Romans Chapter 7
The subject in this chapter is still how the eternal power of God operates in us and through us. In chapter 6 the power is for living toward God. Here it is for the bearing of fruit. Paul deals with the removal of what would hinder this. First it is the law, so far as those under it were concerned. Secondly it is the flesh, as to those who were in it (or who thought they were in it in their response to God).
- Chapter 6 is re. life, chapter 7 re. fruit
- Chapter 6 is actions, chapter 7 is thoughts
- Chapter 6 is objective, chapter 7 is subjective
- Chapter 6 in Christ Jesus, chapter 7 through Christ
- Chapter 6 re. newness of life, chapter 7 re. newness of spirit
- Chapter 6 re. life, chapter 7 re. relationships.
The first six verses describe the relationship from which power for fruitbearing develops. Then follows the removal of hindrances to fruitbearing. The change in pronouns is instructive – “ye”, “we”, “I”.
- “Ye” refers to those brethren who were under the law previously.
- “We” refers to the body of believers.
- “I” refers to Paul himself, showing the development of his own christian experience and, by extension, the normal development that should characterise christian growth in every believer.
Verse 1 “Know ye not brethren (for I speak to them that know the law); how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?”
Again Paul emphasises the importance of true knowledge if we are to be purposeful to God. “Know ye not?”, “I speak to those that know the law”. It is possible to know the ‘letter’ without knowing its true, spiritual interpretation. Paul addresses them as his brethren in the divine activity in which they were mutually involved. The teaching of Paul brings out the true significance of the words of O.T. Scripture, particularly in order that it may be interpreted aright in the new spiritual circumstances brought about by the death and resurrection of the Christ.
The law has lordship over the man who is under it so long as he lives. It is essential to recognise that the man and the husband presented in this chapter is Christ and not the believer. The believer is the wife. Death alone is more powerful than the law in its authority. So long as the man lived in the flesh under the law, his legal relationships were wholly determined by the law. It imposed restrictions upon Christ so long as He lived under it. As long as Christ was a man in the flesh, born of a woman under the law, He was bound wholly and only to those who were also under the law. While He lived in that state and realm, His associates under the law lived merely in the flesh. The Spirit had not yet been given.
Verse 2 “For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.”
In verses 2 and 3 the people of God under the law were bound to their husband, Jehovah, and Christ was Jehovah in flesh. The conduct of this wife was governed by the law, which exercised sanctions upon disobedience. The law never passes away, so death became the only means of freedom from it. We shall see in verse 4 that in fact both partners died. Christ died literally, the believing Jew has died spiritually. The Jewish nation, the woman of divine purpose at that point in the outworking of God’s purposes on earth, had a husband – the God of the law – to whom she was bound so long as He lived. Such a God had assumed a fleshly form in which He himself lived under the law. That relationship was binding upon her in the terms set forth in the law of the husband. The gospel reveals that the law was spiritual rather than natural.
If the husband died she was loosed from the law of the husband. The terms which bound the Jew to his God could be unloosed only if God ceased to exist toward them as Jehovah. This is in fact what happened at the death of Christ. Jehovah is the God of the partial revelation of the Old Testament. As a result of the work of Christ in flesh under the law, God has been revealed as the Father and not just Jehovah. The terms which bound Israel have been changed by the death of One who was Jehovah. The law, though it remains, is no longer binding upon the believing Jew, who has died toward Jehovah in flesh and lives toward the Father in possession of divine life.
Verse 3 “So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.”
Paul sets forth the illegality, the spiritual error, involved in the Jewish nation being given to another man while her legal husband lived. So long as God acted toward His people under the law, then the law remained the highest authority in the nation. The highest spiritual ideal attainable under the law was that the nation become the bride of Jehovah, according to the terms of spiritual faithfulness defined in the law. If the nation failed in this she would be called an adulteress. She would be called this and treated as such by Jehovah in His dealings with the nation. This is the spiritual situation which prevailed at the coming of the Son in flesh, born of a woman under the law. The nation showed by her rejection of God manifested in flesh that she was given over to another, to the vain tradition of the elders.
