but I see another law in my members, warring in opposition to the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which exists in my members.
Paul's cry in this verse is not about things he has done wrong but about a force inside him that overpowers what he most wants. Two questions press on every reader. Who is the man speaking here? And why does someone who delights in God's law end up a prisoner?
One word carries two different meanings in this chapter.
Near the end of chapter 7 it is important to notice that this passage uses the word law in two senses. In most cases it means the law of God given through Moses. But in verses 23 and 25 we get "another law," "the law of my mind," and "the law of sin." Here the word means a power or force that acts in one steady direction. That is just the sense we use when we talk about "the laws of nature."
So the two "laws" at war in this verse are not two codes of rules. They are two forces, and the stronger one wins.
The verse is not about guilt. It is about power — and the lack of it.
Guilt is not the matter in hand, but power — or rather the total absence of it. So with the best possible desires and intentions, everything ends in captivity to sin, though sin is now hated. This is not the soul in the death and darkness of nature, but a renewed soul. God is loved, evil is hated; but the soul finds itself powerless either to carry out the one or to avoid the other.
This misery is not a sign of a false conversion. Only a person with a new nature could feel it.
Some may turn on me and say, "But sir, I am a child of God, I am not all flesh, I am born again, I have a new nature." But the man who cries, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" had a new nature too. It was his new nature that made him groan like that! ... Thank God for a new nature; but deliverance is another matter. Is there not a law in your members warring against the law of your mind? Are you not learning weakness rather than power — the strength of sin rather than the holiness you are seeking?
Fighting this inner force does not weaken it. The fight only shows how strong it is.
The flesh in me is, after all, too strong for me. The more I struggle with it for the mastery, the more it struggles with me and overpowers me. I am like a man in a wrestling match. My opponent has me pinned down, and however I wriggle and struggle, I cannot get up. The secret is out. You have been looking for victory over yourself, to beat this lust and that passion. And how proud you would be if you had won it! But must I not strive? you say. Strive on! Strive on! You have not come to the end of yourself yet.
Commentators are agreed that this experience is meant to teach something, not to be a permanent home.
In order to be truly delivered, you must learn, and learn by experience, that you are captive to the power of sin and have no power to free yourself, even when you want to be free. God uses the law for this purpose, along with the new man's desire to be free from the yoke of sin that he hates.
The one writing this was not in that condition when he wrote it.
We believe that in Romans 7 the apostle shows the exercise of a soul made alive but not yet knowing deliverance. To use a picture, it is a man who has got out of a trap describing how he felt while he was in it. Do you think Paul was a "wretched man" crying out for deliverance when he wrote his letter to the Romans? Certainly not! He was a happy man rejoicing in full deliverance. But he is describing a soul still under the law with no power against sin. In all this part of the chapter you do not find the Holy Spirit in His indwelling power. There is new life, but no power and no sense of full deliverance. All this you have in chapter 8.
The man's mistake is where he looks. He watches a standard instead of a Person.
The delight he speaks of is right enough, but it is also clear that he is more occupied with "the law of God" than with God Himself, and his misery is no surprise. He must learn that "the law of God" is neither to be his standard of conduct nor his source of strength; he must find both in the Son of God. In these verses he sees two distinct laws — that is, governing principles — in conflict. Each one claims him. But the "law of sin" keeps defeating "the law of God," so that against his own will he is carried captive.
- Force, not rule. "Another law" means a steady force, like a law of nature — sin at work in the body against the mind that loves God's law.
- Power, not guilt. The problem is not what he has done. It is that he has no strength, and the better his desires, the worse he feels.
- Proof, not doubt. Only a new nature can groan like this; the conflict is evidence of life, not evidence against it.
- Captivity, not stalemate. Struggling for mastery does not win; it pins you down until you come to the end of yourself.
- Deliverer, not standard. The law of God is neither his standard nor his strength. He finds both in the Son of God, and chapter 8 brings in the indwelling Spirit.
O wretched man that I [am]! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?
Romans 7 builds through verse after verse of failed effort. Here it breaks into a cry. Who is speaking? And why is this cry a turning point, not just defeat?
The man who groans here is not a rebel. One writer describes what he loves, and why he still fails:
After the first six verses, the Holy Spirit gives us the experience of a person troubled under law. So we do not have the Spirit of God introduced there at all. This is a remarkable fact... There, it is a renewed man — a soul truly born of God. He hates sin as no unconverted man does. He loves righteousness because it is of God, and he has a horror of evil. Yet despite all this, the evil he would not do, he does. The good he desires is never done. He has learned the evil of sin and sees the good of righteousness, but he is utterly powerless. What is the cause? The Holy Spirit shows the reason: he has only the law in front of him.
What is missing from the passage is as telling as what is in it:
Taking the chapter as it stands, you cannot help being struck by what the speaker does not mention. In all the verses from 7 to 24, he makes not one reference to the redemption work of Christ. He says not one word about the Spirit of God. These painful exercises plainly belong to someone who is born again and so has a new nature. But in his conscience he is under the law. He does not know redemption, and he does not have the gift of the indwelling Spirit. Yet a believer who has peace with God may have an experience of this kind, though in a modified form, since he does know redemption and does have the Spirit.
The complaint has moved past bad behaviour to the person himself.
Notice here, it is not "O wretched sins that I have committed!" That might be quite true as well. But it is, "O wretched man!" — the wretched man that I am. It is what he is himself.
So what has to go is not just his failures but himself:
Self, the old man, the body of this death, must be given up. We must have a Deliverer, and that Deliverer is Christ.
