zu Erwin Preuschens Vollstaendigem Griechisch-Deutschen Handwoerterbuch, etc.