But if the husband has died, the situation is changed. The spiritual ideal realisable in the law has perished in the death of Christ in the flesh. Yet, in the purpose of God, this has opened up a greater ideal. By the death of Christ we have come into a higher form of life than that which the law governed. We do so in a realm in which death no longer has any authority. The Jew is free from the law as a result of the death of Christ. Those who believe the gospel are not committing spiritual adultery in being “to another man”. They are united to the Christ who died in order to enter into a new form of life, resurrection life, with which the law has nothing to do. So, the new Israel is no adulteress, even if she is married to another Man. This is the Man of the new system of access to God, in which the spiritual ideal of eternal fruitbearing is alone possible.
Verse 4 “Wherefore my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.”
In fact both parties have died. First, the Christ has died. His body, his life in flesh, became the means in which Jehovah came forth to consummate the ideal spiritual relationship with Israel under the law. The dead body of the Christ was the means which ended this relationship and formed another greater one. Secondly, “ye also were put to death” to the law through the body of Christ. The Jewish nation awaited the coming of the Christ as its earthly fulfilment. His death in the body, to the flesh, ended this natural hope. They were put to death spiritually because of the cross, at the time of their highest opportunity. They knew not their visitation and so incurred this form of death as the judgment of God for their failure.
According to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, they crucified Him with lawless hands. From the godward viewpoint this took place in order that new ties might be formed between them and the Man in glory who remains both Lord and Christ. They were (spiritually) put to death by God so that they might live toward Him who has been raised out of death physically. At this point Paul widens the fellowship to all who live by the gospel, whether Jew or Gentile, that we bring forth fruit to God.
The Jew was judged for the previous spiritual failure of his response to God. This had been the cause of the death of Christ. Yet this created spiritual bonds between God and the people He has acquired by the gospel, in which fruit is produced unto God. Again the aorist tense (once-for-all) is used in the description of the fruitbearing. Attention is thus drawn to the fact and not to any moral obligations on our part to God. The work is wholly of God.
Verse 5 “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”
In this verse Paul reminds them of their experience when they lived in the flesh toward God. He is about to show true christian development and begins his argument by characterising our unconverted days. We went on living in the flesh. Before God produced faith in us by the gospel, we lived in the world in spiritual purposelessness. In that state, two conflicting principles governed us. The passions of sin (plural_ worked in our members. These members are the powers which express what we are inherently in flesh. The passions of sins were the only powers we had with which to respond to God. Our inherent sin, failure toward God in the things of God, acted to assert the powers of man in the service he performed in nature. Sin in us, in the flesh, was stimulated to passions of sins by the way in which we understood and responded to law. These were through the law, which was given to condemn both sin and sins.
The law, given to forbid the activity of sins, in fact merely brought them out in their full development because of the inability of the flesh, human nature, to comprehend aright the previous system of God. The fruit which such spiritual conflict produced was spiritual death. The law manifested that there were no powers in human nature to produce eternal good, nor to overcome the spirit of evil. On the contrary, spiritual evil abounded and spiritual death accumulated. This was the work which continued in such a spiritual state.
Verse 6 “But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”
By a divinely accomplished fact we are delivered from the law and our failure in it. We no longer live and act toward God in the fleshly nature, which the letter of the law condemns by exposing its spiritual failure. The accomplished spiritual fact is that we have died to that in which we went on being held captive. Once we had only fleshly lives and in its powers sought to live by the law as the flesh interprets it. Now we have died to that nature and to the law as we once understood it.
We have been delivered so as to serve as slaves in newness of spirit. We have died to that which held us bound, the sinfulness of the flesh, in the old system of approach. It is not that we have liberty in the flesh to do as we please morally and socially. Our fleshly life in the old realm has nothing to do with the service to which God calls us and fits us. In God’s sight, and ideally in our own reckoning, we died in the old realm associated with fleshly spiritual failure to serve in newness of spirit. It remains a natural fact that we have an ordinary fleshly life, as have all men, but this is a fact of no spiritual consequence in the new spiritual realm in which we serve God. Our fleshly limitations do not limit our spiritual service. We walk (aorist tense) in the newness of life (6:4). We continue to serve (present) in newness of spirit. This supposes the development of spiritual maturity in the people of God. This comes from knowing the law and its spiritual significance as unfolded in the New Testament. We serve not in the oldness of the letter. Our service is not directed by legal rules which govern the flesh. The old Jewish way of interpreting the law literally and applying it to ordinary human life in the present world was their spiritual failure. An enlightened christian is delivered from this.
