To whom does the passage refer?
To the unregenerate.--
It has been much discussed whether this section describes a justified man, or a man still unforgiven. The latter view was held by Origen and the Greek fathers generally. The former was adopted by Augustine and the Latin fathers generally. It was received in the West during the Middle Ages; and by the Reformers. It is now held, I believe, by most Calvinists. Among Arminians the view of the Greek fathers prevails. It is worthy of remark that this is the older opinion, and was theirs who spoke the language in which this Epistle was written. That this section describes Paul’s own experience before justification, I hold for the following reasons.
1. In the last section we saw a great change take place in Paul, a change from life to death. This change brought him into the state described in Romans 7:5. But in Romans 7:6, Paul says, and he never wearies to repeat it, that another change, as glorious as this was sad, had been wrought in him by the power of God. The completeness of this change has been frequently set before us (Romans 5:10; Romans 6:11; Romans 6:22; Romans 7:6). Paul is dead to sin, set free from its service, dead to the law which formerly bound him to a cruel master. This second change must be located between Romans 7:13, which gives the purpose of the first change, and Romans 8:1, which describes the state of those who enjoy the second. And since Romans 8:14-25 deal with one subject, we must put the second change either between Romans 8:13, Romans 14:1-23, or between chaps. 7 and 8. Now we have no hint whatever between Romans 8:13; Romans 14:1-23 of a change. But in Romans 8:1, the change is written in characters which no one can misunderstand. The words “made me free from the law of sin” proclaim in the clearest language that the bondage of Romans 8:23; Romans 8:25 has passed away.
2. Again, this section contradicts all that Paul says about himself and the Christian life. He here calls himself a slave of sin, and groans beneath its bondage. He is a calamity-stricken man. But in the last chapter he describes his readers as dead to sin, and set free from its service. In what sense could a Roman Christian dare to reckon himself dead to sin, if this section were a picture of the liberty from sin enjoyed by an apostle? Paul here says that sin dwelling in his flesh is the true author of his actions. But in the next chapter he says that they who live after the flesh will die. He here declares that he works out that which is bad. But in Romans 2:9, he teaches that upon all who do so the anger of God will fall. If these words refer to a justified person, they stand absolutely alone in the New Testament.
3. It has been objected that the language of this section is inapplicable to men not yet justified. But we find similar language in the lips of pagans. “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?” (Seneca). “We understand and know the good things, but we do not work them out” (Euripides). “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” (Xenophon). “I know what sort of bad things I am going to do: but passion is stronger than my purposes. And this is to mortals a cause of very great evils” (Euripides). “I desire one thing: the mind persuades another. I see and approve better things: I follow worse things” (Ovid). These passages prove that in many cases men are carried along against their better judgment to do bad things, and that even in pagans there is an inward man which approves what God’s law approves.
4. What Paul says elsewhere about his religious state before justification confirms the description of himself here given. He was a man of blameless morality (Philippians 3:6); it was in ignorance that he persecuted the Church (1 Timothy 1:13); he was zealous for God (Acts 22:3); a Pharisee of the strictest sect (Acts 26:5); no doubt he sought to set up a righteousness of his own (Romans 10:3). Of such a man’s inner life we have a picture in this section. His conscience approves the law: he makes every effort to keep it: 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 cause 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 of God by doing right, the more painfully conscious will he be of his failure.
5. It has been objected to the view here advocated that all this is the experience of many justified persons. But this only proves that the change in us is not yet complete, and Paul makes this a matter of reproach (1 Corinthians 3:1-4). On the other hand, there are thousands who with deep gratitude acknowledge that, while this section describes their past, it by no means describes their present state. Day by day they are more than conquerors through Him that loved them.
6. Then why did Paul puzzle plain people by using the present tense instead of the past? Let the man who asks this question write out the section in the past tense. “I was a man of flesh: I saw another law fighting against me, and leading me captive: I cried, ‘Calamity-stricken man,’” etc. The life and reality of the section are gone. To realise past calamity, we must leave out of sight our deliverance from it. The language of the last section made it easy to do this. Paul’s description of his murder by the hand of sin was so sad and so real that he forgot the life which followed. Hence when he came to speak of the state in which that murder placed him, it was easy to use the present tense. Of this change of the point of view we have already had other examples. 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 upon 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 5:14, 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 if already past. This mode of speech is common in all languages. But it is a conspicuous feature of the language in which this Epistle was written.
