Romans · Chapter 7

V. 1. The apostle continues the comparison between the former and the present state of a believer, and at the same time endeavours to wean the Jewish believers from their fondness for the Mosaic law. I speak to them that know the law-To the Jews chiefly here. As long-So long, and no longer.

As it liveth-The law is here spoken of, by a common figure, as a person, to which, as to an husband, life and death are ascribed. But he speaks indifferently of the law being dead to us, or we to it, the sense being the same.

Verse 1. For I speak to them that know the law] This is a proof that the apostle directs this part of his discourse to the Jews. As long as he liveth?] Or, as long as IT liveth; law does not extend its influence to the dead, nor do abrogated laws bind. It is all the same whether we understand these words as speaking of a law abrogated, so that it cannot command; or of its objects being dead, so that it has none to bind. In either case the law has no force.

Verses 1-3. Know ye not, brethren — The apostle, having shown that justified and regenerated persons are free from the dominion of sin, shows here that they are also free from the yoke of the Mosaic law, it being dead to them, verse 6; and they to it, verse 4: for I speak to them that know the law — To the Jews or proselytes chiefly here; that the law — The Mosaic dispensation in general, to which you were espoused by Moses; hath dominion over a man — Over a Jew married to it, and engaged to observe it; as long as he — Rather, as long as it liveth; that is, abideth in force, and no longer. For it would be contrary to the apostle’s design, to suppose the sense of this to be as our translation renders it, as long as he, that is, the man in question, liveth; for he professedly endeavours to prove that they had outlived their obligations to the law. But the rendering here proposed is natural, and suits the connection with the following verses, in which the law is represented as their first husband, whose decease left them free to be married to Christ. The law is here spoken of, by a common figure, as a person to which, as to a husband, life and death are ascribed. It is as if he had said, The dominion of the law over particular persons can, at the utmost, last no longer than till it is itself abrogated; for that is, as it were, its death; since the divine authority going along with it was the very life and soul of it. Suppose that to cease, and the letter of the precept becomes but a dead thing, and with respect to its obligations, as if it had never been. But he speaks indifferently of the law being dead to us, or us to it, the sense being the same. For the woman, &c. — Just as it is, according to the law itself, with respect to the power of a husband over his wife, who is bound by the law to be subject to her husband so long as he liveth — The law here referred to is not merely that particular branch of the law of Moses which respected marriage, but also and especially the law of marriage promulgated in paradise, Genesis 2:24; whereby our Lord declared marriages were appointed to continue for life, except in the case of adultery, Matthew 19:6. This argument was peculiarly adapted to the Jews, whose connection with God, as their king, was represented by God himself under the idea of a marriage, solemnized with them at Sinai. But if the husband — To whom she was bound, be dead, she is loosed — From that law, which gave him a peculiar property in her. So then, if while her husband liveth, genhtai andri eterw, she become the property of another man, &c. — The apostle, says Theodoret, “does not consider here the permission given by the law of Moses to the woman divorced to be married to another, as being taught by Christ not to approve of such divorces; but he seems only to intimate that she had no power to dissolve this bond by putting away her husband, or that this divorce rendered her husband dead in law to her, she being not to return to him again. Deuteronomy 24:4.” Perhaps we ought rather to say, he speaks in the general, not entering exactly into every excepted case that might be imagined. To infer, therefore, hence, as some have done, that adultery is not a sufficient foundation for divorce, is very unreasonable. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law — Which bound her to be in subjection, and yield conjugal affection to her husband only; so that she is no more an adulteress — Subject to the shame and punishment of one; though she be married, genomenhn andoi eterw, becoming the property of another man; for death, having interposed between them, hath dissolved the former relation. He is dead to her, and she to him.

Verse 1. I speak to them that know the law, with a view more fully to illustrate the liberation from the condemnation of the law, that the law has dominion over a man, and over a woman, as long as they live. The dissolution of marriage by death was a new and striking argument, that Christ by his death had taken away sin, and therefore put the new covenant in full force, that they might now embrace the promises, and bring forth all the fruits of the Spirit: and whom the Son makes free, he shall be free indeed.

1. Know the law—Not by the Jewish polity alone, but universally, subjection to law terminates at death. Hence the apostle assumes that his brethren know law; not the law, with the article, as in the English translation. Over a man—Over a person; for the Greek word may imply either sex, and the apostle in fact selects a female for his illustration.

Ver. 1. To men who know law: to Jews and others familiar with the Law of Moses, and to Gentiles familiar with the universal principles underlying all law. This is the new and important feature of Rom. 7, as of Romans 2:12-29.

The Law: the divinely given and authoritative Law of Moses, ever present in the religious thought of Jews. But the principle here asserted applies to every authoritative prescription of conduct. We therefore cannot infer from this verse that Paul’s readers were chiefly Jews.

Is-lord of: as in Romans 6:9.

So long time as he lives: conceding to the Law all it can claim, the concession suggesting a limitation.

V. 2. She is freed from the law of her husband-From that law which gave him a peculiar property in her.

Verse 2. For the woman which hath a husband] The apostle illustrates his meaning by a familiar instance. A married woman is bound to her husband while he lives; but when her husband is dead she is discharged from the law by which she was bound to him alone.

Verses 1-3. Know ye not, brethren — The apostle, having shown that justified and regenerated persons are free from the dominion of sin, shows here that they are also free from the yoke of the Mosaic law, it being dead to them, verse 6; and they to it, verse 4: for I speak to them that know the law — To the Jews or proselytes chiefly here; that the law — The Mosaic dispensation in general, to which you were espoused by Moses; hath dominion over a man — Over a Jew married to it, and engaged to observe it; as long as he — Rather, as long as it liveth; that is, abideth in force, and no longer. For it would be contrary to the apostle’s design, to suppose the sense of this to be as our translation renders it, as long as he, that is, the man in question, liveth; for he professedly endeavours to prove that they had outlived their obligations to the law. But the rendering here proposed is natural, and suits the connection with the following verses, in which the law is represented as their first husband, whose decease left them free to be married to Christ. The law is here spoken of, by a common figure, as a person to which, as to a husband, life and death are ascribed. It is as if he had said, The dominion of the law over particular persons can, at the utmost, last no longer than till it is itself abrogated; for that is, as it were, its death; since the divine authority going along with it was the very life and soul of it. Suppose that to cease, and the letter of the precept becomes but a dead thing, and with respect to its obligations, as if it had never been. But he speaks indifferently of the law being dead to us, or us to it, the sense being the same. For the woman, &c. — Just as it is, according to the law itself, with respect to the power of a husband over his wife, who is bound by the law to be subject to her husband so long as he liveth — The law here referred to is not merely that particular branch of the law of Moses which respected marriage, but also and especially the law of marriage promulgated in paradise, Genesis 2:24; whereby our Lord declared marriages were appointed to continue for life, except in the case of adultery, Matthew 19:6. This argument was peculiarly adapted to the Jews, whose connection with God, as their king, was represented by God himself under the idea of a marriage, solemnized with them at Sinai. But if the husband — To whom she was bound, be dead, she is loosed — From that law, which gave him a peculiar property in her. So then, if while her husband liveth, genhtai andri eterw, she become the property of another man, &c. — The apostle, says Theodoret, “does not consider here the permission given by the law of Moses to the woman divorced to be married to another, as being taught by Christ not to approve of such divorces; but he seems only to intimate that she had no power to dissolve this bond by putting away her husband, or that this divorce rendered her husband dead in law to her, she being not to return to him again. Deuteronomy 24:4.” Perhaps we ought rather to say, he speaks in the general, not entering exactly into every excepted case that might be imagined. To infer, therefore, hence, as some have done, that adultery is not a sufficient foundation for divorce, is very unreasonable. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law — Which bound her to be in subjection, and yield conjugal affection to her husband only; so that she is no more an adulteress — Subject to the shame and punishment of one; though she be married, genomenhn andoi eterw, becoming the property of another man; for death, having interposed between them, hath dissolved the former relation. He is dead to her, and she to him.

Ver. 2. The woman with a husband: a case in point involving the whole principle of law. The emphatic word living suggests a limitation valid in all law, and expressly stated in the rest of the verse.

Bound: a feature of all law: it limits our action.

Made-of-no-effect from: as in Romans 3:3, 31; 4:14; 6:6: made practically non-existent in the eyes of the Law. It is equivalent to free from in Romans 7:3.

But if the husband die, the woman goes beyond the operation of the law of the husband: i.e. the statute which forbids her to marry another. For the phrase law of, see Leviticus 6:9, 14, etc.

Verse 3. So then, if, while her husband liveth] The object of the apostle’s similitude is to show that each party is equally bound to the other; but that the death of either dissolves the engagement.

So-she is no adulteress, though she be married to another] And do not imagine that this change would argue any disloyalty in you to your Maker; for, as he has determined that this law of ordinances shall cease, you are no more bound to it than a woman is to a deceased husband, and are as free to receive the Gospel of Christ as a woman in such circumstances would be to remarry.

Verses 1-3. Know ye not, brethren — The apostle, having shown that justified and regenerated persons are free from the dominion of sin, shows here that they are also free from the yoke of the Mosaic law, it being dead to them, verse 6; and they to it, verse 4: for I speak to them that know the law — To the Jews or proselytes chiefly here; that the law — The Mosaic dispensation in general, to which you were espoused by Moses; hath dominion over a man — Over a Jew married to it, and engaged to observe it; as long as he — Rather, as long as it liveth; that is, abideth in force, and no longer. For it would be contrary to the apostle’s design, to suppose the sense of this to be as our translation renders it, as long as he, that is, the man in question, liveth; for he professedly endeavours to prove that they had outlived their obligations to the law. But the rendering here proposed is natural, and suits the connection with the following verses, in which the law is represented as their first husband, whose decease left them free to be married to Christ. The law is here spoken of, by a common figure, as a person to which, as to a husband, life and death are ascribed. It is as if he had said, The dominion of the law over particular persons can, at the utmost, last no longer than till it is itself abrogated; for that is, as it were, its death; since the divine authority going along with it was the very life and soul of it. Suppose that to cease, and the letter of the precept becomes but a dead thing, and with respect to its obligations, as if it had never been. But he speaks indifferently of the law being dead to us, or us to it, the sense being the same. For the woman, &c. — Just as it is, according to the law itself, with respect to the power of a husband over his wife, who is bound by the law to be subject to her husband so long as he liveth — The law here referred to is not merely that particular branch of the law of Moses which respected marriage, but also and especially the law of marriage promulgated in paradise, Genesis 2:24; whereby our Lord declared marriages were appointed to continue for life, except in the case of adultery, Matthew 19:6. This argument was peculiarly adapted to the Jews, whose connection with God, as their king, was represented by God himself under the idea of a marriage, solemnized with them at Sinai. But if the husband — To whom she was bound, be dead, she is loosed — From that law, which gave him a peculiar property in her. So then, if while her husband liveth, genhtai andri eterw, she become the property of another man, &c. — The apostle, says Theodoret, “does not consider here the permission given by the law of Moses to the woman divorced to be married to another, as being taught by Christ not to approve of such divorces; but he seems only to intimate that she had no power to dissolve this bond by putting away her husband, or that this divorce rendered her husband dead in law to her, she being not to return to him again. Deuteronomy 24:4.” Perhaps we ought rather to say, he speaks in the general, not entering exactly into every excepted case that might be imagined. To infer, therefore, hence, as some have done, that adultery is not a sufficient foundation for divorce, is very unreasonable. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law — Which bound her to be in subjection, and yield conjugal affection to her husband only; so that she is no more an adulteress — Subject to the shame and punishment of one; though she be married, genomenhn andoi eterw, becoming the property of another man; for death, having interposed between them, hath dissolved the former relation. He is dead to her, and she to him.

Ver. 3. Fuller statement of the case of a married woman, as an inference from the principle stated in Romans 7:1:

therefore etc. The husband may be a tyrant and murderer: another, kind and good, may wish to make her his wife. Yet,

while the husband lives, the Law steps in and brands her as an adulteress if she attempts to escape from the tyrant by giving herself to another man. But if the husband die: same words as in Romans 7:2. By his death she ceases to be a wife; and passes, according to an essential principle of law, from under control of the law which forbad her second marriage. Death, without setting aside

the law, has made her free from it. The case of the wife is specially suitable to the matter before us. For, in other cases, e.g. a man condemned to imprisonment for a term of years, the person set free by death is by death removed from our observation. But the widow is before our eyes, living and free. Moreover, her case suggests an important and beautiful metaphor: cp. 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:25-27.

V. 4. Thus ye also-Are now as free from the Mosaic law as an husband is, when his wife is dead.

By the body of Christ-Offered up; that is, by the merits of his death, that law expiring with him.

Verse 4. Wherefore, my brethren] This is a parallel case. You were once under the law of Moses, and were bound by its injunctions; but now ye are become dead to that law-a modest, inoffensive mode of speech, for, The law, which was once your husband, is dead; God has determined that it shall be no longer in force; so that now, as a woman whose husband is dead is freed from the law of that husband, or from her conjugal vow, and may legally be married to another, so God, who gave the law under which ye have hitherto lived, designed that it should be in force only till the advent of the Messiah; that advent has taken place, the law has consequently ceased, and now ye are called to take on you the yoke of the Gospel, and lay down the yoke of the law; and it is the design of God that you should do so.

That ye should be married to another-who is raised from the dead] As Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth, the object of God in giving the law was to unite you to Christ; and, as he has died, he has not only abolished that law which condemns every transgressor to death, without any hope of a revival, but he has also made that atonement for sin, by his own death, which is represented in the sacrifices prescribed by the law. And as Jesus Christ is risen again from the dead, he has thereby given the fullest proof that by his death he has procured the resurrection of mankind, and made that atonement required by the law. That we should bring forth fruit unto God-we, Jews, who believe in Christ, have, in consequence of our union with him, received the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit; so that we bring forth that fruit of holiness unto God which, without this union, it would be impossible for us to produce. Here is a delicate allusion to the case of a promising and numerous progeny from a legitimate and happy marriage.

Verse 4. Wherefore, my brethren — Hence it follows, or by this comparison it appears; ye also — Believing Jews, and much more believing Gentiles; are become dead to the law — Taken off from all hopes of justification by it, and confidence in your obedience to it: and so likewise it has become dead to you, and has no life or efficacy in these respects; by the body of Christ — By the offering up of Christ’s body on the cross; that is, by the merit of his death, by which it evidently appears, that there is no other way of making reconciliation for sin, or of obtaining deliverance from wrath but by that; his death and sufferings having now accomplished the design of the law, and abrogated its authority; and it, therefore, expiring with him. That ye should be married to another — (2 Corinthians 11:2;) so that you must now give up yourselves to Christ, as your second husband, that you may be justified by faith in him. The apostle speaks of Christ as the husband of the believing Jews, because he was now become their Lord and head; and he calls him another husband, because they had been formerly, as it were, married to the Mosaic law, and relied on that alone for salvation. And the crucifixion of their old man, or corrupt nature, and their obtaining a new nature, through the death of Christ, was a fit preparation of them for being espoused to Christ. Who is raised from the dead — Who is alive himself, and will bestow spiritual life on those that believe on him, and give up themselves to him; that we should bring forth fruit — Namely, of holiness and good works, Galatians 5:22; unto God — To his glory, Matthew 5:16; John 15:8; Philippians 1:11. In this passage the union of Christ with his people is represented as a marriage, as it is also Ephesians 5:31, 32; Revelation 21:9; 22:17. The apostles probably took that idea from the ancient phraseology concerning the Jews. See on verse 2. But from whatever source it was derived, it is a strong representation of the friendship and endearment which subsists, and to all eternity will subsist, between Christ and believers, and of the happiness which they will derive from his love to them, and from their entire subjection to him.

4. Dead to the law—As the deceased husband was physically dead to the wife, so the widow was legally dead to the husband; that is, she was emancipated from all subjection or relation to him. Similarly, by the apostle’s varied and flexible use of the word dead, the new Church was dead to the departed law. They were emancipated according to the measure of their life in Christ, and the spontaneity of their active holiness, from all pressure of the law.

Ver. 4. Application of the foregoing case to ourselves:

so that also ye etc. Made-dead to the Law: placed beyond its control, as though we were dead: cp. Galatians 2:19, a close parallel. Through the body of Christ: nailed to the cross. Through Christ’s death, we were set free from the divine law which condemned us, for our sins, to be slaves of sin.

That ye might become another’s: God’s purpose in saving us from bondage to sin, viz. that we might be united to Christ. Inasmuch as we are saved by the death of Him to whom God designs us to be united, it is needful to add that

He was raised from the dead: cp. Romans 6:4, 5, 9. Had He not died, we had not been released: had He not risen, he would not have become our husband.

Bear-fruit for God: practically the same as “fruit for sanctification “ in Romans 6:22. We were united to Christ that we may live a life producing good results, such as will advance the purposes of God. To fill up the comparison, we must consider ourselves to have been, not merely the servant, but the wife, of sin. Our husband was a murderer. But we had chosen him for our lord: and the Law recognised the marriage. God’s original purpose was that we should be the bride of His Son. But we gave ourselves to Sin; and the Law then forbad our union with Christ. In Rom. 6, however, we have learnt that through Christ’s death we ourselves are dead. Therefore, according to Romans 7:1-3, we are legally free from the Law which forbad our marriage with Christ. We are made free by the death of One to whom we are so closely related that in the eyes of the Law His death is our death.

Translated into the language of common life, this verse teaches that through the death of Christ is removed a barrier to our restoration to normal and blessed relation to Christ and to God having its foundation in the Law of God.

V. 5. When ye were in the flesh-Carnally minded, in a state of nature; before we believed in Christ.

Our sins which were by the law-Accidentally occasioned, or irritated thereby.

Wrought in our members-Spread themselves all over the whole man.

Verse 5. For, when we were in the flesh] When we were without the Gospel, in our carnal and unregenerated state, though believing in the law of Moses, and performing the rites and offices of our religion. The motions of sins, which were by the law] ta paqhmata twn amartiwn, the passions of sins, the evil propensities to sins; to every particular sin there is a propensity: one propensity does not excite to all kinds of sinful acts; hence the apostle uses the plural number, the PASSIONS or propensities of SINS; sins being not more various than their propensities in the unregenerate heart, which excite to them. These paqhmata, propensities, constitute the fallen nature; they are the disease of the heart, the pollution and corruption of the soul.

Did work in our members] The evil propensity acts en toiv melesin, in the whole nervous and muscular system, applying that stimulus to every part which is necessary to excite them to action.

To bring forth fruit unto death.] To produce those acts of transgression which subject the sinner to death, temporal and eternal. When the apostle says, the motion of sin which were by the law, he points out a most striking and invariable characteristic of sin, viz. its rebellious nature; it ever acts against law, and the most powerfully against known law. Because the law requires obedience, therefore it will transgress. The law is equally against evil passions and evil actions, and both these exert themselves against it. So, these motions which were by the law, became roused into the most powerful activity by the prohibitions of the law. They were comparatively dormant till the law said, thou shalt NOT do this, thou shalt DO that; then the rebellious principle in the evil propensity became roused, and acts of transgression and omissions of duty were the immediate consequences.

Verses 5, 6. For — We ought now to be fruitful in good works, because we were formerly fruitful in evil: when we were in the flesh — Under the comparatively carnal dispensation of Moses, and in our natural corrupt state, before we believed on Christ and were regenerated. Thus, oi ontev en sarki, they that are in the flesh, and oi kata sarka ontev, they that are after the flesh, (Romans 8:5, 8,) signify those that are influenced and governed by the fleshly principle, in opposition to the guidance and influences of the Holy Spirit; and einai en sarki, to be in the flesh, (verse 9,) zhn peripatein kata sarka, to live, to walk according to the flesh, (verses 12, 13,) bear the same sense. It is evident, therefore, as Dr. Whitby justly observes, that this expression, when we were in the flesh, not only signifies to be under the carnal ordinances of the law, for so were all the pious Jews, who lived from Moses to gospel times; but that it more especially relates to them who, living under these ordinances, were themselves carnal, and so had the law of the flesh still warring against the law of their minds, and bringing them into captivity to the law of sin, which could not be the state of Zacharias and Elisabeth, or any other of those persons who were righteous before God, and walked in all the commandments of the Lord blameless. And if of such [unregenerate persons] only, we understand the apostle’s following discourse in this chapter, the sense will be clear. The motions of sins — Ta paqhmata twn amartiwn, sinful passions; which were by the law — Accidentally occasioned or irritated thereby; did work in our members — Spread themselves all over the whole man; to bring forth fruit — Very different from that which has just been mentioned, even such as would have been unto death, Romans 6:21, 23; that is, would have exposed us to, and have issued in, eternal death, if God in his mercy had not interposed, and brought us acquainted with the gospel. But now — Being brought out of that carnal state; we are delivered from the law — Set at liberty from our subjection to it as a law, and our obligation to observe it, and from the condemning, irritating power thereof, and therefore from the sinful passions occasioned by it; that being dead wherein we were held — In subjection, as the wife to her living husband; that law being now made void, and having no further power to condemn us. It may be proper to observe here, that the Syriac and Arabic versions, Origen, Theodoret, Œcumenius, and Theophylact, (with whom agree Bengelius, Mill, Macknight, and others,) read apoqanontev, we being dead to that by which we were held: which, says Origen, is undoubtedly the best reading, agreeing with verse 4, ye are become dead to the law. That we should serve — God and our generation; in newness of spirit — In a new and spiritual manner; and not in the oldness of the letter — Not in a bare, literal, external way, as we did before. The new service here enjoined implies, 1st, A freedom from the dominion of the flesh, by the power of the Spirit enabling us to mortify the deeds and lusts of the flesh, Romans 8:13. 2d, The serving God, not chiefly with bodily services and carnal ordinances, but in the spirit of our minds, Romans 12:2; Philippians 3:3; having our minds renewed and transformed after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, which are the fruits of the Spirit. 3d, The serving him by the continual aid of his Spirit, strengthening us with might in the inner man, Ephesians 3:16, so as to live and walk in the Spirit, or to live as those who are renewed by the Spirit, and possessed of his various graces. With regard to the believing Jews in particular, it implies, that being loosed from the Mosaic law, they were no longer to worship and serve God with rites and ceremonies pertaining to their flesh, but with services of their spirit, consisting in faith, love, and new obedience. From this, however, we must not infer that the pious Jews under the law did not serve God with spiritual services: all the services in which true piety and morality consist, were enjoined in the covenant with Abraham, and were practised by the pious Israelites. But to these the law of Moses added numberless services pertaining to the body, from which the converted Jews were freed since their embracing the gospel.

Ver. 5. When we were in the flesh, in a judaical state, the motions of sin excited by the law, gained the ascendancy over the mind, and hurried us on to bring forth fruit unto death.

5. When we were in the flesh—When we were unregenerate, before our conversion. Motions of sins—These are spoken of as belonging to a past stage of experience.

Ver. 5. Reason why, “in order to bear fruit for God,” we must needs be “made dead to the Law;” and a restatement of the contrast of past and present.

In the flesh: the material of our body as the environment in which the spirit lives, moves, and acts, an environment controlling at that time our entire action and thought. It is not so now. The flesh is (see Galatians 2:20; 2 Corinthians 10:3) the physical, but no longer the moral, element of our life. For although we ever feel its influence, it no longer controls us.

The emotions of sins: emotions of desire evoked by forbidden objects in those who yield to their influence, and tending to produce sinful acts. They were evoked

by means of the Law: strange words designed to awaken surprise and to prompt the objection in Romans 7:7. They will be explained in Romans 7:7-11.

When we were in the flesh, these emotions were at work (cp. 2 Corinthians 4:12; Ephesians 2:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:7) in our members, the various parts of our bodies, moving our lips, hands, and feet, to words, deeds, and ways, of sin. When the body with its appetites was the controlling element of our life, it was the seat of emotions prompting sin.

In order to bear fruit etc: tendency and purpose of these emotions. They made us fruitful; but the fruit was poison. Of this, Paul’s own earlier history was a literal and sad example.

For death: as in Romans 6:16, 21, 23.

Fruit for death: in awful contrast to “fruit for God,” in Romans 7:4. Since these emotions, evoked by means of the Law, were at work with such deadly intent, we must needs die to the Law in order that we may bear fruit for God.

V. 6. Being dead to that whereby we were held-To our old husband, the law.

That we might serve in newness of spirit-In a new, spiritual manner. And not in the oldness of the letter-Not in a bare literal, external way, as we did before.

Verse 6. But now we are delivered from the law] We, who have believed in Christ Jesus, are delivered from that yoke by which we were bound, which sentenced every transgressor to perdition, but provided no pardon even for the penitent, and no sanctification for those who are weary of their inbred corruptions.

That being dead wherein we were held] To us believers in Christ this commandment is abrogated; we are transferred to another constitution; that law which kills ceases to bind us; it is dead to us who have believed in Christ Jesus, who is the end of the law for justification and salvation to every one that believes.

That we should serve in newness of spirit] We are now brought under a more spiritual dispensation; now we know the spiritual import of all the Mosaic precepts. We see that the law referred to the Gospel, and can only be fulfilled by the Gospel.

The oldness of the letter.] The merely literal rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices are now done away; and the newness of the spirit, the true intent and meaning of all are now fully disclosed; so that we are got from an imperfect state into a state of perfection and excellence. We sought justification and sanctification, pardon and holiness, by the law, and have found that the law could not give them: we have sought these in the Gospel scheme, and we have found them. We serve God now, not according to the old literal sense, but in the true spiritual meaning.