Verse 7 “What shall be say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law; for I had not known lust, except that law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”
What follows is the practical, experiential knowledge of the removal of every difficulty and obstacle which would hinder the power of God acting in us. Suppose for the sake of argument that I was still in the flesh and under the law before God, and at the same time in possession of new life in Christ. What then would my experience be? Paul here transfers the argument to himself – “I”. He traces out for us the experience through which he had to pass before he realised the nature of the new christian position. He is not setting forth the position of a sinner before God under the law, nor of a saint in normal experience. Here is a christian who was spiritually immature, a carnal christian. Paul describes himself as being carnal at that stage in his spiritual development (v.14). He had found new life in Christ and was trying to outwork it under the law, using the law as a rule of life.
Is the law sin? Lest it be said of Paul’s doctrine that he declared the law to be sinful, Paul first of all upholds the law’s perfection. It could be argued that Paul taught that God did not demand full obedience to the law and therefore would be satisfied with something less. In fact Paul’s teaching manifests the true purpose for which God gave the letter of the law to man, viz. to give man the knowledge of sin. Paul would not have known the sin unless through law. As before, the sin is man’s spiritual failure in relation to God and the eternal things of God. Man’s natural conscience gives him the knowledge of natural, moral and social sin, that which men call sin. The Scriptures, in relation to salvation and new life, do not deal with the natural but with spiritual issues. Law, as it was understood in naturalistic Judaism, made Paul conscious of the sin, the spiritual failure which necessarily manifested itself in man in such a system. Paul appears to distinguish between “the law” and “law”. “The law” is the writings which came from God through Moses. “Law” is the economy in which the Jews lived as a result of this divine intervention. In his experience in that economy, Paul was made aware of the sin which rendered perfection unattainable in the system of Judaism as he had understood it.
Paul should not have been aware of the covetousness. Through the law he was made aware of the existence within himself of a spiritual power of evil which coveted that which God had forbidden. The law said, “Thou shalt not covet”. In the legal economy in which Paul had been raised, particularly in Phariseeism, this meant what it said literally. Thus God was making demands upon human nature which it could not meet. He was condemning it for its inability to do so. The dilemma of the religious Jew is brought out in the very nature of the law spoken by God. It was given in negative terms – thou shalt not. Paul selects this particular commandment to show that there is no denying the naturally unattainable perfection by the letter. Men might honestly have believed that they could live up to the literal demands of the other commandments, but an honest man is confounded by this one. To covet natural things is an inherent desire of human nature. By the old interpretation of the law, the desire in itself was sinful. Paul would not have known this desire in him to be sinful and condemnatory before God except through the law. The law revealed it to represent transgression in the sight of God.
Verse 8 “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence, For without the law sin was dead.”
The sin, the inevitability on the part of human nature to fail spiritually toward God, found the opportunity to manifest itself in Paul through the commandments. Naturalistic Judaism worsened the spiritual situation in Paul’s experience in those days when he sought to serve God after the manner of his fathers. The commandment, held up for fleshly obedience, afforded the irrepressible power of the spirit of evil in Paul the occasion to develop itself more fully. The more devotedly he sought to serve the God of the commandment in the nature which the law condemned, the stronger this nature became. The moralistic Jewish religion had to do with making man’s ordinary life in the world better at a natural level. Paul exercised his self-control and devoted his will to this ethic.
His experience was that known sin wrought in him all manner of covetousness. As he grew stronger morally and socially by his religion, he found himself acting to gratify the nature which coveted greatness for itself under such a law. Religious flesh acquires spiritual pride in its own capabilities and covets all kind of fleshly attainments in the world. It does so before a God whose law condemns it.
For apart from law sin is a dead thing. “Apart from law”, as in 3:21 signifies man living in creation outside the economy of law, not being judged by divine revelation for being in spiritual failure. Sin is present in all men but in the case of the Gentiles it was spiritually powerless. In the accepted Jewish religion, man’s natural sinfulness was deadly in a spiritual sense. It caused men who sought to live in the flesh after the letter to be in a hopeless position. It manifested their sin and gave it irrefutable power over them. They were engaged in a hopeless struggle with their own defective nature.