7. I cannot agree with those who say that Paul refers in this section to the state of babes in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:1); and in the next, to full salvation. The next chapter certainly describes Paul’s own experience, which was that of full salvation. And the language of this section is frequently used by those who are only in part saved from sin. But the least babe in Christ has experienced a resurrection from the dead (Colossians 2:13), and a deliverance purchased with the blood of Christ. Of such resurrection and deliverance there is no hint in this section, till the last verse of it proclaims the dawn of a brighter day.
8. If the above interpretation be correct, we have in this section the fullest description in the Bible of the natural state of man. Even in the immoral there is an inner man which 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 the path of sin. This is not contradicted, nor its force lessened, by Paul’s admission in Romans 2:26, that even pagans do sometimes what the law commands. 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 the occasional performance of noble and praiseworthy acts. Although men unforgiven sometimes perform 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. (Prof. J. A. Beet.)
The character described in the seventh chapter of Romans
Attend to--
I. The commencement of the struggle of sin in the very formation of the Christian character. In this process there are three features.
1. The rectification of our judgment on the subject of our relation to God. This is what is called conviction of sin. It arises from a perception of the meaning of the law of God, attention to the Scriptures. Things once deemed innocent are now seen to be evil, and sins once deemed trifling are now fell to be awful. The law appears with its avenging eye, and reiterating its demands. The mind is stripped of its vain hope of escaping Divine justice. This conviction may be produced gradually, or suddenly. It may be attended with terror, or it may be serene.
2. A strife on the part of the mind to get out of the state. That conviction of sin which has no influence on the conduct, is not a true conviction. Now the most painful part of the Christian life commences. The individual, from a perception of the holiness of God and the evil of sin, sets himself to avoid sin. But sin, indignant at the restraint, like a mighty torrent before a feeble barrier, collects all its strength, and bears all down before it. It makes him sensible of its strength by the vanity of his efforts to check it. Temptation takes him as easily as a whirlwind lifts a straw. He returns to renew his defeated resolutions, but only to have them defeated again. In what a state must this leave the mind!
3. A clear discovery of the gospel mode of deliverance, and the full application of the mind to it. Now commences the life of faith; for as that which is sown is not quickened except it die, so the faith that gives the mind up to Christ, to be saved by His merits and sanctified by His grace, arises out of the death of self-conflict. What is the consequence? Peace takes possession of the mind. There is a principle formed in the mind, and fixed there, directly opposed to sin, and getting the mastery over it. The struggle may be violent, but grace is sure to prevail, and every fresh victory leads to a further one; until the very habits and tastes of the mind become on the side of piety, and the man feels as in the firm grasp of the hand of his God. This is regeneration.
II. The illustration and confirmation of all this in the chapter before us.
1. The opinion of several eminent commentators is that Paul here refers to himself and men generally in an unconverted state, and under the law, and of that natural approbation which they have of what is good, though quite unable to follow it. They maintain that the language would not suit any other than an unconverted man, inasmuch as in the conflict sin is represented in every instance as getting the victory. But I think this opinion to be wrong, for--
(1) It is contrary to all that we know of the apostle and his history. When was he ever in this state of bondage to sin? Before conversion he was a Pharisee of the strictest sort: he was not only in his own opinion free from this miserable bondage, but he imagined that he was able to keep all the law of God.
(2) The language employed is far too strong for any man in an unconverted state. Can any such man say, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man”?
2. There is another opinion totally adverse to this, viz., that the apostle is speaking in his state as a Christian at the time he wrote this Epistle. This opinion, however, I conceive to be equally wrong.
(1) It does not agree with the design of the apostle, which was to convince that the law of God was neither an instrument of justification nor of sanctification; but the gospel of both. He has shown in the previous Chapter s that it was not an instrument of justification. In this chapter he begins to show, that neither was the law an instrument of sanctification, in that it was “weak through the flesh”; that it could only stir and goad sin by being used to oppose it; that, therefore, we must look out for something else, the gospel of Christ. Now how would it have accorded with this design, to have shown that the mature Christian would not be able to keep the law, nor to become sanctified? That would be proving too much, in that not only the law but the gospel could not be the instrument of sanctification, and would be quite foreign to his design.
