A marriage illustration
7
📚Do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the Law), that the Law has authority over a man as long as he lives? 2 📚For the woman who has a husband is bound to her husband, by the Law, as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is freed from the law regarding the husband.
3 📚So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still living, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband is dead, she is freed from that law, so that even though she gets married to another man, she is not an adulteress.
4 📚Therefore, my brethren, you also have died to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be married to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God.
7:3-4 The death of a woman’s first husband gives her freedom to marry another. In Paul’s spiritual application who is the first husband? Some commentators say he is Christ under the law before His death (Gal 4:4). A greater number, however, say the husband is the law that God gave through Moses and that this law died in relation to believers when Christ died.
But whether the first husband is the law, or Christ under the law, the chief point Paul makes is the same – believers died when Christ died (Rom 6:6-8). And being dead they are free from the authority of the law, free to have a spiritual “husband”, free to have a new relationship with God. By receiving Christ as their Lord and Savior they become His “bride”. See Matt 22:2; John 3:29; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:25-33; Rev 19:7. See the purpose of this union of Christ and believers – spiritual “fruit to God”. See John 15:1-8.⚜
5 📚For when we were in the flesh 📖, the sinful passions aroused by the Law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.
6 📚But now we have been delivered from the Law, having died to what held us, so that we might serve in newness of spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
7:6 That which “held us” was the law of Moses. In this verse Paul contrasts serving under the authority of the law and under the grace and freedom of God’s Spirit (see also 2 Cor 3:6, 17). In chapter 8 Paul makes much of service in the new way of God’s Spirit. He calls it a new way because after the resurrection of Christ God gave His Spirit in a new way (John 7:38; 14:16-17; Acts 1:4; 2:4).⚜
Paul experienced his sinful nature
7 📚What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? Absolutely not! Indeed, I would not have known sin except through the Law, for I would not have known what it means to covet unless the Law had said, “You shall not covet”.
7:7 This question arises because Paul said that the law aroused sinful desires (v 5). If it does so, is it not sinful itself? No. The law is holy, righteous, and good (v 12), but people by nature are unholy, unrighteous and bad (Rom 3:9-19). And the law reveals this. It is not the fault of the law that people want to break it. It is altogether the fault of people. In this and the following verses Paul shows how this worked out in his own experience.
The commandment which destroyed his good views of himself was the one against desiring. See Ex 20:17. Paul could keep from outwardly breaking the law of God, but he found his inward desires were beyond his control. In fact, the very command not to desire seemed to arouse his desires and make them stronger. The heart of human beings is filled with sinful desires and God’s law says “absolutely no” to them all. But this only causes these desires to become even more determined. Rebelliousness against God’s law is an inherent part of the “flesh” (Rom 8:7).⚜
8 📚But sin, taking the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of craving. For apart from the Law sin was dead.
7:8 Until he more clearly and fully understood that the law was commanding him not to desire, Paul did not recognize sin in himself. It was as though sin was completely inactive. He thought his heart was good, but soon found that it was a nest of poisonous snakes.⚜
9 📚For once I was alive apart from the Law. But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
7:9 Paul was a Jew born under the old covenant, and there was never a time when he was not under the law until he trusted in Christ. He means here that there was a time when he thought he was spiritually alive because he had not yet understood the spiritual meaning of the law and how it condemned his inner desires. When he truly understood the command not to desire he realized his sin, and that he was dead in sin and not spiritually alive as he had thought. “I died” speaks of an inner experience that was like death.⚜
10 📚And the commandment, which was to lead to life, I found to lead to death.
7:10 One reason God gave the law was to promote a good, just, and moral life among His people. To Paul it brought death. That is, he realized his sin by the law, and he knew that the result of sin is death.⚜
11 📚For sin, taking the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.
7:11 See the deceiving nature of sin. Compare Heb 3:13. It promised Paul life through the law, but brought death instead.⚜
12 📚Therefore, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and just, and good.
7:12 Verse 7.⚜
13 📚Then, did that which is good become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it might appear as sin, was producing death in me through that which is good, so that sin, through the commandment, might become exceedingly sinful.
7:13 There is no fault in the law. The whole problem with man is the sinful nature in him. God uses the law to show what sin is. Fallen human nature will not and cannot obey the law. Human beings break God’s holy law revealing the utter sinfulness of humanity.⚜
The power of the sinful nature in believers
14 📚For we know that the Law is spiritual. But I am fleshly, sold under sin.
