Romans 7

Paul begins with the principle that the law has dominion over each person so long as they are living. But verse 4 will show that this dominion is broken for those who become dead to the law through the body of Christ.

Why does Paul now seemingly switch to a discussion of marriage and divorce? Actually, it is brilliant and designed to help us understand how we can live an overcoming Christian life. The clear statement here is that the wife is bound to her husband for a defined period of time. There is a similar defined period of time in which we are bound to the law. As long as we live, we are bound to the law. As long as the husband lives, the wife is bound to her husband. What is the defined period of time? The law is a lifelong bond, and marriage is a lifelong covenant bond. We are bound to the law and bound to our spouses for life. Only death can set us free.

What does it mean that we are bound? If we are bound, we cannot escape. If we could freely walk out, we would not say that we are bound. So how long is a wife bound to her husband? As long as he lives. If he dies, only then is she free, released, or delivered. But the focus in this passage is not how we usually view death. The question is how I can be set free from sin. The answer is that when the husband dies, the wife is no longer bound; rather, she is free. Paul takes this analogy a little further to illustrate something he wants to be abundantly clear. (Paul's analogy is not intended to apply to every aspect of marriage; but indeed it is death that dissolves the dominion.)

A married woman is released from the bond of marriage by her husband's death; but if she marries another while he lives, she is guilty of adultery. Paul intends to apply the same principle to the power of the law: those under the law are bound by the law for so long as they live.

Now Paul comes to the point: “you also have become dead to the law.” Just as death releases the wife from the former bond, death sets us free from the law. Verse 5 describes our pre-Christian life in the flesh, but verse 4 describes the Christian life in Christ. If our inner being remains in the flesh, we remain in bondage. If our inner being is in Christ, being made dead to the law, we may belong to another, the risen Lord Jesus, and the bond to sin is broken.

Paul is not saying that marriage is dead or purposeless, nor that the law is dead or purposeless. God designed marriage, and God gave the law a precious function. The law, whether written on tablets of stone or upon the tablet of the heart, reveals that the motions of the flesh trespass against God's command. If we want to belong to Christ, we must be willing to forsake living in the flesh and die to self. Our identity with Christ in His death releases us from the law, and His resurrection gives us new life so that we may bear fruit to God.

“When we were in the flesh” means Paul is describing our pre-Christian experience, before the new birth and before life in the Spirit. As Christians, we may still stumble in sin, but God forbid that believers should live in the flesh. As Paul writes in Romans 8:9, “believers are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in them.”

So we have this contrast between the Christian life of verse 4 and the pre-Christian life of verse 5. Paul continues to go back and forth. This verse identifies the source of our struggle, which are the sinful passions of our flesh, which conflict with our efforts to obey the law without the new life and the power of the Spirit.

“But now we have been delivered from the law” is a contrast from verse 5. This is not our pre-Christian experience, when we were in the flesh. This is “but now,” our present state. It is an updated expression of Galatians 2:20, set in the language of Romans 7.

“Having died to what we were held by” means our inner being is no longer in the flesh, bound, as in marriage, to the law. It is as though we have died to our flesh, having crucified it, so that there is nothing for our flesh to bind to, and there is no longer any obligation, duty, or compulsion between the two. We are free. We are delivered.

This verse also brings a contrast between the newness of the Spirit and the oldness of the letter. Now we can serve God in the newness of the Spirit. Previously, any service to God that we attempted to perform was in the oldness of the letter. The Jews tried that for centuries and failed. They had the law, they read the law, they tried to live the law, but they were never capable of doing so. If that is our life, we will fail miserably as well.

If we want to bear fruit to God, as verse 4 says, we cannot do so in our flesh. We must be spirit-minded, spirit-led, and spirit-powered. But the Spirit of God is the theme of Chapter 8, not mentioned in this chapter except in this verse.

What shall we say then? If the law just kills, and we cannot keep the law or serve God in the oldness of the letter, is the law the problem? If we struggle to keep the law but always fail, are we correct to say that the law is bad?

Certainly not, or God forbid. If we think so, we are looking at the law for the wrong reasons. The purpose of the law is to teach us that our fleshly desires, though they may seem natural, are sin. Paul confesses that he would not even recognize the lust that dwelled within him if he did not know the law. His knowledge of the law helped him to recognize his sin. As Paul wrote in Galatians 3:24, “the law was our schoolmaster, or tutor, to bring us unto Christ.”

But sin: it is not the law that is bad, but sin, which makes use of the good law to kill.

Here is the absolute genius. Sin was dead until the law. It needed the law, or the commandments, to have power. When we know the law, we then ought clearly recognize that sin is killing us and exerting its power over us. It is as though the law reveals to us that we are married to, or bound to, sin which has the power to bring us to death. How? We know the law, we violate the law, and we begin to recognize that we are in bondage to sin, as though we were married to it. As long as we are married to sin, we are powerless and condemned. This is a spouse from whom we may righteously desire to be set free.