(2) And as it does not conform to his design, so neither does it agree with the progressive representations of this and the following Chapter s. The seventh chapter should never have been separated from the eighth. And who does not see that the man in the eighth chapter is in a very different state from the man in the seventh, though the same man?
(3) It is not agreeable to truth and experience. It is not true of confirmed Christians that they always do the evil they would not, and fail to do the good that they would. Some half-hearted and sluggish Christians may be “carnal, sold under sin”; their “old man” may be as strong in them at the last as it is at the first. But it is not true of such Christians as Paul, who tells us that he “kept under his body,” and “brought it into subjection.” It is not true of such Christians as John describes when he says, “Whoso is born of God, doth not commit sin.” Nay, David says of good men that “they do no iniquity; they walk in Thy way.”
3. Then what is the alternative? Look at the person whom I described in the incipient stages of the formation of the Christian character. See if his case does not agree with every part of the representation and design of the apostle. There is one objection, however. Was he not Paul a Pharisee up to the time of his conversion? And did not that in one instant change him into a decided disciple of Jesus Christ? How then can the representations of this chapter be true of him in this point of view? Answer:
(1) He is speaking of what is common to converted persons at large. If, therefore, his extraordinary conversion had not allowed him to go through that precise experience, he would not be prevented from speaking of himself in this manner, as that which belongs to all converted persons. Such a mode of speaking is common in the Scriptures.
(2) It is not improbable that the apostle did go through something of this kind during the interval which elapsed between his saying, “What wilt Thou have me to do?” and Ananias coming to give him sight along with the gift of the Holy Spirit. He might learn in those three days and nights all that about sin, about the excellence of the law, about human imbecility, and about the mode of Divine deliverance which he here describes, and which many often do not learn in as many years. Conclusion: Is it asked, Why dwell on such minute parts of Christian experience? We think them of importance to correct false views of religion. How many are apt to suppose that religion consists in a few feelings and sentiments of a religious nature, and in a superficial change of the mind and of the behaviour! But religion is a change of character; it is the death of sin in the soul, commencing with a painful conflict, but proceeding to an habitual and a general victory: and nothing short of this will warrant the hope of a state of salvation. (J. Leifchild, D. D.)
The moral history of the inner man illustrated by this passage
At the outset we observe two remarkable things.
1. Two distinct forces (verse 15), represented as if they were two Egos, the one hating what the other does, the one willing to do what the other strenuously refuses. What are these?
(1) The moral desire, going ever with the law of God--which is “holy, just, and good.”
(2) The animal choice following ever the “law of sin in the members.” The choice and the desire, which ought ever to be one in the one being, are in man’s case two. All are bound to admit the existence of this fact, however they may differ in their methods of explaining it.
2. The development of these two powers in the same person. The language shows a kind of underlying personality in which these two selves live--“the wretched man” (verse 24); “the inner man,” the moral core of our nature--the man of the man. That there should be an opposition between the desire and the choice of different men is a remarkable fact. But that each man should be a self-divided kingdom, a self-created battleground on which heaven and hell fight their campaigns, is a fact as wonderful as it is evident. Here we have the inner man--
I. In absolute subjection to the flesh--thoroughly animalised. It is the state prior to the advent of the commandment (verse 10), when “sin was dead,” and the man fancied himself morally “alive.” The soul of infants, of course, is in this state. It is the creature of bodily appetites and desires. It seems wise and kind that the mind should for a time lie dormant in these frail organisations--that the muscles, limbs, and nerves might get strength. But the language is evidently intended to apply to adults. And are not millions walking after the flesh, and living to the flesh? the great question of their existence being--“What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?” The passage teaches that the state of the soul in this stage of its history is--
1. A state of unconscious sin. “Without the law sin was dead.” It produced no compunction. The soul was “dead in trespasses and sin.” There is no moral struggle against it. Still, though sin is not a matter of consciousness, it is sin.
(1) It is a violation of our constitution. Were we like the brute, without intellect or conscience, it would be proper to give full play to all our animal impulses and desires. But as we have souls connecting us with moral law, whose well-being consists in the possession of virtue, and which outlive the body, to allow the body a mastery over the soul is a more monstrous anomaly than the enthroning of a ruthless savage as the monarch of a civilised people.
