The Struggle Against Sin

Romans 7

In my reading from various folks on this chapter 7 from Paul, many of the writers struggle with Paul’s meaning.......

One writer wrote this about chapter 7: “Seldom did Paul write so difficult and so complicated a passage as this.”

Another writer questions Paul’s motives behind writing this chapter, stating that Paul was confused from the outset.

A guy named Lenski said that Paul’s illustration was “perfectly chosen”

I can see it being a struggle for those that might think they have some good in them.....Paul was different......He had been a “legalist” on the outward keeping the law........He also had seen his evil/hatred in his persecution of Christians.

I think he knew he was a “whitewashed tomb”!

That is the reason for chapter 7.........the teaching that living out human existence is a struggle against sin.

Remember he began this epistle by explaining the depravity of man, in chapter 3 going as far as to say that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God......there is none righteous no not one......There is none that understands God and there is none that seeks after God.

I heard a preacher the other day say that none has loved God the way that God truly with all the heart!

It is a desperate lot and this is a man that understood that desperation and knew the answer!

Romans 3:22–24 “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:”

Knowing that his readers (especially the Jewish ones) would have many questions about how the law relates to faith in Christ, Paul sets out to explain that relationship (he refers to the law 25 times in this passage). In a detailed explanation of what it means not to be under law, but grace, Paul teaches that:

The Law can no longer condemn a believer (keyword: believer) 7:1-6

It convicts unbelievers of sin 7:7-13

It cannot deliver a believer from sin 7:14-25

Verse 1: Some older manuscripts has the word “or”, showing a link between chapter 6, some thinking going as far back as ch.6 verse 14.......

The main point here, as Paul speaks to those that know the law.......not scholars......just those that know the basic principles of all law keeping.....the main point is........everyone knows that the law’s authority over a person lasts his entire lifetime. But no more. When life ceases, law ceases to hold sway.

Verse 2: Paul proceeds to a specific case, and his for example shows that it is an illustration and not a proof. A married woman is bound by law to her living husband.5 But if her husband dies, the situation is radically altered. This is perhaps the only example in the New Testament of a situation in which death frees some living person who is then able to enter new relationships. It is not only the dead man over whom the law has no authority; this is true of the living woman as well. The man’s death alters her obligations.

Paul uses the word “loosed” others use released....it has a strong meaning meaning abolished, null and void.

Verse 3: The law that governs a married woman’s actions no longer has any jurisdiction over her once her husband dies.

In Verses 2-3, Paul uses an analogy of the marriage law to illustrate the point about the law’s jurisdiction.

There is a difficulty in that it is the husband who dies, while it is the wife who is free. Paul’s point is that death, the death of either partner, dissolves the marriage.

Verse 4: There is a finality about death. Paul is pointing to a complete and final break with law. This does not mean that the moral law is dead, as the apostle’s whole argument in this part of his letter makes clear. The release “is not from the righteousness which is taught in the law, but from the rigid demands of the law and from the curse which follows from its demands” (Calvin). It is not the law that dies, but the believer. The law still points to the kind of living that is pleasing in the sight of God. But the believer is dead to all forms of legalism. He will engage in upright living as the result but not the cause of his salvation.

The death’s results are complete and final

Someone else, in this case God Himself, initiated this death .

In response to faith in His Son, God makes the believing sinner forever dead to condemnation and penalty of the law.

Jesus suffered that penalty of death (2nd death) that the Law demanded

That we can be married to another, instead of sin and death, Christ which is life everlasting!

This marriage brings about fruit......new attitudes and actions.

Verse 5: Flesh meaning a non-moral being, his physical life/body, in an unredeemed state all will be morally evil!

The “body” the physical” will always contain the immoral desires

The spirit (inward) is what is born again and made new!

The last part of this verse just reiterates Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death;.......”

The fruit of this life, produce a harvest of eternal death!

“motions of sin, which were by the law”.....better said: “When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.”

Aroused meaning: when you are told not to do something the flesh seems always to tempt us to do the things that we are not to do.

Verse 6: This is not saying that we are free to do what God’s law forbids, but free from spiritual penalties of God’s Law, because we have died in Christ.....the Law with it’s condemnation and penalties no longer has jurisdiction over us through Christ.

We are now serving or a slave to a new spirit, a new state of mind which the Holy Spirit produces within us, a new desire and ability to keep God’s law.

Oldness of the letter: the external written law code that produces hostility and condemnation.

Verse 7: Paul wanted to make sure his readers did not conclude from verses 4-6 that the law itself was evil.

The Law reveals the Divine standard and as believers compare themselves against that standard, they can identify sin, which simply means a failure to meet God’s standard.

Paul starts here to use his personal experience as an example of what is true of unredeemed mankind and true of Christians.

Verse 8: A commentator cites a most unlikely theologian in Mark Twain. “This plain-spoken American said that most idealists overlooked one feature of the human make-up which is very prominent, namely, plain mulishness or perverseness. Mark Twain said that if a mule thinks he knows what you want him to do he will do just the opposite, and Twain admitted he was like that himself—often mean for the sake of meanness. But the fault lies not in the ideal but in the man who reacts against it.” The point of it all is that until the command not to do an evil thing comes we may not feel much urge to do it, but when we hear the command our native mulishness takes over. But the fault is not in the command. It is in the mulishness, in the sinner.

The Law is a means of establishing people’s guilt. It gives them something to sin against and in this way is an ally of sin. The commandment is aimed at our good, but it is quite possible for us to view it as a limitation on our freedom. Seen in that light it becomes a cause of resentment and opposition. Without something to rebel against there could be no rebels.

