28 The Believer and Indwelling Sin (7:14-25)

For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. (7:14–25)

This passage is obviously a poignant account of a person’s inner conflict with himself, one part of him pulling one direction and another part pulling the opposite. The conflict is real and it is intense.

For perhaps as long as the church has known this text, however, interpreters have disagreed as to whether the person described is a Christian or a non-Christian. Whole movements have arisen to promote one of those views or the other. One side maintains that the person is too much in bondage to sin to be a believer, whereas the other side maintains that the person has too much love for the things of God and too much hatred of sin to be an unbeliever.

It is obviously important, therefore, to determine which sort of person Paul is talking about before any interpretation of the passage is attempted. It is also of some importance to determine whether Paul’s first person singular refers to himself or whether that is simply a literary device he uses to identify more personally with his readers. The answer to those two questions will automatically answer a third: If Paul is speaking of himself, is he speaking of his condition before or after his conversion?

Those who believe Paul is speaking about an unbeliever point out that he describes the person as being “of flesh, sold into bondage” (v. 14), as having nothing good dwelling in him (v. 18), and as a “wretched man” trapped in a “body of … death” (v. 24). How then, it is argued, could such a person correspond to the Christian Paul describes in chapter 6 as having died to sin (v. 2), as having his old self crucified and no longer being enslaved to sin (v. 6), as being “freed from sin” (vv. 7, 18, 22), as considering himself dead to sin (v. 11), and as being obedient from the heart to God’s Word (v. 17)?

Those who contend Paul is speaking about a believer in chapter 7 point out that this person desires to obey God’s law and hates doing what is evil (vv. 15,19, 21), that he is humble before God, realizing that nothing good dwells in his humanness (v. 18), and that he sees sin as in him, but not all there is in him (vv. 17, 20–22). He gives thanks to Jesus Christ as his Lord and serves Him with his mind (v. 25). The apostle has already established that none of those things characterize the unsaved. The unbeliever not only hates God’s truth and righteousness but suppresses them, he willfully rejects the natural evidence of God, he neither honors nor gives thanks to God, and he is totally dominated by sin so that he arrogantly disobeys God’s law and encourages others to do so (1:18–21, 32).

In Romans 6, Paul began his discussion of sanctification by focusing on the believer as a new creation, a completely new person in Christ. The emphasis is therefore on the holiness and righteousness of the believer, both imputed and imparted. For the reasons given in the previous paragraph, as well as for other reasons that will be mentioned later, it seems certain that in chapter 7 the apostle is still talking about the believer. Here, however, the focus is on the conflict a believer continues to have with sin. Even in chapter 6, Paul indicates that believers still must continually do battle with sin in their lives. He therefore admonishes them: “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness” (Rom. 6:12–13).

Some interpreters believe that chapter 7 describes the carnal, or fleshly, Christian, one who is living on a very low level of spirituality. Many suggest that this person is a frustrated, legalistic Christian who attempts in his own power to please God by trying to live up to the Mosaic law.

But the attitude expressed in chapter 7 is not typical of legalists, who tend to be self-satisfied with their fulfillment of the law. Most people are attracted to legalism in the first place because it offers the prospect of living up to God’s standards by one’s own power.

It seems rather that Paul is here describing the most spiritual and mature of Christians, who, the more they honestly measure themselves against God’s standards of righteousness the more they realize how much they fall short. The closer we get to God, the more we see our own sin. Thus it is immature, fleshly, and legalistic persons who tend to live under the illusion that they are spiritual and that they measure up well by God’s standards. The level of spiritual insight, brokenness, contrition, and humility that characterize the person depicted in Romans 7 are marks of a spiritual and mature believer, who before God has no trust in his own goodness and achievements.

It also seems, as one would naturally suppose from the use of the first person singular (which appears forty-six times in Rom. 7:7–25), that Paul is speaking of himself. Not only is he the subject of this passage, but it is the mature and spiritually seasoned apostle that is portrayed. Only a Christian at the height of spiritual maturity would either experience or be concerned about such deep struggles of heart, mind, and conscience. The more clearly and completely he saw God’s holiness and goodness, the more Paul recognized and grieved over his own sinfulness.