7:14 In describing his past experiences in vs 7-13 Paul used the past tense. In vs 14-25 he changed to the present tense. Surely this change is significant. It seems clear to the author of these notes that in these verses Paul is describing what he was in himself even after his new birth in Christ. He uses the words “I”, “me”, “my”, “myself” nearly forty times in these twelve verses and refers to Christ only once at the end, and makes no mention of God’s Spirit at all. And having used the present tense all through, in v 25 he gives thanks to God through Jesus Christ, and then sums up how things are with him. This is surely an indication that in the preceding verses he is describing what he was experiencing as a believer.
Here in v 14 when he says he is “fleshly”, and “sold under sin”, he is indicating what he is like by nature, not what Christ has made him. The spiritual law of God has shown him what he is in his personal sinfulness. Who but an enlightened man could say what Paul says of himself in this verse? Those who do not know Christ may feel regret over foolish actions or the fact that they were caught in some misdeed, but unless we are awakened by the Spirit of God we will not have this deep consciousness of sinfulness and will not grieve about sin as Paul does here in vs 14-25. The man in these verses reveals that he is poor in spirit and mourns about sin, and so the kingdom of heaven is his. See Matt 5:3-4. This could not have been true before Paul met Christ on the road to Damascus.
The great battle in these verses against the sinful nature is not seen in unsaved people. It is true that even unbelievers may struggle against one or another quality in themselves with which they are not pleased. And they may want to gain control over all of their desires and not be in bondage to any. But this is merely one aspect of their sinful nature fighting against another aspect of it. And their motive is not to live a spiritual life in Christ or glorify God, but to glorify themselves, or to satisfy themselves in some way, or to gain something else that self wants very badly. Their struggle is not the spiritual struggle Paul reveals here.⚜
15 📚For I do not understand what I do; for I do not do what I intend to do, but do what I hate 📖. 16 📚If, then, I do what I do not intend to do, I agree with the Law, that it is good. 17 📚So then it is no longer I who do it, but sin that lives in me.
7:17 Paul is facing the terrible reality that an enemy lives in him, and that this enemy, sin, is stronger than he is. “No longer I...but sin that lives in me” (also v 20). Observe how he distinguishes between himself and his sinful nature. Before he obtained a new nature in Christ he was his old nature, and nothing more than that (this is true of all of us). But the words “no longer” suggest a radical change, the change he speaks of in v 4. When Christ died for him, in God’s eyes it was the same as Paul dying, and so the death of all that Paul had been (Rom 6:3-7; Gal 5:24; Col 3:3), and he learned to regard it as God did. He (and this is true of all believers) no longer had any connection with his sinful nature, for it was “dead” through the death of Christ, and he, the new man, was alive in Christ (compare Col 2:11-12). And so he refused any longer to regard his sinful nature, or any part of it, as himself – “no longer I”.
Sin lived on in him (as we see in these verses, in 1 John 1:8, and other places in the Bible), but now only as an alien which Paul detested and opposed. This unwelcome evil power (not some demon or demonic power, but simply his old nature), which was no longer himself, produced bad desires, bad motives, and even bad acts. But Paul, the new man in Christ, the man dead to the law and crucified with Christ, the man born again by the Spirit of God, did not purpose to do those things and did not do them. It was the old man of sin who did them, the old man who refused to accept his proper place of death and raged on, always trying to subdue Paul and bend him to his will.
Since it was not “I” who did the evil, “I” (the new man in Christ) could not be charged with doing it (see and understand Rom 4:8). That is why there is “no condemnation” to death and hell for those in Christ (Rom 8:1), and no losing of salvation because of what the old fallen man within does. That “old man” is already condemned, crucified, and, in God’s eyes, counted as dead forever.
Paul was a holy man of God and was not trying to make an excuse for bad behavior – he is writing by the inspiration of God’s Spirit for our instruction, and stating things as God sees them, and as he himself came to understand them. He did not side with his sinful nature, but rejected it with abhorrence, and longed to be completely free from its influences and its presence. And he was not at all denying his responsibility for his actions. He knew very well the truth he wrote in another place – “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor 5:10).⚜
18 📚For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) no good thing lives. For the ability to choose is present with me, but I do not see how to perform what is good.