Verses 5, 6. For — We ought now to be fruitful in good works, because we were formerly fruitful in evil: when we were in the flesh — Under the comparatively carnal dispensation of Moses, and in our natural corrupt state, before we believed on Christ and were regenerated. Thus, oi ontev en sarki, they that are in the flesh, and oi kata sarka ontev, they that are after the flesh, (Romans 8:5, 8,) signify those that are influenced and governed by the fleshly principle, in opposition to the guidance and influences of the Holy Spirit; and einai en sarki, to be in the flesh, (verse 9,) zhn peripatein kata sarka, to live, to walk according to the flesh, (verses 12, 13,) bear the same sense. It is evident, therefore, as Dr. Whitby justly observes, that this expression, when we were in the flesh, not only signifies to be under the carnal ordinances of the law, for so were all the pious Jews, who lived from Moses to gospel times; but that it more especially relates to them who, living under these ordinances, were themselves carnal, and so had the law of the flesh still warring against the law of their minds, and bringing them into captivity to the law of sin, which could not be the state of Zacharias and Elisabeth, or any other of those persons who were righteous before God, and walked in all the commandments of the Lord blameless. And if of such [unregenerate persons] only, we understand the apostle’s following discourse in this chapter, the sense will be clear. The motions of sins — Ta paqhmata twn amartiwn, sinful passions; which were by the law — Accidentally occasioned or irritated thereby; did work in our members — Spread themselves all over the whole man; to bring forth fruit — Very different from that which has just been mentioned, even such as would have been unto death, Romans 6:21, 23; that is, would have exposed us to, and have issued in, eternal death, if God in his mercy had not interposed, and brought us acquainted with the gospel. But now — Being brought out of that carnal state; we are delivered from the law — Set at liberty from our subjection to it as a law, and our obligation to observe it, and from the condemning, irritating power thereof, and therefore from the sinful passions occasioned by it; that being dead wherein we were held — In subjection, as the wife to her living husband; that law being now made void, and having no further power to condemn us. It may be proper to observe here, that the Syriac and Arabic versions, Origen, Theodoret, Œcumenius, and Theophylact, (with whom agree Bengelius, Mill, Macknight, and others,) read apoqanontev, we being dead to that by which we were held: which, says Origen, is undoubtedly the best reading, agreeing with verse 4, ye are become dead to the law. That we should serve — God and our generation; in newness of spirit — In a new and spiritual manner; and not in the oldness of the letter — Not in a bare, literal, external way, as we did before. The new service here enjoined implies, 1st, A freedom from the dominion of the flesh, by the power of the Spirit enabling us to mortify the deeds and lusts of the flesh, Romans 8:13. 2d, The serving God, not chiefly with bodily services and carnal ordinances, but in the spirit of our minds, Romans 12:2; Philippians 3:3; having our minds renewed and transformed after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, which are the fruits of the Spirit. 3d, The serving him by the continual aid of his Spirit, strengthening us with might in the inner man, Ephesians 3:16, so as to live and walk in the Spirit, or to live as those who are renewed by the Spirit, and possessed of his various graces. With regard to the believing Jews in particular, it implies, that being loosed from the Mosaic law, they were no longer to worship and serve God with rites and ceremonies pertaining to their flesh, but with services of their spirit, consisting in faith, love, and new obedience. From this, however, we must not infer that the pious Jews under the law did not serve God with spiritual services: all the services in which true piety and morality consist, were enjoined in the covenant with Abraham, and were practised by the pious Israelites. But to these the law of Moses added numberless services pertaining to the body, from which the converted Jews were freed since their embracing the gospel.

Ver. 6. But now we are delivered from the curse and condemnation of the law, to love God with all our heart, according to the new spirit or covenant of the gospel. Here therefore grace abounds more than sin.

6. But now we are delivered from the law—Delivered from it as our source of justification as the actuating power of our attainment in holiness, and as a condemning power. Serve in newness of spirit—As we once served sin with all our heart most freely, so now we serve Christ with all our heart without legal compulsion and freely.

c. But the law is to be exculpated from blame, 7-25.

The new Church is freed from law as a woman from an oppressive husband, and the apostle is about to picture the bliss of that emancipation when he is interrupted by two questions, and compelled to postpone that picture to the next chapter. Those questions and their answers (7-12 and 13-25) occupy the remainder of this entire chapter.

The Jew, made jealous for the law by verse 5, demands: “Is the law sin?” No, the apostle answers; the law is the detection of sin, and is good, and sin the only murderer, 7-12.

But, then, is this law, maintained by you to be good, the cause of death? No, but sin, defeating every effort of the awakened self to be holy, becomes a body of death, 13-25.

These two paragraphs, therefore, are entirely occupied in showing how the man in the flesh and under law (ver. 5) is dealt with by the law. First question—Is the law sin? 7-12.

Ver. 6. But now: introducing, as in Romans 6:22, the joyful contrast ever present to Paul’s thought.

Made-of-no-effect from the Law: as in Romans 7:2, which it recalls. Having died to that in which etc.: event which released us from the Law in which we were held-down, or held-fast: same word in Romans 1:18.

So that we may serve: happy result of our liberation. [The infinitive with wste states not objective fact, as does the indicative, but a subjective view of cause and effect.]

Serve: same word as in Romans 7:25; Romans 6:6; cognate to servants in Romans 6:16, 17, 19, 20, and to made-servants in Romans 7:18, 22. This family of words is a conspicuous feature of Romans 6:6-Romans 7:6. Notice that we are still servants or slaves, but (Romans 6:22) to different masters and in a new environment.

Newness of Spirit: a new order of things of which the characterizing feature is the animating presence of the Spirit of God, in contrast to an old environment characterized by possession of a written letter. Same contrast of Spirit and letter in Romans 2:29; and, more fully developed, in 2 Corinthians 3:3, 6, where “the Spirit of God” is contrasted with the letters written on the tables of stone. And this is probably the reference of the word Spirit here and in Romans 2:29: for it is evidently a forerunner of “the Spirit of God” in Romans 8:9, 11, 14. If so, the letter must be the written Law of Moses, in possession of which the Jews (Romans 2:23) boasted. The new feature of our present service is that our Master has given us, not a mere written word bidding us do this or that, but an animating Spirit, who opens our minds to understand and approve the will of God, and enables us to do it. This gift of the Spirit makes our present service altogether new, and our former service altogether old.

The above argument has less force for us than for Paul’s readers. To any who objected that the teaching of Rom. 6, would set aside the Law of Moses, it was a complete reply to say that the Law claims jurisdiction only over the living, and that believers are practically dead. But to us God has given a more tremendous and far-reaching law. To those who reject it, the Gospel is itself a condemning law: for they who disbelieve its promises are compelled to believe its threatenings. And from this law death is no deliverance: for its threatenings control the world to come. Hence the argument, in the form in which it stands here, does not meet our case. But, underneath the Jewish form of this argument, lie great and abiding principles of immense importance. It is a reassertion, in another form, of Paul’s exposition, in Romans 3:26, of the purpose for which God gave Christ to die, viz. to harmonize with His own justice the justification of believers. For, that we are in Romans 7:4 said to be “dead to the Law through the body of Christ” can only mean that through His death is removed a barrier to salvation having its foundation in the Law of God. Now the Law is a literary embodiment of the justice of God. Consequently, to say that the Law forbad our rescue, is to say that the justice of God forbad it. But Paul has taught that God set forth Christ as a propitiation in His blood, in order that God may be Himself just and a justifier of Him that believes in Jesus. If so, through the death of Christ we are set free, in harmony with the principle of law, from the law which condemned us to be slaves of the master we had so perversely chosen. This important coincidence of thought, under totally different phraseology, confirms our interpretation of Romans 3:26; is confirmed by Galatians 2:19; 3:13; Colossians 2:14, and by an interesting illustration in Hebrews 9:16, 17, in all which passages the death of Christ is placed in relation to the Law; and sheds important light on the necessity and purpose of the death of Christ. This coincidence is the more important because no other N.T. writer connects the death of Christ with the justice or the law of God.

This teaching has also experimental value. Many conscientious men feel that for God to pardon their sins and to smile upon sinners would be to set aside the eternal principles which underlie morality. And, because they know that God will not do this, they dare not believe His proclamation of pardon. They are in the position of a woman who has made a ruinous marriage from which now there is no escape. But in these verses we are reminded that the death of Christ, by revealing the inevitable connection of sin and death, has satisfied the external moral principles which forbad our pardon; and that now, without infringing them, God may and will set us free.

CHAPTERS 6:1-7:6 describe the new life in its relation to sin, to the Law, to Christ, and to God. It is complete deliverance from sin, removes us legally from the domain of the Law which condemned us, unites us to Christ in His death and burial and in His resurrection life, a life of fruitful devotion to God. Notice the complete confidence with which Paul accepts the death and resurrection of Christ as historic facts, and as essential factors in God’s purpose of salvation, a confidence moulding his thought and creating new modes of thought and new phraseology peculiar to him. In his theology, the events which closed the life of Christ on earth are reproduced in His servants. This confidence, in (Galatians 1:13) a former persecutor, can be explained only by the reality of that which he believed: and no account of Paul’s teaching which does not explain this remarkable element in it can be tolerated for a moment.

Certain strange assertions in Romans 7:5, needing explanation and defence, will next claim the apostle’s attention.

V. 7. What shall we say then-This is a kind of a digression, to the beginning of the next chapter, wherein the apostle, in order to show in the most lively manner the weakness and inefficacy of the law, changes the person and speaks as of himself, concerning the misery of one under the law. This St. Paul frequently does, when he is not speaking of his own person, but only assuming another character, Romans 3:5; 1 Corinthians 10:30; 1 Corinthians 4:6. The character here assumed is that of a man, first ignorant of the law, then under it and sincerely, but ineffectually, striving to serve God. To have spoken this of himself, or any true believer, would have been foreign to the whole scope of his discourse; nay, utterly contrary thereto, as well as to what is expressly asserted, Romans 8:2.

Is the law sin-Sinful in itself, or a promoter of sin.

I had not known lust-That is, evil desire. I had not known it to be a sin; nay, perhaps I should not have known that any such desire was in me: it did not appear, till it was stirred up by the prohibition.

Verse 7. Is the law sin?] The apostle had said, Romans 7:6: The motions of sins, which were by the law, did bring forth fruit unto death; and now he anticipates an objection, “Is therefore the law sin?” To which he answers, as usual, mh gevoito, by no means. Law is only the means of disclosing; this sinful propensity, not of producing it; as a bright beam of the sun introduced into a room shows; millions of motes which appear to be dancing in it in all directions; but these were not introduced by the light: they were there before, only there was not light enough to make them manifest; so the evil propensity was there before, but there was not light sufficient to discover it.

I had not known sin, but by the law] Mr. Locke and Dr. Taylor have properly remarked the skill used by St. Paul in dexterously avoiding, as much as possible, the giving offence to the Jews: and this is particularly evident in his use of the word I in this place. In the beginning of the chapter, where he mentions their knowledge of the law, he says YE; in {Romans 7:4} the 4th verse he joins himself with them, and says we; but here, and so to the end of the chapter, where he represents the power of sin and the inability of the law to subdue it, he appears to leave them out, and speaks altogether in the first person, though it is plain he means all those who are under the law. So, Romans 3:7, he uses the singular pronoun, why am I judged a sinner? when he evidently means the whole body of unbelieving Jews.

There is another circumstance in which his address is peculiarly evident; his demonstrating the insufficiency of the law under colour of vindicating it. He knew that the Jew would take fire at the least reflection on the law, which he held in the highest veneration; and therefore he very naturally introduces him catching at that expression, Romans 7:5, the motions of sins, which were by the law, or, notwithstanding the law. “What!” says this Jew, “do you vilify the law, by charging it with favouring sin?” By no means, says the apostle; I am very far from charging the law with favouring sin. The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just, and good, Romans 7:12. Thus he writes in vindication of the law; and yet at the same time shows: 1. That the law requires the most extensive obedience, discovering and condemning sin in all its most secret and remote branches, Romans 7:7. 2. That it gives sin a deadly force, subjecting every transgression to the penalty of death, Romans 7:8-14. And yet, 3. supplies neither help nor hope to the sinner, but leaves him under the power of sin, and the sentence of death, Romans 7:14, &c. This, says Dr. Taylor, is the most ingenious turn of writing I ever met with. We have another instance of the same sort, Romans 13:1-7. It is not likely that a dark, corrupt human heart can discern the will of God. His law is his will. It recommends what is just, and right, and good and forbids what is improper, unjust, and injurious. If God had not revealed himself by this law, we should have done precisely what many nations of the earth have done, who have not had this revelation-put darkness for light, and sin for acts of holiness. While the human heart is its own measure it will rate its workings according to its own propensities; for itself is its highest rule. But when God gives a true insight of his own perfections, to be applied as a rule both of passion and practice, then sin is discovered, and discovered too, to be exceedingly sinful. So strong propensities, because they appear to be inherent in our nature, would have passed for natural and necessary operations; and their sinfulness would not have been discovered, if the law had not said, Thou shalt not covet; and thus determined that the propensity itself, as well as its outward operations, is sinful. The law is the straight edge which determines the quantum of obliquity in the crooked line to which it is applied. It is natural for man to do what is unlawful, and to desire especially to do that which is forbidden. The heathens have remarked this propensity in man.

Thus LIVY, xxxiv. 4:—

Luxuria-ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia, irtitata.

“Luxury, like a wild beast, is irritated by its very bonds.” Audax omnia perpeti

Gens humana ruit per vetitun; nefas.

“The presumptuous human race obstinately rush into prohibited acts of wickedness.” HOR. Carm. lib. i. Od. iii. ver. 25.

And OVID, Amor. lib. ii. Eleg. xix. ver. 3:—

Quod licet, ingratum est; quod non licet, acrius urit.

“What is lawful is insipid; the strongest propensity

is excited towards that which is prohibited.”

And again, Ib. lib. iii. E. iv. ver. 17:—

Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata.

“Vice is provoked by every strong restraint,

Sick men long most to drink, who know they mayn’t.”

The same poet delivers the same sentiment it another place:— Acrior admonitu est, irritaturque retenta

Et crescit rabies: remoraminaque ipsa nocebant.

METAM. lib. iii. ver. 566.

“Being admonished, he becomes the more obstinate;

and his fierceness is irritated by restraints.

Prohibitions become incentives to greater acts of vice.” But it is needless to multiply examples; this most wicked principle of a sinful, fallen nature, has been felt and acknowledged by ALL mankind.

Verses 7, 8. What shall we say then? — This, to the beginning of the next chapter, is a kind of digression, wherein the apostle, in order to show, in the most lively manner, the weakness and inefficacy of the law, changes the person, and speaks as of himself. This he frequently does when he is not speaking of his own person, but only assuming another character. See Romans 3:7; 1 Corinthians 10:30; 4:6. The character here assumed is that of an unrenewed, unregenerated man; first, ignorant of the spirituality and holiness of the law, then acquainted therewith, and convinced of his depravity and weakness thereby, and sincerely but ineffectually striving to serve God. To have spoken this of himself, or of any true believer, would have been foreign to the whole scope of his discourse; nay, utterly contrary thereto, as well as to what is expressly asserted Romans 8:2. Is the law sin? — Macknight connects this with the preceding words thus: What then, do we say that the law is sin? is a bad institution, that causes or encourages sin? that there is any moral evil in it, or that it is intended by God, or adapted in its own nature, to lead men into sin? That this is the apostle’s meaning is plain from verse 12, where he mentions, by way of inference, the proposition which his reasoning was designed to prove, namely, the law is holy, &c. God forbid — We revere the high authority by which it was given too much to insinuate any thing of that kind. Nay, I had not known sin — Either not at all, or not clearly and fully: I had not known its evil nature and destructive consequences; nor, in many instances, what really was sin; but by the law — As the apostle is speaking of the law of Moses, and, as appears from the last clause of the verse, of the moral law, the quotation there being from the tenth commandment, his words must not be understood universally. “For it is not to be supposed that the reason and conscience of the heathen gave them no knowledge at all of their sins; the contrary is affirmed by the apostle, Romans 2:14. Nevertheless, the most enlightened among them had but an imperfect knowledge of the nature and demerit of sin in general, and of the number and aggravations of their own sins in particular, compared with the knowledge of these things which they would have derived from revelation. The truth is, they fancied many things to be innocent which were real enormities; and many things trivial sins which were very heinous, as is evident from their writings. The inference to be drawn, therefore, is, that since the law discovers, or forbids and condemns sin, in order that it may be avoided, it does not directly promote it, but only by accident, by reason of the corruption of our nature. For I had not known lust — To be sin; epiqumian, desire — That is, the desire of an unlawful thing, or the inordinate desire of what is lawful. The word signifies desire, or, as Dr. Macknight renders it, strong desire, whether good or bad. Here it is used in the bad sense, as it is likewise 1 John 2:16; epiqumia thv sarkov, the lust of the flesh. “But it signifies strong desire of a good kind also, Luke 22:15: epiqumia epequmhsa, I have strongly desired to eat this passover. 1 Thessalonians 2:17, Endeavoured the more abundantly, pollh epiqumia, with great desire, to see your face. Except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet — In this commandment, the desire that is forbidden is of what belongs to others. Now, as the operation of such a desire is to prompt men to acts of injustice, the existence of it in the mind is obviously sin, because it could not hold its place there for any length of time, unless it were indulged. However, the knowledge that strong desire, not exerted in outward actions, is sin, is not very obvious; and therefore the apostle ascribes it to the information given us by the revealed law of God.” But sin — But what I say is, not that the law is sin, but that sin, namely, the corrupt inclination of fallen nature; taking occasion by the commandment — Forbidding but not subduing it, and being excited, quickened, and drawn forth into action by it; wrought in me — While unrenewed; all manner of concupiscence — Every kind of evil desire; inclinations to sins of all sorts. This evil principle in human nature is acknowledged even by heathen, whose words are frequently quoted in illustration of it:

Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas:

Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata.

“Mankind rush into wickedness,

and always desire what is forbidden.”

The reader will observe, that this, which appears to be the true sense of the words, namely, that the prohibitions of the law awaken and irritate men’s evil desires, supposes such desires to exist in the mind previous to these prohibitions, and that these desires, with other evil dispositions, prompt men to make trial of things forbidden, the inclination of human nature being too generally like that of a froward child, who will do a thing because it was forbidden; and perhaps is, as it were, reminded of an evil, on hearing it mentioned in a prohibition. It must not, however, be supposed, that all evil desire arises from hence; for fleshly appetites, and other strong desires, which prevail in men’s minds, do not owe either their existence or their operation to the prohibitions and penalties of the law, or to the knowledge thereof; but only their power to kill, of which, therefore, Macknight interprets the words. For without the law sin was dead — Neither so apparent nor so active; nor was I under the least apprehension of any danger from it. Sin, which he still represents as a person, would have had no being, or at least no strength to kill men, had not the law, revealed or natural, existed; for the essence of sin consists in its being a violation of law. Though the apostle speaks this primarily and directly of the law of Moses, it is equally true of the law of nature, and may be applied to the state of mankind before the law of Moses was given. For unless there had been a law written in men’s hearts, sin would have been dead, or have had neither existence nor power to kill.

Ver. 7. Is the law sin? God forbid. The law is a reflection of the moral glory of God, shining out in all its purity. It shines into the heart, discovering the turpitude of sin, and all its enmity against the light.

7. Is the law sin?—In thus making deliverance from law the Christian principle, do you identify the law as sin? Not only as satisfying the sensitive Jew, but as a neutralizer of all antinomianism, (which abolishes obligation to holiness,) the apostle must honour the divine law. Had not known sin—So far from being sin, the law is the detecter of sin, revealing its existence and odiousness to the moral consciousness of the unreflecting sinner. Sin, like a heinous monster in the dark, lies concealed in the soul; the law comes like the sun and reveals his awful deformity. Shalt not covet—Shalt not entertain the evil desire of the heart. The sinner knew external crime against human law, against society, against honour. But sin, the motion of the inner man infringing God’s law, he was ignorant of, or unconsciously ignored. We need not go to childhood, as many commentators do, to find this state of darkness and unconsciousness. It is the state of the world. With the busy worldly world the law of God has gone up into invisibility in the skies; and the world-law, that knows only crime and not sin, is solely and persistently known.

ROMANS

SECTION 21 — YET THE LAW IS NOT BAD

CH. 7:7-12

What then shall we say? Is the Law sin? Be it not so. Nevertheless, I had not known sin except through law: for I should not know desire except the Law said, “Thou shalt not desire.” But sin, having taken occasion, through the commandment worked out in me every desire. For apart from law sin is dead. Moreover, I was alive apart from law once. But when the commandment came, sin returned to life; and I died. And to me the commandment which was for life, this was found to be for death. For sin, having taken occasion, through the commandment deceived me and through it slew me. So that on the one hand the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good:-

Ver. 7. What then shall we say? What inference shall we draw? as in Romans 6:1; 4:1.

The Law: of Moses, from which Paul quotes the tenth commandment. Sin: an embodiment of sin; cp. 2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 8:7. In Romans 7:5, Paul gave as a reason why we were put to death to the Law that “through the Law came the emotions of sins” which “were at work” in our bodily powers with deadly purpose. He now asks, Are we to infer from this that the Law itself is essentially hostile to God? and thus suggests a most serious objection to his foregoing teaching. This inference, Paul meets with an emphatic negative; and then gives the correct inference. He did not say, nor do his words imply, that the Law is the voice of an enemy;

nevertheless, he does say that, had there been no law as an avenue of approach, there had been no sin. To this reply and the following argument, Paul gives great reality and force by narrating his own experience: I had not known sin. That he narrates it in proof of a general principle, implies that it is the experience of all. The word law does not limit this experience to Jews: for the great principles of morality which underlie all law are written (see Romans 2:14) in the hearts of all men. But Paul, writing as a Jew, has in his mind the Law in that form in which he received it, viz. the voice of Sinai and the books in which from childhood that voice had spoken to him. Hence, as a sample of the Law, he quotes the tenth commandment. To know sin, denotes, not as in Romans 3:20 a consciousness of having sinned, but that acquaintance with the nature and power of sin which is an immediate and terrible result of committing sin. This deeper meaning is involved in the further description given in Romans 7:8. In this sense, the forbidden tree was the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” and Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21) “knew no sin;” but (Isaiah 53:3) He knew grief; and Paul knew(2 Corinthians 5:11) “the fear of the Lord.”

Through law: recalling same words in Romans 7:5. The foregoing statement, Paul proves by quoting, as a fair example, one of the many commands of

the Law: thou shalt not desire: word for word (LXX.) from Exodus 20:17.

Desire: as in Romans 1:24; 6:12: not necessarily bad desire. The tenth commandment forbids, not all desire, but desire of other men’s goods. Paul takes for granted that we know the rest of the passage. That he refers throughout Romans 7:7, 8 to evil desire, is made clear by the whole context. In proof of the general statement I had not know sin, he quotes the commandment most easily and frequently broken, the breach of which leads to that of all others. Had it not been for the Law, Paul would have been a stranger even to the beginnings of sin in wrong desire.

V. 8. But sin-My inbred corruption.

Taking occasion by the commandment-Forbidding, but not subduing it, was only fretted, and wrought in me so much the more all manner of evil desire.

For while I was without the knowledge of the law, sin was dead-Neither so apparent, nor so active; nor was I under the least apprehensions of any danger from it.

Verse 8. Sin, taking occasion by the commandment] I think the pointing, both in this and in the 11th verse, to be wrong: the comma should be after occasion, and not after commandment. But sin taking occasion, wrought in me by this commandment all manner of concupiscence. There are different opinions concerning the meaning of the word aformh, which we here translate occasion. Dr. Waterland translates the clause, Sin, taking ADVANTAGE. Dr. Taylor contends that all commentators have mistaken the meaning of it, and that it should be rendered having received FORCE. For this acceptation of the word I can find no adequate authority except in its etymology-apo, from, and ormh, impetus. The word appears to signify, in general, whatsoever is necessary for the completion or accomplishment of any particular purpose. Xenophon uses aformai eiv ton bion to signify whatever is necessary for the support of life. There is a personification in the text: sin is, represented as a murderer watching for life, and snatching at every means and embracing every opportunity to carry his fell purpose into effect. The miserable sinner has a murderer, sin, within him; this murderer can only destroy life in certain circumstances; finding that the law condemns the object of his cruelty to death, he takes occasion from this to work in the soul all manner of concupiscence, evil and irregular desires and appetites of every kind, and, by thus increasing the evil, exposes the soul to more condemnation; and thus it is represented as being slain, Romans 7:11. That is, the law, on the evidence of those sinful dispositions, and their corresponding practices, condemns the sinner to death: so that he is dead in law. Thus the very prohibition, as we have already seen in the preceding verse, becomes the instrument of exciting the evil propensity; for, although a sinner has the general propensity to do what is evil, yet he seems to feel most delight in transgressing known law: stat pro ratione voluntas; “I will do it, because I will.” For without the law, sin was dead.] Where there is no law there is no transgression; for sin is the transgression of the law; and no fault can be imputed unto death, where there is no statute by which such a fault is made a capital offence.

