Romans 7 is Not What You Think

The “I” in Romans 7 is impersonation. Paul is impersonating Adam and those who are in Adam in verses 7-25. That is, it is in reference to anyone living according to a post sin Adamic nature rather than living in a renewed Spirit nature. In Romans 5:12-14 the Adam figure along with the law are introduced and mentioned together. So, this is a continuation of that Adam figure. Have you wondered why Paul mentions “coveting”? Well, that was the first sin, wasn’t it? When mankind coveted and ate the forbidden fruit? They had to have it. Notice in verse 9 that he says, “I was once alive apart from the Law.” Adam had spiritual life. He was in a state of innocence and moral perfection. He was both alive and he did not originally have any law—he was “apart from” the law—and Adam is the only one who could say that. Then when the commandment, “thou shalt not eat of this fruit” was given, sin became a thing, sin came into being and produced death as he continues to say, “but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died.”

Notice how all this is in opposition to verses 4-6 which is quite a different voice. Paul speaks to his audience as “brethren” and tells them what the Law used to be like for them, it bore fruit for death. “But now,” he says, they have been released from the Law. They died to what previously had them bound. But if he is speaking past tense here of them being delivered from the power and bondage of the Law, then why does he go on to speak of himself in verse 10, 14, and 23 as being still bound and controlled by the Law so that it proved to result death in him and cause him to sin? May I suggest that it is because he is not speaking of himself but speaking in a way where he is impersonating Adam or those “in Adam.” Otherwise, it seems quite contradictory and does not make sense. Are they controlled by the Spirit or are they controlled by the Law? If they are controlled by the Law then they are not controlled by the Spirit and if they are controlled by the Spirit, they are not controlled by the Law. But if they have been released from the Law, the Law is dead to them and does not arouse in them sinful passions because they are joined to Christ now and operate out of the Spirit to bear fruit rather than operating by the Law to bear death. So, either the Law is dead to them so that its bondage does not urge within them evil passions to sin. Or, they are still prisoners to the Law and not joined to Christ to bear fruit for God by the power of the Spirit.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that those who still operate by the Law are not saved because verse 4 indicates to the “brethren” that they were “made to” die to the Law. Meaning, it’s their goal and purpose to pursue that to make sure it happens. And he says, so that you “might be” joined to another, further indicating that this is the goal to attain. But those who have been wedded to Christ and the Spirit through salvation but then operate according to the law and seek favor from God by the works of the flesh through the law rather than living by and through the Spirit with faith, they are adulteresses against Christ. They were made to die to the law and be divorced from the law so that they may be fully joined to Christ in faithfulness. Yet, their thinking is quite opposite. Instead of thinking it adultery to produce their own performance and measure of works to please God, they think it adultery against God if they do not maintain a certain level of pious works. But that is the sort of thinking they must die to in order to be set free, to be fully joined to Christ, and not be an adulteress. They must pursue faith so that good works naturally come forth from them. It is an opposite and counter-intuitive mindset to worldly wisdom and the natural mind but that’s how it works to bear fruit for God from the Spirit.

What are some other evidences that the “I” in Romans 7 are those in Adam? Notice that “commandment” is singular. It is not speaking here of a plurality of laws but of one. Who was the only one in history who had a single law commanded to him? Adam. And that’s the law that was broken, the commandment to not take—to not covet.

Notice how sin is personified in verse 11, “for sin [the serpent], taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” It was the serpent that tempted and deceived Eve and Adam in the garden and it resulted in their death. This verse would make less sense if this isn’t viewed as personification of the serpent because sin itself cannot deceive. Sin is not a conscious entity within itself to speak lies.

In Romans 7:14-25, I do not believe that Paul is describing himself when he was previously a religious unsaved Pharisee because in Philippians 3:6 Paul describes all his previous accomplishments when he was a Pharisee and how he upheld all the laws. He said, “as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless” (cf. Gal 1:14). This points to the fact that no one could point at him and say he was at fault anywhere and because that was the case, we might infer that he was not living with a troubled and tortured conscience. Though, one could also postulate that the reason Paul had such a zeal for the Law before his conversion could have been because his conscience was constantly troubling him, feeling like he was never doing as much as he should have or could have been doing to serve God. Such was certainly the case in the pre-conversion experience of Martin Luther where he constantly was living with a troubled and tortured conscience, even to the point of attempting to beat his body into submission through ascetic practices. Therefore, it would make sense for Luther to interpret this passage according to that past experience and bias of his. However, I do not think that we have the biblical evidence to support that view.

