Chapter 7
7:1-3- Paul moves from using a slave/master analogy to the legality of marriage. Those who knew the law knew the principles of legal jurisdiction. Rather logically, that is, that the law only has jurisdiction over the living, not those who are dead. He equates this to marriage. Only if a wife’s husband dies would she be legally free to marry another. If she did so while her husband lived, she would commit adultery.
7:4-6- Paul now moves to connect the analogy. However, as we read verses 4-6, we notice that the connection to the husband/wife analogy in verses 2-3 isn’t exact. Paul equates the law to the husband (who dies) in his example. However, he goes on to say that we (the bride) have died to the law and are now free to be joined to Christ. To quote Everett Harrison: “Paul avoids saying that the law died, something that is never affirmed in Scripture, though the law has a certain course to run (Gal. 3:19). All he is concerned with is continuing the emphasis already made clear in chapter 6, that death ends obligation.” F.F. Bruce sums up Paul's reversal of the situation: “As death breaks the bond between a husband and wife, so death–the believer’s death-with-Christ–breaks the bond which formerly yoked him to the law, and now he is free to enter into union with Christ.” The result of this is that the believer can now bear fruit for God (Eph. 2:10), unlike beforehand when we were controlled by the sinful nature and bound to the law.
Robert Mounce comments on verse 5: “Law not only reveals sin (cf. 7:7), but it also excites it to action. By nature rebels oppose restrictions. When placed under the law, people instinctively find themselves at odds with the lawgiver and act accordingly. The response of their sinful passions is to rebel against authority. Opposition to God inevitably ends in death.” Being released from the law as a wife is released from her husband at death (being free to marry another) means that we are free from one therefore making it “so that we serve” a new master “in the Spirit.” This, along with verses like Rom. 8:4, speak to the new covenant that was prophesied in the Old Testament and finds its fulfillment in Christ and His Church. Jeremiah 31:33 (NIV), “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV), “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
As Bruce puts it, “Christian holiness is not a matter of painstaking conformity to the individual precepts of an external law-code; it is rather a question of the Holy Spirit producing His fruit in the life, reproducing those graces which were seen in perfection in the life of Christ. The law prescribed a life of holiness, but it was powerless to produce such a life, because of the inadequacy of the human material that it had to work upon. But what the law was powerless to do has been done by God… All that the law required by way of conformity to the will of God is now realized in the lives of those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit and are released from their servitude to the old order. God’s commandments have now become enablings.”
7:7-8- Paul establishes that the Law is not sinful. As he’s already shown, the Law is only a reflection of God’s holiness; His righteous standard. It’s the mirror that exposes the mud on our faces! Mud that we might have otherwise not known was on us, but nonetheless needs to be cleaned off to be in God’s presence. There was a time in which Paul was ignorant of the Law, but once he understood with his mind (or when he ‘came of age’ and assumed responsibility of keeping the Law as all jewish boys did at 13), he was acutely aware of his sinful desires. Most can relate to the ironic fact that prohibitions against certain things tend to only fuel the desire to do them. We see the truth of this in the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Harrison comments: “Eve was faced with a commandment–a prohibition. When desire was stirred through the subtle suggestion of the serpent, a certain rebelliousness came into play that is the very heart of sin–a preference for one’s own will over the expressed will of God.” “for apart from the Law sin is dead” is being spoken of in a relative sense and is connected to verse 9. Sin still exists, but lies dormant until the knowledge comes about and brings it to life.
7:9-11- As Adam in the garden was not aware of sin until his obedience to God’s command was tested by the tempter, so was Paul. In a very real and practical sense, obedience to the Law brought about a fruitful life. Even within the society of Israel, there were punishments for breaking the law, to include death for someone who, say, commits murder. By adhering to the law in this matter, it literally results in life! Even in less extreme examples, we see in Scripture (Proverbs for example) that neglecting the Law leads to a lot of heartache, whereas obedience leads to fulfillment. The difficulty though, is that a man can go his whole life never externally transgressing the 7th Commandment, but break it internally every day of his life as Jesus points out in Matt. 5:27-28. By this standard we are all helpless and the Law results in death!
Verse 11 really echoes Adam and Eve in the garden. Sin (taking the place of the tempter), took the opportunity through the commandment of God and deceived Eve. This led to both a spiritual and eventual physical death.