Dr. Taylor thinks that cwriv nomon, without the law, means the time before the giving of the law from Mount Sinai, which took in the space of 430 years, during which time the people were under the Abrahamic covenant of grace; and without the law that was given on Mount Sinai, the sting of death, which is sin, had not power to slay the sinner; for, from the time that Adam sinned, the law was not re-enacted till it was given by Moses, Romans 5:13. The Jew was then alive, because he was not under the law subjecting him to death for his transgressions; but when the commandment came, with the penalty of death annexed, sin revived, and the Jew died. Then the sting of death acquired life; and the Jew, upon the first transgression, was dead in law. Thus sin, the sting of death, received force or advantage to destroy by the commandment, Romans 7:8, 11. All manner of concupiscence.] It showed what was evil and forbade it; and then the principle of rebellion, which seems essential to the very nature of sins rose up against the prohibition; and he was the more strongly incited to disobey in proportion as obedience was enjoined. Thus the apostle shows that the law had authority to prohibit, condemn, and destroy; but no power to pardon sin, root out enmity, or save the soul. The word epiqumia, which we render concupiscence, signifies simply strong desire of any kind; but in the New Testament, it is generally taken to signify irregular and unholy desires. Sin in the mind is the desire to do, or to be, what is contrary to the holiness and authority of GOD. For without the law, sin was dead.] This means, according to Dr. Taylor’s hypothesis, the time previous to the giving of the law. See before. But it seems also consistent with the apostle’s meaning, to interpret the place as implying the time in which Paul, in his unconverted Jewish state, had not the proper knowledge of the law-while he was unacquainted with its spirituality. He felt evil desire, but he did not know the evil of it; he did not consider that the law tried the heart and its workings, as well as outward actions. This is farther explained in the next verse.

Verses 7, 8. What shall we say then? — This, to the beginning of the next chapter, is a kind of digression, wherein the apostle, in order to show, in the most lively manner, the weakness and inefficacy of the law, changes the person, and speaks as of himself. This he frequently does when he is not speaking of his own person, but only assuming another character. See Romans 3:7; 1 Corinthians 10:30; 4:6. The character here assumed is that of an unrenewed, unregenerated man; first, ignorant of the spirituality and holiness of the law, then acquainted therewith, and convinced of his depravity and weakness thereby, and sincerely but ineffectually striving to serve God. To have spoken this of himself, or of any true believer, would have been foreign to the whole scope of his discourse; nay, utterly contrary thereto, as well as to what is expressly asserted Romans 8:2. Is the law sin? — Macknight connects this with the preceding words thus: What then, do we say that the law is sin? is a bad institution, that causes or encourages sin? that there is any moral evil in it, or that it is intended by God, or adapted in its own nature, to lead men into sin? That this is the apostle’s meaning is plain from verse 12, where he mentions, by way of inference, the proposition which his reasoning was designed to prove, namely, the law is holy, &c. God forbid — We revere the high authority by which it was given too much to insinuate any thing of that kind. Nay, I had not known sin — Either not at all, or not clearly and fully: I had not known its evil nature and destructive consequences; nor, in many instances, what really was sin; but by the law — As the apostle is speaking of the law of Moses, and, as appears from the last clause of the verse, of the moral law, the quotation there being from the tenth commandment, his words must not be understood universally. “For it is not to be supposed that the reason and conscience of the heathen gave them no knowledge at all of their sins; the contrary is affirmed by the apostle, Romans 2:14. Nevertheless, the most enlightened among them had but an imperfect knowledge of the nature and demerit of sin in general, and of the number and aggravations of their own sins in particular, compared with the knowledge of these things which they would have derived from revelation. The truth is, they fancied many things to be innocent which were real enormities; and many things trivial sins which were very heinous, as is evident from their writings. The inference to be drawn, therefore, is, that since the law discovers, or forbids and condemns sin, in order that it may be avoided, it does not directly promote it, but only by accident, by reason of the corruption of our nature. For I had not known lust — To be sin; epiqumian, desire — That is, the desire of an unlawful thing, or the inordinate desire of what is lawful. The word signifies desire, or, as Dr. Macknight renders it, strong desire, whether good or bad. Here it is used in the bad sense, as it is likewise 1 John 2:16; epiqumia thv sarkov, the lust of the flesh. “But it signifies strong desire of a good kind also, Luke 22:15: epiqumia epequmhsa, I have strongly desired to eat this passover. 1 Thessalonians 2:17, Endeavoured the more abundantly, pollh epiqumia, with great desire, to see your face. Except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet — In this commandment, the desire that is forbidden is of what belongs to others. Now, as the operation of such a desire is to prompt men to acts of injustice, the existence of it in the mind is obviously sin, because it could not hold its place there for any length of time, unless it were indulged. However, the knowledge that strong desire, not exerted in outward actions, is sin, is not very obvious; and therefore the apostle ascribes it to the information given us by the revealed law of God.” But sin — But what I say is, not that the law is sin, but that sin, namely, the corrupt inclination of fallen nature; taking occasion by the commandment — Forbidding but not subduing it, and being excited, quickened, and drawn forth into action by it; wrought in me — While unrenewed; all manner of concupiscence — Every kind of evil desire; inclinations to sins of all sorts. This evil principle in human nature is acknowledged even by heathen, whose words are frequently quoted in illustration of it:

Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas:

Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata.

“Mankind rush into wickedness,

and always desire what is forbidden.”

The reader will observe, that this, which appears to be the true sense of the words, namely, that the prohibitions of the law awaken and irritate men’s evil desires, supposes such desires to exist in the mind previous to these prohibitions, and that these desires, with other evil dispositions, prompt men to make trial of things forbidden, the inclination of human nature being too generally like that of a froward child, who will do a thing because it was forbidden; and perhaps is, as it were, reminded of an evil, on hearing it mentioned in a prohibition. It must not, however, be supposed, that all evil desire arises from hence; for fleshly appetites, and other strong desires, which prevail in men’s minds, do not owe either their existence or their operation to the prohibitions and penalties of the law, or to the knowledge thereof; but only their power to kill, of which, therefore, Macknight interprets the words. For without the law sin was dead — Neither so apparent nor so active; nor was I under the least apprehension of any danger from it. Sin, which he still represents as a person, would have had no being, or at least no strength to kill men, had not the law, revealed or natural, existed; for the essence of sin consists in its being a violation of law. Though the apostle speaks this primarily and directly of the law of Moses, it is equally true of the law of nature, and may be applied to the state of mankind before the law of Moses was given. For unless there had been a law written in men’s hearts, sin would have been dead, or have had neither existence nor power to kill.

8. Wrought… concupiscence—Commentators generally understand that the apostle here describes the reaction that sometimes takes place, with which the fractious soul sins the worse from its very spite against the restraints of law. It will not only sin when it is forbidden, but sin all the more rampantly because it is forbidden. Prohibition provokes transgression, and transgression ramps and rages out of vengeance against prohibition. Now this may be the meaning; and yet the idea seems hardly called for, or relevant to the train of thought. The demanded meaning is that sin, by means of law, brought every variety of concupiscence or unlawful heart-sin into revelation and visible existence; for the apostle more than once vividly describes a bringing into sight as a bringing into existence. Dead—Dead to all visibility or phenomenal existence.

Ver. 8. Occasion: Luke 11:54; 2 Corinthians 5:12; 11:12: a starting-point, the first step in a line of action. In the tenth commandment (cp. Romans 13:9)

sin found a starting-point for deadly activity; and through it worked-out (as in Romans 1:27; 2:9; 4:15; 5:3)

in Paul every kind of desire. Sin thus made itself known to him. This is what Paul meant in Romans 7:5 by “the emotions of sins which were through the Law.” Notice the contrast of working-in and working-out in Romans 7:5, 8: so Philippians 2:12, 13. The one denotes inward activity; the other, actual result.

For apart etc.: a general principle proving the foregoing. Notice a further personification of sin. We have seen it as a king enthroned in the bodies of men, making unrighteous war, using men as weapons and paying them wages, cherishing and working out purposes of death. Paul now proves that only through the Law were sinful desires wrought in him, by saying that

apart from law sin is dead. Since sin is here personified as active and powerful, to say that it is dead, is to say that it is inactive and powerless. Just so a dead lion has claws and sinews, but no strength or activity. In James 2:17-26, a dead faith is one which produces no results: contrast a “living hope” and “living word of God” in 1 Peter 1:3, 23. The principle here stated and the argument built upon it demand further study. “Sin is lawlessness:” 1 John 3:4. It is doing what God has forbidden. Consequently, had not certain objects been marked off as forbidden, there could not have been even wrong desire: for all desires would have been right. Therefore, but for the Law, we should never have known what it is to desire forbidden things; nor have known by experience the depraving effects of such desires. There would have been no moral character, and no sin. This we may illustrate from the story of Paradise. If God had given no prohibition, the tempter would have had no weapon of attack; and our parents would have been utterly beyond his reach. He brought in his mouth a command of God, and used it as a weapon of deception and murder evoking first desire and then actual sin. Only thus can we conceive sin entering into human life. In this sense, sin is powerless apart from law; and all sinful emotions come through law. So 1 Corinthians 15:56: “The power of sin is the Law.”

V. 9. And I was once alive without the law-Without the close application of it. I had much life, wisdom, virtue, strength: so I thought. But when the commandment-That is, the law, a part put for the whole; but this expression particularly intimates its compulsive force, which restrains, enjoins, urges, forbids, threatens.

Came-In its spiritual meaning, to my heart, with the power of God. Sin revived, and I died-My inbred sin took fire, and all my virtue and strength died away; and I then saw myself to be dead in sin, and liable to death eternal.

Verse 9. I was alive without the law once] Dr. Whitby paraphrases the verse thus:-“For the seed of Abraham was alive without the law once, before the law was given, I being not obnoxious to death for that to which the law had not threatened death; but when the commandment came, forbidding it under that penalty, sin revived, and I died; i.e. it got strength to draw me to sin, and to condemn me to death. Sin is, in Scripture, represented as an enemy that seeks our ruin and destruction; and takes all occasions to effect it. It is here said to war against the mind, Romans 7:23; elsewhere, to war against the soul, 1 Peter 2:11; to surround and beset us, Hebrews 12:1; to bring us into bondage and subjection, and get the dominion over us, Romans 6:12; to entice us, and so to work our death, James 1:14-16; and to do all that Satan, the grand enemy of mankind, doth, by tempting us to the commission of it. Whence Chrysostom, upon those words, Hebrews 12:4: Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, prov thn amartian avtagwnizomenoi, striving against sin; represents sin as an armed and flagrant adversary. When, therefore, it finds a law which threatens death to the violater of it, it takes occasion thence more earnestly to tempt and allure to the violation of it, that so it may more effectually subject us to death and condemnation on that account; for the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, condemning us to death for transgressing it. Thus, when God had forbidden, on pain of death, the eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Satan thence took occasion to tempt our first parents to transgress, and so slew them, or made them subject to death; exhpathse, he deceived them, Genesis 3:13; 1 Timothy 2:14; which is the word used Romans 7:11. The phrase, without the law, sin was dead, means, that sin was then (before the law was given) comparatively dead, as to its power of condemning to death; and this sense the antithesis requires; without the law, amartia nekra, egw de ezwn, sin was dead, but I was living; but when the commandment came, (i.e. the law,) sin revived, and I died. How were men living before the law, but because then no law condemned them? Sin, therefore, must be then dead, as to its condemning power. How did they die when the law came but by the law condemning them to death? Sin therefore revived, then, as to its power of condemning, which it received first from the sin of Adam, which brought death into the world; and next, from the law of Moses, which entered that the offence might abound, and reign more unto death, Romans 5:20, 21. For though sin was in the world from Adam to Moses, or until the law was given, yet it was not imputed unto death, when there was no law that did threaten death; so that death reigned from that interval by virtue of Adam’s sin alone; even over them who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, i.e. against a positive law, forbidding it under the penalty of death; which law being delivered by Moses, sin revived; i.e. it had again its force to condemn men as before to death, by virtue of a law which threatened death. And in this sense the apostle seems to say, Galatians 3:19, the law was added because of transgressions, to convince us of the wrath and punishment due to them; and that the law, therefore, worketh wrath, because where no law is there is no transgression, Romans 4:15, subjecting us to wrath; or no such sense of the Divine wrath as where a plain Divine law, threatening death and condemnation, is violated.” See Whitby, in loco.

Verses 9-11. For I was alive — In my own conceit; without the law — Without the proper knowledge of its spirituality, extent, and obligation. I apprehended myself to be righteous, and in the way to life eternal; but when the commandment came — That is, the law; (a part being put for the whole;) but this expression particularly intimates its compulsive force, which restrains, enjoins, urges, forbids, threatens; — when, in its spiritual meaning, it came to my heart: or, when the spiritual meaning and full extent of the law, condemning desires of evil, was brought home, and closely applied to my conscience by the Spirit of God; sin revived — My conscience was awakened and convinced, and I found myself guilty of many sins, which before I perceived not, and a lively sense of the guilt of them was imprinted on my soul; and I died — My virtue and strength died away, and my former persuasions vanished: for I saw myself to be dead in sin, in a state of condemnation, and liable to death eternal. And the commandment — The law; which was ordained to life — Which promised life to them that kept it, saying, The man that doeth these things shall live in, or by them; and which, if rightly used, would have been a means of increasing spiritual life, and leading to life everlasting. “The law of nature, and its transcript in the moral precepts of the law of Moses, were intended for life; because the threatening of death for every offence, is virtually a promise of life to those who obey perfectly. This appears from the law given to Adam in paradise.” I found to be unto death — To be attended with deadly consequences, both as it consigned me over to destruction for past sin, and occasionally, though not intentionally, proved productive of new guilt and misery. Perfect obedience being impossible, according to the present state of human nature, the law, which threatens death for every offence, necessarily ends in death to the sinner, although it was originally intended to give life to the obedient. For sin, as I said before, (see on verse 8,) taking occasion by the commandment — Prohibiting it under the severest penalties, but affording me no help against it; deceived me — Came upon me unawares, while I was expecting life by the law; and by it slew me — Slew all my hopes, by bringing me under guilt, condemnation, and wrath. In other words, Satan, the grand enemy of mankind, and author of sin, finding a law which threatened death to the transgression of it, takes occasion thence more earnestly to tempt and allure us to the violation of it, that so he may more effectually subject us to condemnation and death upon that account. Thus, when God had forbidden, under the pain of death, the eating of the forbidden fruit, Satan thence took occasion to tempt our first parents to the breach of it, and so slew them, or made them subject to death. Dr. Doddridge paraphrases the verse rather differently, thus: “Sin, taking occasion by the terror and curse of the violated commandment, and representing the great Lawgiver as now become my irreconcileable enemy, deceived me into a persuasion that I could be no worse than I was, and thereby it slew me; it multiplied my mortal wounds, and rendered my case still more desperate.” Instead of sin taking occasion, Dr. Macknight renders aformhn labousa, taking the opportunity, an expression which he thinks less likely to countenance the idea, that men’s evil desires are owing to the prohibitions of the law; to suppose which, would be to make God the author of sin by his law. “The apostle’s meaning,” says he, “is, that sin took the opportunity of men being under the commandment, first to deceive, and then to kill them.” According to Bengelius, the most approved copies read, not, sin taking occasion or opportunity by the commandment, but, by the commandment deceived and slew me; connecting the commandment, not with the former, but with the latter clause of the verse. In the words, deceived me, there seems to be an allusion to the excuse which Eve made for eating the forbidden fruit. The serpent deceived me, by assuring me that I should not die. “The apostle speaks of a two-fold opportunity taken by sin, while men are under the commandment. The first is, sinful dispositions, deceiving men into the belief that the prohibitions of the law are unreasonable, that the thing forbidden is pleasant or profitable, and that it will not be followed with punishment, persuade them to do it. This was the serpent’s discourse to Eve; and it is what men’s sinful inclinations always suggest to them. The second opportunity which sin takes under the commandment, is that of killing the sinner by the curse annexed to the commandment which he hath broken.”

Ver. 9, 10. I was alive once without the law. St. Paul, under the figure of his own person, comprises the whole jewish nation, who lived in Egypt without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, which had lain as dead, slumbering in the heart, and I died. Such is the state of carnal men at ease in their sins, and thoughtless of divine things. The filth of a prison is scarcely seen in the dark, but when the sun shines, all the defilement appears. Just so, the commandment which was ordained to life in paradise, and from which the jews expected life, as is apparent from the question of the young ruler, Matthew 19:16, I found to be unto death, it being a law demonstrating sin, and denouncing condemnation. What a discovery; what a change of views induced by awakening grace.

9. Alive—Fanciedly alive—alive in my own conceit; not knowing that I was truly a dead man. Without the law—The law having to me no virtual existence. Commandment came—Like a new arrival front parts unknown. Sin revived—A reversal takes place: sin was dead and I alive; but now, law having come, sin is alive and I am dead. I died—And the question is, Who killed me? The answer is not law; but law waked up sin, and sin killed me.

Ver. 9.-11. Further description and fatal result of the personal experience narrated in Romans 7:8. Paul says,

Once, in a day gone by, I was alive or living, without law, having no command requiring obedience. Then the commandment, the 10th or others, came: at its coming sin lived-again, as a dead body waking up into life: and I died. On this event Paul makes the sad comment, the commandment which was designed for life, i.e. to give or maintain life, this was found by me to be for death. [Notice the preposition eiv, which always denotes tendency, denoting first purpose, as usually, and then result. This different use of the same preposition in the same short sentence is made easy by the personification of sin. For, if sin be personified, we may speak of its tendency as a purpose.] The commandment given in Paradise was designed to save life by guarding our parents from the tree of death. The Law of Moses had the same purpose: Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 5:33. Indeed, all that comes from the Author of Life, is designed to give or maintain life. In those who believe, the Law attains its end by leading them to Christ: Galatians 3:24.

Then follows, in Romans 7:11, a sad restatement, in almost the same words, of the great calamity stated in Romans 7:8. An added detail is that

sin… deceived me: so Genesis 3:13. Same strong word in 2 Corinthians 11:3 (cp. 1 Timothy 2:14), in reference to Eve; also Romans 16:18; 1 Corinthians 3:18. Sin kills by persuading that the forbidden object is good; so Genesis 3:5.

Slew me: restating Romans 7:9, I died. It is a result of the “desire” evoked by sin: Romans 7:8. While sin lay dead or dormant, Paul was alive: but at the voice of the Law it woke up to life, and slew him. We have seen, under Romans 7:9, that to Paul sin was once dead in the sense of being powerless and inoperative; and that at the coming of the Law it sprang into life in the sense that in the commands of the Law it found a starting-point for activity and effect. We now ask, In what sense was Paul himself once alive or living, apart from law, and in what sense at the coming of the Law can it be said that he died? These words, when applied to Paul, a man capable of life and death in the fullest sense, must have a meaning far deeper than they can have when applied to sin, a mere abstract principle. But this deeper meaning must be in harmony with the essential significance of the words and with Paul’s argument. The sadness of Romans 7:9-11 implies that the death which Paul died was a great calamity. It was wrought by sin using the Law as a weapon. Already in Romans 6:16, 21, 23 we have learnt that death is a result of sin. This can be no other than the “destruction” or ruin (see under Romans 2:12) which awaits sinners beyond the grave, destruction of body and soul. Now in Romans 8:10 Paul speaks of the body as already dead, because already doomed inevitably to the grave; and in Ephesians 2:1, 5; 1 Timothy 5:6 of sinners as already dead by means of their sins. So 1 John 3:14. This language is easily explained. We constantly speak of that which is inevitable as though it had actually taken place: for the future tense suggests uncertainty. The bad man is not dying but dead. For a dying man may recover by his own vital force, or a doctor may save him: but no power can save a bad man from the awful penalty of sin and give him moral life except that of Him who raises the dead. This language is the more appropriate because the sinner is in a very real sense separated from God the Source of life, destitute of the Holy Spirit who is the breath of the new life of the sons of God, and is, like a corpse, in a state of progressive (moral) corruption.

In this sense, in spite of the outward morality mentioned in Philippians 3:6, Paul was dead before (Romans 8:2) “the Spirit of Life” in Christ Jesus made him free. Just as Lazarus could look back to a time when his body lay rotting in the grave, so Paul remembered a time when he was in a state which, but for the life-giving power of God, would have inevitably developed into eternal death.

Of this death, the Law was the instrument. For, had there been no prohibition, Paul could not have sinned and thus fallen under the death-penalty of sin.

When was Paul alive, without law? Not while he was persecuting the Church and thus fighting against God. For he was then (Romans 2:12; 6:14, 1 Corinthians 9:20) in law and under law: and indisputably (Ephesians 2:1-5) he was spiritually dead. To say that he was then alive, is utterly alien from the thought of Paul and of the entire New Testament. But at a still earlier day, in infancy before the age of responsibility, he possessed a real though immature life which death of the body could not destroy. However deeply a man be sunk in sin, however completely under its power to-day, he can look back to the early dawn of memory and say, In those days God smiled on me, and in the full sense of the word I was alive: and this is the saddest thought the bad man can have. But the infant grew to boyhood. Through his mother’s lips, the commandment came to him; and he learnt that God had forbidden him to do this and that. Now awoke to activity the innate but slumbering power of sin. Following the guidance of nature, like other men, he fell under the anger of God and became dead by means of his trespasses: Ephesians 2:3, 5. His death was loss of the life he possessed in the days of innocence, was wrought by sin, and by means of the law.

The above exposition is the only one possible. For in no sense can a man be called alive when he is asleep in sin, or be said to die when he wakes up to consciousness of his awful position. Nor could the loss of such life, or such moral awakening, be spoken of in the tone of sadness which breathes in Romans 7:9, 11. For such awakening, however painful, was not a calamity, but the dawn of a new life.

On the other hand, the metaphorical language used here and in Ephesians 2:1-5 must be interpreted with utmost caution. The mortality of infancy reminds us that by birth we are in some measure heirs of the penalty of Adam’s sin: and in Ephesians 2:3; John 3:6 we find an inborn defect leading to actual sin and making needful a new birth. The passage before us is simply a pathetic picture, in the vivid thought of Paul, of a part of his own experience.

That the term alive is never elsewhere in the N.T. applied to infants, is no serious objection to the above exposition. For we read very little about their spiritual position. The sacred volume does not gratify our curiosity in this direction. But the term life is frequently used to describe those on whom God smiles; and our Lord’s reception of little children proves that God smiles on them. Nor is this exposition inconsistent with the probably greater prevalence of sin among the Gentiles than among the Jews. For the Gentiles have the law written in every man’s heart. Moreover, the fuller revelation of God to Israel evoked a spiritual life, which finds expression in the Psalms, far above the highest spiritual life of the Gentiles, and which could not but bear fruit in a higher morality.

Verse 5 has now been explained and proved, and the Law has been vindicated. It is merely a weapon with which sin slew Paul. But we do not blame a sword because in the hands of an enemy it has slain the man for whose defence it was made. His death only reveals the strength of the foe who tore it from his grasp and used it for his destruction. Take an illustration. A man is condemned for murder. The law against murder was designed to save his life, by keeping others from killing him. It will now destroy his life. But this is no proof that the law is bad, or that it was enacted by an enemy: it proves only the strength of the evil disposition which, in spite of the law, drove the man to murder and to the gallows. Similarly Paul’s case is inexpressibly sad; but the fault is not with the Law, but with sin. Thus, while explaining and justifying Romans 7:5, Paul has really cleared the Law from a charge which that verse seemed to bring against it, and his own teaching from the charge of antagonism to the Law of God.

V. 10. The commandment which was intended for life-Doubtless it was originally intended by God as a grand means of preserving and increasing spiritual life, and leading to life everlasting.

Verse 10. And the commandment] Meaning the law in general, which was ordained to life; the rule of righteousness teaching those statutes which if a man do he shall live in them, Leviticus 18:5, I found, by transgressing it, to be unto death; for it only presented the duty and laid down the penalty, without affording any strength to resist sin or subdue evil propensities.

Verses 9-11. For I was alive — In my own conceit; without the law — Without the proper knowledge of its spirituality, extent, and obligation. I apprehended myself to be righteous, and in the way to life eternal; but when the commandment came — That is, the law; (a part being put for the whole;) but this expression particularly intimates its compulsive force, which restrains, enjoins, urges, forbids, threatens; — when, in its spiritual meaning, it came to my heart: or, when the spiritual meaning and full extent of the law, condemning desires of evil, was brought home, and closely applied to my conscience by the Spirit of God; sin revived — My conscience was awakened and convinced, and I found myself guilty of many sins, which before I perceived not, and a lively sense of the guilt of them was imprinted on my soul; and I died — My virtue and strength died away, and my former persuasions vanished: for I saw myself to be dead in sin, in a state of condemnation, and liable to death eternal. And the commandment — The law; which was ordained to life — Which promised life to them that kept it, saying, The man that doeth these things shall live in, or by them; and which, if rightly used, would have been a means of increasing spiritual life, and leading to life everlasting. “The law of nature, and its transcript in the moral precepts of the law of Moses, were intended for life; because the threatening of death for every offence, is virtually a promise of life to those who obey perfectly. This appears from the law given to Adam in paradise.” I found to be unto death — To be attended with deadly consequences, both as it consigned me over to destruction for past sin, and occasionally, though not intentionally, proved productive of new guilt and misery. Perfect obedience being impossible, according to the present state of human nature, the law, which threatens death for every offence, necessarily ends in death to the sinner, although it was originally intended to give life to the obedient. For sin, as I said before, (see on verse 8,) taking occasion by the commandment — Prohibiting it under the severest penalties, but affording me no help against it; deceived me — Came upon me unawares, while I was expecting life by the law; and by it slew me — Slew all my hopes, by bringing me under guilt, condemnation, and wrath. In other words, Satan, the grand enemy of mankind, and author of sin, finding a law which threatened death to the transgression of it, takes occasion thence more earnestly to tempt and allure us to the violation of it, that so he may more effectually subject us to condemnation and death upon that account. Thus, when God had forbidden, under the pain of death, the eating of the forbidden fruit, Satan thence took occasion to tempt our first parents to the breach of it, and so slew them, or made them subject to death. Dr. Doddridge paraphrases the verse rather differently, thus: “Sin, taking occasion by the terror and curse of the violated commandment, and representing the great Lawgiver as now become my irreconcileable enemy, deceived me into a persuasion that I could be no worse than I was, and thereby it slew me; it multiplied my mortal wounds, and rendered my case still more desperate.” Instead of sin taking occasion, Dr. Macknight renders aformhn labousa, taking the opportunity, an expression which he thinks less likely to countenance the idea, that men’s evil desires are owing to the prohibitions of the law; to suppose which, would be to make God the author of sin by his law. “The apostle’s meaning,” says he, “is, that sin took the opportunity of men being under the commandment, first to deceive, and then to kill them.” According to Bengelius, the most approved copies read, not, sin taking occasion or opportunity by the commandment, but, by the commandment deceived and slew me; connecting the commandment, not with the former, but with the latter clause of the verse. In the words, deceived me, there seems to be an allusion to the excuse which Eve made for eating the forbidden fruit. The serpent deceived me, by assuring me that I should not die. “The apostle speaks of a two-fold opportunity taken by sin, while men are under the commandment. The first is, sinful dispositions, deceiving men into the belief that the prohibitions of the law are unreasonable, that the thing forbidden is pleasant or profitable, and that it will not be followed with punishment, persuade them to do it. This was the serpent’s discourse to Eve; and it is what men’s sinful inclinations always suggest to them. The second opportunity which sin takes under the commandment, is that of killing the sinner by the curse annexed to the commandment which he hath broken.”