Verse 9: Paul is referring to the life of the natural man, the happy pagan, the person who lives cheerfully with no reference to law and with an untroubled conscience. He is not alive with the life that the New Testament writers so often speak about. He is alive in the sense that he has never been put to death as a result of a confrontation with the law of God.

When Paul became aware of the seriousness of the law or someone going through life without any knowledge of the Law of God and then realizes the seriousness of it....what is realized then is man’s true condition and desperate state.

He realizes his deadness, spiritually....

It could be said by Paul that all his “religious credentials” and his accomplishments was trash.

Verse 10: Theoretically, perfect obedience to the Law of God could bring eternal life and with it happiness and holiness. But no one except Christ has or even could fully obey!

Realizing our inability to keep the Law, we find death!

Verse 11: We should be clear that it was not the commandment that slew Paul. God’s commandment is always directed towards life. It was sin that killed the apostle. Sin took advantage of the situation and used the commandment to bring about Paul’s death.

In Paul’s situation, where he thought he was holy enough to pass through God’s judgement, Paul was deceived, instead the law brought death!

Verse 12: The fact that the Law of God reveals, arouses, and condemns sin, bringing death to the sinner, does not mean that the law is evil. Rather the Law is a perfect reflection of God’s holy character and the standard for humans to please Him!

Verse 13: The law did not cause death. Right through this passage sin is the villain. It is sin that killed him, sin using the law as its base, it is true, but sin. His But introduces something quite different. His clause of purpose, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, sums up much of the relationship between sin and the law. The law was given in order that sin might be seen for what it is.78 Without the law we would not recognize sin in its deepest evil; we would not see it as rebellion against the command of God. Through what was good repeats Paul’s essential point about the goodness of the law. Sin did the harm but did it through the law; it made use of what is good to bring about something evil. A second clause of purpose goes a little further than the first. Paul has said that the law’s working of death in the sinner was to show sin to be evil. Now he says that it was so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. This is somewhat more than making sin appear to be evil; now it “becomes” utterly evil.

Exceedingly.........Beyond measure

Some have argued that verses 14-25 are Paul’s inner conflict in describing his life before Christ. However in this passage Paul speaks of a desire to obey God’s law and hating his sin. Paul also uses present tense verbs, which would seem to point to his current situation.

Verse 14: The Law is spiritual .....which is to say that it reflects God’s Holy Character.

John 4:24 “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

This is a vivid way of bringing out the truth that Paul sins, though he does not want to. It does not mean that he never does the right, but is a strong expression for his inability to do the right as he would like to. Calvin brings out the paradox: “It would not be sin if it were not voluntary. We are, however, so addicted to sin, that we can do nothing of our own accord but sin.”

Sold to sin.......Sin contaminates him and frustrates his inner desire to obey the will of God.

Verse 15: The word allow here means to understand or acknowledge......

It could be read this way: “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”

Paul found himself doing things in which he disapproved!

Verse 16: Paul’s new nature defends the Divine standard.......the perfectly righteous law is not responsible for Paul’s sin. His new self longs to honor the law and keeps it perfectly.

Verse 17: Paul’s new inner self no longer approved of the sin that was still residing in his flesh, like his old self did, but rather strongly disapproved.

Sin is pictured as having taken up residence in Paul. This is not the honored guest, nor the paying tenant, but the “squatter”, not legitimately there, but very difficult to eject. Paul is personifying sin again; it is in some sense a separate entity, even though it is within him. But it is not external to him. This sin that lives in him, though it is not the real Paul, is what produces the acts which the real Paul hates so much. Sin is out of character for the believer, even though it is so difficult to be rid of it entirely.

Verse 18: Verses 18–20 repeat verses 14–17, more or less.........

Nothing good dwells in me....the fallenness of the flesh is that which is not good.

The new Spirit of God that lives within Paul is good, but it is of God not man.

Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak!

Verse 19-20: But things being what they are, it is the indwelling sin that brings about the evil action. Paul’s will is not behind it. He is not saying that he is not responsible; after all, it is his action. He is saying that he is no careless or audacious sinner. His will is firmly in opposition to evil, and that is to be borne in mind in assessing the situation.

Verse 21: Paul insists that he has the will to do good. But the trouble is that evil is right there with me. He cannot escape it.

Verse 22: The believer’s justified, new inner self no longer sides with sin, but joyfully agrees with the Law of God against sin.

Verse 23: Paul’s unredeemed, fallen human flesh wages war against his desire to obey God’s Law....The new Law of His Mind (the New Man created in Christ Jesus).

Galatians 5:17 “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”

Verse 24: This war between the 2 natures brings Paul to exclaim his desperation.......

O wretched man that I am.....Frustration and grief......Paul laments his sin, as we all should!

“set me free” means to rescue from danger, as a soldier would pull a wounded comrade from the battlefield!

Body of death.....the fallen nature, the physical body which is fallen by evidence of it’s decay physically and it’s lust for the fleshly!

We are still attached to it, it will also be redeemed with us, one day.

In traditional historic writings, says that a tribe near Tarsus (where Paul was from) tied the corpse of a murder victim to it’s murderer, allowing its spreading decay to slowly infect and execute the murderer......perhaps that is the image that Paul has in mind!

Verse 25: The first half of this verse answers the question Paul just raised....Christ will rescue us, when He returns, by His finished work we have the Hope and certainty of salvation!

The 2nd half summarizes the 2 sides of the struggle:

My mind desires God’s way

The flesh desires the sinful way!

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