Daily Thoughts from Romans: Learning to Be Wretched (7:14-25)

Daily Thoughts from Romans: Learning to Be Wretched

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  (Romans 7:14-25 ESV)

Without Jesus Christ we are sold under sin, in bondage to it no matter how much we want to do what is right.  We find our ‘flesh,’ our inner resources, incapable of getting us where God’s Law wants us to go and, if the Law (or conscience, our internal law) does what it is supposed to do in us, it makes us realize that there is nothing good in us, no ability to please God.  We should find ourselves wretched people in need of deliverance.

And there is deliverance from this body of death.  It is the salvation God has provided in Jesus Christ our Lord.  The Law cannot rescue me, no matter how much my mind agrees with its precepts.  My flesh will keep me in bondage.  As Paul will share next, I need to be in Christ.

It has been a perpetual debate whether the experience Paul is describing is him as an unbeliever or him as a believer.  I believe his language about being in bondage or sold under sin requires the view that he is speaking of the unregenerate person in this description.  Does this mean that the believer never experiences such a struggle?  No.  We are not under sin’s bondage, but that is not an immediate cessation from sin or struggling with it, it is a guarantee that we are going to overcome it.  God’s sanctifying work in our lives will be successful if we’re saved.  Paul will elaborate on this in chapter 8.

So if you are feeling in bondage to sin there are two possibilities.  You are not saved and the Spirit of God is not helping you become like Jesus, or, you are saved but you are wrestling with a prevailing sin that the Spirit will teach you to overcome.  If you are a believer, God is disciplining you, training you to live a holy life, and He will succeed.