Ver. 9, 10. I was alive once without the law. St. Paul, under the figure of his own person, comprises the whole jewish nation, who lived in Egypt without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, which had lain as dead, slumbering in the heart, and I died. Such is the state of carnal men at ease in their sins, and thoughtless of divine things. The filth of a prison is scarcely seen in the dark, but when the sun shines, all the defilement appears. Just so, the commandment which was ordained to life in paradise, and from which the jews expected life, as is apparent from the question of the young ruler, Matthew 19:16, I found to be unto death, it being a law demonstrating sin, and denouncing condemnation. What a discovery; what a change of views induced by awakening grace.

Ver. 9.-11. Further description and fatal result of the personal experience narrated in Romans 7:8. Paul says,

Once, in a day gone by, I was alive or living, without law, having no command requiring obedience. Then the commandment, the 10th or others, came: at its coming sin lived-again, as a dead body waking up into life: and I died. On this event Paul makes the sad comment, the commandment which was designed for life, i.e. to give or maintain life, this was found by me to be for death. [Notice the preposition eiv, which always denotes tendency, denoting first purpose, as usually, and then result. This different use of the same preposition in the same short sentence is made easy by the personification of sin. For, if sin be personified, we may speak of its tendency as a purpose.] The commandment given in Paradise was designed to save life by guarding our parents from the tree of death. The Law of Moses had the same purpose: Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 5:33. Indeed, all that comes from the Author of Life, is designed to give or maintain life. In those who believe, the Law attains its end by leading them to Christ: Galatians 3:24.

Then follows, in Romans 7:11, a sad restatement, in almost the same words, of the great calamity stated in Romans 7:8. An added detail is that

sin… deceived me: so Genesis 3:13. Same strong word in 2 Corinthians 11:3 (cp. 1 Timothy 2:14), in reference to Eve; also Romans 16:18; 1 Corinthians 3:18. Sin kills by persuading that the forbidden object is good; so Genesis 3:5.

Slew me: restating Romans 7:9, I died. It is a result of the “desire” evoked by sin: Romans 7:8. While sin lay dead or dormant, Paul was alive: but at the voice of the Law it woke up to life, and slew him. We have seen, under Romans 7:9, that to Paul sin was once dead in the sense of being powerless and inoperative; and that at the coming of the Law it sprang into life in the sense that in the commands of the Law it found a starting-point for activity and effect. We now ask, In what sense was Paul himself once alive or living, apart from law, and in what sense at the coming of the Law can it be said that he died? These words, when applied to Paul, a man capable of life and death in the fullest sense, must have a meaning far deeper than they can have when applied to sin, a mere abstract principle. But this deeper meaning must be in harmony with the essential significance of the words and with Paul’s argument. The sadness of Romans 7:9-11 implies that the death which Paul died was a great calamity. It was wrought by sin using the Law as a weapon. Already in Romans 6:16, 21, 23 we have learnt that death is a result of sin. This can be no other than the “destruction” or ruin (see under Romans 2:12) which awaits sinners beyond the grave, destruction of body and soul. Now in Romans 8:10 Paul speaks of the body as already dead, because already doomed inevitably to the grave; and in Ephesians 2:1, 5; 1 Timothy 5:6 of sinners as already dead by means of their sins. So 1 John 3:14. This language is easily explained. We constantly speak of that which is inevitable as though it had actually taken place: for the future tense suggests uncertainty. The bad man is not dying but dead. For a dying man may recover by his own vital force, or a doctor may save him: but no power can save a bad man from the awful penalty of sin and give him moral life except that of Him who raises the dead. This language is the more appropriate because the sinner is in a very real sense separated from God the Source of life, destitute of the Holy Spirit who is the breath of the new life of the sons of God, and is, like a corpse, in a state of progressive (moral) corruption.

In this sense, in spite of the outward morality mentioned in Philippians 3:6, Paul was dead before (Romans 8:2) “the Spirit of Life” in Christ Jesus made him free. Just as Lazarus could look back to a time when his body lay rotting in the grave, so Paul remembered a time when he was in a state which, but for the life-giving power of God, would have inevitably developed into eternal death.

Of this death, the Law was the instrument. For, had there been no prohibition, Paul could not have sinned and thus fallen under the death-penalty of sin.

When was Paul alive, without law? Not while he was persecuting the Church and thus fighting against God. For he was then (Romans 2:12; 6:14, 1 Corinthians 9:20) in law and under law: and indisputably (Ephesians 2:1-5) he was spiritually dead. To say that he was then alive, is utterly alien from the thought of Paul and of the entire New Testament. But at a still earlier day, in infancy before the age of responsibility, he possessed a real though immature life which death of the body could not destroy. However deeply a man be sunk in sin, however completely under its power to-day, he can look back to the early dawn of memory and say, In those days God smiled on me, and in the full sense of the word I was alive: and this is the saddest thought the bad man can have. But the infant grew to boyhood. Through his mother’s lips, the commandment came to him; and he learnt that God had forbidden him to do this and that. Now awoke to activity the innate but slumbering power of sin. Following the guidance of nature, like other men, he fell under the anger of God and became dead by means of his trespasses: Ephesians 2:3, 5. His death was loss of the life he possessed in the days of innocence, was wrought by sin, and by means of the law.

The above exposition is the only one possible. For in no sense can a man be called alive when he is asleep in sin, or be said to die when he wakes up to consciousness of his awful position. Nor could the loss of such life, or such moral awakening, be spoken of in the tone of sadness which breathes in Romans 7:9, 11. For such awakening, however painful, was not a calamity, but the dawn of a new life.

On the other hand, the metaphorical language used here and in Ephesians 2:1-5 must be interpreted with utmost caution. The mortality of infancy reminds us that by birth we are in some measure heirs of the penalty of Adam’s sin: and in Ephesians 2:3; John 3:6 we find an inborn defect leading to actual sin and making needful a new birth. The passage before us is simply a pathetic picture, in the vivid thought of Paul, of a part of his own experience.

That the term alive is never elsewhere in the N.T. applied to infants, is no serious objection to the above exposition. For we read very little about their spiritual position. The sacred volume does not gratify our curiosity in this direction. But the term life is frequently used to describe those on whom God smiles; and our Lord’s reception of little children proves that God smiles on them. Nor is this exposition inconsistent with the probably greater prevalence of sin among the Gentiles than among the Jews. For the Gentiles have the law written in every man’s heart. Moreover, the fuller revelation of God to Israel evoked a spiritual life, which finds expression in the Psalms, far above the highest spiritual life of the Gentiles, and which could not but bear fruit in a higher morality.

Verse 5 has now been explained and proved, and the Law has been vindicated. It is merely a weapon with which sin slew Paul. But we do not blame a sword because in the hands of an enemy it has slain the man for whose defence it was made. His death only reveals the strength of the foe who tore it from his grasp and used it for his destruction. Take an illustration. A man is condemned for murder. The law against murder was designed to save his life, by keeping others from killing him. It will now destroy his life. But this is no proof that the law is bad, or that it was enacted by an enemy: it proves only the strength of the evil disposition which, in spite of the law, drove the man to murder and to the gallows. Similarly Paul’s case is inexpressibly sad; but the fault is not with the Law, but with sin. Thus, while explaining and justifying Romans 7:5, Paul has really cleared the Law from a charge which that verse seemed to bring against it, and his own teaching from the charge of antagonism to the Law of God.

V. 11. Deceived me-While I expected life by the law, sin came upon me unawares and slew all my hopes.

Verse 11. Sin, taking occasion] Sin, deriving strength from the law, threatening death to the transgressor, (see Clarke’s note on “Romans 7:8”,) deceived me, drew me aside to disobedience, promising me gratification honour, independence, &c., as it promised to Eve; for to her history the apostle evidently alludes, and uses the very same expression, deceived me, exhpathse me, See the preceding note; and see the Septuagint, Genesis 3:13.

And by it slew me.] Subjected me to that death which the law denounced against transgressors; and rendered me miserable during the course of life itself. It is well known to scholars that the verb apokteinein signifies not only to slay or kill, but also to make wretched. Every sinner is not only exposed to death because he has sinned, and must, sooner or later, die; but he is miserable in both body and mind by the influence and the effects of sin. He lives a dying life, or a living death.

Verses 9-11. For I was alive — In my own conceit; without the law — Without the proper knowledge of its spirituality, extent, and obligation. I apprehended myself to be righteous, and in the way to life eternal; but when the commandment came — That is, the law; (a part being put for the whole;) but this expression particularly intimates its compulsive force, which restrains, enjoins, urges, forbids, threatens; — when, in its spiritual meaning, it came to my heart: or, when the spiritual meaning and full extent of the law, condemning desires of evil, was brought home, and closely applied to my conscience by the Spirit of God; sin revived — My conscience was awakened and convinced, and I found myself guilty of many sins, which before I perceived not, and a lively sense of the guilt of them was imprinted on my soul; and I died — My virtue and strength died away, and my former persuasions vanished: for I saw myself to be dead in sin, in a state of condemnation, and liable to death eternal. And the commandment — The law; which was ordained to life — Which promised life to them that kept it, saying, The man that doeth these things shall live in, or by them; and which, if rightly used, would have been a means of increasing spiritual life, and leading to life everlasting. “The law of nature, and its transcript in the moral precepts of the law of Moses, were intended for life; because the threatening of death for every offence, is virtually a promise of life to those who obey perfectly. This appears from the law given to Adam in paradise.” I found to be unto death — To be attended with deadly consequences, both as it consigned me over to destruction for past sin, and occasionally, though not intentionally, proved productive of new guilt and misery. Perfect obedience being impossible, according to the present state of human nature, the law, which threatens death for every offence, necessarily ends in death to the sinner, although it was originally intended to give life to the obedient. For sin, as I said before, (see on verse 8,) taking occasion by the commandment — Prohibiting it under the severest penalties, but affording me no help against it; deceived me — Came upon me unawares, while I was expecting life by the law; and by it slew me — Slew all my hopes, by bringing me under guilt, condemnation, and wrath. In other words, Satan, the grand enemy of mankind, and author of sin, finding a law which threatened death to the transgression of it, takes occasion thence more earnestly to tempt and allure us to the violation of it, that so he may more effectually subject us to condemnation and death upon that account. Thus, when God had forbidden, under the pain of death, the eating of the forbidden fruit, Satan thence took occasion to tempt our first parents to the breach of it, and so slew them, or made them subject to death. Dr. Doddridge paraphrases the verse rather differently, thus: “Sin, taking occasion by the terror and curse of the violated commandment, and representing the great Lawgiver as now become my irreconcileable enemy, deceived me into a persuasion that I could be no worse than I was, and thereby it slew me; it multiplied my mortal wounds, and rendered my case still more desperate.” Instead of sin taking occasion, Dr. Macknight renders aformhn labousa, taking the opportunity, an expression which he thinks less likely to countenance the idea, that men’s evil desires are owing to the prohibitions of the law; to suppose which, would be to make God the author of sin by his law. “The apostle’s meaning,” says he, “is, that sin took the opportunity of men being under the commandment, first to deceive, and then to kill them.” According to Bengelius, the most approved copies read, not, sin taking occasion or opportunity by the commandment, but, by the commandment deceived and slew me; connecting the commandment, not with the former, but with the latter clause of the verse. In the words, deceived me, there seems to be an allusion to the excuse which Eve made for eating the forbidden fruit. The serpent deceived me, by assuring me that I should not die. “The apostle speaks of a two-fold opportunity taken by sin, while men are under the commandment. The first is, sinful dispositions, deceiving men into the belief that the prohibitions of the law are unreasonable, that the thing forbidden is pleasant or profitable, and that it will not be followed with punishment, persuade them to do it. This was the serpent’s discourse to Eve; and it is what men’s sinful inclinations always suggest to them. The second opportunity which sin takes under the commandment, is that of killing the sinner by the curse annexed to the commandment which he hath broken.”

11. Taking occasion—Law was the occasion, sin the author of the murder. Deceived me—Deluded me, as all temptation does with some false good. So did the serpent Eve. Slew me—As sin and serpent did both Adam and Eve.

Ver. 9.-11. Further description and fatal result of the personal experience narrated in Romans 7:8. Paul says,

Once, in a day gone by, I was alive or living, without law, having no command requiring obedience. Then the commandment, the 10th or others, came: at its coming sin lived-again, as a dead body waking up into life: and I died. On this event Paul makes the sad comment, the commandment which was designed for life, i.e. to give or maintain life, this was found by me to be for death. [Notice the preposition eiv, which always denotes tendency, denoting first purpose, as usually, and then result. This different use of the same preposition in the same short sentence is made easy by the personification of sin. For, if sin be personified, we may speak of its tendency as a purpose.] The commandment given in Paradise was designed to save life by guarding our parents from the tree of death. The Law of Moses had the same purpose: Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 5:33. Indeed, all that comes from the Author of Life, is designed to give or maintain life. In those who believe, the Law attains its end by leading them to Christ: Galatians 3:24.

Then follows, in Romans 7:11, a sad restatement, in almost the same words, of the great calamity stated in Romans 7:8. An added detail is that

sin… deceived me: so Genesis 3:13. Same strong word in 2 Corinthians 11:3 (cp. 1 Timothy 2:14), in reference to Eve; also Romans 16:18; 1 Corinthians 3:18. Sin kills by persuading that the forbidden object is good; so Genesis 3:5.

Slew me: restating Romans 7:9, I died. It is a result of the “desire” evoked by sin: Romans 7:8. While sin lay dead or dormant, Paul was alive: but at the voice of the Law it woke up to life, and slew him. We have seen, under Romans 7:9, that to Paul sin was once dead in the sense of being powerless and inoperative; and that at the coming of the Law it sprang into life in the sense that in the commands of the Law it found a starting-point for activity and effect. We now ask, In what sense was Paul himself once alive or living, apart from law, and in what sense at the coming of the Law can it be said that he died? These words, when applied to Paul, a man capable of life and death in the fullest sense, must have a meaning far deeper than they can have when applied to sin, a mere abstract principle. But this deeper meaning must be in harmony with the essential significance of the words and with Paul’s argument. The sadness of Romans 7:9-11 implies that the death which Paul died was a great calamity. It was wrought by sin using the Law as a weapon. Already in Romans 6:16, 21, 23 we have learnt that death is a result of sin. This can be no other than the “destruction” or ruin (see under Romans 2:12) which awaits sinners beyond the grave, destruction of body and soul. Now in Romans 8:10 Paul speaks of the body as already dead, because already doomed inevitably to the grave; and in Ephesians 2:1, 5; 1 Timothy 5:6 of sinners as already dead by means of their sins. So 1 John 3:14. This language is easily explained. We constantly speak of that which is inevitable as though it had actually taken place: for the future tense suggests uncertainty. The bad man is not dying but dead. For a dying man may recover by his own vital force, or a doctor may save him: but no power can save a bad man from the awful penalty of sin and give him moral life except that of Him who raises the dead. This language is the more appropriate because the sinner is in a very real sense separated from God the Source of life, destitute of the Holy Spirit who is the breath of the new life of the sons of God, and is, like a corpse, in a state of progressive (moral) corruption.

In this sense, in spite of the outward morality mentioned in Philippians 3:6, Paul was dead before (Romans 8:2) “the Spirit of Life” in Christ Jesus made him free. Just as Lazarus could look back to a time when his body lay rotting in the grave, so Paul remembered a time when he was in a state which, but for the life-giving power of God, would have inevitably developed into eternal death.

Of this death, the Law was the instrument. For, had there been no prohibition, Paul could not have sinned and thus fallen under the death-penalty of sin.

When was Paul alive, without law? Not while he was persecuting the Church and thus fighting against God. For he was then (Romans 2:12; 6:14, 1 Corinthians 9:20) in law and under law: and indisputably (Ephesians 2:1-5) he was spiritually dead. To say that he was then alive, is utterly alien from the thought of Paul and of the entire New Testament. But at a still earlier day, in infancy before the age of responsibility, he possessed a real though immature life which death of the body could not destroy. However deeply a man be sunk in sin, however completely under its power to-day, he can look back to the early dawn of memory and say, In those days God smiled on me, and in the full sense of the word I was alive: and this is the saddest thought the bad man can have. But the infant grew to boyhood. Through his mother’s lips, the commandment came to him; and he learnt that God had forbidden him to do this and that. Now awoke to activity the innate but slumbering power of sin. Following the guidance of nature, like other men, he fell under the anger of God and became dead by means of his trespasses: Ephesians 2:3, 5. His death was loss of the life he possessed in the days of innocence, was wrought by sin, and by means of the law.

The above exposition is the only one possible. For in no sense can a man be called alive when he is asleep in sin, or be said to die when he wakes up to consciousness of his awful position. Nor could the loss of such life, or such moral awakening, be spoken of in the tone of sadness which breathes in Romans 7:9, 11. For such awakening, however painful, was not a calamity, but the dawn of a new life.

On the other hand, the metaphorical language used here and in Ephesians 2:1-5 must be interpreted with utmost caution. The mortality of infancy reminds us that by birth we are in some measure heirs of the penalty of Adam’s sin: and in Ephesians 2:3; John 3:6 we find an inborn defect leading to actual sin and making needful a new birth. The passage before us is simply a pathetic picture, in the vivid thought of Paul, of a part of his own experience.

That the term alive is never elsewhere in the N.T. applied to infants, is no serious objection to the above exposition. For we read very little about their spiritual position. The sacred volume does not gratify our curiosity in this direction. But the term life is frequently used to describe those on whom God smiles; and our Lord’s reception of little children proves that God smiles on them. Nor is this exposition inconsistent with the probably greater prevalence of sin among the Gentiles than among the Jews. For the Gentiles have the law written in every man’s heart. Moreover, the fuller revelation of God to Israel evoked a spiritual life, which finds expression in the Psalms, far above the highest spiritual life of the Gentiles, and which could not but bear fruit in a higher morality.

Verse 5 has now been explained and proved, and the Law has been vindicated. It is merely a weapon with which sin slew Paul. But we do not blame a sword because in the hands of an enemy it has slain the man for whose defence it was made. His death only reveals the strength of the foe who tore it from his grasp and used it for his destruction. Take an illustration. A man is condemned for murder. The law against murder was designed to save his life, by keeping others from killing him. It will now destroy his life. But this is no proof that the law is bad, or that it was enacted by an enemy: it proves only the strength of the evil disposition which, in spite of the law, drove the man to murder and to the gallows. Similarly Paul’s case is inexpressibly sad; but the fault is not with the Law, but with sin. Thus, while explaining and justifying Romans 7:5, Paul has really cleared the Law from a charge which that verse seemed to bring against it, and his own teaching from the charge of antagonism to the Law of God.

V. 12. The commandment-That is, every branch of the law. Is holy, and just, and good-It springs from, and partakes of, the holy nature of God; it is every way just and right in itself; it is designed wholly for the good of man.

Verse 12. Wherefore the law is holy] As if he had said, to soothe his countrymen, to whom he had been showing the absolute insufficiency of the law either to justify or save from sin: I do not intimate that there is any thing improper or imperfect in the law as a rule of life: it prescribes what is holy, just, and good; for it comes from a holy, just, and good God. The LAW, which is to regulate the whole of the outward conduct, is holy; and the COMMANDMENT, Thou shalt not covet, which is to regulate the heart, is not less so. All is excellent and pure; but it neither pardons sin nor purifies the heart; and it is because it is holy, just, and good, that it condemns transgressors to death.

Verses 12, 13. Wherefore — Since then, by what has been said, it appears that the law is not the cause of sin or death, except indirectly and by accident, it must be acquitted from this charge, and acknowledged to be holy; and the commandment — The preceptive part of the moral law, and every particular precept of it; is holy, just, and good — It springs from and partakes of the holy nature of God; tends only to promote holiness and a conformity to God, and prescribes our duty to God in his worship and service. It is every way just and right in itself, and commands nothing but what is agreeable to those common apprehensions of right and equity which are imprinted in our natures: it is designed wholly for the good of man, 1 Timothy 1:8, and is really profitable and conducive to our good, both temporal and eternal, and subservient to the common interest of mankind. Was then that which is good made the cause of evil to me? — Yea, of death, which is the greatest of evils? Was it made the proper and direct cause of death? Not so: But it was sin, which was made death to me, inasmuch as it wrought death in me, even by that which is good. Here the apostle clearly distinguishes between a proper cause and an occasion, or cause by accident. The law is the occasion of death to sinners; but sin is the proper or efficient cause of that evil. That it might appear sin — Might appear superlatively vile; working death in me by that which is good — By the good law: that sin by the commandment — Manifesting and forbidding it, and thereby awakening and irritating it; might become exceeding sinful — That, being quickened and excited by so innocent and holy a thing as the commandment, it might thereby show its horrid and vile nature; the guilt of it being hereby greatly aggravated. “Our translators suppose that amartwlov [rendered sinful] is put here for the adjective. But, as Beza observes, it is used as a substantive, and signifies a sinner. For the apostle carries on the personification of sin, begun chap. 6:6, by showing its exceeding sinfulness in this respect, that it makes the law, which was intended for life, the occasion of men’s death.” — Macknight.

12. Wherefore—The conclusion is that the law stands vindicated in its divine perfection. Law—The eternal law universally taken. Commandment—The law manifested in some special requirement, as to Adam, in the ten commandments, and in the details of the Mosaic requirements.

Second question, and answer—The law not made death to me, 13-25. It is now demanded whether by this narrative (8-12) it is to be understood that this holy thing, the law, is responsible for his death. The answer is, By no manner of means. And to show this he goes over the same story again of 8-12, with fuller particulars, so stated as to show that it was sin, not law, that formed for him the body of this death above described in verse

11. From this it is plain, and must be specially noted, that 13-25 narrates the same period an 8-12. And this is a very important fact, as we shall now show.

It has for ages been debated whether 13-25 described the case of an unregenerate or regenerate man. For the first three centuries the entire Christian Church with one accord applied it solely to the unregenerate man. It seemed too low a moral picture for a possessor of a new Christian life, as the apostle in the main current of thought is describing. Its application to the regenerate man was first invented by Augustine, who was followed by many eminent doctors of the Middle Ages. After the Reformation the interpretation by Augustine was largely adopted, especially by the followers of Calvin. At the present day the Church generally, Greek, Roman, Protestant, including some of the latest commentators, have returned to the just interpretation as held by the primitive Church.

If, however, it be true, as we have above stated, and as we think will appear in our comment, that this passage does but tell the story of 8-12 over again, this question is settled, for all are unanimously agreed that 8-12 is the narrative of an unregenerate man. The story as retold is this: When the holy law came the good I waked up and tried to be good according to law. I did consent to the law that it is good, I willed to do good, I did even delight in the law after the inward man. But the traitor sin, identifying itself with my evil I, held me fast as sold under sin, hemmed me in at every good attempt, organized a rebellions counter law in my members, and so became a complete nightmare upon me, the very body of this death above mentioned, and now in question. So that the question is again answered, In what relation stood the man in the flesh (verse 5) under the law to the law? In fact, 7-25 is an unfolding of verse 5, and 8:1-11 is an unfolding of verse 6.

Moreover, as 7-12 is but an expansion of 5, and 13-25 an expansion of 7-12, it is clear that all three passages do describe but one thing: how with the man in the flesh under the law the motions of sin bring forth death. If, now, the reader will with a pair of scissors cut out the entire passage 7-25, (which the apostle flung in to discuss the two questions,) he will find a continuous train of thought. The paragraph Romans 7:1-6 describes the Christian’s emancipation from law, and Romans 8:1-39 describes his blessed state as thus emancipated. The passage 7-25 is therefore parenthesis.

No one need deny that in a low state of Christian life, a state normal with a large share of Christians, law resumes its compelling and even menacing power. And this is a thing of degrees, a sliding scale. The lower the degree of Christian life the more vividly the law flashes out, just as the deeper the twilight the brighter the stars. And when the Christian vitality dies out the bolt of the law again strikes the man dead, sin being responsible. But of all this subsidence of the believer into the law state, however true, the apostle does not here say one word. It is the man under the law in the flesh he is describing.

Ver. 12. So that etc.: result of the foregoing argument. [The particle min without de following indicates that the sentence is broken off, like Romans 5:12, and that only a preliminary part of the result is here stated. The remainder we shall find in Romans 7:13.] Paul has not actually proved that the Law is holy; but has shown that Romans 7:5 does not imply that it is unholy.

The Law… the commandment: recalling Romans 7:7, 8. Holy: cp. Romans 1:2: in definite relation to God and tending to work out His purposes.