(2) It is a violation of the design of our being. Why are we thus organised? That our spiritual nature might be buried in the material, that the Divine spark might be extinguished, or even clouded by the animal nature? No. The body is designed as a temple in which the soul is to worship, an organ by which the soul is to subordinate the material universe to its service.
(3) It is a violation of Biblical injunctions. We are commanded “to mortify the flesh,” etc., to keep in subjection our bodies, etc.
2. A state of false life. “I was alive without the law once”--without the understanding of the law. In this fleshy stage of being, man is so destitute of all sense of responsibility, and all convictions of sin, that he fancies everything right. He lives, it is true. See him revelling in pleasure, or bustling in business. There is life, but it is a false life; not that of an intelligent moral being, made to act to the glory of God. It is the life of a dying man, who in his delirium fancies himself strong and hale; it is the life of a maniac who acts under the impression that he is a king. Such, then, is the state of man in the first stage of his soul’s history.
II. In violent battlings with the flesh (verses 9-24). In the first stage the conscience was asleep. Not so now. A new era has dawned--conscience is roused from her long slumbers, and a scene of terrible conflicts has commenced. This second stage--
1. Is introduced by a spiritual revelation of the Divine law. “The commandment came.” The law of God flashed on the conscience and revealed the true moral position. The bodily eye would never be developed without light. It would of course be a perfect organism, but it would not yield the sensation of sight. So with the conscience. It is a perfect organism, but without God’s law it will never see. Bring “the commandment” upon it, and it will give the man a new world. When the beams of morning play upon the eyeball, the slumbering tribes awake; so when the light of God’s law breaks on the conscience, the man awakes to his true condition. The revelation gives him three horrific feelings.
(1) The feeling of utter wrongfulness. He looks within and finds “no good thing.” He feels towards the commandment as Hamlet’s wicked mother felt towards her reproving son--“Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,” etc.
(2) The feeling of miserable slavery.
(a) In corporeal slavery the soul may rise on the wings of devotion, may revel in thought: but here the spiritual faculties are manacled.
(b) Death puts an end to physical and political slavery; but this spiritual slavery, death has no power to destroy.
(3) The feeling of moral death. Sin woke into consciousness, and “I died.” The law was “found to be unto death.” It “slew” him. What is the feeling of the criminal, who has been cheering his doleful state with the delusive hope of pardon, when the executioner tells him the fatal hour is come? What is the feeling of the young man whose blood is warm, heart buoyant, and hopes high, when the physician tells him that a fatal plague has seized him? The feeling of death! What is it? The question produces a cold shiver throughout the frame. But the feeling of death in relation to the soul, what can be more horrific?
2. Is characterised by a struggle to get deliverance by the law. In the first stage the law was disobeyed, but then there was no feeling about it; it was done mechanically. But now there is a struggle for a deliverance by the law.
(1) And this is futile, because the revelation of the law stimulates the tendency to disobey it. “It wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.” Without the law sin was dead. To our depraved nature, “stolen waters are sweet.” The moment a thing is prohibited our desire to obtain it is increased.
(2) And the struggle is painful, because whilst the law stimulates the tendency to sin, it deepens the impression of its enormity. It is when conscience approves of what we practically oppose that our life becomes intolerable. Thus the sinner in this state cries out, “O wretched man that I am,” etc. This, then, is the second stage of the soul’s history. Some reach it and agonise there forever. Cain, Belshazzar, Judas, did. Some reach it as did the thousands on the day of Pentecost, and thence pass on to the peaceful and perfect stage of being.
III. In victorious sovereignty over the flesh. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1. The deliverance comes not by the law. The law brought on the conflict. The law exposed the disease, but had no remedy; the slavery, but it could not emancipate; the danger, but it could not deliver.
2. As an illustration of the enormity of sin. It is sin that has reduced man to this state in which he cries out, “O wretched man that I am,” etc.
3. As a proof of the glory of the gospel. Science, education, law, the utmost human ingenuity and effort, none of these can deliver man. The gospel alone can do it, has done it, does it, and will do it. (D. Thomas, D. D.)