“I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind” (Rom 7:23). So Paul writes, in the section of the letter written “to all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints” which is offered by the lectionary for this coming Sunday (Rom 7:15–25a).
The lectionary wants us to end this reading with the words of gratitude, “thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (15:25a). But in my analysis, Paul’s argument reaches its conclusion with the stalemate of verse 23—a clash between “the law of God” and “the law of my mind”. “Wretched man that I am”, he explodes in exasperation (7:24), after a lengthy and complex consideration of the issues which has led him to this damning conclusion.
What Paul is writing about in this complex section (7:1–25) is about the battle of wills, as God’s will comes into conflict with human will. The argument throughout this chapter—as, indeed, the argument throughout much of Romans—is presented as a dialectic, in which one point of view is put, to be met by an opposite point of view; followed by a rebuttal by the first voice, and a further oppositional claim by the second voice.
The thesis for discussion has been set out in 7:1–6, using the marriage relationship between husband and wife and “another man” (7:1–3) as the basis for an analogy (“in the same way”, 7:4) for the relationship between humans, “living in the flesh” (7:5) whilst also having “the new life of the Spirit” (7:6).
The use of analogy, already developed in earlier Greek rhetoric and used extensively by philosophers and political orators, does reflect rabbinic practice. The deployment of analogy, gezerah shewah, was one of Hillel’s principles of interpretation, indicating the influence of hellenistic thought and ideas on Jewish teachers and writers. So Paul here may well be operating as a rabbi, in the way that he sets out and developed his case.
But the fundamental dualism which underlies this whole chapter—the law of sin and death, the holy law of God—is thoroughly Greek in origin and character. Plato’s view of the soul trapped in the prison of the material world, which he set out in his Allegory of the Cave and which marks so many of his Dialogues: a clear line of demarcation between the spirit and the flesh, the body and the mind, the idea and the particular object.
So Paul, trained as a Pharisee, being “far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors” (Gal 1:14), brings into the discussion a “delight in the law of God in my inmost self” (Rom 7:22). He affirms that he upholds the Torah (Rom 3:31), alluding to various commands in The Ten Words which he insists are worth obeying (2:17–22), and affirming that, in its essential character, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (7:12).
Yet his calling to be “apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom 11:23; Gal 2:8) led to his experience of eating at table with Jews and Gentiles together, in breach of kosher food laws (Gal 2:11–13)—an issue that is clearly in view decades later, as Luke writes his account of the early years of the Jesus movement, siding with Paul in the view that God has set aside the requirement for separate foods and separate tables (Acts 10:1–11:18; 15:19–20, 28–29).
This, in turn, leads Paul to his missionary goal of bridging the gap between Jews and Gentiles in practical ways (Rom 15:25–27), undergirded by the message that he preaches, affirming that salvation is offered “to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16; see also 2:10; 10:12; Gal 3:28; and the post-Pauline development in Eph 2:11–22). He is driven by the scriptural claim that “God shows no partiality” (Rom 2:11; Deut 16:19–20; 2 Chron 19:7; Sir 35:15–16).
So Paul brings a firm commitment of this universal availability of salvation into this discussion in Rom 7:1–25. The argument that he has set out in the thesis of 5:1, “since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we obtained access to this grace in which we stand”, is argued throughout the ensuing verses, and given a ringing affirmation at the end in 6:23, that all humanity is able to know and access “the free gift of God [which is] eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (6:23).
This sounds, to us today, like a formal debate: three speakers, alternating between the Government for the proposition, the Opposition against the proposition, and then short concluding remarks, before the adjudicator declares a result and announces a winner. In the ancient world, however, Paul is writing in the style of a diatribe—a form that was developed in Ancient Greece and which was widely practised by Greek rhetoricians, philosophers, and teachers during the Hellenistic period.
See my analysis of the diatribe style in Rom 4 at
In the diatribe that Paul develops in Rom 7, he needs to address what he now sees as the inadequacy of Torah, given his affirmation that “God shows no partiality” (2:11) and his commitment to Jews and Gentiles eating together, without scruples regarding the food being shared. This deficiency in the law runs throughout the argument of Romans; it is impossible to keep the law (2:17–3:20).
Since his calling to work amongst the Gentiles, Paul has come to see that the law brings wrath (4:15) and increases sin (5:20), and indeed he maintains that the law “brought death” (7:9). As a consequence, righteousness must be gifted by God “apart from law”(3:21).
Paul, as we have seen, uses the scriptural example of Abraham, who “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (4:3), to argue that “the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham” (4:16). See
And so, he declares that “you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead” (7:4), and thus “we are discharged from the law” (7:6). Paul then demonstrates this in what immediately follows. The law is not sin in and of itself; and yet, “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin” (7:6). This is seen, first, through the educational function of the law, which teaches for example, about covetousness (7:7–8a).
Then Paul notes that, paradoxically, the essential nature of the law reveals and activates sin (7:8b—10), so that “the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me”, before he intensifies this with the claim that “sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me” (7:11).
He concludes this section with affirmation of the law as “holy, just, and good” (7:12), before clarifying that it was not the Law which brought death to him, but rather “it was sin … working death in me through what is good … through the commandment” (7:13). Paul has worked hard to differentiate sin from the Law; the one is evil, the other is good.