Commandment: the 10th, quoted in Romans 7:7. It is a specification of that part of the Law which actually slew Paul. He therefore lingers over it, and expounds what is implied in its being holy.

Righteous: in harmony with the essential principles of right and wrong. Good: beneficial in its working. Such is whatever is holy, i.e. belonging to God. The word good sounds so strange to one to whom the Law has been the means of death that at this point Paul breaks off and asks a question which will become a starting-point for other teaching. In the answer to this question, he will state more fully the result of the foregoing argument.

V. 13. Was then that which is good made the cause of evil to me; yea, of death, which is the greatest of evil? Not so.

But it was sin, which was made death to me, inasmuch as it wrought death in me even by that which is good-By the good law. So that sin by the commandment became exceeding sinful-The consequence of which was, that inbred sin, thus driving furiously in spite of the commandment, became exceeding sinful; the guilt thereof being greatly aggravated.

Verse 13. Was then that which is good made death unto me?] This is the question of the Jew, with whom the apostle appears to be disputing. “Do you allow the law to be good, and yet say it is the cause of our death?” The apostle answers:-God forbid! genoito, by no means: it is not the law that is the cause of your death, but sin; it was sin which subjected us to death by the law, justly threatening sin with death: which law was given that sin might appear-might be set forth in its own colours; when we saw it subjected us to death by a law perfectly holy, just, and good; that sin, by the law, might be represented what it really is:-kaqJ uperbolhn amartwlov, an EXCEEDING GREAT and deadly evil.

Thus it appears that man cannot have a true notion of sin but by means of the law of God. For this I have already given sufficient reasons in the preceding notes. And it was one design of the law to show the abominable and destructive nature of sin, as well as to be a rule of life. It would be almost impossible for a man to have that just notion of the demerit of sin so as to produce repentance, or to see the nature and necessity of the death of Christ, if the law were not applied to his conscience by the light of the Holy Spirit; it is then alone that he sees himself to be carnal, and sold under sin; and that the law and the commandment are holy, just, and good. And let it be observed, that the law did not answer this end merely among the Jews in the days of the apostle; it is just as necessary to the Gentiles to the present hour. Nor do we find that true repentance takes place where the moral law is not preached and enforced. Those who preach only the Gospel to sinners, at best only heal the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly. The law, therefore, is the grand instrument in the hands of a faithful minister, to alarm and awaken sinners; and he may safely show that every sinner is under the law, and consequently under the curse, who has not fled for refuge to the hope held out by the Gospel: for, in this sense also, Jesus Christ is the END of the LAW for justification to them that believe.

Verses 12, 13. Wherefore — Since then, by what has been said, it appears that the law is not the cause of sin or death, except indirectly and by accident, it must be acquitted from this charge, and acknowledged to be holy; and the commandment — The preceptive part of the moral law, and every particular precept of it; is holy, just, and good — It springs from and partakes of the holy nature of God; tends only to promote holiness and a conformity to God, and prescribes our duty to God in his worship and service. It is every way just and right in itself, and commands nothing but what is agreeable to those common apprehensions of right and equity which are imprinted in our natures: it is designed wholly for the good of man, 1 Timothy 1:8, and is really profitable and conducive to our good, both temporal and eternal, and subservient to the common interest of mankind. Was then that which is good made the cause of evil to me? — Yea, of death, which is the greatest of evils? Was it made the proper and direct cause of death? Not so: But it was sin, which was made death to me, inasmuch as it wrought death in me, even by that which is good. Here the apostle clearly distinguishes between a proper cause and an occasion, or cause by accident. The law is the occasion of death to sinners; but sin is the proper or efficient cause of that evil. That it might appear sin — Might appear superlatively vile; working death in me by that which is good — By the good law: that sin by the commandment — Manifesting and forbidding it, and thereby awakening and irritating it; might become exceeding sinful — That, being quickened and excited by so innocent and holy a thing as the commandment, it might thereby show its horrid and vile nature; the guilt of it being hereby greatly aggravated. “Our translators suppose that amartwlov [rendered sinful] is put here for the adjective. But, as Beza observes, it is used as a substantive, and signifies a sinner. For the apostle carries on the personification of sin, begun chap. 6:6, by showing its exceeding sinfulness in this respect, that it makes the law, which was intended for life, the occasion of men’s death.” — Macknight.

13. Good made death—Blessing is, indeed, by sin often transformed into curse. But the blessing is not thereby to blame. There is a bold truth in saying that the good law was made death, but, the apostle claims, not responsibly so. Sin is the knave and murderer, without which law would be most benign and glorious, “the harmony of the universe.” Might appear sin—Death follows sin in order to unfold the accursedness of sin. The intrinsic, immutable, eternal execrableness of sin is a lesson in theology that God is wisely unfolding to all intelligence. Exceeding sinful—He might have said exceeding bad; but what worse can be ascribed to sin than that it is intensely itself?

ROMANS

SECTION 22 — THE LAW REVEALS THE

BADNESS AND POWER OF SIN CH. 7:13-25

The good thing then, did it to me become death? Be it not so. But sin did; in order that it might be seen to be sin through the good thing working out for me death, in order that sin might become beyond measure a sinner through the commandment. For we know that the Law is spiritual: but I am a man of flesh, sold under sin. For what I am working out, I do not know: for not what I wish, this I practise, but what I hate, this I do. But if what I do not wish, this I do, I agree with the Law that it is good. And now no longer do I work it out, but sin dwelling in me. For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, a good thing. For to wish is present to me, but to work out the good is not. For not what I wish I do, a good thing, but what I do not wish, an evil thing, this I practise. But if what I do not wish, this I do, no longer do I work it out, but sin dwelling in me. I find therefore that to me who wish for the Law, to do the good, that to me the evil is present. For I take pleasure with the Law of God according to the inward man: but I see another law in the members of my body carrying on war against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin which is in the members of my body. Calamity-stricken man that I am! who will rescue me from the body of this death? Thanks to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore I myself with the mind serve the Law of God, but with the flesh a law of sin.

Ver. 13. The good thing then etc.: question prompted by the foregoing word good, so incongruous to the sad experience just narrated. Paul asks, after asserting that the Law is good, Am I to infer that this good thing has become to me death? This was so to the man condemned to death under the law against murder: see p. 198. {Romans 7:11} But for himself Paul denies it, and goes on to state the actual case. But sin: a subject without a predicate, which must be supplied from the context, followed by a nearer, and then an ultimate, purpose. In these purposes, we find evidently the chief matter of this verse, viz. the purpose for which the Law, the good thing, was given. It is true, as Paul stated in Romans 7:10, that the Law, which he has just declared to be good, had become to him a means of death. But this is not the whole case: for in that death there was a further purpose, and this purpose changes completely the whole aspect of the sad calamity which befell Paul. This will appear as the argument proceeds.

The above-described calamity happened

in order that sin might be seen to be sin: i.e. in order that its real character might be manifested.

Through the good thing, to me working out death: mode of this manifestation.

Working-out: bringing about results, as in Romans 7:8: so Romans 7:15, 17, 18, 20.

In order that beyond measure etc.: a further purpose, or further description of the foregoing purpose. The abstract principle of sin becomes beyond measure a sinner by working out more and still more deadly consequences. That these are brought about through the commandment, itself good, reveals the tremendous and evil power of sin. The word sinner keeps up the personification of sin. Notice its conspicuous prominence in this verse.

We have here another account, in addition to those in Romans 3:19; 5:20, of the purpose of the Law. Each statement illustrates the others. The Law was a result of Adam’s sin, and came in order that it might be multiplied into the many sins of his children, in order that thus the real nature of sin might appear. Consequently Paul’s death was due ultimately, not to the Law, but to sin. A still further purpose of the Law is stated in Galatians 3:24: “that we may be justified by faith.” But this is not yet in view.

V. 14. I am carnal-St. Paul, having compared together the past and present state of believers, that in the flesh, Romans 7:5, and that in the spirit, Romans 7:6, in answering two objections, (Is then the law sin? Romans 7:7, and, Is the law death? Romans 7:13,) interweaves the whole process of a man reasoning, groaning, striving, and escaping from the legal to the evangelical state. This he does from Romans 7:7, to the end of this chapter.

Sold under sin-Totally enslaved; slaves bought with money were absolutely at their master's disposal.

Verse 14. For, we know that the law is spiritual] This is a general proposition, and probably, in the apostle’s autograph, concluded the above sentence. The law is not to be considered as a system of external rites and ceremonies; nor even as a rule of moral action: it is a spiritual system; it reaches to the most hidden purposes, thoughts, dispositions, and desires of the heart and soul; and it reproves and condemns every thing, without hope of reprieve or pardon, that is contrary to eternal truth and rectitude. But I am carnal, sold under sin.] This was probably, in the apostle’s letter, the beginning of a new paragraph. I believe it is agreed, on all hands, that the apostle is here demonstrating the insufficiency of the law in opposition to the Gospel. That by the former is the knowledge, by the latter the cure, of sin. Therefore by I here he cannot mean himself, nor any Christian believer: if the contrary could be proved, the argument of the apostle would go to demonstrate the insufficiency of the Gospel as well as the law.

It is difficult to conceive how the opinion could have crept into the Church, or prevailed there, that “the apostle speaks here of his regenerate state; and that what was, in such a state, true of himself, must be true of all others in the same state.” This opinion has, most pitifully and most shamefully, not only lowered the standard of Christianity, but destroyed its influence and disgraced its character. It requires but little knowledge of the spirit of the Gospel, and of the scope of this epistle, to see that the apostle is, here, either personating a Jew under the law and without the Gospel, or showing what his own state was when he was deeply convinced that by the deeds of the law no man could be justified, and had not as yet heard those blessed words: Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way, hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost, Acts 9:17.

In this and the following verses he states the contrariety between himself, or any Jew while without Christ, and the law of God. Of the latter he says, it is spiritual; of the former, I am carnal, sold under sin. Of the carnal man, in opposition to the spiritual, never was a more complete or accurate description given. The expressions, in the flesh, and after the flesh, in Romans 7:5, and in Romans 8:5, 8, 9, &c., are of the same import with the word carnal in this verse. To be in the flesh, or to be carnally minded, solely respects the unregenerate. While unregenerate, a man is in a state of death and enmity against God, Romans 8:6-9. This is St. Paul’s own account of a carnal man. The soul of such a man has no authority over the appetites of the body and the lusts of the flesh: reason has not the government of passion. The work of such a person is to make provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, Romans 13:14. He minds the things of the flesh, Romans 8:5; he is at enmity with God. In all these things the spiritual man is the reverse; he lives in a state of friendship with God in Christ, and the Spirit of God dwells in him; his soul has dominion over the appetites of the body and the lusts of the flesh; his passions submit to the government of reason, and he, by the Spirit, mortifies the deeds of the flesh; he mindeth the things of the Spirit, Romans 8:5. The Scriptures, therefore, place these two characters in direct opposition to each other. Now the apostle begins this passage by informing us that it is his carnal state that he is about to describe, in opposition to the spirituality of God’s holy law, saying, But I am carnal. Those who are of another opinion maintain that by the word carnal here the apostle meant that corruption which dwelt in him after his conversion; but this opinion is founded on a very great mistake; for, although there may be, after justification, the remains of the carnal mind, which will be less or more felt till the soul is completely sanctified, yet the man is never denominated from the inferior principle, which is under control, but from the superior principle which habitually prevails. Whatever epithets are given to corruption or sin in Scripture, opposite epithets are given to grace or holiness. By these different epithets are the unregenerate and regenerate denominated. From all this it follows that the epithet carnal, which is the characteristic designation of an unregenerate man, cannot be applied to St. Paul after his conversion; nor, indeed, to any Christian in that state.

But the word carnal, though used by the apostle to signify a state of death and enmity against God, is not sufficient to denote all the evil of the state which he is describing; hence he adds, sold under sin. This is one of the strongest expressions which the Spirit of God uses in Scripture, to describe the full depravity of fallen man. It implies a willing slavery: Ahab had sold himself to work evil, 1 Kings 21:20. And of the Jews it is said, in their utmost depravity, Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, Isaiah 50:1. They forsook the holy covenant, and joined themselves to the heathen, and WERE SOLD to do mischief, 1 Macc. i. 15. Now, if the word carnal, in its strongest sense, had been sufficiently significant of all he meant, why add to this charge another expression still stronger? We must therefore understand the phrase, sold under sin, as implying that the soul was employed in the drudgery of sin; that it was sold over to this service, and had no power to disobey this tyrant, until it was redeemed by another. And if a man be actually sold to another, and he acquiesce in the deed, then he becomes the legal property of that other person. This state of bondage was well known to the Romans. The sale of slaves they saw daily, and could not misunderstand the emphatical sense of this expression. Sin is here represented as a person; and the apostle compares the dominion which sin has over the man in question to that of a master over his legal slave. Universally through the Scriptures man is said to be in a state of bondage to sin until the Son of God make him free: but in no part of the sacred writings is it ever said that the children of God are sold under sin. Christ came to deliver the lawful captive, and take away the prey from the mighty. Whom the Son maketh free, they are free indeed. Then, they yield not up their members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; for sin shall not have the dominion over them, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made them free from the law of sin and death, Romans 6:13, 14; 8:2. Anciently, when regular cartels were not known, the captives became the slaves of their victors, and by them were sold to any purchaser; their slavery was as complete and perpetual as if the slave had resigned his own liberty, and sold himself: the laws of the land secured him to his master; he could not redeem himself, because he had nothing that was his own, and nothing could rescue him from that state but a stipulated redemption. The apostle speaks here, not of the manner in which the person in question became a slave; he only asserts the fact, that sin had a full and permanent dominion over him.-Smith, on the carnal man’s character.

I am carnal, sold under sin.] I have been the more particular in ascertaining the genuine sense of this verse, because it determines the general scope of the whole passage.

Verse 14. For we know that the law is spiritual — Extending to the spirit of man; forbidding even the sins of the spirit; sins internal, committed merely in men’s minds, such as vain thoughts, foolish imaginations, carnal inclinations, pride, self-will, discontent, impatience, anger, malice, envy, revenge, and all other spiritual evils, in the commission of which the body has no concern: enjoining, at the same time, all spiritual graces and virtues, such as humility, resignation, patience, contentment, meekness, gentleness, long-suffering, benevolence; with all holy intentions, affections, and dispositions, included in loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves, which the law especially enjoins: being intended, at the same time, to purify and exalt the spirit, and assert its superiority over the meaner part of our nature. But I am carnal — That is, man, considered in himself, as in a state of nature, and destitute of the regenerating grace of God, is carnal. See note on verse 5, where to be in the flesh is evidently of the same import with the word carnal here, as are also similar expressions, Romans 8:5, 8, 9, &c., expressions which, all are agreed, solely respect the unregenerate; and in which the person that is in the flesh, or carnally minded, is represented as being in a state of death, and enmity against God. Very different, surely, from the spiritual man, whom this same apostle represents as living in a state of favour and friendship with God; minding chiefly the things of the Spirit; yea, having the Spirit of God dwelling in him, and giving him dominion over all fleshly lusts, which, through that Spirit, he is enabled to mortify; whose passions submit to the government of reason, and whose reason is itself under the influence of grace; whose enjoyments are chiefly of a spiritual nature, and his great employment to work out his salvation with fear and trembling. The Scriptures, therefore, place these two characters in direct opposition the one to the other; and the apostle begins this paragraph by informing us that it is his carnal state which he is about to describe, in opposition to the spirituality of God’s holy law, saying, But I am carnal; and adding, as a still more decisive proof that his meaning is as is here stated, sold under sin — That is, sold as a slave, to remain under the dominion of sin, and to be compelled to do those evil actions to which sinful inclinations prompt men. “In peccati potestatem, libidinis et concupiscentiæ predio redactus,” says Origen; brought under the power of sin by the enticement of lust and concupiscence. “So enslaved to it,” says Theophylact, wste mh anableyai dunasqai, as not to be able to look up: “a willing slave, who had sold himself to it,” says Theodoret. The meaning is, totally enslaved: slaves bought with money being absolutely at their master’s disposal. In this sense, the phrase is continually used in the Old Testament, as the reader may see by consulting the texts referred to in the margin. By the addition of this clause, therefore, the apostle evidently shows that he does not here use the word carnal in the sense in which it is taken 1 Corinthians 3:1, namely, to denote only such a state of imperfection in knowledge and holiness, as persons may be in who are newly converted; but that he uses it in the worst sense, namely, in the same sense in which the expression, to be in the flesh, and carnally minded, is used; that is, to signify a state of death and enmity against God. Those commentators, therefore, who suppose that in this and what follows, to the end of the chapter, the apostle describes his own state, at the time he wrote this epistle, and consequently the state of every regenerated person, must be under a great mistake. Universally, indeed, in the Scriptures, man is said to be in this state of bondage to sin until the Son of God make him free; but in no part of the sacred writings is it ever said of the children of God, that they are sold under sin, or enslaved to it. The very reverse is the Holy Spirit’s description of Christians, for the Son of God makes them free, and therefore they are free indeed; free especially from the power of sin, which has no longer dominion over them. See notes on Romans 6:13-22, and 8:2. The truth is, through this whole paragraph the apostle, to wean the Jews from their attachment to the Mosaic law, is showing how little that dispensation, even the moral part of it, considered as a covenant of justice, independent of the covenant of grace, could do for them, or for any of the fallen offspring of Adam. It could convince them of sin, but not constitute them righteous. It could show them their guilt, depravity, and weakness, but could neither justify their persons, nor renew their nature, nor furnish them with power to do the will of God. As he expresses himself, Romans 8:3, It was weak through the flesh, or through the corruption and infirmity of human nature. In pursuance of his design, having compared together the past and present state of believers, that in the flesh, verse 5, and that in the spirit, verse 6. in answering two objections, (Is then the law sin? verse 7, and, Is the law death? verse 13,) he interweaves the whole process of a man reasoning, groaning, striving, and escaping from the legal to the evangelical state. This he does, from verse 7 to the end of the chapter.

Ver. 14. I am carnal, sold under sin. The apostle, from indwelling sin, now proceeds to the habits of sin. The old man, the usurper, now acts openly as a tyrant. He catches men by their reigning passions, and holds them under the yoke of servitude, as Ahab, who sold himself to work wickedness. All this is exemplified in the words which follow.

14. Spiritual—The law is not only to be vindicated but extolled, and extolled not only by the good, but even by the man whom it condemns. Carnal—That is, in the flesh, (verse 5,) that is, unregenerate. Sold under sin—Not merely under the dominion of sin, (Romans 6:14,) although that is the sure and infallible characteristic of the unregenerate. The low regenerate state has sin rebellious within, the higher life has nature under foot; but though sin may win many masteries, it never holds permanent dominion over the regenerate man, for then he ceases to be regenerate. But this man is worse still, sold under sin, not only a subject but a slave. And it is not the base I, the lower self, but the higher I that utters this awful plaint. Reducing the hyperbole as much as we reasonably can, it is absolutely inadmissible to predicate this in any case of a regenerate man. Dr. Hodge expresses the opinion that such is the ordinary language of Christian experience. It is so only, we reply, in accordance with and in consequence of a theological teaching that requires it. No such language, either doctrinal or practical, is found in the Christian writings of the first three centuries. Under such doctrinal instruction language of a hyperbolical “voluntary humility” is sometimes habitually uttered, utterly factitious in its character. This practice of factitious self-invective, both in language and cultivated thought, is repressive of the higher emotions of Christian life, and produces a dry, hard, and ungenial style of piety. it often produces in revivals also not a winning, but a menacing tone of preaching; and in the religious tone that results, much that is severe and unlovely. Dr. Hodge is surprised that Tholuck should approve the declaration of Dr. Adam Clarke that the Augustinian interpretation of this passage tends to lower the Christian standard. He avers that Calvinists, who prefer this interpretation, may safely claim a superior piety over Socinians and Arminians, who take the reverse view. The so-called Arminian view, we again reply, was held in the earliest and best days of the Church. Nor do those who coincide with Mr. Wesley in this interpretation shrink from Dr. Hodge’s comparison as to piety; or hesitate the declaration that the spirit in which they read this passage, carried out in all directions, is the source of a large part of their spiritual life, joy, and efficiency. Oblige them to feel that this and cognate passages are a true view of Christian life, and their whole frame of piety would receive a lowering cheek.

Ver. 14. A conspicuous change from past to present. In order to explain a bygone event in his own experience, Paul now describes the constitution of the Law, and of himself; and his own bondage to sin. Whether Romans 7:14-24, which evidently describe the same experience, describe Paul’s state while writing this letter, we will consider later. We know: as in Romans 2:2; 3:19, calling attention to what even Paul’s opponents admit.

Spiritual: as in Romans 1:11: pertaining to the Spirit of God, who is frequently contrasted with the flesh: see Romans 8:4-9. The Law expresses the mind of the Holy Spirit.

Man-of-flesh, or fleshen: same word in 1 Corinthians 3:1; 2 Corinthians 3:3; Hebrews 7:7, and (LXX.) 2 Chronicles 32:8; Ezekiel 36:26. See note under Romans 8:11. Paul’s entire personality was dominated by his material side.

Sold: recalling a slave-market, and thus giving vividness to the picture. Under sin: as in Romans 3:9: the slave-master in whose power Paul now legally is. Cp. 1 Kings 21:20, 25; Isaiah 50:1. Notice the practical result of being, while the Law is spiritual, a man of flesh. The flesh is not bad: for it is a creature of God. But it is the lower side of man’s nature, where sin erects its throne and whence it rules the man. Consequently one who is under control of his own body is a sold slave of sin. He therefore cannot (Romans 8:7, 8) obey a law expressing the mind of the Spirit of God, who is utterly adverse (see Galatians 5:17) to the rule of the body. The only possible immediate consequence of the gift of such a law to a man of flesh is a revelation of his bondage. And this inevitable consequence is in Romans 7:13 described as the purpose of the sad experience described in Romans 7:11.

Verse 15. For, that which I do, I allow not, &c.] The first clause of this verse is a general assertion concerning the employment of the person in question in the state which the apostle calls carnal, and sold under sin. The Greek word katergaxomai which is here translated I do, means a work which the agent continues to perform till it is finished, and is used by the apostle, Philippians 2:12, to denote the continued employment of God’s saints in his service to the end of their lives. WORK OUT your own salvation; the word here denotes an employment of a different kind; and therefore the man who now feels the galling dominion of sin says, What I am continually labouring at I allow not, ou ginwskw, I do not acknowledge to be right, just, holy, or profitable.

But what I hate, that do 1.] I am a slave, and under the absolute control of my tyrannical master: I hate his service, but am obliged to work his will. Who, without blaspheming, can assert that the apostle is speaking this of a man in whom the Spirit of the Lord dwells? From Romans 7:7 to this one the apostle, says Dr. Taylor, denotes the Jew in the flesh by a single I; here, he divides that I into two I’s, or figurative persons; representing two different and opposite principles which were in him. The one I, or principle, assents to the law that it is good, and wills and chooses what the other does not practise, Romans 7:16. This principle he expressly tells us, Romans 7:22, is the inward man; the law of the mind, Romans 7:23; the mind, or rational faculty, Romans 7:25; for he could find no other inward man, or law of the mind, but the rational faculty, in a person who was carnal and sold under sin. The other I, or principle, transgresses the law, Romans 7:23, and does those things which the former principle allows not. This principle he expressly tells us, Romans 7:18, is the flesh, the law in the members, or sensual appetite, Romans 7:23; and he concludes in the last verse, that these two principles were opposite to each other; therefore it is evident that those two principles, residing and counteracting each other in the same person; are reason and lust, or sin that dwells in us. And it is very easy to distinguish these two I’s, or principles, in every part of this elegant description of iniquity, domineering over the light and remonstrances of reason. For instance, Romans 7:17: Now then, it is no more I that do it, but SIN that dwelleth in me. The I he speaks of here is opposed to indwelling or governing sin; and therefore plainly denotes the principle of reason, the inward man, or law of the mind; in which, I add, a measure of the light of the Spirit of God shines, in order to show the sinfulness of sin. These two different principles he calls, one flesh, and the other spirit, Galatians 5:17; where he speaks of their contrariety in the same manner that he does here.

And we may give a probable reason why the apostle dwells so long upon the struggle and opposition between these two principles; it appears intended to answer a tacit but very obvious objection. The Jew might allege: “But the law is holy and spiritual; and I assent to it as good, as a right rule of action, which ought to be observed; yea, I esteem it highly, I glory and rest in it, convinced of its truth and excellency. And is not this enough to constitute the law a sufficient principle of sanctification?” The apostle answers, “No; wickedness is consistent with a sense of truth. A man may assent to the best rule of action, and yet still be under the dominion of lust and sin; from which nothing can deliver him but a principle and power proceeding from the fountain of life.” The sentiment in this verse may be illustrated by quotations from the ancient heathens; many of whom felt themselves in precisely the same state, (and expressed it in nearly the same language,) which some most monstrously tell us was the state of this heavenly apostle, when vindicating the claims of the Gospel against those of the Jewish ritual! Thus OVID describes the conduct of a depraved man:—

Sed trahit invitam nova vis; aliudque cupido,

Mens aliud suadet. Video meliora, proboque;

Deteriora sequor.

OVID, Met. lib. vii. ver. 19.

My reason this, my passion that persuades;

I see the right, and I approve it too;

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.

———indignum facinus! nunc ego et

Illam scelestam esse, et me miserum sentio:

Et tædet: et amore ardeo: et prudens, sciens,

Vivus, vidensque pereo: nec quid agam scio.

TERENT. Eun. ver. 70.