Verse 9 “For I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”
At this point Paul brings forward his conversion to the gospel as the divine means of new life. He was alive (imperfect tense) apart from the law once. Understood literally, this would indicate the first seven days of his life before he was circumcised and brought under the law. Clearly, this is not the intended meaning. Paul remained alive thereafter in the law until his conversion. It was after this that he came to live before God apart from the law. This is the righteousness of God which is apart from law, as in 3:21. He knew that his sin had been forgiven on the basis of the gospel and that he lived in the possession of a new life.
Yet he did not then know the full significance of the spiritual position into which God had brought him. The commandment coming to him in this new state of life would signify the fact that, being in possession of this new life, he subjected himself to the law again. His hope would be that this new life in Christ within him would give him a new power to overcome the previous spiritual failure and enable him to outwork the commandment perfectly. It was of course doomed to failure.
His experience then was that the sin sprang to life again. At his conversion he knew that sin was dead and that Paul was truly alive before God. When, in spiritual immaturity, he put himself back under law, he found the opposite to be true in his practical experience. The sin from which he vainly sought deliverance by the gospel came to life again and Paul was dead. The sin was demonstrated to be still present in him and this was a contradiction of the gospel which he had learned. As yet Paul had not learned the true spiritual significance of God’s work in him. He had not learned the spiritual implications of having been constituted righteous by God. The old Paul, Paul in the flesh, was dead before God and he lived only in the new life in Christ. At this point, however, Paul still reckoned that he was to remain under the law in flesh. To act toward God – after receiving life in Christ – in a nature which inevitably comes short of the demand of the law, is to act in deadness spiritually.
Verse 10 “And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.”
The resultant experience is that this commandment, given by God for the development of spiritual life and for effective service, was unto death. The commandment was given to the old nature to manifest its sinfulness in the sight of God. It is given to the new man in Christ to govern and develop the new nature conferred by the gospel. This effect is not produced when a man who lives toward God in new life, apart from law, seeks to use this power of life to make the flesh obedient to the letter. The flesh in him is not changed by conversion. Rather it is put to death in God’s sight and the believer is called to reckon accordingly. Otherwise he will find that he has believed in vain. He continues to live unto death in spite of God’s work in him.
The word “for” is used frequently in this chapter, showing the progressive development set forth in it. Paul is revealing the experience which resulted from his pristine immaturity in the new things of God.
Verse 11 “For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.”
Paul then repeats what he had said in verse 8, concerning his experience when he sought to do his best to obey the law. He now found himself back where he started when he lived after the flesh under the law. The new birth had afforded him no help to live up to the commandment. The flesh, when it seeks to live before God and serve him legally, is deceived by such appearances. At this stage of his development, Paul acted as if he still lived in the flesh in moral obligation to obey the commandments in order to be profitable to God. He thought he had received new life in Christ to enable him the more effectively to fulfil the commandment. He thought that Christianity was a divine means to improve what is of nature, the flesh.
This understanding of his new spiritual position in Christ was false. This was the sin which deceived him through the commandment. Through it sin slew him. Paul was deceived because at that time he could not distinguish aright between good and evil. This spiritual failure, concerning the true significance of Christianity, slew him. The search after natural good as a means of responding to the work of God by one who has new life, is spiritual evil. It was this sort of response that killed him spiritually, rendering him dead as to the realisation of God’s calling. Paul lost a conflict in which he ought never to have been engaged.
Verse 12 “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”
That which God had declared to be the standards by which man is acceptable and profitable to Him is holy. It is of God as to its origin and in its nature. The commandment is the law insofar as it puts obligations upon men who receive it. This is the commandment which gave the sin in Paul the opportunity to deceive and slay him. It exposed his inward deficiencies as to the things which God has entrusted to man. So the commandment is still found by Paul to be holy, even if it manifested his unholiness. Paul was still at fault spiritually. The new life in him did not manifest any imperfections in that which God had given to Israel. God’s new dealings with man magnified the law in Paul’s sight. So also the Lord Jesus told the Jews that, by His teaching, He had not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it.
The commandment is also described as just. The standard demanded by it for man in the presence and service of God, was righteous. No conduct short of this would suffice for God and for man’s profitability to God. It is good. It is so in an ultimate, eternal rather than a relative, natural, sense. It defined that which God considered good. It was not merely the standard of good which should prevail between man and man. Paul saw it to be holy, just and good godwardly, and in it the fundamental dilemma for man.