And yet, as he continues his diatribal discussion, more problems emerge (of course, since this is the nature of a diatribe!). Here is the dilemma: “we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin” (7:14). What follows is a foray into the murky mind of Paul, where, as he says, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (7:15)—although he immediately attempts to excuse himself by stating that “it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me” (7:17).
That sits uncomfortably alongside Paul’s claim to the Galatians, that “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me”, and thus, Paul now “lives to God” (Gal 2:19–20). In writing to the Romans, Paul claims that “nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh” (7:18), for it is “sin that dwells within me” (7:17, 20). The contradiction is confusing. What is the essential force that “lives within” Paul; it is Christ, as in Gal 2, or sin, as in Rom 7?
The confusion caused by “sin that dwells within me” (7:20) whilst still claiming that “I delight in the law of God in my inmost self” (7:22), drives Paul deeper into the hellenistic dualism, seeing “in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (7:23). No wonder he throws his hands up in despair, exclaiming, “wretched man that I am! who will rescue me from this body of death?” (7:24).
The argument runs a parallel course three times, as my schematic structuring (below) demonstrates. For each proposition that is put (introduced often by the Greek particle gar, “for”), a counter-proposition is offered (introduced by the Greek particle de, “but”).
Modern psychological insights have been used to dig deeper into what Paul writes in Romans 7. Paul appears to be fixated on his own self, using the Greek word egō many times (7:9, 10, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, and 25). And the language of “sin” and “death” which runs through this chapter exacerbates the tendency to adopt this approach. Declaring that these malicious forces are at work within his inmost being appears to present Paul as a figure consumed with internal contradictions and unresolved tensions. In short, he is a prime candidate for psychological investigation, if not psychiatric intervention!
Who is the person, the egō, who is referenced in these verses? Some interpreters consider that Paul here is talking about his “old self”—the person he was before he encountered the risen Jesus and was commissioned for the task he now undertakes, as “apostle to the Gentiles”. This chapter, reflecting Paul the pious and intense Jew, living under the Law, desperately seeking to obey it in every detail, is thus contrasted with the following chapter, portraying Paul the apostle, fervent and passionate for the mission he is undertaking, freed from the Law and living in the liberty of divine grace.
That simplistic analysis, however, owes more to the 19th century Pietism that was driving interpreters of that time, who considered the Christian life inevitably involved a fierce inner struggle with sin which fermented and eventually erupted into an existential crisis that would, hopefully, ultimately result in a decision to live a new, Christ-centered life. We can see how that dynamic can be extracted from Paul’s agonising words in Rom 7.
A second way of dealing with this chapter, by contrast, has been to claim that the struggle about which Paul here writes reflects precisely the struggle he was enduring after that dramatic encounter with Christ.
The commission that Paul received in that encounter is reported in graphic terms, many decades later, by Luke, who makes the moment into a grand call–and–commissioning scene (Acts 9:3–8; 22:6–11; 26:12–18). Of course, Luke was not present for this event, so he shaped in along the lines of classic call-and-commissioning narratives that existed in earlier Jewish writings. (I have explored this in detail in my commentary on Acts in the Eerdman’s Commentary on the Bible, 2003). In Paul’s own writings, by contrast, this mentioned only briefly, in passing (1 Cor 9:1 and Gal 1:1, 11–12).
Whatever took place in that encounter, it is clear that, as a believer, Paul was not exempt from the ongoing struggle between the desire to do what is pleasing to oneself, but is sinful (Rom 7), on the one hand; and on the other hand, the delight of living a life redeemed by grace (Rom 8). So the passage offered by this week’s lectionary (7:14–25a) is offered as a counterpoint to that which we have on the following Sunday (8:1–11).
This has been the line of interpretation advocated, to various degrees, by Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin—but it has fallen into disfavour with contemporary interpreters, who see this as too simplistic and as presenting an unresolved and unintegrated egō. Surely Paul was not caught in that immature state?
So a third line of interpretation has been that Paul here is setting forth the general, universal condition of the human being. The egō is Paul’s way to talk about “all of us”, for we are all still wrestling with that key characteristic of the human condition: we all, each one of us, “do not do the good [we] want, but the evil [we] do not want is what [we] do” (7:19).
This interpretation was proposed by Kümmel and has been followed by Bultmann, Käsemann, and Dunn, amongst others. Dunn argues that the struggle of Rom 7 provides the key to the argument developed by Paul throughout Rom 5—8 as a whole.
Beyond that, Kristen Stendhal has mounted a persuasive case, that the egō of Rom 7 should not be connected with Paul’s inner being, but rather with the broader issue to which Paul is addressing himself throughout the whole letter of Romans—what place does the Law have in the new community of faith, where both Jews and Gentiles are sharing together in fellowship? How might the demands of the Law function within such a context?
It’s a proposal that I find attractive and helpful, for indeed that broader question is what Paul comes back to in 8:1–8, and then in 9:30–33, 10:1–4, and 11:25–32; and finally in 13:8–10. The egō of Rom 7 is not the last word on this matter; Paul has “yet more light and truth to break forth” on this complex matter!
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You can look ahead to what I have to say about some of those passages, at
An Informed Faith 