Quick Notes on Romans 7

Is Romans 7:14ff. speaking of the unbeliever or the believer?

There has to be a reason why Paul changes from past tense to present tense. People who take the shift in chapter 8 between the past Paul and present Paul have no explanation for the shift. Verb tenses are extremely important

Mark 12:26–27 (CSB)

26 And as for the dead being raised—haven’t you read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to him: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? 27 He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are badly mistaken.”

Should we just discount Jesus’ argument based on verb tenses?

The alternative view has no explanation for the very tense shift in verse Romans 7:14. It just seems like a good way for Paul to confuse us if he’s just talking about someone under the law throughout Romans 7

This cannot be an unbeliever

This cannot be an unbeliever for a number of reasons:

Romans 7:25 (CSB)

25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

Paul says that he’s serving the law of God with his mind, but serving the law of sin with his flesh.

Romans 8:5–7 (CSB)

5 For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. 6 Now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so.

Even though Paul describes himself as serving the law of sin with his flesh, notice that this cannot be an unbeliever because the unbeliever, according to Romans 8, has a mindset that is hostile to God’s law. The unbeliever does not serve the law of God with his mind.

So, according to Romans 8, the believer serves the law of God in his mind, and that’s exactly what we see from Romans 7:14ff.

Further, this cannot be an unbeliever because this person is struggling to live godly…

Earlier in Romans 7, there is no struggle.

In Romans 1, there is no struggle.

Here there is a struggle because the believer is ever aware of his sin.

Adding to this, if it’s talking about Paul’s life before he was a believer, it doesn’t make sense. Paul wasn’t struggling with his sinfulness before he was a believer. This is what Paul believed of himself before he was a believer:

Philippians 3:6 CSB

6 regarding zeal, persecuting the church; regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless.

“Freed From Sin”

Elsewhere in Romans, the text talks about how believers are freed from sin. We are no longer slaves. How do we answer this? This is answered in a number of ways:

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Volume 1 (i) The Indwelling of the Spirit (8:1–11)

(i) Both 7:14b, etc., and 8:2 are indeed true of the Christian life, and neither is to be watered down or explained away.

(ii) While the Christian never in this life escapes entirely from the hold of egotism, that is, of sin, so that even the best things he does are always marred by its corruption, and any impression of having attained a perfect freedom is but an illusion, itself the expression of that same egotism, there is a vast difference between the ways in which the believer and the unbeliever are prisoners of the law of sin—a difference which fully warrants, we believe, the ἠλευθέρωσεν of 8:2. The believer is no longer an unresisting, or only ineffectually resisting, slave, nor is he one who fondly imagines that his bondage is emancipation. In him a constraint even stronger than that of sin is already at work, which both gives him an inner freedom (cf. 7:22, 25b (τῷ μὲν νοῒ δουλεύω νόμῳ θεοῦ)) and also enables him to revolt against the usurper sin with a real measure of effectiveness. He has received the gift of the freedom to fight back manfully.

(iii) The present effectiveness of the authority of the Spirit in those who are in Christ is the pledge of their future complete freedom from the authority of sin. Between the pressure still exerted on their lives by sin, to which 7:14b, etc., bear witness, and the pressure exerted already by the Holy Spirit, to which 8:1ff testifies, there is no equilibrium: the former is destined to pass away, the latter to be fully realized hereafter.

There is a sense of “already, not yet.” Here.

In a sense we are not slaves to sin, but in a sense we still are.

You still struggle with sin. Are you perfect? We are already free, but not yet free.

In a sense we have already overcome death, but in a sense we haven’t.

Yes, Paul is not a slave of sin.

Yes, Paul is at peace… but only because of Jesus… This is what Romans 7 itself says… But even with Jesus, we still stumble, and sin, and do the wrong things.

Romans 7:24–25 (CSB)

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

Notice the transition here. You have Jesus Christ introduced at the beginning of verse 25, but you still have the struggle with sin at the end of the verse.

Romans 8:10 (CSB)

10 Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.

Even in Romans 8, you see that struggle between sin.

In Romans 7, Paul is talking about his present struggle with sin… It’s lucky that he’s been freed from that sin through Jesus Christ. That’s what Romans 7 is about.

Quotes about Romans 7:

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Volume 1 (ii) A Necessary Clarification of What Has Been Said concerning the Law (7:7–25)

But we are convinced that it is possible to do justice to the text of Paul—and also to the facts of Christian living wherever they are to be observed—only if we resolutely hold chapters 7 and 8 together, in spite of the obvious tension between them, and see in them not two successive stages but two different aspects, two contemporaneous realities, of the Christian life, both of which continue so long as the Christian is in the flesh.

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Volume 1 (ii) A Necessary Clarification of What Has Been Said concerning the Law (7:7–25)

Against (iii), and also against (ii)[that this is a reference to Paul before his conversion], the use of present tenses throughout vv. 14–25 weighs heavily; for the use of the present is here sustained too consistently and for too long and contrasts too strongly with the past tenses characteristic of vv. 7–13 to be at all plausibly explained as an example of the present used for the sake of vividness in describing past events which are vividly remembered. Moreover v. 24 would be highly melodramatic, if it were not a cry for deliverance from present distress. A further objection to (iii), which also lies against (ii) and (iv) and (v) and also against (vi)[that this is a reference to the non-christian Jew], is the order of the sentences in vv. 24–25. Verse 25b is an embarrassment to those who see in v. 24 the cry of an unconverted man or of a Christian living on a low level of Christian life and in v. 25a an indication that the desired deliverance has actually arrived, since, coming after the thanksgiving, it appears to imply that the condition of the speaker after deliverance is just the same as it was before it. All the attempts so far made to get over this difficulty have about them an air of desperation

Overall, the answer is not so clear and people will need to discern for themselves. I believe the evidence lends itself that Romans 7:14ff. are a reference to the believer, as I think this view has less difficulties to overcome, and is - overall - more consistent with the context.

If you have any questions: [e-mail] or text me.