Paul reflects the same humility many places in his writings. In his first letter to the church at Corinth, he confessed, “I am the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). Although he refers there to his attitude and actions before his conversion, he speaks of his apostleship in the present tense, considering himself still to be unworthy of that high calling. To the Ephesian believers he spoke of himself as “the very least of all saints” (Eph. 3:8), and to Timothy he marvelled that the Lord “considered me faithful, putting me into service” and refers to himself as the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:12, 15). He knew and confessed that whatever he was in Christ was fully due to the grace of God (1 Cor. 15:10).

Only a new creation in Christ lives with such tension of sin against righteousness, because only a Christian has the divine nature of God within him. Because he is no longer in Adam but now in Christ, he possesses the Spirit-given desire to be conformed to Christ’s own image and be made perfect in righteousness. But sin still clings to his humanness, although in his inner being he hates and despises it. He has passed from darkness to light and now shares in Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, and eternal life, but as he grows in Christlikeness, he also becomes more and more aware of the continued presence and power of indwelling sin, which he loathes and longs to be rid of. It is such sensitivity that caused the fourth-century church Father John Chrysostom to say in his Second Homily on Eutrophius that he feared nothing but sin. The person depicted in Romans 7 has a deep awareness of his own sin and an equally deep desire to please the Lord in all things. Only a mature Christian could be so characterized.

The Puritan writer Thomas Watson observed that one of the certain signs of “sanctification is an antipathy against sin … A hypocrite may leave sin, yet love it; as a serpent casts its coat, but keeps its sting; but a sanctified person can say he not only leaves sin, but loathes it.” He goes on to say to the Christian, “God … has not only chained up sin, but changed thy nature, and made thee as a king’s daughter, all glorious within. He has put upon thee the breastplate of holiness, which, though it may be shot at, can never be shot through” (A Body of Divinity [London: Banner of truth, rev. ed., 1965], pp. 246,250).

The spiritual believer is sensitive to sin because he knows it grieves the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30), because it dishonors God (1 Cor. 6:19–20), because sin keeps his prayers from being answered (1 Pet. 3:12), and because sin makes his life spiritually powerless (1 Cor. 9:27). The spiritual believer is sensitive to sin because it causes good things from God to be withheld (Jer. 5:25), because it robs him of the joy of salvation (Ps. 51:12), because it inhibits spiritual growth (1 Cor. 3:1), because it brings chastisement from the Lord (Heb. 12:7), and because it prevents his being a fit vessel for the Lord to use (2 Tim. 2:21). The spiritual believer is sensitive to sin because it pollutes Christian fellowship (1 Cor. 10:21), because it prevents participating properly in the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:28–29), and because it can even endanger his physical life and health (1 Cor. 11:30; 1 John 5:16).

As pointed out in the previous chapter of this volume, Paul uses past tense verbs in Romans 7:7–13, which doubtless indicates he was speaking of his preconversion life. Beginning in verse 14, however, and continuing throughout the rest of the chapter, he uses the present tense exclusively in reference to himself. That abrupt, obvious, and consistent change of tenses strongly supports the idea that in verses 14–25 Paul is describing his life as a Christian.

Beginning in verse 14 there is also an obvious change in the subject’s circumstances in relation to sin. In verses 7–13 Paul speaks of sin as deceiving and slaying him. He gives the picture of being at sin’s mercy and helpless to extricate himself from its deadly grasp. But in verses 14–25 he speaks of a conscious and determined battle against sin, which is still a powerful enemy but is no longer his master. In this latter part of the chapter Paul also continues to defend the righteousness of God’s law and rejoice in the benefits of His law, which, although it cannot save from sin, can nevertheless continue to reveal and convict of sin in the believer’s life, just as it did before salvation.

As long as a believer remains on earth in his mortal and corrupted body, the law will continue to be his spiritual ally. The obedient and Spirit-filled believer, therefore, greatly values and honors all the moral and spiritual commandments of God. He continues to declare with the psalmist, “Thy word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee” (Ps. 119:11), and that Word is more than ever a lamp to his feet and a light to his path (Ps. 119:105). God’s Word is more valuable for believers under the New Covenant than it was for those under the Old Covenant, not only because the Lord has revealed more of His truth to us in the New Testament, but also because believers now have the fulness of His indwelling Holy Spirit to illumine and apply His truth. Therefore, although the law cannot save or sanctify, it is still holy, righteous, and good (Rom. 7:12), and obedience to it offers great benefits both to believers and unbelievers.