An unworthy act! Now I perceive that she is wicked, and I am wretched. I burn with love, and am vexed at it. Although prudent, and intelligent, and active, and seeing, I perish; neither do I know what to do. Sed quia mente minus validus, quam corpore toto,

Quæ nocuere, sequar; fugiam, quæ profore credam.

HOR. Ep. lib. i. E. 8, ver. 7.

More in my mind than body lie my pains:

Whate’er may hurt me, I with joy pursue;

Whate’er may do me good, with horror view.

Francis.

Epei gar o amartanwn ou qelei amartanein, alla

katorqwsai, dhlon oti, o men qelei, ou poiei, kai omh

qelei, poiei. ARRIAN. Epist. ii. 26.

For, truly, he who sins does not will sin, but wishes to walk uprightly: yet it is manifest that what he wills he doth not; and what he wills not he doth.

———alla nikwmai kakoiv,

Kai manqanw men, oia tolmhsw kaka,

Qumov de kreisswn twn emwn bouleumatwn,

JOsper megistwn aitov kakwn brotoiv.

EURIP. Med. v. 1077.

————But I am overcome by sin,

And I well understand the evil which I presume to commit. Passion, however, is more powerful than my reason;

Which is the cause of the greatest evils to mortal men.

Thus we find that enlightened heathens, both among the Greeks and Romans, had that same kind of religious experience which some suppose to be, not only the experience of St. Paul in his best state, but to be even the standard of Christian attainments! See more examples in Wetstein. The whole spirit of the sentiment is well summed up and expressed by St. Chrysostom: otan tinov epiqumwmen, eite kwluwmeqa, airetai mallon thv epiqumiav h flox, If we lust after any thing which is afterwards prohibited, the flame of this desire burns the more fiercely.

Verse 15. For that which I do — Greek, katergazomai, what I thoroughly work, the word signifying earnestness and perseverance in working till the work in which the agent is employed is finished. It is therefore used by the apostle to denote the continued employment of God’s people in his service unto the end of their lives; Philippians 2:12, Work out your own salvation. That is, as you have, in time past, laboured to serve God in all things, so persevere in that service to the end. The word here denotes a continued employment of a very different nature. Therefore he says, What I work, I allow not, or, approve not; for the word, ginwskw, which literally signifies I know, is used in the sense of approving, Matthew 7:21. For what I would — That is, incline to, or desire, as Macknight renders qelw, which, he observes, cannot here signify the last determination of the will, “actions always following that determination; but such a faint ineffectual desire as reason and conscience, opposed by strong passions, and not strengthened by the Spirit of God, often produce.” These corrupt passions frequently darken the understanding, mislead the judgment, and stupify the conscience; in consequence whereof the will, strongly impelled by criminal desires, in the place of being governed by these higher powers of the mind, governs them herself. But, “when order is restored to the soul by regeneration, then the enlightened understanding determines the judgment, and the decisions thereof, enforced by the voice of conscience, determine the will, whose volitions, thus excited, become the spring of action; so that the good the regenerated man would, he doth, — and the evil he hates, he doth not. But, in the unregenerate, those volitions neither obey the directions of reason nor conscience; hence there is a continual conflict in his breast, between appetites and passions on the one side, and reason and conscience on the other. The latter, however, are generally overcome; and in this state the person, with propriety, may say, What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that I do: or, as it is expressed, verse 19, The good, that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Ovid, a heathen, describes the conduct of depraved men in words very similar to these: Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido,

Mens aliud suadet.

Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor.

OVID, Metam., lib. 7. ver. 19.

‘My reason this, my passion that persuades;

I see the right, and I approve it too;

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.’

The apostle does not say that this took place in his conduct on some particular occasions merely, but he gives us this account of himself as his general conduct, while he was carnal and sold under sin, as appears from verse 21. where see the note.” — Smith, On the Carnal Man’s Character.

Ver. 15. But what I hate, that do I. Here is the conflict between the two natures in man, the one drawing the mind to good, the other to evil, and evil which cannot be conquered by human efforts; it is by the aids of grace alone that sin can be subdued. If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. — A very impressive instance of these conflicts occurs in the Trojan mythology. When Medea put her two illicit children to death, the Roman poet makes her say, “My mind persuades me to one thing, but my new, my wicked will, impels me, against my will, to another. I see the better, and approve; nevertheless I follow the worse.” Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido,

Mens aliud suadet; video meliora, proboque,

Deteriora sequor.

Ovid. Metam. lib. 7:20.

15. I do, I allow not—Here begins the battle of the I’s. It is the corrupt I of carnality and indwelling sin asserting its law in the members, and overwhelming the I of conscience, awakened by the Spirit, with the body of death. What I wickedly do, I conscientiously allow not.

Ver. 15.-17. Further description of the bondage of the man of flesh. Work out: achieve results, as in Romans 7:13. Like other servants, Paul does not understand the results he is working out. That a soldier on the field marches and counter-marches he knows not why, and actually achieves results beyond his thought, proves that he is a servant working out the purposes of another. Just so, all sinners know not what they do: Luke 23:34. This ignorance Paul accounts for by saying that his action is not determined by, but runs counter to, his own wish. This is a mark, not only of service, but of compulsory and distasteful service. Then follows, in Romans 7:16, an inference from this distasteful service, viz. that Paul agrees with the Law and recognises that it is good; and in Romans 7:17 another inference, viz. that Paul is not the author of his own actions, but that they are wrought out by another dwelling in him. This stranger who has seized the helm of Paul’s ship, he calls sin.

V. 16. It is good-This single word implies all the three that were used before, Romans 7:12, holy, just, and good.

Verse 16. If then I do that which I would not, &c.] Knowing that the law condemns it, and that therefore it must be evil. I consent unto the law; I show by this circumstance that I acknowledge the law to be good.

Verses 16, 17. If then I do that which I would not, &c. — In willing not to do it, I do so far, though to my own condemnation, consent to the law, and bear my testimony to it that it is good — And do indeed desire to fulfil it; though when temptations assault me, contrary to my resolution, I fail in my practice. This is an inference from the former verse, the obvious sense of which is, that men, even in an unconverted state, approve of the law of God: they see its propriety and equity, consequently their judgment approves of it as good, though their passions and inclinations oppose it. It is not supposed here that the person spoken of consents at all times to the whole of God’s law as good: this inference is limited by what he said in the former verse. Nor is it every evil which he hates, that he does; nor does he always feel that hatred which he mentions against the sins which he commits. He only mentions it as a thing which frequently happened, that the evils which he hated, and was inclined to avoid, were actually committed by him; and the good deeds which his conscience inclined him to do, were not performed. From this he infers, that this inclination implied the consent of his judgment unto the goodness of those laws, which under these circumstances he was in the habit of breaking. And, that the minds even of wicked men consent to the law of God as good, is obvious from their approbation of good actions in others. Now then it is no more I that can properly be said to do it, but rather sin that dwelleth in me — Which makes, as it were, another person, and tyrannises over me. “Here the apostle considers man as composed of two parts, flesh and spirit, each of which has distinct volitions, affections, and passions. And, because the influence of these on men’s actions is very powerful, he calls the one the law of the members, and the other, the law of the mind; (verse 23;) and, like the ancient philosophers, he considers these two principles as distinct persons. And as in this discourse he personates mankind, he speaks of the former, which (verse 22) he terms, o esw anqrwpov, the inward man, or spiritual part of human nature, as his real self, and calls it, ego, I, (verses 17, 19,) and autov egw, I myself (verse 25,) because it is the part in which man was made after the image of God. The other person he calls his flesh, or carnal part; and, o exw anqrwpov, the outward man; (2 Corinthians 4:16;) and sin dwelling in him, in this verse; and the body of sin; (Romans 6:6;) and the body of death; (Romans 7:24;) and the old man; (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:21; Colossians 3:9;) and denies that this part is his self; (Romans 7:17;) and to prevent our confounding this with his real self, having said, (Romans 7:18,) I know that in me dwelleth no good thing, he immediately corrects himself by adding, that is, in my flesh. But notwithstanding the apostle considered the flesh and spirit as distinct persons, who have different affections and members, and though he ascribes to those persons different volitions and actions, and denies that the actions of the outward man, or flesh, are his actions, it does not follow that he thought himself no way concerned in, or accountable for, the actions of his flesh. For he told the very persons to whom he said those things, (Romans 8:13,) If ye live after the flesh ye shall die. But he thus spake to give a more lively idea of the struggle between reason and passion, [or rather, between grace and nature,] which subsists in the minds of those whose conscience is awakened by the operation of the law, but who are not completely converted.” Perhaps, as Doddridge conjectures, he might have read the passage in Xenophon’s Cyropedia, lib. 6., where Araspes complains of two souls contending within him.

But sin that dwelleth in me — “As the apostle had personified sin, he very properly represents it as dwelling in him; because this suggests to us the absolute and continued influence which sin hath in controlling the reason and conscience of the unregenerated, and in directing all their actions. By distinguishing his real self, that is, his spiritual part, from the self, or flesh, in which sin dwelt, and by observing that the evil actions which he committed were done, not by him, but by sin dwelling in him, the apostle did not mean to teach that wicked men are not accountable for their sins, but to make them sensible of the evil of their sins, by showing them that they are all committed in direct opposition to reason and conscience, the superior part of their nature, at the instigation of passion and lust, the lower part. Further, by appealing to the opposition which reason and conscience make to evil actions, he hath overturned the grand argument, by which the wicked justify themselves in indulging their lusts. Say they, since God hath given us passions and appetites, he certainly meant that we should gratify them. True, says the apostle; but God hath also given you reason and conscience, which oppose the excesses of lust, and condemn its gratification: and as reason and conscience are the superior part of man’s nature, a more certain indication of the will of God may be gathered from their operation, than from the impulses of the other.” — Macknight.

Ver. 15.-17. Further description of the bondage of the man of flesh. Work out: achieve results, as in Romans 7:13. Like other servants, Paul does not understand the results he is working out. That a soldier on the field marches and counter-marches he knows not why, and actually achieves results beyond his thought, proves that he is a servant working out the purposes of another. Just so, all sinners know not what they do: Luke 23:34. This ignorance Paul accounts for by saying that his action is not determined by, but runs counter to, his own wish. This is a mark, not only of service, but of compulsory and distasteful service. Then follows, in Romans 7:16, an inference from this distasteful service, viz. that Paul agrees with the Law and recognises that it is good; and in Romans 7:17 another inference, viz. that Paul is not the author of his own actions, but that they are wrought out by another dwelling in him. This stranger who has seized the helm of Paul’s ship, he calls sin.

V. 17. It is no more I that can properly be said to do it, but rather sin that dwelleth in me-That makes, as it were, another person, and tyrannizes over me.

Verse 17. Now then it is no more I] It is not that I which constitutes reason and conscience, but sin-corrupt and sensual inclinations, that dwelleth in me-that has the entire domination over my reason, darkening my understanding, and perverting my judgment; for which there is condemnation in the law, but no cure. So we find here that there is a principle in the unregenerate man stronger than reason itself; a principle which is, properly speaking, not of the essence of the soul, but acts in it, as its lord, or as a tyrant. This is inbred and indwelling sin-the seed of the serpent; by which the whole soul is darkened, confused, perverted, and excited to rebellion against God.

Verses 16, 17. If then I do that which I would not, &c. — In willing not to do it, I do so far, though to my own condemnation, consent to the law, and bear my testimony to it that it is good — And do indeed desire to fulfil it; though when temptations assault me, contrary to my resolution, I fail in my practice. This is an inference from the former verse, the obvious sense of which is, that men, even in an unconverted state, approve of the law of God: they see its propriety and equity, consequently their judgment approves of it as good, though their passions and inclinations oppose it. It is not supposed here that the person spoken of consents at all times to the whole of God’s law as good: this inference is limited by what he said in the former verse. Nor is it every evil which he hates, that he does; nor does he always feel that hatred which he mentions against the sins which he commits. He only mentions it as a thing which frequently happened, that the evils which he hated, and was inclined to avoid, were actually committed by him; and the good deeds which his conscience inclined him to do, were not performed. From this he infers, that this inclination implied the consent of his judgment unto the goodness of those laws, which under these circumstances he was in the habit of breaking. And, that the minds even of wicked men consent to the law of God as good, is obvious from their approbation of good actions in others. Now then it is no more I that can properly be said to do it, but rather sin that dwelleth in me — Which makes, as it were, another person, and tyrannises over me. “Here the apostle considers man as composed of two parts, flesh and spirit, each of which has distinct volitions, affections, and passions. And, because the influence of these on men’s actions is very powerful, he calls the one the law of the members, and the other, the law of the mind; (verse 23;) and, like the ancient philosophers, he considers these two principles as distinct persons. And as in this discourse he personates mankind, he speaks of the former, which (verse 22) he terms, o esw anqrwpov, the inward man, or spiritual part of human nature, as his real self, and calls it, ego, I, (verses 17, 19,) and autov egw, I myself (verse 25,) because it is the part in which man was made after the image of God. The other person he calls his flesh, or carnal part; and, o exw anqrwpov, the outward man; (2 Corinthians 4:16;) and sin dwelling in him, in this verse; and the body of sin; (Romans 6:6;) and the body of death; (Romans 7:24;) and the old man; (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:21; Colossians 3:9;) and denies that this part is his self; (Romans 7:17;) and to prevent our confounding this with his real self, having said, (Romans 7:18,) I know that in me dwelleth no good thing, he immediately corrects himself by adding, that is, in my flesh. But notwithstanding the apostle considered the flesh and spirit as distinct persons, who have different affections and members, and though he ascribes to those persons different volitions and actions, and denies that the actions of the outward man, or flesh, are his actions, it does not follow that he thought himself no way concerned in, or accountable for, the actions of his flesh. For he told the very persons to whom he said those things, (Romans 8:13,) If ye live after the flesh ye shall die. But he thus spake to give a more lively idea of the struggle between reason and passion, [or rather, between grace and nature,] which subsists in the minds of those whose conscience is awakened by the operation of the law, but who are not completely converted.” Perhaps, as Doddridge conjectures, he might have read the passage in Xenophon’s Cyropedia, lib. 6., where Araspes complains of two souls contending within him.

But sin that dwelleth in me — “As the apostle had personified sin, he very properly represents it as dwelling in him; because this suggests to us the absolute and continued influence which sin hath in controlling the reason and conscience of the unregenerated, and in directing all their actions. By distinguishing his real self, that is, his spiritual part, from the self, or flesh, in which sin dwelt, and by observing that the evil actions which he committed were done, not by him, but by sin dwelling in him, the apostle did not mean to teach that wicked men are not accountable for their sins, but to make them sensible of the evil of their sins, by showing them that they are all committed in direct opposition to reason and conscience, the superior part of their nature, at the instigation of passion and lust, the lower part. Further, by appealing to the opposition which reason and conscience make to evil actions, he hath overturned the grand argument, by which the wicked justify themselves in indulging their lusts. Say they, since God hath given us passions and appetites, he certainly meant that we should gratify them. True, says the apostle; but God hath also given you reason and conscience, which oppose the excesses of lust, and condemn its gratification: and as reason and conscience are the superior part of man’s nature, a more certain indication of the will of God may be gathered from their operation, than from the impulses of the other.” — Macknight.

17. No more I—So completely nullified and robbed of my moral personality am I that the carnal, self, indwelling sin is the real agent, absorbing for the time being the whole man.

Ver. 15.-17. Further description of the bondage of the man of flesh. Work out: achieve results, as in Romans 7:13. Like other servants, Paul does not understand the results he is working out. That a soldier on the field marches and counter-marches he knows not why, and actually achieves results beyond his thought, proves that he is a servant working out the purposes of another. Just so, all sinners know not what they do: Luke 23:34. This ignorance Paul accounts for by saying that his action is not determined by, but runs counter to, his own wish. This is a mark, not only of service, but of compulsory and distasteful service. Then follows, in Romans 7:16, an inference from this distasteful service, viz. that Paul agrees with the Law and recognises that it is good; and in Romans 7:17 another inference, viz. that Paul is not the author of his own actions, but that they are wrought out by another dwelling in him. This stranger who has seized the helm of Paul’s ship, he calls sin.

V. 18. In my flesh-The flesh here signifies the whole man as he is by nature.

Verse 18. For I know that in me, &c.] I have learned by experience that in an unregenerate man there is no good. There is no principle by which the soul can be brought into the light; no principle by which it can be restored to purity: fleshly appetites alone prevail; and the brute runs away with the man.

For to will is present with me] Though the whole soul has suffered indescribably by the FALL, yet there are some faculties that appear to have suffered less than others; or rather have received larger measures of the supernatural light, because their concurrence with the Divine principle is so necessary to the salvation of the soul. Even the most unconcerned about spiritual things have understanding, judgment, reason, and will. And by means of these we have seen even scoffers at Divine revelation become very eminent in arts and sciences; some of our best metaphysicians, physicians, mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, &c., have been known-to their reproach be it spoken and published-to be without religion; nay, some of them have blasphemed it, by leaving God out of his own work, and ascribing to an idol of their own, whom they call nature, the operations of the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Most High. It is true that many of the most eminent in all the above branches of knowledge have been conscientious believers in Divine revelation; but the case of the others proves that, fallen as man is, he yet possesses extra-ordinary powers, which are capable of very high cultivation and improvement. In short, the soul seems capable of any thing but knowing, fearing, loving, and serving God. And it is not only incapable, of itself, for any truly religious acts; but what shows its fall in the most indisputable manner is its enmity to sacred things. Let an unregenerate man pretend what he pleases, his conscience knows that he hates religion; his soul revolts against it; his carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. There is no reducing this fell principle to subjection; it is SIN, and sin is rebellion against God; therefore sin must be destroyed, not subjected; if subjected, it would cease to be sin, because sin is in opposition to God: hence the apostle says, most conclusively, it cannot be subjected, i.e. it must be destroyed, or it will destroy the soul for ever. When the apostle says, to will is present with me, he shows that the will is on the side of God and truth, so far that it consents to the propriety and necessity of obedience. There has been a strange clamour raised up against this faculty of the soul, as if the very essence of evil dwelt in it; whereas the apostle shows, throughout this chapter, that the will was regularly on God’s side, while every other faculty appears to have been in hostility to him. The truth is, men have confounded the will with the passions, and laid to the charge of the former what properly belongs to the latter. The will is right, but the passions are wrong. It discerns and approves, but is without ability to perform: it has no power over sensual appetites; in these the principle of rebellion dwells: it nills evil, it wills good, but can only command through the power of Divine grace: but this the person in question, the unregenerate man, has not received.

Verses 18-20. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh — The corrupt and degenerate self, my animal appetites and passions, debased and enslaved as they are by sin through the fall; or in me, while I was in the flesh, chap. 8:8, and not in the spirit, verse 9; dwelleth no good thing — Ouk oikei agaqon, good dwelleth not. Hence he asserts, in the place just referred to, that they who are in the flesh, whose reason and conscience are under the government of passion and appetite, or who are in their natural unrenewed state, cannot please God. For to will — To incline, desire, and even purpose; is present with me — Parakeitai moi, lies near me, or, is easy for me; but how to perform — Katergazesqai, statedly to practise, or, habitually work, (see on verse 15;) that which is good — Kalon, excellent, I find not — Have not sufficient ability. For the good that I would, &c. — See on verses 15 and 17, for an explanation of this and the next verse.

18. For to will—What proves that in the me, which is identical with my flesh, is no good thing, is the fact that it defeats my will to perform the good, and induces me to do the evil which I would not.

Ver. 18.-20. Proof of the correctness of the name just given to the stranger dwelling in Paul, completing the proof that he is (Romans 7:14) a sold slave of sin.

I know: a secret of Paul’s own heart: contrast “we know” in Romans 7:14.

That is, in my flesh: limiting the above denial to the outer and material side of his nature. In that side which is nearest to the world around, and through which actions are wrought, there dwells a foreign element; and Paul knows that it is not good. The proof is that in him is desire but no realisation. From this he infers that his flesh, the medium through which desire passes into action, is occupied by an enemy. And, since that which he desires and cannot do is good, and that which he does not desire yet does is evil, he infers with sad certainty that this enemy is sin. The words good and evil in Romans 7:19 note the progress in argument since Romans 7:15, where Paul merely asserts the contrast between his desires and actions, without any moral judgment on them. After thus identifying the enemy who is the real author of his actions, Paul restates, in Romans 7:20, word for word, the inference stated in Romans 7:17.

Verse 19. For the good that I would I do not] Here again is the most decisive proof that the will is on the side of God and truth. But the evil which I would not] And here is equally decisive proof that the will is against, or opposed to evil. There is not a man in ten millions, who will carefully watch the operations of this faculty, that will find it opposed to good and obstinately attached to evil, as is generally supposed. Nay, it is found almost uniformly on God’s side, while the whole sensual system is against him.-It is not the WILL that leads men astray; but the corrupt PASSIONS which oppose and oppress the will. It is truly astonishing into what endless mistakes men have fallen on this point, and what systems of divinity have been built on these mistakes. The will, this almost only friend to God in the human soul, has been slandered as God’s worst enemy, and even by those who had the seventh chapter to the Romans before their eyes! Nay, it has been considered so fell a foe to God and goodness that it is bound in the adamantine chains of a dire necessity to do evil only; and the doctrine of will (absurdly called free will, as if will did not essentially imply what is free) has been considered one of the most destructive heresies. Let such persons put themselves to school to their Bibles and to common sense.

The plain state of the case is this: the soul is so completely fallen, that it has no power to do good till it receive that power from on high. But it has power to see good, to distinguish between that and evil; to acknowledge the excellence of this good, and to will it, from a conviction of that excellence; but farther it cannot go. Yet, in various cases, it is solicited and consents to sin; and because it is will, that is, because it is a free principle, it must necessarily possess this power; and although it can do no good unless it receive grace from God, yet it is impossible to force it to sin. Even Satan himself cannot do this; and before he can get it to sin, he must gain its consent. Thus God in his endless mercy has endued this faculty with a power in which, humanly speaking, resides the salvability of the soul; and without this the soul must have eternally continued under the power of sin, or been saved as an inert, absolutely passive machine; which supposition would go as nearly to prove that it was as incapable of vice as it were of virtue.

“But does not this arguing destroy the doctrine of free grace?” No! it establishes that doctrine. 1. It is through the grace, the unmerited kindness, of God, that the soul has such a faculty, and that it has not been extinguished by sin. 2. This will, though a free principle, as it respects its nilling of evil and choosing good, yet, properly speaking, has no power by which it can subjugate the evil or perform the good. We know that the eye has a power to discern objects, but without light this power is perfectly useless, and no object can be discerned by it. So, of the person represented here by the apostle, it is said, To will is present with me, to gar qelein parakeitai moi. To will is ever in readiness, it is ever at hand, it lies constantly before me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not; that is, the man is unregenerate, and he is seeking justification and holiness from the law. The law was never designed to give these-it gives the knowledge, not the cure of sin; therefore, though he nills evil and wills good, yet he can neither conquer the one nor perform the other till he receives the grace of Christ, till he seeks and finds redemption in his blood. Here, then, the free agency of man is preserved, without which he could not be in a salvable state; and the honour of the grace of Christ is maintained, without which there can be no actual salvation. There is a good sentiment on this subject in the following words of an eminent poet:— Thou great first CAUSE, least understood;

Who all my sense confined

To know but this, that thou art good;

And that myself am blind.

Yet gave me in this dark estate

To see the good from ill;

And binding nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.

——POPE’S Universal Prayer.

Verses 18-20. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh — The corrupt and degenerate self, my animal appetites and passions, debased and enslaved as they are by sin through the fall; or in me, while I was in the flesh, chap. 8:8, and not in the spirit, verse 9; dwelleth no good thing — Ouk oikei agaqon, good dwelleth not. Hence he asserts, in the place just referred to, that they who are in the flesh, whose reason and conscience are under the government of passion and appetite, or who are in their natural unrenewed state, cannot please God. For to will — To incline, desire, and even purpose; is present with me — Parakeitai moi, lies near me, or, is easy for me; but how to perform — Katergazesqai, statedly to practise, or, habitually work, (see on verse 15;) that which is good — Kalon, excellent, I find not — Have not sufficient ability. For the good that I would, &c. — See on verses 15 and 17, for an explanation of this and the next verse.

Ver. 18.-20. Proof of the correctness of the name just given to the stranger dwelling in Paul, completing the proof that he is (Romans 7:14) a sold slave of sin.

I know: a secret of Paul’s own heart: contrast “we know” in Romans 7:14.

That is, in my flesh: limiting the above denial to the outer and material side of his nature. In that side which is nearest to the world around, and through which actions are wrought, there dwells a foreign element; and Paul knows that it is not good. The proof is that in him is desire but no realisation. From this he infers that his flesh, the medium through which desire passes into action, is occupied by an enemy. And, since that which he desires and cannot do is good, and that which he does not desire yet does is evil, he infers with sad certainty that this enemy is sin. The words good and evil in Romans 7:19 note the progress in argument since Romans 7:15, where Paul merely asserts the contrast between his desires and actions, without any moral judgment on them. After thus identifying the enemy who is the real author of his actions, Paul restates, in Romans 7:20, word for word, the inference stated in Romans 7:17.

Verse 20. It is no more I] My will is against it; my reason and conscience condemn it. But sin that dwelleth in me-the principle of sin, which has possessed itself of all my carnal appetites and passions, and thus subjects my reason and domineers over my soul. Thus I am in perpetual contradiction to myself. Two principles are continually contending in me for the mastery: my reason, on which the light of God shines, to show what is evil; and my passions, in which the principle of sin works, to bring forth fruit unto death.