“Without the law sin was dead” does not mean sin was nonexistent. Romans 5:13-14 already shows that sin and death were in the world before Moses. Rather, sin was dead in the sense that its condemning power was not exposed in the same way until the commandment came. The law, which is good and has good purpose, also gives power to sin to bring bondage and death to those who violate it.

“For I was alive without the law once” - when? When was Paul without the law? Clearly Paul is speaking figuratively, as though he lived prior to the Mosaic law. He speaks representatively, standing with man before the commandment came, and also experientially, as one who had not yet understood the law's condemning force. So, in this pre-Christian state, Paul describes the awakening that comes when the commandment confronts the conscience. The commandment exposes death where a man may have imagined life.

So Paul continues his figurative reasoning, as one who lived both before the law and when it was delivered, discovering that this delivery brought death. The commandment itself points toward life, but because of sin it becomes the occasion of condemnation. The law can define righteousness but cannot free the sinner.

“And by it killed me” raises the question: when is this that Paul says he was killed by the law? As a Christian? No. This continues the figurative reasoning which began in verse 9. All seemed fine before he knew the law. But when the law, which is indeed good, came, it gave power to sin, because now sin was a clear trespass against the law of God. He now understood his disease.

Sin is the killer. Paul again protects the law from blame while showing that sin manipulates the commandment to bring death.

Paul vindicates the law. The failure under discussion is not because God gave Israel something evil, but because sinful man cannot be delivered merely by receiving a holy command.

Clearly, to this point, Paul was describing how the good law made his sin exceedingly sinful. He is still describing how the law works to bring a man to Christ, just as he was writing about in verse 7. The law exposes sin for what it is. Sin becomes plainly sinful because it uses even God's good commandment as an instrument of death.

This is the language of captivity, not triumph. The man under law recognizes the law's spiritual character but finds himself enslaved to sin. If Paul intended this to be the description of a believer, how would that be consistent with Romans 8:9, which proclaims that “believers are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in them”?

Paul's present-tense language does not reflect his present Christian condition. Clearly Paul is continuing to speak figuratively, as though he was then living under the Mosaic law. He speaks representatively, standing with man living under the dominion of the law, and also experientially, as one who did desire to obey the law, but without the indwelling Spirit of God was unable and under the law's condemning force.

This is the central struggle. It is best read as Paul's description of the Jew under law: devout, approving the good, yet unable without the indwelling Spirit of God to do the good he wills.

The struggler agrees with the law. He is not an atheist or moral rebel in his mind; he acknowledges the goodness of God's command.

Paul identifies indwelling sin as the power producing the conduct. This does not remove responsibility, but explains why law-awareness alone cannot deliver.

The will to do good is present. The power to perform is lacking. This fits a man under law who has command and desire but not deliverance in the Spirit.

Paul repeats the contradiction to emphasize the misery of the condition. The chapter is not celebrating defeat; it is exposing the need for rescue.

The repeated point is that sin, not the law, rules the man. The law names the good, but sin still dominates. Paul's language here and in the immediately preceding verses describes more than occasional failure. Rather it describes a continuing captivity under sin which Romans 8 portrays as inconsistent with the normal life of one walking in the Spirit and 1 John 3:6-10 condemns as the life of the “children of the devil.”

Joseph Benson observed: “The expression, when I would do good, intimates that this inclination to do good was not permanent; it only arose on particular occasions. This is another feature of an unregenerate man; his inclinations and purposes to do good, and live to the glory of God, are only temporary.” Benson then notes Macknight's point that Paul is not describing isolated failures, but a continued pattern of doing evil and neglecting good, a pattern difficult to attribute to a regenerate person, especially to Paul, who could write to the Thessalonians of how holily, righteously, and unblameably he had behaved among them.

Paul states the discovered principle: evil remains present even when the man wills the good. This is the prison of the law-aware but undelivered man.

The struggler loves God's law inwardly. This strongly fits a sincere Jew under the law, not a pagan indifferent to God's command. A man may sincerely approve the goodness of God's law, and even delight in it, without possessing the liberating power of the Spirit described in Romans 8.

The result is captivity. This should not be softened into normal Christian health. Paul is describing a condition from which deliverance is needed.

The cry is for deliverance, not resignation. The man under law cannot free himself. He needs another Deliverer.

The answer is Jesus Christ. The thanksgiving points forward to deliverance in Christ, while the final “so then” restates the unresolved divided condition from which Romans 8 will now show deliverance. The closing contrast leads directly into Romans 8, where the Spirit of life frees those in Christ from the law of sin and death.