Paul is still teaching about the broader subject of justification by grace through faith. He has established that justification results in the believer’s security (chap. 5), his holiness (chap. 6), and his freedom from bondage to the law (7:1–6). To that list of benefits the apostle now adds sensitivity to and hatred of sin.

In Romans 7:14–25 Paul gives a series of laments about his spiritual predicament and difficulties. The first three laments (vv. 14–17, 18–20, 21–23) follow the same pattern. Paul first describes the spiritual condition he is lamenting, then gives proof of its reality, and finally reveals the source of the problem. The final lament (vv. 24–25) also includes a beautiful exultation of gratitude to God for His Son Jesus Christ, because of whose gracious sacrifice believers in Him are no longer under condemnation, in spite of the lingering power of sin (8:1).

THE FIRST LAMENT

THE CONDITION

For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. (7:14)

The conjunction for carries the idea of because and indicates that Paul is not introducing a new subject but is giving a defense of what he has just said. He begins by again affirming that the Law is not the problem, because it is spiritual. Salvation by grace through faith does not replace or devalue the Law, because the law was never a means of salvation. As observed previously, Hebrews 11 and many other passages of Scripture make clear that the only means of salvation has always been the provision and power of God’s grace working through the channel of man’s faith.

“But I,” Paul continues, “am still of the flesh. I am still earth-bound and mortal.” It is important to note that the apostle does not say he is still in the flesh but that he is still of it. He has already explained that believers are no longer “in the flesh” (7:5; cf. 8:8), no longer bound by and enslaved to its sinfulness as they once were. The idea is that, although believers are not still in the flesh, the flesh is still in them. In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul describes the Christians there as “men of flesh, … babes in Christ” (1 Cor. 3:1). As the apostle confesses later in the present passage, using the present tense, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (7:18). Even as an apostle of Jesus Christ he possessed a remnant of the sinfulness that characterizes all human beings, including those who, in Christ, are saved from its total mastery and its condemnation.

But the Christian’s spirit, his inner self, has been completely and forever cleansed of sin. It is for that reason that, at death, he is prepared to enter God’s presence in perfect holiness and purity. Because his spiritual rebirth has already occurred, his flesh, with its remaining sin, is left behind.

Every well-taught and honest Christian is aware that his life falls far short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness and that he falls back into sin with disturbing frequency. He is no longer of his former father, the devil (John 8:44); he no longer loves the world (1 John 2:15); and he is no longer sin’s slave—but he is still subject to its deceit and is still attracted by many of its allurements. Yet the Christian cannot be happy with his sin, because it is contrary to his new nature and because he knows that it grieves his Lord as well as his own conscience.

The story is told of an unbeliever who, when he heard of the gospel of salvation by grace alone, commented, “If I could believe that salvation is free and is received only by faith, I would believe and then take my fill of sin.” The person witnessing to him wisely replied, “How much sin do you think it would take to fill a true Christian to satisfaction?” His point was that a person who has not lost his appetite for sin cannot be truly converted.

The phrase sold into bondage to sin has caused many interpreters to miss Paul’s point and to take those words as evidence the person being talked about is not a Christian. But Paul uses a similar phrase in verse 23, where he makes clear that only his members, that is, his fleshly body, is “a prisoner of the law of sin.” That lingering part of his unredeemed humanness is still sinful and consequently makes warfare against the new and redeemed part of him, which is no longer sin’s prisoner and is now its avowed enemy.

Paul’s strong words about his condition do not indicate he was only partially saved at the time but rather emphasize that sin can continue to have dreadful power in a Christian’s life and is not to be trifled with. The believer’s battle with sin is strenuous and life-long. And as Paul also points out later in this chapter, even a Christian can truthfully say, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18). In himself, that is, in his remaining fleshly being, a Christian is no more holy or sinless than he was before salvation.

Probably many years after he became a believer, David prayed, “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Thy compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Ps. 51:1–3). The rendering in the New International Version of verse 5 of that psalm gives helpful insight: “Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” David well understood the truth the apostle John would later proclaim to believers: “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:8–10).