We do not have biblical evidence to support that Paul was one to torture himself with self-introspection whether in the past or in his present Christian experience. I have made a very robust case for this in my previous article: Piety or Pietism? The torturous self-introspective Christian experience and struggle with the law was not a Pauline Christian experience. Nor would it make sense to interpret this passage as the general condition of unsaved people because in Romans 1:18-32 their condition towards the law is to ignore the law and live as they please in rebellion to God. Unbelievers are happy to live in that state and the law does not continually prick at their hearts to unsettle them or condemn them, as they suppress the truth in their own unrighteousness. However, because of our modern psychology, we are tempted to see this passage in a certain way, reading that into the text, this analyzing of our own thoughts, feelings, and struggles in life. But we must be watchful over that kind of bias.

What I believe we have here, then, is a crisis type moment and experience before conversion where someone becomes acutely aware of their total inability to keep the perfect standards of the law and their bondage to sin; and are thus compelled to Christ. There is a crescendo of praise at the end of this chapter where Paul says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” and he says that because he is describing and exemplifying that jubilant praise that a person has once they come into Christ and are freed. A few verses later support this proposition as it says, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Ro 8:2), as Paul addresses the believers again.

The freedom of a new believer could be compared to coming back into a state of innocence like Adam was before sin. In this way, sinning is still possible, but it is not a compelling force that reigns. Therefore, Martin Luther’s theology of “simul justus et peccator” (simultaneously justified/righteous and a sinner) is a completely inadequate understanding of the new life and freedom we have in Christ. Romans 7 isn’t a passage about Christians struggling with sin. How could that be? When Paul says in the previous chapter, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” and “for he who has died is freed from sin” (Ro 6:2, 7).

Victory over sin is not attained through the keeping of commandments but through faith in God and the power of the Holy Spirit operating through one’s faith. Unfortunately, many commentators today teach Romans 7 is all about the Christian’s struggle with sin and the law, telling everyone, this is just how it’s going to be, you’ll never rise higher than that description in Romans 7, everyone has their own stuff, everyone has their own besetting sin to deal with. But the Christians and early church fathers before Calvin, Luther, and Augustine did not have that kind of interpretation of Romans 7. But ever since the Reformation, that interpretation has become common place and some of those doctrines that came out of the Reformation are what keep people’s faith in a prison cell so that they cannot have victory over sin. But it is a prison cell of their own making.

Paul makes it very clear in verse 5 that the sinful passions being aroused by the law through the flesh was a past tense experience of people before they come to Christ. Verse 5 says, “For while we [generally and collectively, him and his audience of “brethren”] were [past tense] in the flesh [a state of past being], the sinful passions [which are supposed to be crucified/killed for the believer according to Galatians 5:24], which were [past tense] aroused by the Law [past tense], were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death [past tense].” Therefore, this continual inner struggle in verse 19, “For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want” is not a descriptive experience of the normal Christian life. Those passions, desires, and lusts are supposed to be dead so that there is not a war within. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of peace, who brings to a halt the raging storms within. If this is not your experience, then it could be that you are not saved or it could be that you are subjecting yourself to the law, to the works of the flesh. Therefore, Paul has this admonition: “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” and “walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” (Gal 5:1, 16).

Most of the arguments in this section have been taken from Ben Witherington III: Paul’s Letter to the Romans, A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. This includes the argument which said that the commentators before Luther and Augustine saw this text differently from many modern interpreters who followed after Luther and Augustine.

Other information for understanding Romans 7

• NASB-95 is the translation used for this study.

• The Mosaic Law is in view here but it pragmatically applies to other Christian laws, commandments/instructions in the Bible, and pious acts. For Christians, the Holy Spirit is the new law, the new sheriff in town. We live by the Spirit’s direction with an informed conscience of the Word of God.

• The body of Christ (v. 4) refers to the death of Christ on the cross, not the church

• The law is not bad or sinful. The law is good.

• Sin is the problem. The sin in which Paul has in view here are the lusts of the flesh, the passions and impulsive desires that operate through the flesh (body). The passions of sin are more his view here rather than merely the choices of sin. Passions like: envy, greed, lust, anger, rage, anxiety, fear, etc.

• The body (flesh) is not evil but it is the sin that uses the body as an instrument of evil that is the problem.

• The “coveting” can also be understood as lust.

• The “law of sin” can be understood as the principal force of sin at work.