One writer explains the picture behind the phrase:
It is said that these words refer to a punishment used in the Roman army. When a soldier had committed a very serious offence, he was tied to a corpse and left to die in that condition. The living man would grow weaker and weaker without food and water. The corpse became more repulsive every day. Could any condition be more terrible?
Commentators differ over how far to press the words. Some read the corpse as the sinful nature carried inside. Another writer insists the man means his actual body:
This refers to the actual body, beyond doubt. The reason is this: the man who uttered that sorrowful complaint had been made to feel that death lay upon him and in him — in his mortal body.
One small word marks the end of self-effort and the start of rescue.
The soul sees that it has neither righteousness nor power. It is in despair about this, and looks around, not saying, How shall I? but Who will deliver me? It finds at once in God a deliverance already prepared in Jesus. It is not even that God will deliver: the deliverance is already done, and he gives thanks.
And the rescue asked for is total, not partial:
The cry is not, "Who will help me to deliver myself?" It is not, "Who will help me to make myself better?" It is, "Who will deliver me from myself altogether?" ... Deliverance does not come by his fighting for the victory. It comes by finding that he is in Christ, through whom he now lives before God.
The relief that follows is given to this same man:
The comfort of deliverance is all the more striking when you notice one thing. The "me" now set free, when we turn from self to Christ, is the same "me" that was groaning under law just before... "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed me from the law of sin and death."
The writer quotes an older translation of Romans 8:2, which reads "freed me." The ESV has "has set you free from the law of sin and death." Either way, the man who cries out here is the man who is set free.
- Cry — the speaker is born again and hates sin, yet has no power. From verse 7 to here he never mentions redemption or the Spirit.
- Self — his complaint is not about his sins but about himself, so no amount of improvement can meet it.
- Corpse — "this body of death" pictures a living man tied to a corpse. He cannot free himself from it.
- Who — the question stops being how shall I and becomes who will, and the answer is a Person, already provided.
- Same me — the very "me" groaning here is the "me" set free in what follows, by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then *I* *myself* with the mind serve God's law; but with the flesh sin's law.
Verse 24 is the cry of a man who cannot rescue himself. This verse answers him — not with a plan, but with thanks. So why does the answer come as praise and not as a promise? And why does a freed man still admit that his flesh serves the law of sin?
The wording of the cry shapes the answer. Paul asks who will free him, not what.
It is not simply deliverance that the soul looks for, but a Deliverer. We may indeed come to the point when we realise our need of deliverance from sin, but fail to obtain it by looking for deliverance rather than a Deliverer. The question is not "How can I be delivered?" but, "Who shall deliver me?"
The turning point is the moment the struggling man stops looking inward at his own efforts.
He looks away from himself and his inward struggles altogether, to seek deliverance outside of himself. He finds the answer at once. God's way is always "through Jesus Christ our Lord" — deliverance is there. Think of a man struggling in the water to save himself. The sheer effort of his struggle blinds him to what is around him. At last he finds that he is powerless to save himself. He gives up the struggle, looks up for deliverance, and finds a lifebuoy close at hand.
Notice the tense. Paul does not say that help is coming. He gives thanks.
When we cast ourselves on grace, there is nothing but grace before us. Deliverance comes by our not being alive in the flesh at all. We have died away from it, and from under the law, which held us in bondage and condemnation. We are married to another, Christ raised from the dead. As soon as the distressed soul has said, "Who will deliver me?" the answer is ready: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The answer is not, He will deliver. Deliverance is already done: he gives thanks.
Read back through the chapter and one name is missing: Christ. It returns here.
Once this point is reached, deliverance is at hand: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The first word of the delivered man is praise, and it brings in a name we have not heard once in all the experience before it. The eye turned in on self had turned away from Christ… But how has it come, and in what form? Has power suddenly poured in from above to nerve the paralysed soul to do what was impossible until now? No; the words that follow rule that out. It is a word that has come home to the soul — a new revelation that shows the folly and hopelessness of the past struggle, and ends it forever.
The second half of the verse can feel like a step backwards. Commentators read it as a deliberate warning.
Before the Spirit of God unfolds the blessed portion of the delivered soul, one word is added: "So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." It comes as both instruction and warning. It teaches us that we shall always have these two natures, whatever our progress. It describes them, and warns us that they will never change. The flesh, though we are now delivered from its mastery, will always remain flesh, and can never be changed or improved. We cannot drive this enemy out, and we cannot turn him into a friend. But we now know his character and the sources of our strength, and so we keep watch.
The conflict does not end when deliverance comes.
A godly person might suppose that, once deliverance comes in Christ Jesus, the conflict is over. That is not the case. This great principle comes out clearly only after the soul has known deliverance by Jesus Christ… I cannot give a calm account of how a man sinks in the swamp until I am out of it. This last verse states the lasting principle: flesh remains in us after we have known deliverance, so the conflict to keep it down goes on… But after deliverance we are no longer under the law; we belong to another. And the power of the Spirit is in us.
The flesh stays. So how does a freed person hold on to that freedom?
You only know deliverance as you keep in touch with the Deliverer… The circumstances stay the same as long as we are down here, but we have a Deliverer who can and does deliver us as long as we are looking to Him.
- Who, not how. The cry that gets answered asks for a Person. Looking for deliverance instead of a Deliverer leaves the soul still searching.
- Outside, not inside. The struggling man gives up trying to save himself and looks away. The help was already at hand.
- Thanks, not waiting. The reply is not "He will deliver." It is praise, because deliverance is already done.
- Named, not nameless. The name missing from the whole struggle returns the moment the eye turns off self. The change comes by a word that ends the struggle, not by new power poured in.
- Watchful, not finished. The flesh never improves, so the freed man keeps watch. He stays free while he keeps looking to the Deliverer.