It was in that humble spirit that Isaiah, although a prophet of God, confessed as he stood before the heavenly throne: “I am a man of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5). Like Isaiah, the more a Christian draws near to God, the more clearly he perceives the Lord’s holiness and his own sinfulness.

The commentator C. E. B. Cranfield observed, “The more seriously a Christian strives to live from grace and to submit to the discipline of the gospel, the more sensitive he becomes to … the fact that even his very best acts and activities are disfigured by the egotism which is still powerful within him—and no less evil because it is often more subtly disguised than formerly” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975], 1:358).

Thomas Scott, an evangelical preacher of the Church of England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, wrote that when a believer “compares his actual attainments with the spirituality of the law, and with his own desire and aim to obey it, he sees that he is yet, to a great degree, carnal in the state of his mind, and under the power of evil propensities, from which (like a man sold for a slave) he cannot wholly emancipate himself. He is carnal in exact proportion to the degree in which he falls short of perfect conformity to the law of God” (cited in Geoffrey B. Wilson, Romans: A Digest of Reformed Comment [London: Banner of Truth, 1969], p. 121).

Sin is so wretched and powerful that, even in a redeemed person, it hangs on and contaminates his living and frustrates his inner desire to obey the will of God.

THE PROOF

For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. (7:15)

Paul’s proof that sin still indwelt him was in the reality that that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do.

Ginõskõ (understand) has the basic meaning of taking in knowledge in regard to something or someone, knowledge that goes beyond the merely factual. By extension, the term frequently was used of a special relationship between the person who knows and the object of the knowledge. It was often used of the intimate relationship between husband and wife and between God and His people. Paul uses the term in that way to represent the relationship between the saved and the Savior: “Now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?” (Gal. 4:9). By further extension, the word was used in the sense of approving or accepting something or someone. “If anyone loves God,” Paul says, “he is known [accepted] by Him” (1 Cor. 8:3).

That seems to be the meaning here and is consistent with the last half of the sentence. Paul found himself doing things he did not approve of. It was not that he was unable to do a particular good thing but that when he saw the fullness and grandeur of God’s law, he was not able to measure up completely. It was not that he could never accomplish any good at all, nor that he could never faithfully obey God. The apostle was rather expressing an inner turmoil of the most profound kind, of sincerely desiring in his heart to fulfill the spirit as well as the letter of the law (see 7:6) but realizing that he was unable to live up to the Lord’s perfect standards and his own heart’s desire.

It was not Paul’s conscience that was bothering him because of some unforgiven sin or selfish reluctance to follow the Lord. It was his inner man, recreated in the likeness of Christ and indwelt by His Spirit, that now could see something of the true holiness, goodness, and glory of God’s law and was grieved at his least infraction or falling short of it. In glaring contrast to his preconversion self-satisfaction in thinking himself blameless before God’s law (Phil. 3:6), Paul now realized how wretchedly short of God’s perfect law he lived, even as a Spirit-indwelt believer and an apostle of Jesus Christ.

That spirit of humble contrition is a mark of every spiritual disciple of Christ, who cries out, “Lord, I can’t be all you want me to be, I am unable to fulfill your perfect, holy, and glorious law.” In great frustration and sorrow he painfully confesses with Paul, I am not practicing what I would like to do.

THE SOURCE

But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me. (7:16–17)

Paul now deals with the reason, or the source, of his inability to perfectly fulfill the law, and he begins by staunchly defending the divine standard. “Whatever the reason for my doing the very thing I do not wish to do,” he says, “it is not the law’s fault. I agree with the Law in every detail. My new self, the new creation that placed God’s incorruptible and eternal seed within me, is wholeheartedly confessing that the law is good. In my redeemed being I sincerely long to honor the law and to fulfill it perfectly.”

Every true Christian has in his heart a sense of the moral excellence of God’s Law. And the more mature he becomes in Christ, the more fully he perceives and lauds the law’s goodness, holiness, and glory. The more profoundly he is committed to the direction of the Holy Spirit in his life, the deeper his love for the Lord Jesus Christ becomes, the deeper his sense of God’s holiness and majesty becomes, and the greater will be his longing to fulfill God’s law.

