Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe (Galatians 3.21-22).
INTRODUCTION
In this section (7.13-25) Paul continues to describe the effect of living under the rule of the Mosaic law. His emphatic use of the first person (ego) dramatizes the inability of the law to effect salvation, even for the most devout and earnest of seekers. The mind may understand and even appreciate the good demands of the law, but resident sin is at war with the mind and holds the individual’s will captive to its rebellious action. The Mosaic law informs one of God’s moral purpose, but it provides no means of escape from the entangling tentacles of sin. The law, which is good, does not bring death to its recipient; the recipient, with his heart of flesh (7.14), is already dead by means of his bondage to sin. This is Paul’s meaning when he says, It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin. This is in keeping with the Ephesian letter: And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2.1-3). Far from rescuing one from sin, the Mosaic law exacerbates the conflict between the heart and the mind by accentuating the impossibility of doing what one wants to do: For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me (7.19-20). The inner being that delights in the law of God is frustrated by another law that holds one captive to the law of sin: For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. The Mosaic law, for all its holiness, is powerless to transform a life and sin reigns supreme.
THE LAW SHOWS SIN TO BE SINFUL BEYOND MEASURE (7.13)
So then, even though indwelling sin causes death, the law itself is good. Now Paul asks the question: “Can that which is good be the cause of his death?” The answer, of course, is, “Absolutely not!” It is sin, not the law, that is the cause of his death. The law merely demonstrates the magnitude of sin’s sinfulness. Paul is most emphatic in his insistence that the law is good. Sin is the great enemy of life. It is sin that uses the innocence of the law as its tool to expose the full magnitude of sin. The law was given so that sin may be seen all the more clearly for what it truly is, namely, sinful beyond measure (7.13). Paul stresses the inability of the law to serve as a means of salvation. With Paul’s use of the first person (ἐγὼ, ego) it is easy to lose sight of what he is talking about, that is, the Mosaic law. The reader should notice that he makes 9 references to the law or the commandment (specifically, You shall not covet; 7.7) in verses 9-14. The Mosaic law is his primary concern in this part of his letter. The Christian reader may be dealing with his own sin and finds Paul’s emphatic use of the ego with respect to the power of indwelling sin to be a point of identity with this great apostle but this is not the question Paul is answering.
Many argue that this section of Paul’s letter is autobiographical and that he is confessing his own struggle with sin. But it is more consistent with the context of his argument to assume that he is using the dramatic first person narrative to portray a picture of the unregenerate Jew living under the influence of the Mosaic law. Such an understanding of this pericope (7.14-25) explains Paul’s shift from the use of the past tense verbs to the present tense.
In describing this continuing state of affairs, this paragraph also fills in a crucial gap that Paul has left in his argument in vv. 7-12. How was it possible for sin to use the law to bring death to “me”? Is “sin” a power, outside a person, that can arbitrarily bring to pass so disastrous a state of affairs? Not al all, Paul affirms in vv. 14-20, for sin dwells “in me.” “I” am ultimately at fault; certainly not the law, not even sin. It is “me” and my “carnality,” my helplessness under sin, that enables sin to do what it does. “Sin” has invaded my existence and made me a divided person, willing to do what God wants but failing to do it.
This subjective characterization of the divided situation of the Jew under the law is followed by a more objective characterization in vv. 21-23. Here Paul uses the word nomos [law] with great rhetorical skill to depict the opposing forces that control the non-Christian: the nomos of God, the Mosaic law, with which “my” mind agrees; and the nomos of sin, the power of sin, that controls my body and prevents me from carrying out what my “mind,” in agreement with the law of God wills, the nomos of sin wins this battle: “I” am a prisoner of that nomos. In personal identification with his own past, as he now views it, Paul decries his wretched, helpless state and cries for deliverance (v. 24). Here Paul can forbear no longer and interjects thanksgiving for the deliverance that has come (v. 25a). Finally, he returns to summarize the divided state of the Jew under the law, serving two “masters” – the nomos of God and yet also the nomos of sin (v. 25b). (Douglas Moo, Romans, p. 451)
THE LAW IS SPIRITUAL – THE FLESH IS SOLD TO SIN
The law spotlights sin at center stage by exposing it as the great enemy of mankind. But the greatness of sin (sin beyond measure, cp. Romans 4.15; 5.13-14, 20), does not exempt the violator of the law from its penalty. Flip Wilson, a comedian of a past generation, popularized the statement “The devil made me do it.” But neither the devil nor the presence of sin can excuse one from the consequence of his own sin. “It would be a mistake to erect a significant distinction between the ἐγὼ which hates evil deeds, and the ‘me’ or ‘flesh’ (v. 14) in which sin dwells as a power. In the former case, Paul does not absolve the ἐγὼ of personal responsibility for sin. The sin after all dwells in the ‘I’ as a power that brings bondage (v. 14), and it is the ‘I’ as a totality that ends up practicing what it detests. Paul does not deny responsibility but confesses impotence” (Thomas Schreiner, Romans, p. 374). Schreiner walks a tightrope in his understanding of Romans 7.14-25 by blurring the distinction between the unregenerate Jew (or Gentile) and the believer: both struggle with the existential reality of sin. Paul, he claims, intentionally leaves the reader in doubt as to whom he is referring. But this will not do. Regardless of one’s exegetical take on the passage, it is clear that the law cannot transform human beings and the Mosaic law is the subject of Paul’s comments. Moo’s argument that Paul is speaking of the unregenerate seems to me to be the more compelling.