Verse 13 “Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”
At this point in his spiritual experience and development Paul began to look at the position godwardly. As a result, spiritual insight began. Previously he had been slain by the sin through the commandment. The commandment was the occasion and the sin the cause of his defeat. He now realised that it was not due to that which is good. Rather it was due to the sin in him, which caused him to have an evil appreciation of the good. Paul, representatively, had to be slain before he could come to appreciate the true significance of the law.
Paul had been deliberately and purposefully slain. This was wrought by the enemy which stood between him and the realisation of the purpose for which God had called him. It was necessary for him to go through this experience, as also it is for us. By it we have the Word of God which sets forth the way in which we also can produce fruit for God in the new system. He was not slain by that which is good but by the sin, that it might be shown to be sin. The sin is the fundamental spiritual error which he had made in relation to the new life and to the law as it is now to be understood and obeyed. Sin is to miss the mark. Paul had missed the whole point of God’s new dealings with him in giving him life apart from the law. This error was exposed to be the nature of his sin in Christianity. It renders all who come under its influence purposeless so far as the present gifts and calling of God are concerned.
The result of this sort of sin was death. It wrought death to him through that which is good. God had set at his disposal the means by which he might have performed good. This is the new life and the law which governs it. Paul responded in spiritual error and this produced the defeat. Despite receiving new life in Christ he carried on as before, in the power of a sinful nature in attempted obedience to the letter. The sin caused him to use that which is good in an evil way godwardly.
The sin through the commandment became exceedingly sinful. He brought the previous spiritual failure of his naturalistic, moralistic response to God under law into the new spiritual realm to which God had introduced him. The sin became exceedingly sinful in that it was directed against the new life in him and the purpose for which God had given it to him. This was wrought as a result of the commandment and Paul’s carnal appreciation of it. At that time he had not appreciated the truth which he reveals in verse 6.
Verse 14 “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.”
We know, we have inward knowledge, that the law is spiritual. At this point Paul is speaking about what is known to be true basically by those who have embraced the christian system. This knowledge, that the law is spiritual and not natural, would be both a revelation and revolutionary to the Jew in his religion. As a Pharisee Paul interpreted the law literally and applied it to the only sort of human life of which he was aware, i.e. to ordinary human nature in the present world. However, his task was now to realise the significance of the spiritual nature of the law which this new knowledge can give.
“But I am carnal”. We must be careful how we understand this. Though Paul says that he is carnal, it should be understood that he is referring to that time in his spiritual development when he had not learned to distinguish between good and evil spiritually. He certainly was not carnal at the time when he wrote this epistle. He was then the most spiritual of men. He declared to the Corinthians that they were yet carnal in their response to God when there were divisions amongst them. To be carnal is to respond to God as if we were still alive to God in the flesh, involved in natural things and issues in our service to divine purpose. To be carnally minded in our orientation to God in Christianity is to be dead to eternal purpose.
In that unspiritual state of carnality toward the God who had renamed him, Paul was sold under sin. He still served the old master and wrought that which was spiritually evil in such service. His redemption from sin was merely true judicially and not functionally. He was not in the present enjoyment of eternal life and did not act in power in the things of God, despite the accomplished work of God for him and in him. He remained sold under the sin despite being alive toward God, apart from the law, by faith. Thus it is still possible for one who has received the free gift of God’s grace to continue to be sold under sin in his thoughts and activities. A fleshly response to God, puritanism, is a death-producing way of life.
Verse 15 “For that which I do I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.”
That it is purposeless for a christian to put himself under the law is demonstrated by the result. There is conflict between two mutally opposed natures and known evil is produced. The flesh necessarily overcomes spiritual good when a carnal, albeit devout, believer seeks to perform ultimate good by conscious fleshly effort. The knowledge which “I” have gained by experience in the new life, the spiritual desires produced by it, the hatred of sin resulting from its activity, are contradicted by the results which work themselves out from submitting “myself” to the law in such a carnal way. What I work out, what I will, and what I hate, set forth the spiritual objectives known to be desirable by Paul.