What then, is the problem? What is the source of our failure to live up to God’s standards and our own inner desires? “Now it is no longer I who is the one doing it,” Paul explains, “but sin which indwells me.”

Paul was not trying to escape personal responsibility. He was not mixing the pure gospel with Greek philosophical dualism, which later plagued the early church and is popular in some church circles today. The apostle was not teaching that the spirit world is all good and the physical world all evil, as the influential Gnostic philosophy of his day contended. Proponents of that ungodly school of thought invariably develop moral insensitivity. They justify their sin by claiming it is entirely the product of their physical bodies, which are going to be destroyed anyway, and that the inner, spiritual person remains innately good and is untouched by and unaccountable for anything the body does.

The apostle had already confessed his own complicity in his sin. “1 am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin,” he said of his present earthly life as a believer (7:14). If the “real” inner Christian were not responsible for sin in his life, he would have no reason to confess it and have it cleansed and forgiven. As noted above, John makes clear that a claim of sinlessness makes God a liar and proves that His Word is not in us (1 John 1:10). A true believer is continually recognizing and confessing his sin (v. 9).

Throughout this chapter Paul has spoken in personal, nontechnical terms. He has not been drawing precise theological distinctions between the old preconversion life of a believer and his new life in Christ. He was certainly not teaching that a Christian has two natures or two personalities. There is just one saved person, just as previously there was one lost person.

In verse 17, however, Paul becomes more technical and theologically precise in his terminology There had been a radical change in his life, as there has been in the life of every Christian. Ouketi (no longer) is a negative adverb of time, indicating a complete and permanent change. Paul’s new I, his new inner self, no longer approves of the sin that still clings to him through the flesh. Whereas before his conversion his inner self approved of the sin he committed, now his inner self, a completely new inner self, strongly disapproves. He explains the reason for that change in his letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20).

After salvation, sin, like a deposed and exiled ruler, no longer reigns in a person’s life, but it manages to survive. It no longer resides in the innermost self but finds its residual dwelling in his flesh, in the unredeemed humanness that remains until a believer meets the Lord at the Rapture or at death. “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh,” Paul further explained to the Galatians; “for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please” (Gal. 5:17).

In this life, Christians are somewhat like an unskilled artist who beholds a beautiful scene that he wants to paint. But his lack of talent prevents him from doing the scene justice. The fault is not in the scene, or in the canvas, the brushes, or the paint but in the painter. That is why we need to ask the master painter, Jesus Christ, to place His hand over ours in order to paint the strokes that, independent of Him, we could never produce. Jesus said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The only way we can live victoriously is to walk by Christ’s own Spirit and in His power, in order not to “carry out the desire of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16).

THE SECOND LAMENT

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. (7:18–20)

The second lament follows the same pattern as the first: the condition, the proof, and the source.

THE CONDITION

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; (7:18a)

In order that his readers will not misunderstand, the apostle explains that the me in whom nothing good dwells is not the same as the “I” he has just mentioned in the previous verse and which referred to his new, redeemed, incorruptible, Christlike nature. The part of his present being in which sin still dwells is his flesh, his old humanness, which has not yet been completely transformed.

Again he points out (see w. 5, 14) that the only residence of sin in a believer’s life is his flesh, his unredeemed humanness. As noted above, the flesh in itself is not sinful, but it is still subject to sin and furnishes sin a beachhead from which to operate in a believer’s life.

THE PROOF

for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. (7:18b-19)

Paul had a deep desire to do only good. The wishing to do God’s will was very much present within his redeemed being. The me used here does not correspond to the me of the first half of this verse but to the I in verse 17. Unfortunately, however, the perfect doing of the good that his heart wished for was not present in his life. Slightly rephrasing the same truth, he says, For the good that I wish, I do not do.

As noted in regard to verse 15, Paul is not saying that he was totally incapable of doing anything that was good and acceptable. He is saying that he was incapable of completely fulfilling the requirements of God’s holy law. “Not that I have … already become perfect,” he explained to the Philippian church, “but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12–14).

As a believer grows in his spiritual life, he inevitably will have both an increased hatred of sin and an increased love for righteousness. As desire for holiness increases, so will sensitivity to and antipathy toward sin.