7:18 Here is the truth God taught Paul about man’s “flesh” (“sarx” – v 5). This is the nature everyone has received from Adam. Compare Rom 1:29-32; 3:9-19; 8:5-8; 13:14; Gen 5:3; 8:21; Jer 17:9; Matt 7:11; 15:19; Gal 5:16-17; Eph 2:1-3; 1 Tim 1:15. See notes at those places.
Here Paul says there is no spiritually good thing in this nature received from Adam (though there are some things in it which people call good qualities – but people dominated by their sinful nature are not reliable judges of what is spiritual or good in God’s eyes. Compare Luke 16:15). Here Paul exposes what “self” really is.
What he writes is in agreement with the words of Jesus. Jesus said that “self” must be completely renounced – it is worthy only of death (Matt 10:38; Luke 9:23 – in this verse notice the word “daily”. Death to self must be an attitude believers renew daily, or the self, the flesh, will assert itself and try to rule us).
Observe in Paul’s case the contrast between his good desire and the poor results. Isn’t there reason enough for all believers to confess this? It is clear that in the fight against his sinful nature Paul could find absolutely nothing in himself that would give him the victory. To subdue and conquer his sinful nature he had to look for resources not found in himself.⚜
19 📚For I do not do the good that I choose to do, but the evil that I do not choose, that I do. 20 📚Now if I do what I do not choose, it is no longer I who does it, but sin that lives in me.
7:19-20 By restating, in slightly different words, what he declared in vs 15,17, he emphasizes the truth of it.⚜
21 📚I find, then, a law 📖: When I choose to do good, evil is present with me. 22 📚For I delight in the Law of God in the person I am inwardly.
7:22 Is it even remotely possible that any unsaved person, any unbeliever, could ever truly say this? The Bible reveals what the heart (the inner being) of unsaved people is like, and it certainly does not delight in God’s law – Gen 8:21; Jer 17:9; Matt 15:19. People dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1-3) do not inwardly delight in anything really holy as the law of God is. Here Paul surely means that in his new inner nature received in the new birth, in what he really was in Christ, he delighted in all the truth of God, including God’s law which was holy, righteous and good. He could say with the psalmist “Your law is my delight” and “Oh, how I love your law!” (Ps 119:77, 97).⚜
23 📚But I see another law 📖 in my bodily members, making war against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 📚O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death 📖?
7:15-24 Believers who like Paul have been awakened to the power of their sinful natures, will have the same complaint he had (certainly the writer of these notes has it) – they want to be good and do only good, but find something bad in them. They have holy desires, but find unholiness in their nature which hinders their efforts to act according to these holy desires.
Paul found that sin lurked in him like a cruel tyrant determined to keep him in bondage to itself. He could not be all that he wanted to be, or do all that he wanted to do, and some things he did he did not want to do at all. He found that the word of Jesus to His disciples is really true: “you are evil” (see Matt 7:11), and he did not try to explain it away by using other terms for it.⚜
7:24 This knowledge of evil within, and this unsuccessful struggle with himself to be good, brought a deep groan from Paul’s heart. This is the cry of a man face to face with the basic, total, incorrigible depravity of his fallen nature, which he himself can do nothing at all to change.⚜
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 serve the law of sin.
7:25 At the same time Paul thanks God through the Lord Jesus for the coming deliverance from his body of death (which he could only do as a believer in Christ), he admits he has a sinful nature that brings bondage. If we ignore his statement here we will not be able to interpret the preceding verses correctly (and several other passages in the New Testament). See also Rom 13:14; Gal 5:16-17; 1 John 1:8.
But the question comes, is there no deliverance now from the power of the sinful nature in believers? Can they not serve God with freedom and joy? Is there no victory over the enemy within? In chapter 6 Paul has already said that there is, and pointed the way. In chapter 8 he makes this even clearer. But here in chapter 7 he reveals that there is no hope of victory by trying to keep God’s law, or by struggling against sin with one’s own strength. Sin is far stronger than the strongest, most determined person on earth. Like Pharaoh of old it says “I do not know the Lord and I will not let His people go” (Ex 5:2).
But Paul does not teach this truth so that believers should despair and give in to the power of sin in them, but that they might know themselves and seek and find victory in God’s way.⚜