Decisive for me are two sets of contrasts. The first is between the description of the ego as “sold under sin” (v. 14b) and Paul’s assertion that the believer – every believer – has been “set free from sin” (6:18, 22). The second contrast is that between the state of the ego “imprisoned by the law [or power] of sin” (v. 23), and the believer, who has been “set free from the law of sin and death” (8:2). Each of these expressions depicts an objective status, and it is difficult to see how they can all be applied to the same person in the same spiritual condition without doing violence to Paul’s language. (Douglas Moo, Romans, p. 448)
Paul does not suggest there is a way to escape from the responsibility for sin; rather, he claims that there is a power in sin that holds the ἐγὼ captive. Paul’s contemporaries would have agreed with Paul that sin does exists in man but they would have contended that there also exists a spiritual nature that can resist the evil desire of the heart. However, Paul’s assessment of the human condition was not so positive. His thinking is more in keeping with the writings of prophets like Jeremiah: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17.9; cp. Ecclesiastes 9.3b; Psalm 14.1-3; 53.1-3). Thus, the passions of sin are aroused through the law. The implication of this within the life of every person is very great indeed. Once the command of God is known, sin’s wickedness becomes more pronounced because it willfully persists in its rebellion against God.
All those who live under the law find that the law becomes an instrument of death for them because they are captive to sin. “In calling the law ‘spiritual,’ Paul is asserting its divine origin. While the Old Testament abounds in similar assertions of the holy origin and character of the law (cp., e.g., Ps. 19:7-11), it is never called ‘spiritual.’ Paul has chosen this word in order to set up the strongest possible contrast between the ‘spiritual’ law and the ‘fleshly’ ego” (Moo, p. 453). It is the unregenerate who is fleshly (7.5) and sold under sin (7.14; cp. 3.9), while the believer has been set free from sin (6.22) and has died to the law (7.4). Though the Christian may continue to be influenced by sin, he has been freed from the authoritarian rule of sin (cp. 1 Corinthians 3.1-3).
WILLING AND DOING (7.15-25)
Verse 15 is a universal description of the sinful human condition: “I know the path that leads to life, but I always seem to chose the path of self-destruction.” It is a conflict between will and action. Speaking as the representative Jew bound under the Mosaic law, Paul says, I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. None of Paul’s contemporaries believed they could keep the law perfectly, that is why the gospels record that Jesus was questioned about which of the laws must be kept in order to inherit eternal life (cp. Luke 18.18). They believed that adherence to the law was necessary to obtain salvation nevertheless. This is not compatible with the teaching of salvation by faith alone (cp. 5.1-8). Paul’s description of the conflict between “willing” and “doing” most likely strikes a chord with most Christians who are rightly sensitive to their own sin. Though there is a similarity, there is also a difference; what Paul depicts here is a slavery to sin that is neither typical nor possible for the Christian (cp. Moo, p. 456).
It is the adherent’s awareness of the conflict between the “willing” and the “doing” that validates the goodness of the law. When Paul says, So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me, he is not abnegating his responsibility for sin; to the contrary, he describes that which is resident in his very life thereby making him completely responsible for all his actions. His relationship with Adam holds him hostage to sin (cp. 5.12-21), while the Mosaic law reveals the magnitude of his sin: he is a man condemned to hell. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul’s cri de coeur is immediately answered by a joyous and hopeful declaration: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Now the stage is set for chapter 8, where the rule of sin under the Mosaic law seen in chapter 7 is contrasted with the with the freedom of life in the Spirit.