The other side of the predicament, Paul says, is that I practice the very evil that I do not wish. Again, it is important to understand that this great inner struggle with sin is not experienced by the undeveloped and childish believer but by the mature man of God.

David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14) and was honored by having the Messiah named the Son of David. Yet no Old Testament saint seems a worse sinner or was more conscious of his own sin. Particularly in the great penitential psalms 32, 38, and 51, but in many other psalms as well, David agonized over and confessed his sin before God. He was so near to the heart of God that the least sin in his life loomed before his eyes as a great offense.

THE SOURCE

But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. (7:20)

Paul repeats what he said in verses 16–17, with only slight variation. If I am doing the very thing I do not wish, he argues with simple logic, then it follows that I am no longer the one doing it. The apostle again uses the phrase no longer, referring to the time before his conversion. Before salvation it was the inner I who sinned and agreed with the sin. An unsaved person cannot truthfully say he is not doing it. He has no moral or spiritual “no longers.”

THE THIRD LAMENT

I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. (7:21–23)

The third lament is very much like the first two, both in substance and in order.

THE CONDITION

I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. (7:21)

The continuing presence of evil in a believer’s life is so universal that Paul refers to it not as an uncommon thing but as such a common reality as to be called a continually operating spiritual principle. Lingering sin does battle with every good thing a believer desires to do, every good thought, every good intention, every good motive, every good word, every good deed.

The Lord warned Cain when he became angry that Abel’s sacrifice was accepted but his own was not: “Sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7). Sin continues to crouch at the door, even of believers, in order to lead people into disobedience.

THE PROOF

For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, (7:22–23a)

The first part of Paul’s proof that sin is no longer his master and that he is indeed redeemed by God and made into the likeness of Christ is his being able to say, I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man. In other words, the apostle’s justified inner man is on the side of the law of God and no longer on the side of sin, as is true of every unsaved person.

Psalm 119 offers many striking parallels to Romans 7. Over and over and in a multitude of ways, the psalmist praises and exalts the Lord and His Word: “I have rejoiced in the way of Thy testimonies, as much as in all riches” (v. 14), “I shall delight in Thy commandments, which I love” (v. 47), “Thy law is my delight” (v. 77), “Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” (v. 105), and “Thy word is very pure, therefore Thy servant loves it” (v. 140). It has always been true that the godly person’s “delight is in the law of the Lord” (Ps. 1:2).

Paul’s inner man, the deepest recesses of his redeemed person, the bottom of his heart, hungers and thirsts for God’s righteousness (see Matt. 5:6) and seeks first His kingdom and His righteousness (see Matt. 6:33). “Though our outer man is decaying,” Paul told the Corinthian believers, “yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). He prayed that Christians in Ephesus would “be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man” (Eph. 3:16).

The second part of Paul’s proof that sin is no longer his master and that he is indeed redeemed by God and made into the likeness of Christ involves a corresponding but opposite principle (cf. v. 21), a different law, which does not operate in the inner person but in the members of the believer’s body, that is, in his unredeemed and still sinful humanness.

That opposing principle is continually waging war against the law of the believer’s mind, a term that here corresponds to the redeemed inner man about whom Paul has been talking. Paul is not setting up a dichotomy between the mind and the body but is contrasting the inner man, or the redeemed “new creature” (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17), with the “flesh” (Rom. 7:25), that remnant of the old man that will remain with each believer until we receive our glorified bodies (8:23). Paul is not saying his mind is always spiritual and his body is always sinful. In fact, he confesses that, tragically, the fleshly principle undermines the law of his mind and temporarily makes him a prisoner of the law of sin which is in his members.

As Paul will explain in the following chapter, what he has just said of himself could not apply to an unbeliever, who is entirely, in his mind as well as in his flesh, “hostile toward God” (Rom. 8:7). Unbelievers do not want to please God and could not please Him if they wanted to (v. 8).

