O wretched man that I am!

A lot of confusion has surrounded the proper understanding of this chapter, and it has to be said that it is not the easiest. A couple of basic things might help us. Firstly, we should distinguish it from Galatians chapter 5. There the conflict is in the believer and is between the Spirit and the flesh. The believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit but still has the flesh to contend with, an evil principle within each person which never gets any better, and which he has until he knows sonship in all its fullness, conformity to the image of God’s Son. In Romans chapter 7, however, the conflict is not between the flesh and the Spirit but between the flesh and the law.

Secondly, whereas only the believer knows the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, any person could have known the conflict between the flesh and the law. The main question in this chapter is not, therefore, whether it has a believer or unbeliever in view, but rather the dynamic between the law and the flesh.

In verse 5 the statement is made that the passions of sins, ‘which were by the law’, worked in the members of our bodies in unconverted days to bring forth fruit unto death. This gives rise to two questions which are answered in our passage. ‘Is the law sin?’, v. 7, is the first question. No, the commandment is holy, just and good, v. 12. There is nothing wrong with the law, but when it is applied, sin fills the mind and heart with what it forbids. Whereas adherence to the law would have brought life, it did, in fact, bring a curse. ‘Was then that which is good made death unto me?’, v. 13, is the second question. That thought is immediately to be dismissed from the mind. The reality is that sin works death in the individual by that which is good, and thereby shows itself to be exceeding sinful. The flesh has no power in respect of the law of God, either to do what it commands, or to abstain from what it forbids, for in it no good thing dwells. How blessed then to know that the believer has been delivered from the dominion of the law, by death and resurrection with Christ, to walk after the Spirit and to know all the privileges and blessings of sonship revealed in chapter 8!