If you can imagine reading Romans 7 for the first time, freed from the fog and complexity of conflicting interpretations and paradigms; and able to discern, with daylight clarity, what the apostle is saying in that needlessly contended passage and why, then this book is for you.
Understanding the Christian’s relationship to the law, and the transformative concept of walking in the Spirit, enables the reader to unravel both the mystery of the ‘I’, and the flawless link which joins together Romans 7 and Romans 8 in harmonious combination.
There are numerous quotations and references from many prominent and respected theologians, although the author mounts a compelling challenge to existing interpretations and paradigms.
This book will be of interest and encouragement to all who have ever found themselves caught in the crossfire of the competing theological arguments surrounding this topic. The style and content is reassuringly approachable and accessible.
stripping away the interpretive layers
Romans 7 is the most highly controversial chapter of the Roman epistle, and one which is still hotly disputed. However, we will sidestep all the intricacies of the debate and seek to get right to the heart of what the apostle is really saying, what it is that he is describing, and why.
In the previous chapter, the apostle has made the point that, despite the non-condemnatory nature of the gospel, believers cannot continue in sin: ‘For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace’ (6:14 NIV). But why is it, runs the argument from Paul’s detractors, if we are not to continue in sin, that we can’t simply continue under the law? Isn’t the law the correct path to follow, and wouldn’t the absence of the law’s authority make sinning all the more inevitable? (v.15). ‘No’, answers Paul, because we are no longer ‘in the flesh’, which is the domain of sin, and the law’s sphere of operation, but ‘in the Spirit’ (8:9); no longer in the realm of sin and death, the realm where the law operates as a ministry of condemnation (7:5), but in the realm of grace, and ‘under the law of the Spirit who gives life’ (v.2 NIV).
Since the apostle has already made the case that believers, having been delivered from the law, and from the tyranny of sin, now live and walk in the realm of the Spirit (vv.4-6), he proceeds to describe the utter futility and aggravating reality of relying any longer on the carnal nature to fulfil the law’s demands. So it is that, writing rhetorically, the portrait Paul paints of himself, in the rawness of his own carnality, exposing, to use Cromwell’s phrase, all the ‘roughness, pimples, warts and everything’,1 is not a very pretty picture. He makes the point that, unlike our new nature, which operates in the realm of the Spirit, whereby we, as believers, offer every part of ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness (6:13b), ‘the flesh’, to which the law formerly issued its commands, remains rebelliously weak, and sold into bondage to sin (7:14). Therefore, as the apostle reveals, to re-enter the domain of the law, would be to re-enter the realm of ‘the flesh’, the realm where sin, incessantly, exercises and asserts its oppressive rule.
The fault lies, not with the law (v.12), but with the sinful nature, ‘the flesh’, thus graphically and veraciously portrayed (vv.15-20). The desire to obey may be yearningly present, but, if we continue under the law, the well-meaning commandment (v.10), rather than opening the way to true righteousness, becomes, instead, sin’s gateway, and not the promised key to unlatch the imprisoning lock (vv.21-23). ‘What a wretched man I am!’ (v.24a NIV) is Paul’s rhetorical cry, accentuating the weakness of his sinful flesh in the face of the law’s demands (v.18), to which he adds the hypophorical question: ‘Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?’ (24b NIV). The apostle knows, of course, that, through our union with Christ, ‘we have been set free by the Spirit from that realm, ruled by sin, in which condemnation (= death) is one’s ineluctable fate’;2 but, for those who would desire to return to the law, it is to this very realm they would be returning.
‘But thanks be to God…’ (v.25a), Paul reminds his readers (a side reference back to the previous chapter) ‘…that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness’ (6:17-18 NIV). For this reason, believers, having pledged loyalty to Christ and the gospel, are no longer under the law, but under grace; for, despite a heartfelt and conscious desire to keep the law, ‘the flesh’, aroused by the commandment operating in the same carnal sphere, is bound and obligated to serve its resident master, sin (v.25b).
1 Antonia Fraser, Cromwell, the Lord Protector, Knopf, p.473
2 Doug Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, William B. Eerdmans, p.477