Psalm 119 also parallels Romans 7 on the down side, in regard to the believer’s constant struggle with the sin that he hates and longs to be rid of. Like believers of every age, the psalmist sometimes was plagued by evil forces and people that warred against God and his own inner person. “My soul is crushed with longing after Thine ordinances at all times” (v. 20), he lamented, “My soul cleaves to the dust” (v. 25), and, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Thy statutes” (v. 71). He repeatedly pleads with God to revive him (vv. 25, 88, 107, 149, 154). With the deep humility that characterizes every mature believer, the writer ends by confessing, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep,” by imploring God to “seek Thy servant,” and finally by affirming again, “I do not forget Thy commandments” (v. 176).

THE SOURCE

and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. (7:23b)

As Paul has already mentioned in the first part of this verse, the source of his sin is no longer the inner man, which is now redeemed and being sanctified. Like all believers while they are in this earthly life, Paul found himself sometimes to be a prisoner of the law of sin, the principle that evil was still present in him (7:21). But now sin was only in the members of his body, in his old self (Eph. 4:22), which was still “dead because of sin” (Rom. 8:10).

It is not that Paul’s salvation was imperfect or in any way deficient. From the moment he receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the believer is completely acceptable by God and ready to meet Him. But as long as he remains in his mortal body, in his old unredeemed humanness, he remains subject to temptation and sin. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh,” Paul explained to the Corinthian Christians (most of whom were spiritually immature and very much still fleshly), “for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” (2 Cor. 10:3–4). In other words, although a Christian cannot avoid living in the flesh, he can and should avoid walking according to the flesh in its sinful ways.

THE FINAL LAMENT

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. (7:24–25)

Paul’s final lament is even more intense than the others. He cries out in utter anguish and frustration. Wretched man that I am! Because this person describes himself in such negative terms, many commentators believe he could not be speaking as a Christian, much less as an apostle. If Paul was speaking of himself, they argue, he must have been speaking about his preconversion condition.

But the Scottish commentator Robert Haldane wisely observed that men perceive themselves to be sinners in direct proportion as they have previously discovered the holiness of God and His law. In one of his penitential psalms, David expressed his great anguish of soul for not being all that he knew the Lord wanted him to be:“0 Lord, rebuke me not in Thy wrath; and chasten me not in Thy burning anger. For Thine arrows have sunk deep into me, and Thy hand has pressed down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of Thine indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they weigh too much for me” (Ps. 3814).

Another psalmist expressed distress over his sin in words that only a person who knows and loves God could ray: “Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, 0 Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, 0 Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope” (Ps. 130:1–5).

Paul next asks a question to which he well knows the answer: Who will set me free from the body of this death? He again makes clear that the cause of his frustration and torment is the body of this death. It is only a believer’s body that remains subject to sin and death.

Rhuomai (set … free) has the basic idea of rescuing from danger and was used of a soldier’s going to a wounded comrade on the battlefield and carrying him to safety. Paul longed for the day when he would be rescued from the last vestige of his old, sinful, unredeemed flesh.

It is reported that near Tarsus, where Paul was born (Acts 22:3), a certain ancient tribe sentenced convicted murderers to an especially gruesome execution. The corpse of the slain person was lashed tightly to the body of the murderer and remained there until the murderer himself died. In a few days, which doubtless seemed an eternity to the convicted man, the decay of the person he had slain infected and killed him. Perhaps Paul had such torture in mind when he expressed his yearning to be freed from the body of this death.

Without hesitation, the apostle testifies to the certainty of his eventual rescue and gives thanks to his Lord even before he is set free: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! he exults. Later in the epistle he further testifies, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). Frustrating and painful as a believer’s present struggle with sin may be, that temporary earthly predicament is nothing compared with the eternal glory that awaits him in heaven.

Because Christians have a taste of God’s righteousness and glory while they are still on earth, their longing for heaven is all the more acute: “We ourselves,” Paul says, “having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23; cf. 2 Cor. 5:4). On that great day, even our corruptible bodies will be redeemed and made incorruptible. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” Paul assures us, “the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality…. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:52–53, 56–57).

Paul’s primary emphasis in the present passage, however, is not on the believer’s eventual deliverance from sin’s presence but on the conflict with sin that torments every spiritually sensitive child of God. He therefore ends by summarizing the two sides of that struggle: So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

In the poem Maud (x. 5), one of Tennyson’s characters yearns, “Ah for a new man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be!” The Christian can say that a new man has already arisen in him, but he also must confess that the sinful part his old man has not yet ceased to be.