This strange self-contradictory propensity led some of the ancient philosophers to imagine that man has two souls, a good and a bad one; and it is on this principle that Xenophon, in his life of Cyrus, causes Araspes, a Persian nobleman, to account for some misconduct of his relative to Panthea, a beautiful female captive, whom Cyrus had entrusted to his care:-“O Cyrus, I am convinced that I have two souls; if I had but one soul, it could not at the same time pant after vice and virtue; wish and abhor the same thing. It is certain, therefore, that we have two souls; when the good soul rules, I undertake noble and virtuous actions; but when the bad soul predominates, I am constrained to do evil. All I can say at present is that I find my good soul, encouraged by thy presence, has got the better of my bad soul.” See Spectator, vol. viii. No. 564. Thus, not only the ancients, but also many moderns, have trifled, and all will continue to do so who do not acknowledge the Scriptural account of the fall of man, and the lively comment upon that doctrine contained in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

Verses 18-20. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh — The corrupt and degenerate self, my animal appetites and passions, debased and enslaved as they are by sin through the fall; or in me, while I was in the flesh, chap. 8:8, and not in the spirit, verse 9; dwelleth no good thing — Ouk oikei agaqon, good dwelleth not. Hence he asserts, in the place just referred to, that they who are in the flesh, whose reason and conscience are under the government of passion and appetite, or who are in their natural unrenewed state, cannot please God. For to will — To incline, desire, and even purpose; is present with me — Parakeitai moi, lies near me, or, is easy for me; but how to perform — Katergazesqai, statedly to practise, or, habitually work, (see on verse 15;) that which is good — Kalon, excellent, I find not — Have not sufficient ability. For the good that I would, &c. — See on verses 15 and 17, for an explanation of this and the next verse.

20. No more I… sin—(See note on 17.) What proves that it is no more I, but an overmastering I of sin that dwelleth in me, is the fact that I am overborne to do that which in conscience I would not.

Ver. 18.-20. Proof of the correctness of the name just given to the stranger dwelling in Paul, completing the proof that he is (Romans 7:14) a sold slave of sin.

I know: a secret of Paul’s own heart: contrast “we know” in Romans 7:14.

That is, in my flesh: limiting the above denial to the outer and material side of his nature. In that side which is nearest to the world around, and through which actions are wrought, there dwells a foreign element; and Paul knows that it is not good. The proof is that in him is desire but no realisation. From this he infers that his flesh, the medium through which desire passes into action, is occupied by an enemy. And, since that which he desires and cannot do is good, and that which he does not desire yet does is evil, he infers with sad certainty that this enemy is sin. The words good and evil in Romans 7:19 note the progress in argument since Romans 7:15, where Paul merely asserts the contrast between his desires and actions, without any moral judgment on them. After thus identifying the enemy who is the real author of his actions, Paul restates, in Romans 7:20, word for word, the inference stated in Romans 7:17.

V. 21. I find then a law-An inward constraining power, flowing from the dictate of corrupt nature.

Verse 21. I find then a law] I am in such a condition and state of soul, under the power of such habits and sinful propensities, that when I would do good-when my will and reason are strongly bent on obedience to the law of God and opposition to the principle of sin, evil is present with me, kakon parakeitai, evil is at hand, it lies constantly before me. That, as the will to do good is constantly at hand, Romans 7:18, so the principle of rebellion exciting me to sin is equally present; but, as the one is only will, wish, and desire, without power to do what is willed, to obtain what is wished, or to perform what is desired, sin continually prevails. The word nomov, law, in this verse, must be taken as implying any strong or confirmed habit, sunhqeia, as Hesychius renders it, under the influence of which the man generally acts; and in this sense the apostle most evidently uses it in Romans 7:23.

Verse 21. I find then a law — An inward constraining power, flowing from my depraved nature; that when I would — When I incline and purpose to do good, evil is present with me — To prevent the execution of such a purpose. The expression, when I would do good, intimates that this inclination to do good was not permanent; it only arose on particular occasions. This is another feature of an unregenerate man; his inclinations and purposes to do good, and live to the glory of God, are only temporary. “They,” says Macknight, “who think the apostle is here describing his own case, and the case of other regenerated persons, should consider that he does not speak of single instances of omission of duty, and commission of sin; for the words which he uses all denote a continuation or habit of acting. Now how such a habit of doing evil and neglecting good can be attributed to any regenerated person, and especially to the Apostle Paul, who, before this Epistle to the Romans was written, told the Thessalonians, Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily, and righteously, and unblameably we behaved among you, I confess I do not comprehend. See also 2 Corinthians 1:12; 7:1, 2; 10:2, 3. To elude the force of this argument, Augustine affirms that the apostle does not speak of his outward actions, but of the inward motions of his concupiscence, by which he means, evil desire in general: and that for the reason mentioned in the note on verse 17, he expresses these motions by the pronoun I. Be it so. On this supposition, verse 15 will mean, ‘What I, my concupiscence, thoroughly worketh, in my mind, I do not approve. For I, my concupiscence, practiseth not, in my mind, that to which I incline; but what I hate, that I, my concupiscence, doth.’ Now, not to insist on the impropriety of applying words which denote outward actions, to motions of evil desire in the mind, I ask, what sense is there in the apostle’s telling us, that his concupiscence did not practise in his mind what he inclined to? For if what he inclined to was good, it could not possibly be practised by concupiscence, if concupiscence be evil desire; consequently, it was foolishness in him either to expect it from concupiscence, or to complain of the want of it, as he does verse 19. He might complain of the existence of concupiscence in his mind; but if it were suffered to remain there uncontrolled, and if it hindered the actings of his sanctified will so effectually that he never did that to which he inclined, but always did the evil to which his sanctified will did not incline, is not this the clearest proof that concupiscence, or evil desire, was the prevailing principle in his mind, and that his sanctified will had no power to restrain its workings? Now could the apostle give any plainer description of an unregenerate person than this?”

Ver. 21. Compact summing up of the main statement in Romans 7:15-20.

[The grammatical construction of Romans 7:21 is most difficult. The chief difficulty is the construction of ton nomon. If we were to leave out these words, we could take tw qelonti emoi poiein to kalon in apposition to the second emoi, thrust forward out of its place in order to emphasise Paul’s desire to do good even while evil is present. We could then render, I find therefore, to me who desire to do the good, that to me the evil is present. But we must do something with ton nomon, the Law, thrust in between euriskw and tw qelonti. This term is, in Romans 7:7, 14, 16, undoubtedly equivalent to the Law of God in Romans 7:22, 25: and this is the ordinary meaning throughout Paul’s epistles. It is the meaning at once suggested by the same term in Romans 7:21. On the other hand, we read in Romans 7:23 of another law and of the law of sin: but here the new meaning is plainly stated. In Romans 7:21, we must retain the ordinary meaning unless we have strong reason to the contrary. Dr. Sanday renders, “I find therefore this law-if it may be so called-this stern necessity laid upon me from without, that much as I wish to do what is good, the evil lies at my door.” But he gives no example of any such use of this common term. An easier exposition is to retain its common use, and to take the accusative ton nomon as governed, not by euriskw foregoing, but by tw qelonti following, and poiein to kalon as epexegetic giving the purpose for which Paul desires the Law. Thus interpreted, the accusative is put before the governing verb for emphasis, just as for emphasis tw qelononti emoi is pushed forward. This exposition gives to the term the Law its ordinary meaning; and explains its conspicuous insertion here, viz. in order to reassert Paul’s desire to obey the Law even while actually breaking it, recalling a similar assertion in Romans 7:16 and preparing a way for a stronger assertion in Romans 7:22. Elsewhere in N.T. the word qelw is almost always followed by an infinitive. But an accusative follows it in Romans 7:15, 16, 19, 20: and this conspicuous construction prepares a way for the same in Romans 7:21. Cp. 2 Corinthians 11:12: twn qelontwn aformhn.]

I find: by daily experience.

Who wish-for the Law: whose desires go after God’s commands. So Romans 7:16, “I agree with the Law:” contrast Isaiah 5:24, LXX., “they did not wish-for the Law of the Lord.”

To do the good: purpose of Paul’s wish for the Law.

To me… to me: emphatic repetition, calling attention to Paul’s own sad case.

The evil is present: he commits sin.

V. 22. For I delight in the law of God-This is more than I consent to, Romans 7:16. The day of liberty draws near. The inward man-Called the mind, Romans 7:23, 25.

Verse 22. I delight in the law of God after the inward man] Every Jew, and every unregenerate man, who receives the Old Testament as a revelation from God, must acknowledge the great purity, excellence and utility of its maxims, &c., though he will ever find that without the grace of our Lord Jesus he can never act according to those heavenly maxims; and without the mercy of God, can never be redeemed from the curse entailed upon him for his past transgressions. To say that the inward man means the regenerate part of the soul, is supportable by no argument. oJ esw anqrwpov, and o entov anqrwpov, especially the latter, are expressions frequently in use among the purest Greek ethic writers, to signify the soul or rational part of man, in opposition to the body of flesh. See the quotations in Wetstein from Plato and Plotinus. The Jews have the same form of expression; so in Yalcut Rubeni, fol. 10, 3, it is said: The flesh is the inward garment of the man; but the SPIRIT is the INWARD man, the garment of which is the body; and St. Paul uses the phrase in precisely the same sense in 2 Corinthians 4:16, and Ephesians 3:16. If it be said that it is impossible for an unregenerate man to delight in the law of God, the experience of millions contradicts the assertion. Every true penitent admires the moral law, longs most earnestly for a conformity to it, and feels that he can never be satisfied till he awakes up after this Divine likeness; and he hates himself, because he feels that he has broken it, and that his evil passions are still in a state of hostility to it. The following observations of a pious and sensible writer on this subject cannot be unacceptable: “The inward man always signifies the mind; which either may, or may not, be the subject of grace. That which is asserted of either the inward or outward man is often performed by one member or power, and not with the whole. If any member of the body perform an action, we are said to do it with the body, although the other members be not employed. In like manner, if any power or faculty of the mind be employed about any action, the soul is said to act. This expression, therefore, I delight in the law of God after the inward man, can mean no more than this, that there are some inward faculties in the soul which delight in the law of God. This expression is particularly adapted to the principles of the Pharisees, of whom St. Paul was one before his conversion. They received the law as the oracles of God, and confessed that it deserved the most serious regard. Their veneration was inspired by a sense of its original, and a full conviction that it was true. To some parts of it they paid the most superstitious regard. They had it written upon their phylacteries, which they carried about with them at all times. It was often read and expounded in their synagogues: and they took delight in studying its precepts. On that account, both the prophets and our Lord agree in saying that they delighted in the law of God, though they regarded not its chief and most essential precepts.” See farther observations on this point at the end of the chapter.

So far, then, is it from being true that none but a REGENERATE man can delight in the law of God, we find that even a proud, unhumbled PHARISEE can do it; and much more a poor sinner, who is humbled under a sense of his sin, and sees, in the light of God, not only the spirituality, but the excellence of the Divine law.

Verse 22. For I delight in the law of God — On this verse, chiefly, rests the opinion that the apostle, in the latter part of this chapter, is describing the character of a regenerate man. Its votaries think they find in this verse all the marks of a Christian. In general they assert, “to have our inward man, our mind and heart, delighted in the law of God, is to have our souls delighted in a conformity to him; it is to love God himself, to love to be like him in the inward man, having his law written on our hearts, which they say is the sum of all religion.” This is not reasoning, it is mere assertion; it is not to be inferred from this passage, and is plainly contradicted by the context. All judicious commentators will allow, that if any passage of the Scriptures appears obscure or susceptible of two senses, it must be explained in a consistency with what precedes and follows, and that interpretation must be chosen which agrees best therewith. Therefore, though it be true, in the fullest sense, that regenerated persons delight in the law of God after the inward man; yet, since the general scope of the paragraph, and the connection of this sentence with the context, show that Paul is here speaking of his unconverted state, our interpretation of it must be regulated by its connection with the whole passage. Those who maintain that Paul is here speaking of his state after his conversion, assert, that by the inward man is meant, the new man, or man of grace, spoken of Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10. Did the context lead to that sense, it might be admitted. But the general sense of the whole passage leads us to understand the expression of the rational part of man, in opposition to the animal, which is its usual signification, as has been shown by several authors. The phrase occurs in two other passages of the New Testament, namely, 2 Corinthians 4:16; Ephesians 3:16; in the former, the apostle’s words are, We faint not, though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day; where the inward man must signify the mind or soul, which is renewed, or created anew in its faculties, in proportion as it grows in grace. In the other passage the apostle prays for the Ephesians that they might be strengthened with might, not in the outward man, the body, which was not a matter of much importance, but in the inward man, the soul; that it might become strong in faith, fervent in love, and conformed to the divine image; and that Christ, by his Spirit, might dwell in it. “The inward man, therefore, always signifies the mind, which either may or may not be the subject of grace. That which is asserted of either the inward or outward man, is often performed by one member or power, and not with the whole man. If any member of the body perform an action, we are said to do it with the body, although the other members be not employed. In like manner, if any power or faculty of the mind be employed about any action, the soul is said to act: [and with still greater propriety, as] our souls are not, like our bodies, made of many members; they are pure spirits, and indivisible. If the mind wills, it is the spirit willing; if it hates, it is the soul hating; if it loves, it is the soul loving; if conscience reprove or excuse, it is the inward man accusing or excusing. This expression, therefore, I delight in the law of God after the inward man, can mean no more than this, that there are some inward faculties in the soul which delight in the law of God. The expression is particularly adapted to the principles of the Pharisees, of whom Paul was one before his conversion. They received the law as the oracles of God, and confessed that it deserved the most serious regard. Their veneration was inspired by a sense of its original, and a full conviction that it was right. To some parts of it they paid the most superstitious regard. They had it written upon their phylacteries, and carried these about with them at all times. It was often read and expounded in their synagogues, and they took some degree of pleasure in studying its precepts. On that account, the prophets and our Saviour agree in saying, that they delighted in the law of God, though they regarded not its chief and most essential precepts.” — Smith, On the Carnal Man’s Character.

Ver. 22. I delight in the law of God after the inward man. Sunhdomai, the prefix augments the sense, equivalent to, I delight with all my soul in the law of God, which is an emanation of his glory shining on the mind. My judgment approves, and all the oppressed emotions of grace, working within, love it, as holy, just, and good.

22. Delight—Rather, regard with complacency. The ordinary conscience even of the natural man, as all moral philosophers maintain, feels an emotion of gratification in seeing right and justice done. The inward man—the ethical nature.

Ver. 22.-23. Summary of the proofs of the inference compactly stated in Romans 7:21.

Take-pleasure-with: recalling, but rather stronger than, “I-agree-with” in Romans 7:16. It personifies

the Law of God as taking delight in that which is good, and asserts that Paul shares that delight.

The inward man: the inner and higher element in man which is farthest from the world around. Same words in 2 Corinthians 4:16, for the inner self which in contrast to the perishing body is being renewed day by day; and in Ephesians 3:16, where it is the recipient of the inworking power of God. Compare 1 Peter 3:4, “the hidden man of the heart,” and Plato, Republic p. 589a, “when the inner man shall have most control over the man.” To this inward side of his being, Paul limits the foregoing assertion: I take pleasure… according to the inward man. Just so he limited the assertion in Romans 7:18 to his outward and material side.

V. 23. But I see another law in my members-Another inward constraining power of evil inclinations and bodily appetites. Warring against the law of my mind-The dictate of my mind, which delights in the law of God.

And captivating me-In spite of all my resistance

Verse 23. But I see another law in my members] Though the person in question is less or more under the continual influence of reason and conscience, which offer constant testimony against sin, yet as long as help is sought only from the law, and the grace of Christ in the Gospel is not received, the remonstrances of reason and conscience are rendered of no effect by the prevalence of sinful passions; which, from repeated gratifications, have acquired all the force of habit, and now give law to the whole carnal man.

Warring against the law of my mind] There is an allusion here to the case of a city besieged, at last taken by storm, and the inhabitants carried away into captivity; antistrateuomenon, carrying on a system of warfare; laying continual siege to the soul; repeating incessantly its attacks; harassing, battering, and storming the spirit; and, by all these assaults, reducing the man to extreme misery. Never was a picture more impressively drawn and more effectually finished; for the next sentence shows that this spiritual city was at last taken by storm, and the inhabitants who survived the sackage led into the most shameful, painful, and oppressive captivity.

Bringing me into captivity to the law of sin] He does not here speak of an occasional advantage gained by sin, it was a complete and final victory gained by corruption; which, having stormed and reduced the city, carried away the inhabitants with irresistible force, into captivity. This is the consequence of being overcome; he was now in the hands of the foe as the victor’s lawful captive; and this is the import of the original word, aicmalwtizonta, and is the very term used by our Lord when speaking of the final ruin, dispersion, and captivity of the Jews. He says, aicmalwtisqhsontai, they shall be led away captives into all the nations, Luke 21:24. When all this is considered, who, in his right mind, can apply it to the holy soul of the apostle of the Gentiles? Is there any thing in it that can belong to his gracious state? Surely nothing. The basest slave of sin, who has any remaining checks of conscience, cannot be brought into a worse state than that described here by the apostle. Sin and corruption have a final triumph; and conscience and reason are taken prisoners, laid in fetters, and sold for slaves. Can this ever be said of a man in whom the Spirit of God dwells, and whom the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made free from the law of sin and death? See Romans 8:2.

Verses 23, 24. But I see another law — Another commanding, constraining power of evil inclinations and fleshly appetites, whose influence is so strong and constant, that it may be fitly called another law; in my members — In my animal part; (of the members, see note on Romans 6:13;) warring against the law of my mind — Against the dictates of my judgment and conscience, which conflict is spoken of Galatians 5:17; The flesh lusteth against the spirit, &c.; and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin: As if he had said, The issue of which conflict is not dubious, for passion continually prevails over reason, the flesh over the spirit, and I am led captive in spite of all my efforts to resist. O wretched man — Namely, in this respect, as to this particular; who shall deliver me — Miserable captive as I am; from the body of this death? — Some prefer translating the clause, from this body of death; joining toutou, this, with swmatov, body, as is done in the Vulgate version. But it seems more proper to consider it as an emphatical Hebraism, signifying the body, that is, the passions and appetites, or the lusts of the body, which cause this death, the death threatened in the curse of the law. Or, as Mr. Smith, in the discourse above mentioned, observes, The body of death may signify death in all its vigour, even that death which is the penalty of a broken law, just as the body of sin signifies the strength of sin. The greatness and insupportable weight of death is its body; and the man here described is represented as exposed to that death, which is the wages of sin. This is the object which chiefly alarms the guilty. Though the remonstrances of conscience are not heard, perhaps, against sin at first, yet after it is committed, conscience raises her voice in more awful accents, and proclaims God’s wrath through the whole soul, which produces a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation from God, which is precisely the state of mind expressed in this passage, namely, the state of a man labouring under the spirit of bondage to fear, or the state described verse 5; when being in the flesh, that is, unregenerate and under the law, sinful passions, manifested and condemned, but not removed by that dispensation, wrought in his members to bring forth fruit unto death.

23. Another law—So uniform and controlling is the mastery of this sin=I, that it has the absoluteness of a law in my members, a law of sin. It is a rebel law warring against the law of my higher mind, namely, the divine law.

Ver. 23. Terrible descriptive exposition of “to me the evil is present” in Romans 7:21.

I see: result of Paul’s self-contemplation, parallel to “I find in” Romans 7:21.

Another law: another authority prescribing conduct, and having its seat in the members of my body. As in Romans 7:5, and Romans 6:12, sin is here said to have its seat of authority in the body. Carrying-on-war-against: vivid picture of inward conflict. The law of my mind: the Law of God as apprehended and approved by Paul’s own intelligence. Sin puts forth its utmost power in order to overturn in Paul an authority which has gained his highest respect. Taking me captive: result of the war which sin is waging within Paul. Me: without limitation. Paul’s entire personality is captured: his body, through which thought passes into action, is occupied by the enemy; and his mind is prevented from working out its will.

The law of sin: fuller description of the other law. It is justified by the antagonism of this other law to the law of Paul’s mind.

Which is in my members: emphatic repetition of the locality of this alien law which is taking Paul captive.

Such, as he contemplates it, is Paul’s awful position. He sees a foe not only in his country and his home but in his own body. The struggle with the invader continues: but resistance is vain. By force the stranger imposes his own laws: and Paul finds himself a prisoner in his own body. He is a slave: his master is his greatest enemy: and his enemy dwells in his own breast.

V. 24. Wretched man that I am-The struggle is now come to the height; and the man, finding there is no help in himself, begins almost unawares to pray,

Who shall deliver me? He then seeks and looks for deliverance, till God in Christ appears to answer his question. The word which we translate deliver, implies force. And indeed without this there can be no deliverance. The body of this death-That is, this body of death; this mass of sin, leading to death eternal, and cleaving as close to me as my body to my soul. We may observe, the deliverance is not wrought yet.

Verse 24. O wretched man that I am, &c.] This affecting account is finished more impressively by the groans of the wounded captive. Having long maintained a useless conflict against innumerable hosts and irresistible might, he is at last wounded and taken prisoner; and to render his state more miserable, is not only encompassed by the slaughtered, but chained to a dead body; for there seems to be here an allusion to an ancient custom of certain tyrants, who bound a dead body to a living man, and obliged him to carry it about, till the contagion from the putrid mass took away his life! Virgil paints this in all its horrors, in the account he gives of the tyrant Mezentius. Æneid, lib. viii. ver. 485.

Quid memorem infandas cædes? quid facta tyranni?

MORTUA quin etiam jungebat corpora VIVIS,

Componens manibusque manus, atque oribus ora;

Tormenti genus! et sanie taboque fluentes

Complexu in misero, longa sic morte necabat.

What tongue can such barbarities record,

Or count the slaughters of his ruthless sword?

‘Twas not enough the good, the guiltless bled,

Still worse, he bound the living to the dead:

These, limb to limb, and face to face, he joined;

O! monstrous crime, of unexampled kind!

Till choked with stench, the lingering wretches lay,

And, in the loathed embraces, died away!

Pitt.

Servius remarks, in his comment on this passage, that sanies, mortui est; tabo, viventis scilicet sanguis: “the sanies, or putrid ichor, from the dead body, produced the tabes in the blood of the living.” Roasting, burning, racking, crucifying, &c., were nothing when compared to this diabolically invented punishment.

We may naturally suppose that the cry of such a person would be, Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this dead body? And how well does this apply to the case of the person to whom the apostle refers! A body-a whole mass of sin and corruption, was bound to his soul with chains which he could not break; and the mortal contagion, transfused through his whole nature, was pressing him down to the bitter pains of an eternal death. He now finds that the law can afford him no deliverance; and he despairs of help from any human being; but while he is emitting his last, or almost expiring groan, the redemption by Christ Jesus is proclaimed to him; and, if the apostle refers to his own case, Ananias unexpectedly accosts him with-Brother Saul! the Lord Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way, hath sent me unto thee, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. He sees then an open door of hope, and he immediately, though but in the prospect of this deliverance, returns God thanks for the well-grounded hope which he has of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Verses 23, 24. But I see another law — Another commanding, constraining power of evil inclinations and fleshly appetites, whose influence is so strong and constant, that it may be fitly called another law; in my members — In my animal part; (of the members, see note on Romans 6:13;) warring against the law of my mind — Against the dictates of my judgment and conscience, which conflict is spoken of Galatians 5:17; The flesh lusteth against the spirit, &c.; and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin: As if he had said, The issue of which conflict is not dubious, for passion continually prevails over reason, the flesh over the spirit, and I am led captive in spite of all my efforts to resist. O wretched man — Namely, in this respect, as to this particular; who shall deliver me — Miserable captive as I am; from the body of this death? — Some prefer translating the clause, from this body of death; joining toutou, this, with swmatov, body, as is done in the Vulgate version. But it seems more proper to consider it as an emphatical Hebraism, signifying the body, that is, the passions and appetites, or the lusts of the body, which cause this death, the death threatened in the curse of the law. Or, as Mr. Smith, in the discourse above mentioned, observes, The body of death may signify death in all its vigour, even that death which is the penalty of a broken law, just as the body of sin signifies the strength of sin. The greatness and insupportable weight of death is its body; and the man here described is represented as exposed to that death, which is the wages of sin. This is the object which chiefly alarms the guilty. Though the remonstrances of conscience are not heard, perhaps, against sin at first, yet after it is committed, conscience raises her voice in more awful accents, and proclaims God’s wrath through the whole soul, which produces a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation from God, which is precisely the state of mind expressed in this passage, namely, the state of a man labouring under the spirit of bondage to fear, or the state described verse 5; when being in the flesh, that is, unregenerate and under the law, sinful passions, manifested and condemned, but not removed by that dispensation, wrought in his members to bring forth fruit unto death.

Ver. 24. Oh wretched man, to serve the law of sin and death in the full beam of legal light, and be devoid of power to break the chain. The cry follows, seeing I cannot liberate myself, who shall deliver me from the body of this death. By this emphatic expression we are to understand the inward conflict, the law in the members, the body obnoxious to the excitements of sin, which being the body of fallen man, is subject to depraved and inordinate affections. St. Paul evidently assumes the person of another, the better to describe the progress of evangelical illumination, and the interior conflicts with sin. For Erasmus adds, that the ancients will not admit that those conflicts belong to the person of Paul himself. Vestustiores nolent ad apostoli personam pertinere.

The grand question here is, what is this deliverance, or glorious liberty of the children of God? If christians can be agreed on any point, assuredly they ought to be agreed on this. Origen is warmly rebutted here by John Calvin, who contends that St. Paul himself, as regards the flesh, was carnal, sold under sin. His words are, St. Paul confesse qu’il est tellement adonè à Dieu que rampant cependent ici en terre, il ne laisse pas d’etre entaché de beaucoup d’ordure. Voici un passage singulier pour rembarre la maudite et malheureuse doctrine des Cathares, laquelle certains esprits fantastiques tacheur encore aujourd’hui de resussciter, et mettre derechef en avant. — Com. on Romans 7:24: ed. anno 1639.

