Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
Now then it is no more I (my renewed self) that do it ('that work it'), but sin that dwelleth in me - that principle of sin that still has its abode in me. To explain this and the following statements, as many do (even Bengel and Tholuck), of the sins of unrenewed men against their better convictions, is to do painful violence to the apostle's language, and to affirm of the unregenerate what is untrue. That co-existence and mutual hostility of "flesh" and "spirit" in the same renewed man, which is so clearly taught in Romans 8:4, etc., and Galatians 5:16, etc., is the true and only key to the language of this and the following verses. It is hardly necessary to say that the apostle means not to disown the blame of yielding to his corruptions, by saying, 'It is not he that does it, but sin that dwelleth in him.' Early heretics thus abused his language; but the whole strain of the passage shows that his sole object in thus expressing himself was to bring more vividly before his readers the conflict of two opposite principles, and how entirely, as a new man-honouring from his inmost soul the law of God-he condemned and renounced his corrupt nature, with its affections and lusts, its stirrings and its outgoings, root and branch. 'The acts of a slave (says Hodge, excellently) are indeed his own acts; but not being performed with the full assent and consent of his soul, they are not fair tests of the real state of his feelings.'