• It should be understood that Christians do not have a “sinful nature,” or should not have a sinful nature because we have died to the sinful nature (the fleshly evil passions).

I do not believe that sin is some kind of substance or entity within itself. Sin is a choice to choose what is not pleasing to God and what is destructive to ourselves. So where do the sinful passions come from? They arise from within the body and the body’s hedonistic nature to desire pleasure and fulfillment. They arise from wrong mindsets and the corruption of the body. The corruption of the body is not sin but the damage which sin has caused to the body from all our ancestors all the way back to Adam. Additionally, the corruption of the body is human weakness because of the lack of spiritual fulfillment, wholeness in God, lack of proper nutrition or lack of a physically healthy state. Bodily weakness leads to choosing what is easy, pleasurable, and gratifying in the moment. In rabbinical literature, there is what is called the yetzer hara (inclination towards evil) and the yetzer hatov (inclination towards good). It’s basically like there’s this energy or drive within us that can be used for either good or for evil. But, that energy within itself is not evil. Here in Romans 7 though, the body’s energy is inclined and bound to sin and this is what is referred to as the sinful passions. It’s like being stuck in the mud of yetzer hara. Though one can still choose to do good with that energy, sin becomes a slave master, preventing the person from always doing the good that they want to do. But when someone comes to Christ and abides in faith, their mind is given the freedom over this negative inclination towards evil so that the sinful passions are not there because the mind has been given control and chooses to walk by faith in the Spirit. The evil passions have been crucified with Christ and so they are dead (Gal 5:24). But nonetheless, we must still continually make the conscious decision to choose to do that which is good. Because of this energy drive within us, we must continually use it to pursue righteousness and God’s purpose and calling for our lives. If we turn back to living in self-gratification, self-seeking, and worldly pleasures rather than serving God and seeking the things above where Christ is, then we will inevitable find ourselves sinning where that energy within us is being used for evil and we could get stuck back in that cycle. It is always possible to go back (Gal 4:8-11; 5:1; Ro 6:12; 11:22; 1 Cor 15:2).

Here is a quote from early church father, Athanasius (296-373 AD)

In the beginning wickedness did not exist. Nor indeed does it exist even now in those who are holy, nor does it in any way belong to their nature. But men later on began to contrive it and to elaborate it to their own hurt.

Athanasius refers here to the wickedness that did not exist in the beginning with Adam and then he says that like the condition of Adam was apart from wickedness, so also is the condition of those who are holy, the believers. Therefore, he believed that the normal and expected state of believers was that their nature was turned to innocence, and the corruption of their nature was reversed.

Athanasius claims that the view he has of the nature of evil within humanity is the church’s theology. He says:

Evil has not from the beginning been with God or in God, nor has any substantive existence; but that men, in default of the vision of good, began to devise and imagine for themselves what was not, after their own pleasure. 4. For as if a man, when the sun is shining, and the whole earth illumined by his light, were to shut fast his eyes and imagine darkness where no darkness exists, and then walk wandering as if in darkness, often falling and going down steep places, thinking it was dark and not light — for, imagining that he sees, he does not see at all — so, too, the soul of man, shutting fast her eyes, by which she is able to see God, has imagined evil for herself, and moving therein, knows not that, thinking she is doing something, she is doing nothing. For she is imagining what is not, nor is she abiding in her original nature; but what she is is evidently the product of her own disorder. 5. For she is made to see God, and to be enlightened by Him; but of her own accord in God's stead she has sought corruptible things and darkness, as the Spirit says somewhere in writing, “God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions” Ecclesiastes 7:29. Thus it has been then that men from the first discovered and contrived and imagined evil for themselves.

The view Athanasius has of sin is that it is not some kind of substance dwelling within people but rather, evil is nothing, just as darkness is nothing. Evil is the opposite of choosing the light of what is good. Choosing sin and the corruption that follows results from focusing on evil imaginations, self-gratifications, self-pleasures, forgetting God, bodily lusts, and having the mind fixed on the senses of the body rather than on the knowledge and contemplation of God. He says that evil “originates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul.” Therefore, to Athanasius, evil was not some kind of substance but rather a misplaced and perverted choice. The darkened soul was the mind that was not fixed on God. He also lists a bunch of sins and says, “All of which things are a vice and sin of the soul: neither is there any cause of them at all, but only the rejection of better things.” What Athanasius is saying here is that sin is caused by the rejection of choosing better things to instead choose lesser things. This is the only cause for sin according to Athanasius and so this idea of a totally depraved sinful nature would have been a foreign concept to Athanasius. The idea that your sinful nature caused you to sin was also a foreign idea. The only thing that was responsible for sin was your choice to not choose the right thing. After giving Paul as an example in Philippians 3:14 of a believer who contemplated on the truth of God, he says, “the holy man, making the good his mark, never did what was evil.” That is to say, as long as Paul had kept his mind upon God, he never practiced any evil.