In his institutes of the christian religion, a work of his younger years, he is often warm on this subject. The substance of what he says is, that our old man, the man of sin, goes down to the grave with the body, but does not rise with it in the resurrection. How far it is delicate to say of the apostle, that “while groveling here on earth, he never ceased to be loaded with much of the dung of sin,” I leave to men’s opinions. By the modern Catharians he means the mystic writers, chiefly Catholics; and certainly few will agree that Kempis, Fenelon, and Molino were men of weak minds. If it be true that the grave purifies the deceased from the old man, then sin has its seat in the body; whereas the scriptures place it in the mind. If the Father, and the Son, with the Comforter, make his abode with us, how can we be carnal, and like Ahab, sold under sin! Assuredly the martyrs and confessors were perfect in love; and how few soever enjoy this glorious liberty, yet we must preach it, and preach it as obtained in an instantaneous manner, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

24. Oh wretched… I—Down to even this despairing cry, and in it, the duplication of the self appears in the I and the body of this death. The I makes a convulsive effort to fling off this body at once of sin and of death, yet feels the impossibility without help from without. For this body of death is myself! This death—When we interpret the body of this death to be the old man, the carnal self, the noisome carcass of indwelling sin producing this death, we bring out the completion and final point of the answer to the question at verse 13. It was not the law that produced the death herein depicted, but sin.

Ver. 24. A cry for deliverance, evoked by Paul’s view of his awful position.

Calamity-stricken: as in Revelation 3:17, cognate word in Romans 3:16; James 5:1; frequent in Greek tragedy. It describes not a man’s state of mind, but his circumstances.

Body: recalling my members twice in Romans 7:23, and in Romans 7:5.

Death: of body and soul, the awful punishment of sin, as in Romans 7:5, 10, 13; Romans 6:16, 21, 23. The sinner’s own body is to him (Romans 6:6) a body of sin and a body of death. For through its appetites, which control him, it drags him along a path of sin leading to death. Paul cries for deliverance; not from a foe before his eyes, not from a prison of granite or bars of iron, but from his own body, by means of which his enemy compels him to sin and holds him in bondage. But we need not conceive him to desire death: for this would not save him. From the tyranny of his own body, from a life of obedience to (Romans 6:12) its desires, he cries to be set free. This cry of helpless anguish, even more than the picture of his captivity, reveals his terrible position.

V. 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord-That is, God will deliver me through Christ. But the apostle, as his frequent manner is, beautifully interweaves his assertion with thanksgiving; the hymn of praise answering in a manner to the voice of sorrow. O Wretched man that I am! So then-He here sums up the whole, and concludes what he began, Romans 7:7.

I myself-Or rather that I, the person whom I am personating, till this deliverance is wrought.

Serve the law of God with my mind-My reason and conscience declare for God.

But with my flesh the law of sin-But my corrupt passions and appetites still rebel. The man is now utterly weary of his bondage, and upon the brink of liberty.

Verse 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ] Instead of eucaristw tw qew, I thank God, several excellent MSS., with the Vulgate, some copies of the Itala, and several of the fathers, read h cariv tou qeou, or tou kuriou, the grace of God, or the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; this is an answer to the almost despairing question in the preceding verse. The whole, therefore, may be read thus: O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ANSWER-The grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus we find that a case of the kind described by the apostle in the preceding verses, whether it were his own, before he was brought to the knowledge of Christ, particularly during the three days that he was at Damascus, without being able to eat or drink, in deep penitential sorrow; or whether he personates a pharisaic yet conscientious Jew, deeply concerned for his salvation: I say, we find that such a case can be relieved by the Gospel of Christ only; or, in other words, that no scheme of redemption can be effectual to the salvation of any soul, whether Jew or Gentile, but that laid down in the Gospel of Christ.

Let any or all means be used which human wisdom can devise, guilt will still continue uncancelled; and inbred sin will laugh them all to scorn, prevail over them, and finally triumph. And this is the very conclusion to which the apostle brings his argument in the following clause; which, like the rest of the chapter, has been most awfully abused, to favour anti-evangelical purposes.

So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God] That this clause contains the inference from the preceding train of argumentation appears evident, from the ara oun, therefore, with which the apostle introduces it. As if he had said: “To conclude, the sum of what I have advanced, concerning the power of sin in the carnal man, and the utter insufficiency of all human means and legal observances to pardon sin and expel the corruption of the heart, is this: that the very same person, the autov egw, the same I, while without the Gospel, under the killing power of the law, will find in himself two opposite principles, the one subscribing to and approving the law of God; and the other, notwithstanding, bringing him into captivity to sin: his inward man-his rational powers and conscience, will assent to the justice and propriety of the requisitions of the law; and yet, notwithstanding this, his fleshly appetites-the law in his members, will war against the law of his mind, and continue, till he receives the Gospel of Christ, to keep him in the galling captivity of sin and death.”

1. THE strong expressions in this clause have led many to conclude that the apostle himself, in his regenerated state, is indisputably the person intended. That all that is said in this chapter of the carnal man, sold under sin, did apply to Saul of Tarsus, no man can doubt: that what is here said can ever be with propriety applied to Paul the Apostle, who can believe? Of the former, all is natural; of the latter, all here said would be monstrous and absurd, if not blasphemous.

2. But it is supposed that the words must be understood as implying a regenerate man, because the apostle says, Romans 7:22, I delight in the law of God; and in this verse, I myself with the mind serve the law of God. These things, say the objectors, cannot be spoken of a wicked Jew, but of a regenerate man such as the apostle then was. But when we find that the former verse speaks of a man who is brought into captivity to the law of sin and death, surely there is no part of the regenerate state of the apostle to which the words can possibly apply. Had he been in captivity to the law of sin and death, after his conversion to Christianity, what did he gain by that conversion? Nothing for his personal holiness. He had found no salvation under an inefficient law; and he was left in thraldom under an equally inefficient Gospel. The very genius of Christianity demonstrates that nothing like this can, with any propriety, be spoken of a genuine Christian.

3. But it is farther supposed that these things cannot be spoken of a proud or wicked Jew; yet we learn the contrary from the infallible testimony of the word of God. Of this people in their fallen and iniquitous state, God says, by his prophet, They SEEK me DAILY, and DELIGHT to know my ways, as a nation that did RIGHTEOUSNESS, and FORSOOK not the ORDINANCES of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of JUSTICE, and TAKE DELIGHT in approaching to God, Isaiah 58:2. Can any thing be stronger than this? And yet, at that time, they were most dreadfully carnal, and sold under sin, as the rest of that chapter proves. It is a most notorious fact, that how little soever the life of a Jew was conformed to the law of his God, he notwithstanding professed the highest esteem for it, and gloried in it: and the apostle says nothing stronger of them in this chapter than their conduct and profession verify to the present day. They are still delighting in the law of God, after the inward man; with their mind serving the law of God; asking for the ordinances of justice, seeking God daily, and taking delight in approaching to God; they even glory, and greatly exult and glory, in the Divine original and excellency of their LAW; and all this while they are most abominably carnal, sold under sin, and brought into the most degrading captivity to the law of sin and death. If then all that the apostle states of the person in question be true of the Jews, through the whole period of their history, even to the present time; if they do in all their professions and their religious services, which they zealously maintain, confess, and conscientiously too, that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good; and yet, with their flesh, serve the law of sin; the same certainly may be said with equal propriety of a Jewish penitent, deeply convinced of his lost estate, and the total insufficiency of his legal observances to deliver him from his body of sin and death. And consequently, all this may be said of Paul the JEW, while going about to establish his own righteousness-his own plan of justification; he had not as yet submitted to the righteousness of God-the Divine plan of redemption by Jesus Christ.

4. It must be allowed that, whatever was the experience of so eminent a man, Christian, and apostle, as St. Paul, it must be a very proper standard of Christianity. And if we are to take what is here said as his experience as a Christian, it would be presumption in us to expect to go higher; for he certainly had pushed the principles of his religion to their utmost consequences. But his whole life, and the account which he immediately gives of himself in the succeeding chapter, prove that he, as a Christian and an apostle, had a widely different experience; an experience which amply justifies that superiority which he attributes to the Christian religion over the Jewish; and demonstrates that it not only is well calculated to perfect all preceding dispensations, but that it affords salvation to the uttermost to all those who flee for refuge to the hope that it sets before them. Besides, there is nothing spoken here of the state of a conscientious Jew, or of St. Paul in his Jewish state, that is not true of every genuine penitent; even before, and it may be, long before, he has believed in Christ to the saving of his soul. The assertion that “every Christian, howsoever advanced in the Divine life, will and must feel all this inward conflict,” &c., is as untrue as it is dangerous. That many, called Christians, and probably sincere, do feel all this, may be readily granted; and such we must consider to be in the same state with Saul of Tarsus, previously to his conversion; but that they must continue thus is no where intimated in the Gospel of Christ. We must take heed how we make our experience, which is the result of our unbelief and unfaithfulness, the standard for the people of God, and lower down Christianity to our most reprehensible and dwarfish state: at the same time, we should not be discouraged at what we thus feel, but apply to God, through Christ, as Paul did; and then we shall soon be able, with him, to declare, to the eternal glory of God’s grace, that the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, has made us free from the law of sin and death. This is the inheritance of God’s children; and their salvation is of me, saith the Lord.

I cannot conclude these observations without recommending to the notice of my readers a learned and excellent discourse on the latter part of this chapter, preached by the Rev. James Smith, minister of the Gospel in Dumfermline, Scotland; a work to which I am indebted for some useful observations, and from which I should have been glad to have copied much, had my limits permitted. Reader, do not plead for Baal; try, fully try, the efficiency of the blood of the covenant; and be not content with less salvation than God has provided for thee. Thou art not straitened in God, be not straitened in thy own bowels.

ROMANS

Verse 25. I thank God, &c. — As if he had said, I bemoan myself as above, when I think only of the Mosaic law, the discoveries it makes, the motives it suggests, and the circumstances in which it leaves the offender: but in the midst of this gloom of distress and anguish, a sight of the gospel revives my heart, and I cry out, as in a kind of rapture, as soon as I turn my eyes, and behold the display of mercy and grace made in it, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord — The Clermont and some other copies, with the Vulgate, read here, cariv tou qeou, the grace of God, namely, will deliver me. But the common reading, being supported by almost all the ancient manuscripts, and the Syriac version, is to be preferred; especially as it contains an ellipsis, which, if supplied, according to the apostle’s manner, from the foregoing sentence, will give even a better sense than the Clermont reading, thus: Who will deliver me? I thank God, who will deliver me, through Jesus Christ. See on Romans 8:2. Thus the apostle beautifully interweaves his complaints with thanksgiving; the hymn of praise answering to the voice of sorrow, Wretched man that I am! So then — He here sums up the whole, and concludes what he had begun, verse 7. I myself — Or rather, that I, (the man whom I am personating,) serve the law of God — The moral law; with my mind — With my reason and conscience, which declare for God; but with my flesh the law of sin — But my corrupt passions and appetites still rebel, and, prevailing, employ the outward man in gratifying them, in opposition to the remonstrances of my higher powers.

On the whole of this passage we may observe, in the words of Mr. Fletcher, “To take a scripture out of the context, is often like taking the stone which binds an arch out of its place: you know not what to make of it. Nay, you may put it to a use quite contrary to that for which it was intended. This those do who so take Romans 7. out of its connection with Romans 6. and 8., as to make it mean the very reverse of what the apostle designed. In Romans 5. and 6., and in the beginning of the seventh chapter, he describes the glorious liberty of the children of God under the Christian dispensation. And as a skilful painter puts shades in his pictures, to heighten the effect of the lights; so the judicious apostle introduces, in the latter part of chap. 7., a lively description of the domineering power of sin, and of the intolerable burden of guilt; a burden this which he had so severely felt, when the convincing Spirit charged sin home upon his conscience, after he had broken his good resolutions; but especially during the three days of his blindness and fasting at Damascus. Then he groaned, O wretched man that I am, &c., hanging night and day between despair and hope, between unbelief and faith, between bondage and freedom, till God brought him into Christian liberty by the ministry of Ananias; — of this liberty the apostle gives us a further and fuller account in chapter eight. Therefore the description of the man who [unacquainted with the gospel] groans under the galling yoke of sin, is brought in merely by contrast, to set off the amazing difference there is between the bondage of sin, and the liberty of gospel holiness: just as the generals who entered Rome in triumph, used to make a show of the prince whom they had conquered. On such occasions, the conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot crowned with laurel; while the captive king followed him on foot, loaded with chains, and making, next to the conqueror, the most striking part of the show. Now, if, in a Roman triumph, some of the spectators had taken the chained king on foot, for the victorious general in the chariot, because the one immediately followed the other, they would have been guilty of a mistake not unlike that of those who take the carnal Jew, sold under sin, and groaning as he goes along, for the Christian believer, who walks in the Spirit, exults in the liberty of God’s children, and always triumphs in Christ. See Fletcher’s Works, vol. 4., Amer. edit, pp. 336, 337.

Ver. 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Was ever praise more justly due to Him who is able to save to the uttermost? The conclusion then is just, that every jew and legal christian extols the law with his mind, but with the flesh he serves the law of sin and death.

25. I thank… through Jesus Christ—Of course this verse declares that Christ was the deliverer from this carnal and deadly incubus. We can either insert I am delivered before through, or we may imagine that the deliverance has already taken place as soon as the cry is uttered, and then this verse is the rapturous burst of gratitude.

So then—This is the summing up of the discord within the struggling sinner in his convicted law state, and prepares by contrast for the sweet harmony that follows in the next chapter. Two parts of his nature adhered to two different laws. There was once a false harmony by the complete and quiet predominance of carnality; the Spirit, revealing the law, produced the discord; the Spirit, through Christ, subduing sin, bestows a harmony divine; and this harmony peals forth in a paean in the opening of the next chapter.

Ver. 25. The cry is heard. In the moment of deepest darkness, a light shines forth, and sorrow is turned into joy. The cry of anguish is lost in a triumphant and grateful shout of

thanks to God through Jesus Christ: so Romans 1:8. This implies deliverance, of which we shall hear more in Romans 8:2. Therefore etc.: a recapitulating inference from Romans 7:14-24. I myself: very emphatic, recalling conspicuously Paul’s own personality which has been before us from Romans 7:7. Looked at in himself, Paul’s allegiance is divided. In his mind, which acknowledges the claims and goodness of the Law, Paul bows before the rule of God: in his flesh, the medium through which actions are performed, he does the bidding of God’s enemy.

With the mind: recalling Paul’s mental agreement with the Law, in Romans 7:16, 21, 22.

With the flesh: Paul’s hands and feet, which actually do the bidding of sin. REVIEW. Paul asked in Romans 7:13 whether, so far as he is concerned, the gift of the Law had been a fatal failure. It would be so, if Romans 7:7-12 were the whole case. But Paul answers his own question with an emphatic negative; and says that his death by means of the Law was itself a divinely-chosen means to reveal the nature of sin. In Romans 7:14-25, we see this purpose accomplished. As we watch Paul struggling helplessly against his foe, and see the foe planting himself in his body and making it a prison, as we hear his cry for deliverance from bondage to his own body, we learn as we never learnt before what sin is. We learn this, not as in Romans 7:7-11 from Paul’s sad death by means of the Law, but from the abiding state of bondage which followed his death, i.e. from the continuous working of sin in one whom it has already slain.

This revelation of sin was made by means of the Law. Had there been no Law, whatever men did would have been attributed to their ignorance and folly. It would have been thought that nothing more was needed than divine teaching supported by the thunders of Sinai. This illusion has been dispelled. The thunders of Sinai have uttered their voice; but in vain. Yet not in vain. By evoking the approbation of that in Paul which is noblest, and by prompting vain efforts after obedience, the Law has proved that Paul is a captive in the hands of an enemy against whom there is no rising up. By means of the Law, Paul has learnt that he needs, not merely a guide to show him the way, but a Saviour to rescue him from the grasp of one stronger than himself.

This lesson is all that can come from the gift of (Romans 7:14) a law dictated by the Spirit of God to a born slave of sin. We therefore infer that in order to teach this lesson the Law was given and sin was permitted to use it as a weapon of death. Thus Paul has virtually proved his statement in Romans 7:13. Compare carefully Galatians 3:22-24. Under Romans 8:4, I shall review briefly the purpose and working of the Law.

Paul has now justified, by an experimental proof of its working, the description of the Law given in Romans 7:12. He has proved that it is good, not merely in (Romans 7:10) its purpose, but in its actual result: for it has evoked from him thanks to God through Christ. It has been admitted to be righteous, even by the conscience of a man who breaks it: and it is holy; for we have seen it working out the purposes of God. We now ask, do Romans 7:14-25 describe a JUSTIFIED man, or one STILL UNFORGIVEN? The latter view was held by Origen, the earliest Christian commentator, and by the Greek fathers generally: the former, by Augustine and the Latin fathers generally. It was received in the West during the middle ages, and by the Reformers; and has been held in our day by most who have accepted Calvin’s teaching on predestination. Among those who reject this teaching, the view of the Greek fathers prevails. It is worthy of note that this is the earlier opinion, and was accepted by nearly all who spoke as their mother-tongue the language in which this epistle was written.

That in Romans 7:14-25 Paul describes his own experience before justification, I hold for the following reasons.

In Romans 7:9-11 we saw a great and sad change take place in Paul, a change from life to death. This change is described in order to explain the condition described in Romans 7:5. But in Romans 7:6, as in Romans 6:22; 8:2; Ephesians 2:5, 6, and elsewhere, we read of a subsequent change, as glorious as the earlier one was sad, wrought in Paul and his readers by the power of God, a transition from bondage to liberty, from death to life. Paul is now dead to sin, set free from its service, and dead to the Law which formerly bound him to a cruel master. The second change must be located between Romans 7:13, which gives the purpose of the first change, and Romans 8:1, 2, which describes the state of those who enjoy the second. And, since Romans 7:14-25 deal evidently with one subject, we must put the second change either between Romans 7:13 and 14 or between Romans 7:25 and Romans 8:1. Now between Romans 7:13 and 14 we have no hint of a change: indeed, Romans 7:14 explains Romans 7:13, and therefore cannot be separated from it by an event which completely changed Paul’s position. But in Romans 8:1 the change takes place before our eyes, and is written in characters which no one can misunderstand. The words “made me free from the law of sin” proclaim in clearest language that the bondage of Romans 7:23, 25 has passed away.

Again, Romans 7:14-25 absolutely contradict all that Paul and the N.T. writers say about themselves and the Christian life. He here calls himself a slave of sin, and groans beneath its bondage, a calamity-stricken man. Contrast this with Galatians 2:20, “I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me;” and with 1 John 3:14, “we know that we are passed out of death into life.” If the words before us refer to a justified man, they stand absolutely alone in the entire New Testament.

It has been objected that the language of Romans 7:14-25 is inapplicable to men not yet justified. But we find similar language in the lips of Greek and Roman pagans. Compare Seneca’s Letters no. 52: “what is it that draws us in one direction while striving to go in another, and impels us towards that which we wish to avoid?” So Euripides, Hippolytus l. 379, “we understand and know the good things, but we do not work them out;” and Medea l. 1078, “I know what sort of evil things I am going to do, but passion is stronger than my purposes: as it is to mortals a cause of very great evils.” Also Xenophon, Cyropædia bk. vi. 1. 41: “I have evidently two souls… for if I had only one, it would not be at the same time good and bad; nor would it desire at the same time both honourable and dishonourable works, nor would it at the same time both wish and not wish to do the same things. But it is evident that there are two souls; and that when the good one is in power the honourable things are practised; but, when the bad, the dishonourable things are attempted.” So Ovid, Metamorphoses xvii. 17: “I desire one thing; the mind persuades another: I see and approve better things; I follow worse things.” These passages do not mention the Law of God, and therefore differ greatly from the verses before us. But they prove that, apart from the historic revelations to Israel and in Christ, men were sometimes carried along, against their better judgment, to do bad things; and thus prove that, apart from the pardon of sins announced by Christ, there is in man an inward man which approves that which the Law commands.

What Paul says elsewhere about his religious state before his conversion confirms the description of himself here given. He was a man of blameless morality, zealous for God, a Pharisee of the strictest sect, in ignorance persecuting the Church: Philippians 3:6; Acts 22:3; 26:5; 1 Timothy 1:13. Of such a man we have a picture here. Paul’s conscience approves the Law: he makes every effort to keep it; but his efforts only prove his moral powerlessness, and reveal the presence of an enemy in whose firm grasp he lies: he seeks to conquer inward failure by strict outward observance, and perhaps by bloody loyalty to what he considers to be the honour of God. In the conscientious Pharisee, we have a man who desires to do right but actually does wrong. And the more earnestly a man strives to obtain the favour or God by doing right, the more painfully conscious will he be of his failure. Thus the harmony of this passage with the character of Paul is no small mark of the genuineness of this epistle. At the same time it describes more or less correctly all sinners, except perhaps some in whom long bondage to sin has almost destroyed the better principle.

That these verses describe the experience of many justified persons is no proof or presumption that they describe Paul’s experience while writing this letter. If our present state corresponds with that portrayed here, this only proves that in us, as in the men referred to in 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, the change is not complete. On the other hand, there are thousands who with deep gratitude recognise that Romans 7:14-25, while describing their past, by no means describe their present, state. Day by day they are more than conquerors through Him that loved them. And, though their experience be of little weight to others, it is to themselves an absolute proof that these words do not refer to Paul’s state while writing the epistle. For they are quite sure that what they enjoy the great apostle enjoyed in far higher degree.

Then why did Paul puzzle plain people by using a present tense to describe a past experience? This question may be answered by attempting to rewrite this paragraph in the past tense: “I was a man of flesh, sold under sin. I did not know what I was doing. I hated my own actions. I saw another law in the members of my body carrying on war against the law of my mind. I cried, Calamity-stricken one, who shall rescue me? “The life and strength of the paragraph are gone. To realise past calamity, we must leave out of sight our deliverance from it. The language of Romans 7:9, 11 made this easy. Paul’s description of his murder by the hand of sin was so real and sad that he forgot for the moment the life which followed it. When therefore he came to describe the state in which that murder placed him, it was easy to use the present tense. Hence the transition from the past tense in Romans 7:11 describing the event of death to the present in Romans 7:14 describing the abiding state of the murdered one. Similarly, in Romans 3:7 Paul throws himself into the position of one guilty of falsehood, and sets up for himself an excuse. In Romans 4:24, he stands by the writer of Genesis and looks forward to the justification of himself and his readers as still future. In Romans 5:1, he urges them to claim peace with God through justification. In Romans 7:14, after contemplating the reign of death from Adam to Moses, he looks forward to the future incarnation of Christ. In Romans 6:5, he speaks in the same way of the resurrection life in Christ. We shall also find him, in Romans 8:30, throwing himself into the far future and looking back upon the nearer future as already past.

The past and present tenses are distinguished, not only in time, but as different modes of viewing an action. The past tense looks upon it as already complete; the present, as going on before our eyes. Consequently, when the time is otherwise determined, the tenses may be used without reference to time. In the case before us, the entire context, foregoing and following, tells plainly to what time Paul refers. He is therefore at liberty to use that tense which enables him to paint most vividly the picture before him. This mode of speech, common to all languages, is a conspicuous feature of the language in which this epistle was written. So Kuehner, Greek Grammar § 382. 2: “In the narration of past events the present is frequently used, especially in principal sentences, but not unfrequently in subordinate sentences, while in the vividness of the representation the past is looked upon as present. This use of the present is also common to all languages. But in the Greek language it is specially frequent; and in the language of poetry appears not merely in narration but also in vivid questions and otherwise, frequently in a startling manner.” It has been suggested that we have here a description of one who has only partly appropriated by faith the salvation offered by Christ. Every defective experience (and whose experience is not defective?) has elements in common with that of those without Christ. Consequently the language of Romans 7:14-25 is appropriate to many who have a measure of saving faith. But we have here no hint of any salvation received by faith in Christ. It is therefore better to understand it as referring to a man yet justified. If the above exposition he correct, we have here the fullest description in the Bible of man unsaved. Even in the immoral there is an inner man which in some measure approves the good and hates the bad. But this inner man is powerless against the enemy who is master of his body, and who thus dictates his conduct. In spite of his better self, the man is carried along a path of sin. This is not contradicted, nor is its force lessened, by Paul’s admission in Romans 2:26, 27 that even pagans do sometimes what the Law commands. For their obedience is only occasional and imperfect; whereas the Law requires constant and complete obedience. A man who breaks the laws of his country is not saved from punishment by occasional performance of noble actions. Although men unforgiven sometimes do that which deserves approbation, they are utterly powerless to rescue themselves from the power of sin and to obtain by good works the favour of God.

CHAPTER VII. reconciles the teaching of Rom. 6, with the divine authority of the Law. Romans 7:1-6 prove that our complete deliverance from sin asserted in Romans 6:22, is in harmony with the essence of law: for the death of Christ puts us beyond the limits affixed by the Law to its own domain. Romans 7:7-12 prove that, though salvation is possible only through deliverance from the Law, yet the Law is not bad: for it is only a passive instrument through which sin slays its victims. And from Romans 7:13-25 we have now learnt that, although its immediate effect was death, yet the Law has not failed in its purpose of life: for our death by its means has made known to us the power of our adversary, and has driven us to One who is able to save.

Man’s relation to the Law is now sufficiently expounded, and the Law sufficiently vindicated. It remains only to describe the new life with which, in Christ Jesus, the Spirit of life makes free the adopted children of God.