In this carnal state he desired carnal good and desired to avoid carnal, naturalistic evil. What he actually worked out by his devoted fleshly efforts he did not approve of. He knew it not to be good. These carnal actions, when he came to scrutinise them in his newly acquired christian knowledge, were rejected as imperfect. Sin obviously still acted in him and this was a contradiction of the known fact that he was alive in Christ, in a nature which does not sin. That which he then willed in practise he did not practise. He willed for fleshly holiness still, just as he had done in the Judaism which he previously practised. He sought to glorify the God who had given him new life by being in practice a perfect specimen of humanity after the flesh, good which men could judge as good. Yet he knew that he remained, before God, a man who did not practise absolute good. This is an unattainable ideal, not the ideal set before the people of God, either under law or grace.
That which Paul hated in his carnal state and carnal response to God, would be that which a fleshly minded believer considers evil, i.e. moral evil. After doing his best at this level Paul had, in the end, to confess that he did what he hated. He still coveted as all men covet. This puritanical brand of Christianity does not make men utterly selfless.
Verse 16 “If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.”
The outcome and inescapable conclusion of that way of responding to God – still having the mind of Adam toward God – was that the carnal Paul did what he willed not to do. He was governed by his own will, by ordinary humanity’s conception of good and evil. His ideals and objectives were as yet spiritually evil, no matter how naturally good they were. He discovered that he was seeking after an illusion.
Thereby he consented unto the law that it is good. The experience derived from this form of response to God gave him fresh insight regarding the law. He sought to live by the letter of the law morally and found this to be impossible. He came to realise that this was the result which the giving of the letter of the law to man was intended to produce. The letter presents and demands absolute naturalistic good, unattainable in and by the flesh.
Verse 17 “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”
Then another conclusion came to him when he considered the end of that way of life. This is a positive spiritual conclusion. It forms the only true basis upon which a believer can live a life of profitable service to God in the christian system.
The law is good because it proscribes the actions of the flesh and condemns a carnal believer’s obsession with the old nature. To put onself under the law is to show how incorrigibly evil one is. This demonstration of increasing evil proved to Paul that it was sin that was active under the law and not the new nature. Paul came to know that this nature which then acted was not the real “I”. He then learned to distinguish between the real “I”, that is Christ in him, and sin still dwelling in him.
It is no more I who work it out but sin which dwells in me. Paul presents this monumental conclusion, which is to be accepted by faith, not by feelings based on natural, fleshly, worldly experience. Paul is not speaking of an organised and a disorganised self. The flesh is all that a man is naturally, not merely that which men regard as being base, morally and socially. The true self is not the finer parts of a man but the new life which is the Christ-life in a believer. There are two natures in a believer. One is spiritually dead and still goes on failing naturally and morally. This is not “I” but sin that dwells in me. This nature, which we must reckon to be dead no matter how much it is active in secular life, works out a form of good which is not the good for which God saved and called us. Natural sin still dwells in us but it is not “us”. There is no struggle between the two natures when the true christian position is known. The working of spiritual purposelessness in our old selves can then be accepted and dismissed as being resident sin for which we are not spiritually responsible. We do of course remain morally and socially responsible for evil conduct toward mankind. This however is not the realm of christian life and service.
Verse 18 “For I know that in me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”
Paul has dealt with the state of affairs which he experienced when, after becoming alive in Christ, he put himself back under the law in order to be profitable to God. Now he deals with the state that he found when he still failed to appreciate that the flesh is dead in normal christian experience and practice. Here he is concerned with good and evil. He first conceived of this in a fleshly way and then came to see what ultimate good is and how it is to be worked out. He presents the case of a believer still struggling with the flesh and its evil in order to perfect good in it.
He had the inward knowledge that in himself there dwelt no good thing. That was when he still regarded himself as being alive in the flesh toward God. Sin dwelt in him in that form of life, as previously stated. Further, no ultimate good dwelt in him in his ordinary natural life as a man in this world. The lack of good was first lack of ultimate natural good and then the knowledge of his lack of spiritual good and the means of good in this natural form of life. His previous experience had caused him now to act by true christian insight and no longer by the will of the flesh. In this knowledge he had learned that no good thing dwelt in his natural self.
The only good thing which he then saw was the natural good which he willed to perform but could not. As yet he did not know how God had dealt with his flesh and he still sought to deal with it himself. Such a believer feels the strong desire in him that he ought to do good as a result of the work of God in him and for him. But how to work out that which is good he had not yet discovered. The only power which he knew was the conscious effort of ‘no-good’ flesh to effect the desires of this new life in him.
Verse 19 “For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.”
The power to develop the character of God and do the work of God, THE GOOD, is what is desired. It is not generated while the evil, the continued presence of sin which the carnal man desires to suppress as a response to God, remains active as the impelling power. Paul was involved in the conflict between good and evil but to be under either the law, or to act by the flesh, would not give the victory. This did not resolve the conflict for him in favour of good and repression of evil in present experience. The sort of good that I will, I do not. He willed that natural good should result from his carnal response to having received eternal salvation.
The evil that he willed not was the moral evil defined by the letter of the law. Thou shalt not covet. This was still understood literally and naturally. In that response he did evil and served the cause of anti-purpose in his activities in sinful flesh. He still practised that which he knew to be evil, despite his apparently good desires after holiness and his utmost fleshly efforts.
Verse 20 “Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”
Neither by the law, nor by a believer’s own efforts and struggles with sin, is deliverance to be found from present natural evil. Paul here presents himself as doing what he willed not to do. He still found himself to be a servant of sin. His fleshly power and spiritual will were both active, albeit in conflict. The flesh lusts against the spirit. At this stage in his spiritual development Paul found himself trying to reconcile the two, now knowing that the flesh cannot and will not subject itself to the spirit.
Paul then progressed to realise and accept that this was according to the present outworking of the will of God. If he did what he did not want to do, it was no longer his true self, “I”, who worked out this effect. He came to view things from God’s standpoint by the intelligence of faith after he had acted in the flesh and been let down. He reaches the same conclusion he had already expressed in verse 17. It is so astounding and so essential to spiritual progress that it is repeated for emphasis. He is not spiritually responsible for the activity of indwelling sin. A believer is held spiritually responsible for understanding how he can serve God’s eternal purpose. We must come to understand the christian system if we are to bring forth fruit to God. Chapter 7 must be interpreted aright before we can understand chapter 8.
Verse 21 “I find then a law that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.”
In the rest of the chapter Paul sums up the conclusions he reached under the hand of God in his spiritual development out of carnal thinking and acting toward God. By his experience he found that he was governed by an unalterable law. This is the general principle that when he would do the good then evil was present with him. This is a law to him who would practise the good set before him in the christian system. It is not the experience of a sinner doing that which natural conscience and reason tell him is no good. It is a saint found willing to practise the supreme, ultimate, eternal good for which God has called and gifted him.
Here it is the good and not good as in verse 19. The word for good is also different. It would appear that when Paul used the word agathos for good he had naturalistic good in mind. When he uses the word kalos he is speaking in terms of spiritual, eternal good, the right response to God. In verse 19 Paul says that he willed to practice good. He had already learned that to live under the law and serve by the flesh was not the good which God desired from those to whom He had given new life.
The law which he then found to operate was that, in this state of true spiritual awareness, the evil was present with him. It is not natural evil in him but the fact that spiritual evil still remains with him even if he is willing to do the good. There is a conflict but it is of a spiritual rather than of a moral or natural character. He found it to be the governing rule that he was to perform ultimate good in the presence of the power of evil which God intentionally did not remove. The power of anti-purpose acts in the present time in a world in which God has also called and gifted a people to serve His eternal purpose. Paul retained a nature which was susceptible to its power but acted toward God in a nature which was not.
Verse 22 “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.”
Paul then found another law which he calls the law of God. For His purpose, God has given him a nature which delights in this law. These are the two positive, essential features which characterise our way of response to God in Christianity. Paul then sets forth the means by which we are to perform eternal good, before he shows how we are to avoid spiritual evil. It is a question of being aware of all the laws which are involved. The law of God is the rule of eternal truth, not that of the letter. The letter kills but the spirit contained in it gives life. Paul at this stage realised that he no longer lived under the letter in the flesh toward God. The commandment was not to be interpreted literally nor applied to the flesh if effective service was to be rendered to God.
Paul now delighted in the truth which his new life, and the insight resulting from his experience, had opened up to him. The Word of God and the new nature are the two crucial things for those who are called by God to further His eternal purpose in their present service. The inward man is this new life which he had received, which had been developed spiritually, and in whose power he now responded to God. He delighted in the law of God after the inward man and no longer in the letter after the flesh.
Verse 23 “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”
Paul proceeds now to reveal another, different law still at work in him in his members. As before, the members set forth those powers which express the nature within us, whether old or new. Here it is our natural powers which express what we are as human beings in the world, in the flesh. A certain law governed Paul’s fleshly nature and its works, which warred against the law of his mind. This law of his mind is that of his spiritual mind, the mind of the Spirit in him. The flesh lusts against the Spirit ……. and these are contrary to one another ……. (Gal.5:17). By a law which remained irrevocable there was a conflict in Paul’s experience. He perceived it to be warring against the law of his mind. He sought to effect natural good in the flesh but was not able. He sought eternal good as a result of the law of God operating in his mind.
So long as Paul sought to equate the conflicting demands of these mutually opposing laws and natures, he was brought into captivity. At this stage in his spiritual development he saw that he lived before God in the possession and power of the new life only. He also realised that he was governed by the law of sin in his secular life in the world. He sought to use his spiritual powers to break this law. In so doing he was once again brought into bondage. The law of sin which was in his members remained so strong in its control over him that he could not break it with the power of the new life and godliness which he possessed. What we become spiritually by divine activity and spiritual experience does not free us from the presence and power of indwelling sin. To engage in a profitless, impossible task is the bondage of a life freed by God and spiritual maturity to engage in work of spiritual significance and profit.
Verse 24 “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
This sets forth Paul’s emotions arising from him seeking to put to death the deeds of the flesh by acquired spiritual ability. Instead of devoting this wholly to the things of God he had also sought to straighten out his naturally crooked self. He found himself then to be more wretched than ever. He had used all his resources in vain, merely to be captivated by the sin, the spiritual failure which necessarily characterises fleshly existence.
Who will deliver me out of the body of this death? Paul now looks for deliverance from another, having perceived that God had not given him the means to deliver himself from the warfare in which he had wrongly involved himself. Total deliverance lies in the future. His present life in bodily form exposes him to the activity of a power of evil from which he cannot deliver himself. He must await divine intervention in the form of the return of the Lord Jesus, being raised into life in a glorified body which, like that of his Lord, is not susceptible to the law of sin and death. Present life in the flesh necessarily involves our being governed by the operation of the law of sin at a fleshly level. We live and act still as men in the world beset with fleshly weakness, despite the operation of the grace of God in us spiritually in the inward man. Meanwhile, we can still serve divine purpose despite the body of this death. Now is the time characterised for us at a worldly, fleshly level as being alive in a body of humiliation governed by the law of sin.
Verse 25 “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Wretched in powerless flesh, Paul was nevertheless able to thank God. He raises his thoughts now to the spiritual realm in which he already lived and enjoyed the fruits of God’s victory in Christ. God has delivered us spiritually to live and act toward Him in the new life. He will deliver us totally from the law of sin just as He has already delivered our Lord Jesus from the life in which He had to do with sin unto a life in which He now lives wholly and solely toward God. Present spiritual delivery from the law of sin and unnecessary, unproductive conflict with it comes from owning the Lordship of Christ. He is the only Lord we serve as to the realisation of eternal purpose. For the furtherance of divine purpose we live and serve through our Lord Jesus in the spiritual realm in which He lives and acts in absolute spiritual supremacy.
Paul had arrived at a state and feeling of hopelessness by assuming this sub-christian place and service. Yet as a result, he arrived at a crucial spiritual conclusion on behalf of us all. With the mind he (I myself, the true I) served a law of God. He had acquired a spiritual mind by which he could rightly appraise the things of God. He served God in the spiritual power of the new nature. But with the flesh he served a law of sin. This is a most unpalatable conclusion for a carnal believer. He desires to be freed from the law of sin by devoted fleshly willpower, even seeking to escape such service by the exercise of the new nature and its desires. But this is a corruption of true, eternal good. There was in Paul’s ultimate experience a realised division between the two natures. He had his senses exercised to distinguish between good and evil. The new man and his powers were devoted to obedience to the law of God. The flesh remained subservient to a law of sin. Paul thus began to serve on the basis of this knowledge. He was thus no longer embarrassed by, nor was he obsessed with, a fleshly nature in his response to God. Thus he would press on to perfect service to divine purpose in unhindered fashion, aside from man’s natural desires and ideals.