If the previous paragraph belongs among those vital to anthropology—that is, what makes men and their cultures tick, the second half of Romans 7 belongs among the do-not-ignore passages for Christian anthropology and discipleship. There is a change in tenses, from past to present, as Paul continues to use his own experience as representative of the kind of internal battle to be expected for believing, but not yet glorified, men.

In Romans 7:7-12 Paul describes, without using these words, his pre-conversion conviction of sin. He grew up a Jew, so the Law was as unavoidable as his mother’s cooking. But at a certain point the law “came home,” it got in, and started to expose his ugly little coveting heart. Rather than fix his heart, the law aggravated him. The law works in God’s plan to teach us our need for grace and point us to forgiveness and freedom in Christ. Without God’s Spirit changing our hearts, the law inevitably aggravates the heart into rebellion against the rules.

Paul carefully eliminates the law itself as the source of sin. The law isn’t sin, the law is holy. But because of sin, the law kills: sin came alive, it took the commandment and “it killed me” (11). This requires further clarification.

Verses 13-25 are more fun to argue about than they are to experience. The fact that there is such debate, actually, demonstrates the severity of the battle even more. The weight of arguments is nothing compared to the weight of seeing one’s sinfulness. Brutal.

As the law aggravates sin in verses 7-12, in verses 13-25 the law assaults the conscience of those who care enough about the law to be vulnerable to its hard edges.

I remember the first time I really studied this text. I was in seminary, and I was teaching through Romans to Junior High students. I had a low-resolution idea about what this passage referred to, but wasn’t finding satisfaction in some of the surface answers. I must have read over a thousand pages of commentaries and journal articles. Martin Lloyd-Jones has an entire volume for chapter 7. I read the whole thing to track with his arguments and interpretation.

The big question is: do verses 13-15 describe the unbeliever or the believer? There really are problems to reckon and wrestle with on both sides. I’m going to cover the passage in two sermons, and while I’ll give you what I believe to be the true and obviously true interpretation before the end of this message, I also believe it’s valuable to wade into the text together and get honest about our pain and propensity to sin. We are sinners. This is Post-Adam Anthropology 101, and it is Great Commission 102 as we teach others to observe all that Jesus commanded, this is what they’re getting into.

An Unbeliever

What makes anyone think that verses 13-25, or at least through verse 24, describes a non-Christian’s frustration?

The most significant reason is due to how different this person’s experience with sin sounds than the previous three chapters. Especially in chapter 6, we are dead to sin and alive in Christ (Romans 6:11). Sin no longer has dominion over us (Romans 6:14). We’re united to Christ to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). We’ve been set free from sin (Romans 6:22). Know, reckon, yield. We’ve been committed to a new master (Romans 6:22). Even at the beginning of chapter 7, we belong to another, to Christ, “who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God” (verse 4).

But look at these phrases in the last half of chapter 7:

• “I am of the flesh” (verse 14), “carnal” as the KJV translates it.
• I am “sold under sin” (verse 14). This sounds like the slave imagery of chapter 6.
• ”I do not understand my own actions” (verse 17)
• He does what sin wants; “sin that dwells in me” (verse 17)
• “Nothing good dwells in me” (verse 18), and again (verse 20)
• He sees a dominating principle that makes him “captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (verse 22).

So verse 24 is a crashing crescendo: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And perhaps the “Now” in Romans 8:1 is meant to be a transition from death to life.

What about having peace with God (Romans 5:1), standing in grace and rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God (5:3)? And in the most immediate context, he just finished describing a time when he thought he was good until the law convicted him (Romans 7:9). That is a pre-conversion, unbelieving condition.

It sounds a lot like there is no faith. There is no reference to the Holy Spirit. There is no mention of union with Christ, our resurrection identity with Him. The lack of victory over sin, the seeming lack of even hope of victory, sets an arduous tone.

In some ways it would be easier to make a blanket statement about this. It would be easier to say that verses 13-23 describe Saul, not Paul, a man dead in sin. All or nothing, obedient or not, takes less effort to judge.

A Believer

On the other hand there are phrases that are impossible to reconcile with an unbeliever’s spiritual sensitivity/capacity, especially in light of verses 7-12, where the law provokes the wrong wants, rather than as here where what the law says is wanted.

Paul wants good even if he doesn’t do good. “I do not do what I want” (verse 15), meaning he wants to obey the law, and what he hates is sin. Do unbelievers hate sin? He can distinguish, however the line is drawn, between a “me” and “sin” (verse 20); “no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” Is this a non-Christian division?

He wants to do what is right (verse 21). He even claims that “I delight in the law of God in my inner being” (verse 22). And after the desperation in verse 24 there is a declaration of thanks to God through Jesus Christ (verse 25). Pagans don’t praise Jesus as Lord an an expected answer to deliverance from the body of death.

Add to that:

• We know from Paul’s own testimony that before his conversion he thought he was “faultless” before the law (Philippians 3:6). He didn’t recognize himself as the chief of sinners until he believed (1 Timothy 1:13-15), his clear conscience was out of ignorant unbelief.
• Paul has switched from past to present tense.
• The primary subject since 3:21 has been the righteousness of salvation in justification by faith alone resulting in sanctification by faith and union with Christ.

The third way of Lloyd-Jones is to take the person as elect, but not regenerate, a person in whom the Holy Spirit has begun to work (and we do believe that “he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it”). He does not give a length of time that such a conversion process might last, and that is only one weakness of his idea. It’s interesting, but it’s like falling between two stools, and one of the stools only has two legs anyway.

What was determinative for me, and what provides the best explanation of all the factors, is to recognize that verses 13-25 pick up the burden of verses 1-6. The problem is the law. Law dominates the whole chapter.

At the start of the chapter he needed to clarify how it is that we are not under law. We must be released from it. “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (verse 5).

And though we are not living in the flesh, we are still connected to the flesh. The flesh does not own us like it did, but we still are in flesh, and “in my flesh” nothing good dwells.

What is the “flesh”? That question has not only buried librarians, it has been much more of a practical discipleship hurdle than pinning down a definition of the imago Dei. Man’s “flesh” can’t only be the material instead of the immaterial, because its fleshy desires are more volitional than animal instincts of the body.

The part of us that is being sanctified can’t help but pull the (good) law down on ourselves like a bookshelf. God’s plan wasn’t immediate perfection. Some of what He’s doing is redeeming us to understand more of the value of our redemption. He grows our strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of His love for rebels that forgives them into fellowship, and that includes increasing our understanding of sin, its evil, its power. Our sanctification is not just theoretical anthropology, it is practical anthropology. Sin is bad, and its strength is coming from inside the house. We have met the enemy, and we can’t evict him in our own authority.

The burden of sin’s remnants and our battle against sin’s wants is war (1 Peter 2:11). Our frustration is that we are wretched and look to Christ for full and final deliverance. Deliver us, Lord!

Conclusion

Let us look to the progression in these verses next time. But this is the believer’s experience, reckoning with remaining sin and part of the urgency for reckoning ourselves dead to it.

It humbles us as “sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure” (verse 13). The Lord is maturing us to sin for what it is.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. (Lewis, Mere Christianity, Location 1855)

Believers, this is the right battlefront, but the wrong place to call home.

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Charge

Church, as you abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11), get busy trying to do good (Titus 3:8, 14). As a defense against discouragement when you find that you’re not doing all the good you want, be careful to get busy getting God’s blessing to do good; be zealous for blessing.

Benediction:

[M]ay God make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12, ESV)