Romans 7King James Version
The struggle with the law and with the flesh. The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. But Paul cries: For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul uses a marriage analogy: the law binds a person only while alive; death dissolves the contract, freeing them to marry another. Believers have died to the law through Christ's body and are now joined to him. Paul then describes a wretched inner conflict: the law is holy and good, but it stirs sin into activity. The person who wants to do right finds something else pulling in the other direction, leaving them crying out for deliverance.
The law reveals sin and even intensifies the awareness of it, but it cannot deliver from it; that requires something from outside the system.
24: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The most honest cry of moral desperation in the letter, followed immediately in chapter 8 by the answer.
Rome's Stoic tradition taught that reason could master passion if you tried hard enough. Paul's portrait of the person at war with themselves runs directly against Stoic optimism about human willpower. The person in chapter 7 knows what is right, agrees that it is right, wants to do it, and still fails. That is not a Stoic problem; it requires a Pauline solution.
Paul, speaking autobiographically or representatively of the person under law. Sin, personified as a resident power that hijacks the law's commands for its own use. The law itself, described as holy and good but powerless against sin.
This is one of the most debated passages in Pauline theology. Is Paul describing his pre-Christian experience, his Christian experience, or a representative everyman? Whatever the answer, the chapter honestly captures an experience familiar to everyone who has tried to be good by willpower alone and found it insufficient.
For when you keep failing at the thing you genuinely want to do right. The chapter gives language for a real experience and refuses to pretend the struggle is simple or shameful. The cry of verse 24 has been on the lips of serious people for two thousand years.
1Know 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?
2For 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.
3So 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.
4Wherefore, 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.
5For 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.
6But 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.
7What shall we 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 the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
8But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.
9For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
11For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
12Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
13Was 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.
14For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
15For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
16If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
17Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
18For 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.
19For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
20Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
21I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
22For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
23But 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.
24O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
25I 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.