Romans 7 explained: The Good Law and the Divided Self

A marriage picture (vv. 1-3)

Paul writes to people who know the law, most likely the Jewish law given through Moses, and starts from a rule they all accept: a law has a hold on someone only while they live. A married woman is bound to her husband while he lives, but if he dies she may marry again without committing adultery.

Free to belong to Jesus (vv. 4-6)

Paul uses the picture loosely: here the readers are the ones who have died to the law, by sharing in Jesus' death, so they are free to belong to the risen Jesus and live lives that bear fruit for God. Before, the law's commands stirred up wrong desires that led toward death, but now they serve God in a new, inward way rather than by a written rulebook (the NIV reads this as God's Spirit, while the older translation has a lowercase spirit).

Is the law to blame? (vv. 7-13)

Paul says no: the command against coveting (craving what belongs to someone else) is what showed him what that craving really was. Sin used the command as a foothold to stir up more craving and bring death, so the fault lies with sin, while the law itself stays holy, right and good (v. 12).

Doing what I hate (vv. 14-20)

From verse 14 the story switches from past to present tense, and the speaker agrees the law is good yet feels like a slave sold to sin, failing at the good he wants and doing the wrong he hates. When he says it is not really he who acts but sin that has made its home in him (vv. 17, 20), this is usually read as a picture of a divided self, not an excuse.

Two pulls and a cry (vv. 21-25)

Here 'law' means a steady pull: his inner self delights in God's law, but another pull at work in his body fights it and takes him prisoner. He cries out for rescue and thanks God through Jesus, yet ends still split between his mind and what the NIV calls his sinful nature (the older translation says flesh), a tension chapter 8 takes further.

Key verse: Romans 7:24

Where Christians differ

Christians genuinely differ over who the 'I' is in verses 14 to 25: many Western Christians, following Augustine, Luther and Calvin, hear Paul's ongoing struggle as a believer, while many early Greek writers, Orthodox and Methodist Christians, and many modern scholars hear a person living under the law without Christ's help, possibly speaking as a figure like Adam or Israel rather than describing Paul himself.

Something to think about

When have you found yourself doing the very thing you didn't want to do, and what do you think explains that gap between wanting and doing?