Having defended this view of sin from the testimony of rabbinical literature of how the Jews saw it, along with the testimony of how Athanasius saw it, how is it then that Paul says in Romans 7:20 “But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”? I do not believe that Paul is denying the personal responsibility for sin. I do not think that he is blaming sin as some kind of separate entity within itself to say that he is guiltless of committing sin. Rather, sin is still personified in this verse as if it were an entity within because that is certainly what it feels like when the lusts of the flesh take over. So, Paul is not speaking literally here about the nature of sin. After all, the “I” that Paul is referring to is not himself but the representation of the person in Adam. Paul is speaking of the principle (law) of sin which is at work within the person (v. 21-25). It is a description of how the darkness within has the tendency to pull one deeper into the darkness. But this darkness is nothing in and of itself except misappropriated thoughts and desires. It is the absence of God’s light and such an absence leads towards corruption because without illumination and the life of God, there is disorder and stumbling through the darkness through loss of sight and lack of sustenance and lack of satisfaction. Such darkness makes the heart and mind desperately sick and from that place of sickness, the body operates in disfunction and ultimately wins the fight against what the mind wants since the senses of the body are such a powerful force. For this person and in this situation, the concentrated energy of the body is no match for the concentrated energy of the mind and so whatever is the most pleasurable and sensational in the moment wins the victory over the mind.

If a struggling Christian finds themselves in this situation, it is because faith is short-sighted and feelings speak louder than faith so that evil desires win out over faith. And, it is because they give in to the pleasures of the flesh, especially at the very first sight, feeling, or thought of it and it has at that point taken a hold and prevails. But Paul tells his readers, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Ro 13:14).

Romans 6:11-14 says

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Every believer should “consider” or “reckon” themselves to be dead to sin since they have been crucified with Christ. But I find here that we have a great problem for many who teach a wrong understanding of Romans 7 saying that it is all about the Christian struggle. The Calvinist doctrine of total depravity is also a problem along with the Augustinian Reformed understanding of original sin and concupiscence, of which most Protestants affirm. The problem is also with the duelist view of the nature of a Christian being a sinful nature and a renewed nature both equally fighting against each other. Such beliefs do damage to our faith because they tell us that our identity is a sinner even though we are saved—sin is part of our identity. If that is true, how can we rise up in faith to reckon ourselves as dead to sin if we still think of sin as something alive within us or part of us? We think it to be an inevitable part of us that we can never overcome and by doing so, we fail to reckon ourselves as dead indeed to sin. These beliefs which are as a virus within our minds, need to be cleansed out so that we can have the victory that is ours in Christ through faith. Jesus perfected obedience in the flesh through His life and so when He was crucified, it was not just a physical death but a spiritual death to the total corruption of the body so that He won victory for us and it is ours if we receive it by faith without any double-mindedness.

Commentary on Romans 7

Verses 4-6 “Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law…”

Paul calls them “brethren” and indicates to them that they are supposed to die to the law, if they haven’t done so already and the purpose of this dying is that they may be fully joined to Christ and bear fruit for God. Then he says, “while we were in the flesh,” indicating a past time where both Paul and his readers were living in the flesh but now are no longer. Then Paul says, “But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound.” However, just because they have been freed, that doesn’t mean they are incapable of going back to their former ways as a dog returns to its vomit. Furthermore, someone might be freed but not realize the freedom they have yet and so they continue to live as slaves since they continue to see themselves that way. In these three verses, Paul then indicates a past reality accomplished, that we have died to that by which we were bound but yet we were also made to die to the law (something not yet fully accomplished by all of his readers). These verses then set up the rest of the chapter communicating to us that all Christians should be free but yet not all Christians live free. Those who are not living free are still living “in Adam” or “in Moses” rather than “in Christ.”

Verse 5 “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.”

This means that the more commandments one has, the more goals one has to attain, the perfect obedience to all those laws and doing everything right becomes increasingly out of reach and is seen as too far to possibly obtain. But nonetheless, this person tries very hard to reach that standard and be acceptable under the examination of that standard. Such a diligent striving to be perfect through striving harder to do these things produces the opposite end to which this person is trying to attain. The prideful striving of acceptance of God, acceptance of the world, and acceptance of self through the works of the law, produce in such a person inner turmoil which feed the passions of the flesh and these passions become more intense and so sin becomes more frequent and intense. Therefore, it is one’s focus upon the law that arouses sinful passions. It’s a very counter-intuitive thing: you’re told not to do something and you find yourself wanting to do it even more just because you were told not to do it. It’s like the law itself is the serpent, deceiver, and tempter, urging you on to sin. However, it is not the law itself that is bad but the sinful passions focused on the law that produces sin and death within you.

Verse 6 “But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”

Serving in the newness of the Spirit is to not focus on law-keeping, but being pleasing to God by pursuing faith in Him and out of that faith produces good fruit. The Spirit directs us and guides us into what exact fruitful works that He wants us to do. We operate by His leading rather than operating by a list of rules to evaluate our spiritual performance. The standard is faith and the Spirit, not outward conformity to law-keeping. What is pleasing to God most of all is the heart, but outward conformity does not change the heart.

Verse 8 “But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.”

Notice how it says, “apart from the Law sin is dead.” This obviously cannot mean the general state of humanity because all people sin, even people who are not under any governing authority living in some remote island or jungle. Even when someone is very young, without being taught to do something, they do that evil anyway, and so they did not have a law. But if they did not have a law but sinned anyway, then this invalidates that “apart from the law sin is dead,” unless, Paul is not speaking about the general state of humanity but about the state of innocence Adam was in before he sinned. He did not have sinful passions that would sway him into a particular decision or the weakness of the body that would have inclined him towards pleasure or fulfillment that the body lacked. The next verse seems to further solidify that proposition since he says, “I was once alive.” Then after the law and sin was committed, he says, “I died.” This seems to very much represent the story of Adam before and after he sinned.

Verse 13 “Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.”

The law is said to be a good thing because it reveals to us the utter sinfulness of sin. We must become humble before God and realize our utter bankruptcy to fulfill all that the law requires and that we will never find acceptance from God or entrance into eternal life on the basis of the law since we all fall short and very deficient of the perfect standard. It is only by the grace of God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ that we find acceptance and salvation and reconciliation to the Father. The purpose of the law is so that people will cling to Christ rather than their own good works. They must come to the end of themselves to be saved, rejecting any thought of anything they do to merit their own forgiveness. Then, once they’re Christians, they must continually abide in that grace and frame of mind. The law, then, continually directs them to Christ, to the cross, and to the forgiveness that they have already received. Instead of the law condemning them, it should cause them to grip even harder onto faith in their forgiveness at the cross. Secondly, the law is also purposeful for the Christian to be used as an instrument for direction in life to live by wisdom and to glorify God’s name through our good works. In this way, the law is not about ourselves but a means to thank God for His grace by our good works. Thirdly, the law for the believer is an instrument of the Holy Spirit to inform the conscience of the actions that are pleasing to God and to direct the believer in doing those actions initially by the conviction of the Spirit and then through the Spirit’s power in fulfilling those convictions. There are a multitude of good works that can be done but obviously we cannot do them all and so the Spirit guides the believer into what is fitting for the believer to perform at that moment in time. This is walking by the Spirit. It is not striving but abiding.

Verse 20 “But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”

Paul is again speaking personifying those operating in the fallen state of Adam. He is not saying that those who sin are not responsible for sin but rather that there is a force of sin within that keeps one in bondage to obeying the lusts of the flesh of which the mind cannot choose to operate the body in self-control. In this way, sin reigns rather than the person himself who at his center, his own mind. The mind, the self, which is supposedly expected to have all volitional control over the entire body in which it controls, finds that it is not in control. Rather, the sinful passions of the flesh are in charge and making the decisions as verse 15 indicates, “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.”

Verse 21 “I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.”

It is not wrong to want to do good. But wanting to do good can often be a work of the flesh of self-righteousness and that self-righteousness and one’s value and identity and feeling accepted before God on the basis of performing good works is what is evil. It also produces endless strivings within, increasing sin, anxiety, fear, and shame. Such a mindset is not one of peace or rest in Christ or of faith.

Verses 22-23 “For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.”

The inner man is not the renewed person in Christ but the inner self, the mind. It is the mind that decides what it wants even if it is unable to attain that goal. It is the mind which is one’s identity—one’s consciousness. However, some might say that this is speaking of the believer because how else could the phrase be said, “I joyfully concur with the law of God,” except if it was a believer saying it? Unbelievers don’t love and agree with God’s law, do they? Surely, most unbelievers despise God’s law and consider it a burden and a killjoy to them. So, what is my defense about this verse? I still consider Paul’s “I” as those in Adam. This could be people like the Pharisees who are all about the importance of God’s law. However, those in Adam are not to be strictly understood as unbelievers. Those in Adam are those who live in accordance with the old self according to the flesh, according to the law rather than the Spirit. Both believers and unbelievers can fit that description. Those who were Jews living under the Mosaic law, fit the description well. They were zealous to obey God’s law, concurring that it was good. Yet, the power to accomplish the law was not in them because they were operating by the flesh rather than by the Spirit.

Verse 24 “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”

“Wretched” means to be in a miserable state. Paul, still impersonating those in Adam and unsaved, cries out in desperation to be saved, for someone to help him. He desperately needs freedom from this carcass of death which looms over him (which is the sinful passions). He has tried and tried and cannot be free, cannot have victory. It weighs heavy upon him, reeks the stench of death, and will not let him go. Then, in the beginning of the next verse, he exclaims victory for being set free.

For the believer abiding in faith in Christ, the sinful passions are dead so that there are not inclinations towards sinning. But this does not mean that the believer never sins (1 Jn 2:1). There is an analogy I can give for this but we must separate our minds from the previous verse because it is not connected in thought. Killing sin through the new life in Christ is like killing a snake by cutting off its head. It is dead for sure but every so often there are nerve twitches that occasionally happen. In a similar way, acts of sin sometimes happen seemingly out of nowhere even though the sinful passions are dead.

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

The last part of verse 25 is a conclusion of all that Paul has said regarding the person operating in Adam and not a statement that regresses what he has previously said affirming a Christian’s freedom in Christ from the law and sin.

In Paul’s original letter to the Romans, there were no chapter breaks. It is one continuous letter. So, in the very next chapter, Romans 8:1 it says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The condemnation being spoken of here is the condemnation of the law and sin, everything that was just talked about in the previous chapter. The next verse also affirms this, concluding the argument with the word “For” to indicate why there is no more condemnation, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” There is no longer the condemnation of the law because why? Because those “in Christ” are freed from the law and freed from sin. They are abiding “in Christ,” in the life of Christ.

For understanding Romans 8:3-4, see Recapitulation theory in my atonement series.

Alternative interpretation and conclusion

What if the “I” in Romans 7 is not Paul personifying the identity of those in Adam? Okay. Let’s examine some other possibilities. One possibility is that Paul identifies himself using “I” to represent Israel as a nation, describing the time in history where Israel existed before the Law of Moses and their experience after having the Law of Moses. Both Romans 5:13-14 and Galatians 3:17 may steer the interpretation towards this view, indicating the Mosaic law coming into being at a time in history. Briefly, we could summarize this view as Israel’s historical encounter with the law.

It would also be a permissible interpretation to see the “I” as some of Paul’s past experiences before he became a Christian. This would even fit within the previous view mentioned as Paul could identify with the Jews, being a Jew himself and therefore also previously under the Mosaic law. But I slightly favor the Adamic view espoused within this article because of the previous arguments listed and because the book of Romans was addressed to a mainly gentile audience. I also do not see that view as completely mutually exclusive to the other ones just mentioned above. However, even with these possible differences in interpretation, the application of the passage remains virtually the same. Therefore, it is not a weighty difference.

Phrases like: “I struggle with…” “I’m prone to…” “I’m fighting against…” “anxiety, frustration, fear, anger, lust, envy, rage, etc.,” are all indications that you are not living in the victory that is provided for you in Christ. Some people may even think that they’re free from these things because of the joy and fire of the Holy Spirit. But that may be a deception because the joy and fire may merely suppress the evil passions so that when the joy is not there, the evil passions manifest. The only way to kill these passions once and for all is by faith alone.

It’s possible to be free and enter into the rest of God. You don’t have to wait until you get to heaven to attain this. What is needed is that you renew your mind in the truth, correct any false beliefs about God, cast off any lies of the devil, choose obedience, get rid of bitterness and unforgiveness, and rest in faith. If you don’t believe me, check out Dan Mohler on YouTube, he’s been doing it for years and stays free. He will provide examples of what all this looks like and strengthen your faith to get there and help you to renew your mind in truth. Freedom is possible. You don’t have to constantly struggle and war against the passions of the flesh. You can be free!

Check out my other article: Piety or Pietism?