7:12-13- Paul definitively answers the question in verse 7. “Is the Law sin?” Again, one must not come to the conclusion that just because we are unable to keep the Law and that it provokes our sin nature means that His standard is in any way bad or unrighteous. Just the contrary! “Since the law is God’s law, it must of necessity reflect the nature of God. The law of a holy God must be consistent with His holy nature (Isa. 6:3). -Robert Mounce
As the Psalmist proclaims in Psalm 119:160 (NIV), “All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.” Throughout the Psalm, he proclaims the beauty and goodness of God’s commands and precepts and acknowledges that those who cherish and walk in them will be blessed. With that being said, it’s not the Law which causes death in us, it’s sin! Sin used what was good (God’s law) to bring about death. This shows us how terrible sin is. It uses God’s commands for its own evil purposes. The destructive results of sin shows us how putrid sin really is. To put it in more simple terms, think of someone who struggles with a bad drug addiction. We can see the negative effects of that addiction play out in their lives thus revealing how bad and horrible it really is.
7:14-25- Starting with verse 14 until the end of chapter 7 has been the subject of much debate for scholars and theologians for centuries. Is Paul referring to his spiritual state and experience before his conversion, or after? There is compelling and convincing evidence for both positions (see notes on 7:13-25 in ESV Study Bible for a brief, but insightful comparison of the two positions), but I tend to lean towards the fact that Paul is speaking in a post conversion context and thus this is also something the believer can relate to. Who among us hasn’t experienced what Paul is describing in ch. 7? A desire to please the God we serve, but simultaneously having to deal with the sin nature still within us that we must die to. I think a passage that lends considerable support is Gal. 5:16-17 where Paul says: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (ESV). Timothy George comments on Gal. 5:17 by saying, “Here in 5:17 flesh and Spirit are portrayed as two warring forces locked in mortal conflict within the life of the believer.”
And Kenneth Wuest says of Paul in Rom. 7:14-25: “He desires to do good and hates sin. No unsaved man does that. The failure to achieve this purpose is found in the fact that he is attempting in his own strength that which can only be accomplished in the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.”
We don’t expect to see this conflict of two natures within unregenerate unbelievers, especially if we believe the truth of Scripture that Paul refers to in Rom. 3:10-18 (v. 11, “there is no one who seeks God.”). However, we see all throughout the New Testament that there is a tension between our current, unrestored world and the world to come (Rev. 21). Paul even goes on to say in 8:23 that “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (ESV). And in Phil. 3:20-21 Paul says, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (ESV). As we see in Scripture and with Paul’s candor in 7:14-25, there is an eschatological tension between the current age (the present age after Christ’s death and resurrection) and the age to come (the “second coming” and restoration of all things).
Albert Barnes writes: “The very struggle with evil shows that it is not loved, or approved, but that the Law which condemns it is really loved. Christians may here find a test of their piety. The fact of struggling against evil, the desire to be free from it, and to overcome it, the anxiety and grief which it causes, is an evidence that we do not love it, and that therefore we are the friends of God. Perhaps nothing can be a more decisive test of piety than a long-continued and painful struggle against evil passions and desires in every form, and a panting of the soul to be delivered from the power and dominion of sin.”
And Matthew Henry comments: “It seems rather to be understood of the struggles that are maintained between grace and corruption in sanctified souls. That there are remainders of indwelling corruption, even where there is a living principle of grace, is past dispute. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 1 John 1:8, 10. That true grace strives against these sins and corruptions is likewise certain (Gal. 5:17).” Henry goes on to point out that Paul’s cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” in verse 24 indicates that he was sick of this sin nature. For one who has the Spirit of grace within, the remainder of his indwelling sin was something to be grieved and burdened over. What fellowship does light have with darkness (2 Cor. 6:14)? Paul is not excusing his sin or absolving himself of responsibility (as some might infer from verse 17), but the thrust of these verses is emphasizing the power of sin within us and identifying the “source;” the “why” behind doing what goes against God’s holy standard. The answer to who can help with this desperate situation is provided in verse 25. Thanks to God through Christ Jesus, our Lord! Having said that, the chapter doesn’t end in victory, but rather in a tension that isn’t resolved. “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.” Chapter 8 dives appropriately into how exactly deliverance from this indwelling sin can be realized. The overall flow from chapter 6 to 7 and then to 8 is crucial. Chapter 7 stands as a blinding reminder that we do not attain perfection in this life even after salvation and further proves how totally corrupted by sin we as humans are. Moving from chapter 6 directly into chapter 8 might have very well implied the opposite (or at least been incorrectly inferred by the reader).
Bibliography (Works Cited):
-Everett F. Harrison: The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 10, Romans, 1976
-F.F. Bruce: The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, TNTC, 1983
-Robert H. Mounce: Romans, NAC, 1995
-Timothy George: Galatians, NAC, 1994
-Kenneth S. Wuest: Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, Vol. 1 (Romans)
-Albert Barnes: Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible (Romans)
-Matthew Henry: Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible