15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see 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. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:15-25a is part of the second defense of the Law that Paul offers. He is still wrestling with the significance of the coming of Christ for those now baptized in Christ. To do so, he paints a picture of life apart from the grace and faith we find in Christ. We need to be careful, for he is not offering a phenomenological description of the human situation. He is offering his understanding of the plight of humanity apart from the faith and grace one has in Christ. His argument is that considering the destiny of humanity revealed in Christ, we learn of the plight of the present situation of humanity. We would not know our plight were it not for this event of revelation. As he describes the plight of humanity, the sin of Adam keeps repeating in every human life. The Law becomes a universal human experience of elevating what is good before individuals, but it introduces the plight of our failure to find ourselves truly reflected in what we do. [1] The recurring decision of each of us to identify with Adam makes sure that we remain enslaved in sin. Turning from God, we turn toward self and death.
Scholarship on this passage will spend much time considering whether the dialectical tension Paul expresses concerns his present Christian experience or his pre-conversion experience as a Jewish person. Anyone who thinks the matter is clear-cut lacks either objectivity or charity, or both.
Several points favor a pre-converted Paul talking about his Jewish life. First, in verse 6 Paul describes Christianity as slavery to new life of the Spirit, but in verse 14 he says he is in slavery to sin. Second, the “I” of verse 23 is “captive to the law of sin” while 8:2 says Christians are “free from the law of sin.” Finally, this would be an uncharacteristically bleak description of Christian experience as compared to what Paul writes everywhere else. If you agree, you may think about this passage evangelistically.
However, several points favor a post-converted Paul talking about the Christian life. First, the tense of the verbs is present, not past. Second, Paul only uses the phrase “inmost self” (v. 22) elsewhere when talking about Christians. Third, a desire to obey God is more descriptive of Christians than non-Christians. And finally, according to one college minister from Austin, Texas, “This just feels like my relationship with God.” If you agree, you may go with a thinking about this passage as urging people toward sanctification and leading the fullness of the Christian life.
To confuse matters further, some scholars say that both views are valid because Paul’s “I” is existential, rhetorically referencing every person who wrestles with God’s demands upon him or her.
The reality is that most people who read this passage are unaware of the nuanced debate in the history of interpretation. I want to have some care that I do not bury the reader in some muddy water. More importantly, the minds of most people will identify with the struggle Paul presents as quite human, at least for anyone with a modest amount of self-knowledge and moral sensitivity. Most people will read this passage as reflecting human life, and most Christians will read it as expressing a dimension of Christian life. It resonates because the struggle with our weakness as human beings, the struggle with relying upon a code of behavior (law) for liberation, and the enigma presented by our failure to be in our actions whom we desire to be, is a struggle that seems relevant at every stage of life. Most of my reflections will keep this latter point in mind.
In context, Paul continues to juxtapose the old life under the power of sin with the new life in the Spirit he will describe in Chapter 8. Throughout the first seven chapters, Paul is emphasizing that the way out of the old life is beyond human achievement. The way out involves turning from our participation in Adam through our recurring pattern of turning from God and instead turning toward the grace of God shown in Christ. God intends to reconcile us with God through the new pattern for humanity revealed in Christ. His thesis statement is that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith (1:16), a gospel that culminates in the life of the Spirit (Chapter 8). He has demonstrated the universal need for salvation (1:18-3:20), making it clear that Jew and Gentile alike exist under the power of sin. He has shown that the gracious gift of redemption is effective through faith and offers a right relationship with God (3:21-4:25). He has shown that the prime hero of the Jewish faith, Abraham, lived by faith in the promise of God, making him the ancestor of Jew and Gentile alike. Paul stresses that while the only pattern it had was Adam and his turn from God and thus toward sin and death, God has given humanity a new pattern in Christ involving a turn toward God in faith and therefore toward sanctification, righteousness, and life. He has stressed that the issue is the way in which bodily desire conflicts with righteousness and life. Salvation is in our recognition of this problem, not through denial of bodily desire, but through presenting our bodily desires as instruments of righteousness (6:13).
Paul will now crystallize the matter of law, sin, flesh, and body. Paul has just shown that law is a spiritual waring system by which sin becomes recognizable for what it is (7:7, 12-13). Further, all too often, the law leads us into further sin rather than away from it (7:8-11, 13-14). The law "compels sin to show its true face," the law "detects sin and makes me aware of my desperate plight," and, sadly, "this knowledge is not therapeutic or preventive but a knowledge-unto-death, which seals my doom."[2] The result is that humanity is ill equipped to make effective use of the law just because it alerts us to sin (7:11). The divinely given warning system of law is in fleshly hands, which results in the irony that our observation of the law leads us into an existential dilemma instead of eternal life. He will use a standard theme of the Greek and Roman world, the conflict between knowing the right thing to do and being incapable of finding the moral capacity to do it." Here, the apostle highlights "the gulf between willing and [non] achievement" as well as "the grip of sin as indwelling power."[3] "Paul has in view here the religious person, the responsible member of the human community, the one who wants to be a contributing member of society. Despite every attempt to accomplish good for other and for self, the efforts of the religious person come to nothing."[4] In that sense, Paul reflects on the experience of any morally sensitive person.[5] At the same time, from what we know of Paul, it does not seem as if he labors under a guilty conscience so much as he confidently defines the personal and communal stakes involved concerning that in which we place our deepest trust. He knows that the warning system function of the law eventually finds us looking for how we can save the day. We cannot do that. The result is despair -- "Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (7:24).[6] Yet the answer is immediate --"Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (7:25a). Our true savior finds us before we even look. Life under law does not lead to the life in the Spirit he will describe in Chapter 8.[7]
Paul never clarified his doctrine of law as a universal human condition. The expression of law we find in Israel must end with the coming of the provision God has made in Christ. Yet, if the coming of Christ is to have universal influence, then the law must be a universal human experience as well. Paul never explicitly makes this connection. Clearly, the will of God for justice that underlies the universal human experience of law does not end.[8] Yet, Paul has given us the elements necessary to discuss the universal human experience of law in his view of conscience, the universal experience of the human sense of right and wrong, the desire for truth and goodness, and the universality of religious experience. In that sense, the Jewish law is one expression of a universal human condition.
The first point Paul makes in verses 15-16 is that if he wishes to do what is right by observing the law properly but is unable to do so, it must because the law is good and therefore sin is responsible (verse 17). 15 I do (κατεργάζομαι "to cause through work, to accomplish, to be successful") not understand my own actions. Paul has just said he is unspiritual, which he defines further as one enslaved to sin. Wording himself this way with the use of “I” has created some confusion. The “I” may well be rhetorical rather than personal, referring to the experience of the observant Jew who attends carefully to the requirements of the law. It thus extends by way of rhetorical example Paul’s discussion of how it is that the Law can be good but not lead to life in the experience of the law-observing Jew. [9] As the song puts it, “You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all; you always take the sweetest rose and crush it till the petals fall.”[10] For I do not do (πράσσω "to bring about, to practice") what I want, but I do (ποιῶ "to make, to produce, to create") the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do (ποιῶ "to make, to produce, to create") what I do (ποιῶ "to make, to produce, to create") not want, I agree that the law (νόμῳ) is good. The fact that one experiences this struggle is a recognition of the divine authority of the law. 17 But in fact it is no longer I that do (κατεργάζομαι "to cause through work, to accomplish, to be successful")it, but sin (ἁμαρτία) that dwells within me. Sin acts like a foreign enemy hostile to me. In Chapter 8, the Spirit dwells within the believer, even as here sin and law conspire to create a divided self. Liberation has begun in the sense that law exposes the problem I face in my own impotence to grasp life and the good. I continue living out of my identification with Adam.
Religion knows it is hardly the wise crown and fulfillment of true humanity. It knows itself to be a questionable, disturbing, and dangerous thing. Religion is not the sure ground upon which human culture safely rests. Religion is the place where civilization and its partner, barbarism, are rendered fundamentally questionable. Religion neither discovers the problem nor solves it. What it does is to disclose the truth that it cannot be solved. Religion is neither a thing to be enjoyed nor a thing to be celebrated. One bears religion as a yoke that one cannot remove.[11]
Slightly restating the same point, he posits that goodness must not be in his flesh because he is able to desire to do what is right but cannot do it (verse 18), thereby desiring the good but doing the evil (verse 19). 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh (σαρκί). The flesh denotes human existence as weak in that it easily becomes self-centered and resists the ways of the Spirit.[12] The weakness of the flesh entices humanity away from God and from the Spirit. The flesh is the weakness of our thinking that leads us away from the source and therefore reaps death. Flesh stands for the being of humanity, constituting its relation to God. He perceives the inability of the flesh to do good, thereby recognizing the weakness of the flesh. I can will (or desire) what is right, but I cannot do it. It seems as if sin takes advantage of the divided self, a lower self (of the weakness of the flesh) that sin dominates and a higher self that expresses itself in conscience and the desire to do what is good and right when coming face to face with others. 19 For I do (ποιῶ "to make, to produce, to create") not do (ποιῶ "to make, to produce, to create") the good I want, but the evil (κακὸν) I do (ποιῶ "to make, to produce, to create") not want is what I do (πράσσω "to bring about, to practice"). In a syllogistic argument, in verse 20 he concludes that that if he does not will to do what is evil but in fact does it, then it must not be he does it, but rather, sin that dwells in him. 20 Now if I do (ποιῶ "to make, to produce, to create") what I do not want, it is no longer I that do (κατεργάζομαι "to cause through work, to accomplish, to be successful") it, but sin that dwells within me. I overly emphasized the nuances in the frequent use of the verb "to do," coming from three separate Greek verbs used interchangeably. Such a divided self demonstrates that sins dwells within me. To emphasize, religion, symbolized in the law, neither discovers the human problem nor solves it. The argument of Paul begins with the statement that I cannot recognize myself in what I accomplish in my own actual achievements, in the details and the totality of my life’s work, even when enlightened by the Law of God. I am supposed to be able to understand and recognize my achievement and myself and to be at unity with myself. I cannot do this because my non-doing is in contradiction with my will. I contradict myself in my achievements. To my shame, I must admit that in the event of my achievements it is not I myself who finds myself revealed in my work, but the sin that dwells within me and lays its law upon me. How can I recognize myself in this even, except at the house of which sin dwells and is master?[13]
In Romans 7: 21-23, sin works through the divided law or principle of human life, as well as the divided self he has just described in verses 18-20. One law relates to the spirit (the mind, the inmost self) that wants to turn toward God. The other law wants to turn away from God. This battle takes place as long as I am in this body. Again, this divided self becomes an acknowledgment that sin dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law (νόμον or principle) that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. Sin coerces the will or desire to do good. Sin is always present to intrude its own will whenever he attempts to exert his own will. He sees two agents at work, one which he identifies as himself in that he desires to do what is right, the other as sin using its willing accomplice in the weakness of the flesh to do what is wrong. Verses 22-23 are the crux of the passage. He refers to two laws. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self (ἄνθρωπον), 23 but I see in my members (μέλεσίν perhaps a euphemism for sexual organs, compare I Corinthians 6:16), which literally means "limbs" and can also refer to the organs as well as the overall frame of the body. All of this coincide metaphorically with the outward mobility, inner motivation and stature associated with human action. As Paul pointed out in Chapter 6, bodily desire, especially manifested in sexual desire, can enslave us. If we are ensouled bodies (Barth), we can understand better the battle Paul is describing. It may well be that the delight his inmost self has in the Torah reflects the image of God that remains with him. Yet, his bodily desire follows the pattern of Adam in finding delight in moving against the command of God. The conflict between good and evil cuts through the hearts of each human being. Neither good nor evil reside in an economic class, ethnic group, or the pigmentation of skin. Each human being confronts this battle between what we desire in our inmost self and bodily desire. Paul sees another law or principle at war with the law or principle of my mind, identifying this with the inmost self, making me captive to the law or principle of sin (ἁμαρτίας)that dwells in my members (μέλεσίν perhaps a euphemism for sexual organs, compare I Corinthians 6:16). Paul adds to the contrast, referring to the law of the mind and to the law of sin that dwells in his body. The conscience is alert to the moral dilemma generated by our encounters with others. How ought we to treat them? The recognition of an ought in human encounter is a recognition of the claim the other has upon my behavior. Sin takes advantage of bodily desire to divert one from the dictates of the mind. The inmost self, the law or principle of mind, is the true and authentic self God intends us to be. Bodily desire is against this true self because of the dictates of sin. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are,[14] for the inner battle is a fight worth having. Most of us have a great deal of unmapped country within us that one would have to take into account in explaining the gusts and storms of our lives.[15] “Know yourself,” said the Delphic oracle, a statement Socrates used to say that he is still trying to do that, and thus does not have time for irrelevant things like myths and other speculations.[16] We will find genuine freedom in the discovery of who we are.[17]
And, above all, to thine own self be true
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.[18]
Early Christian thinking in its anthropology relied on such Greek ideas of nous, linking the faculty of knowledge to the concept of the specifically human soul. They found a basis for doing this in the use of the term “reason,” such as here.[19]The general point is that any form the law takes enslaves and withholds life because sin will overtake it. Observing the law will not break the hold of sin. Only in the death of Jesus is there power to overcome sin. Any attempt to make oneself righteous by adhering to a code inevitably fails to produce the righteousness and purity to which the code aspires.
Thus, the attempt to dictate proper behavior by politically correct codes of speech will fail. The reason is that those who form the code will inevitably become victims of their failure to abide by the code. The politically correct quickly devour their own because of some real or imagined infraction of the code.
Paul offers an account of his experience of the Torah in Philippians 3:4b-6 that demonstrates the difficulty, which is why this passage has such personal overtones. People can distinguish between good and evil. The problem is the difference between knowing and doing. In that sense, Paul is describing the existential experience of all people of good will and conscience. Ovid said, "I will to do good, but do evil." This disparity is not just among non-Christians but is there with those who genuinely try to live out their lives in a Christian way. Yet, this is not a depressing statement of the human situation. In Chapter 6, Paul stated that the sin that had claimed him no longer did so. In that sense, Paul is not speaking of his present condition, but rather of his pre-conversion, Pharisaic self. Once the sin that still held him hooked his zealousness for the law, it warped that enthusiasm, turning Paul into a persecutor of Christians. Paul's actions while under the law were, in fact, lawlessness. Paul is himself the supreme example of a how adherence to a code designed to make one a good person in line with the will of God can make one violent. He is a supreme example of one who united himself to a code that clearly defined purity and righteousness in one group and evil in another (Jesus and his followers). He could justify his violence, his role as persecutor, because the victims of his violence embodied evil. He is the supreme example that since human beings are the ones who are trying to put the law into practice, sin is there to interfere with their efforts. Paul does not perceive "Flesh" and "mind" as a general condemnation of the body, in favor of ethereal existence. If Paul found fleshly life without value, there would be no problem. The reason that Paul decries the weakness of the flesh is because the law of God is only present in flesh and blood human beings. It simply corrupts the necessarily interdependent relationship with the human spirit. The result is that the divine origin of the law makes it good, it directs me to do good, all of which points to my weakness as human being to fulfill the good intent of God.
In Romans 7: 24-25, Paul longs for deliverance in Jesus Christ, while recognizing that the war continues in his body. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body (σώματος) of death (θανάτου)? To belong to the body of death, described in verses 7-23, is to belong to the fellowship of all people under the law of sin. The body of death is without a future, hopeless, and non-redemptive. It is the body from whose context and association humanity must be torn and delivered if it is to live. The whole situation depicted in verses 14-23 has this character of death. Since this self-contradiction is a fact and one cannot resolve it, it can bring humanity only to corruption and non-redemptive death. The dignity of human destiny becomes a judgment on our unworthy conduct. Only then do we reach the deepest plight of our human situation. It is neither want and oppression, nor the frailty and corruptibility of life, but human conduct that contradicts our human destiny that causes the apostle Paul to utter this cry. Mortality characterizes the misery to which all human life is subject, no matter how different human situations may be. The root of this misery lies in the opposition of death to our human destiny of fellowship with God. Whether we know it or not, we all want a life that death does not end. The reason for our misery is the sin of turning from God.[20] His conclusion to the argument reaffirms the divided self and the divided law. With his mind he is a slave to the law of God, while with his flesh he is a slave to the law of sin. What “is happening in my house,” referring to the body. Sin acts, sin performs, sin is successful. Yet, I am still responsible. It means that I stand self-condemned. Paul cannot recognize himself in his actual doing or non-doing, in his achievements, that he cannot identify himself as the one who wills with the one who achieves. Paul is a stranger to himself in what he attains and accomplishes.[21]
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! This is the cry of hope rather than complete realization, although the hope is already beginning to be fulfilled in the experience of the believer. He is suggesting a dialectical tension within us. We can see a hint of a spirituality of patience in the sense that one keeps reaching out in faith for the strength to keep waging the battle. We work to overcome what pulls us down in a way that healing comes over time. Martin Luther famously said, "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly," thereby urging us to believe and rejoice despite our sin. We can also see a spirituality of power at work in the intense hope for a healing of the struggle. Romans 6:12-23 and Romans 8 will refer to genuine freedom from sin, law, and death. In either case, Christ is the one who heals in a way that begins freedom now that reaches its fulfillment eschatologically. The bewildering dialectical tensions are not the ultimate truth about us, so we can find within the tension the effects of this new life.[22] Paul has argued that the old and new epoch created a divided “I” and a divided law. Under the old epoch, the “I” is the flesh, while under the new epoch the “I” is mind or inner person. Under the old epoch, sin uses the law to bring death. Under the new epoch, the law in its clearest expression is the gift of God.
The thrust of the whole of Chapter 7 is the status of the law (Torah). The apostle can present the law in a negative way. In Galatians 3:10, for example, he writes that everyone who submits to the law is under a “curse.” Later in the same epistle he further notes that the law was instituted merely as a “disciplinarian” that kept people in check until the advent of Jesus (3:23-24). These and other harsh statements in Galatians about the law raised the hackles of those in the early Christian movement who regarded the law as a positive entity that was to be integrated into Christian theology rather than shunned. In his letter to the Romans, written after Galatians, Paul goes to some length to correct the perception that his theology is antinomian. The heart of Paul’s attempt to clarify his understanding of the status of the law considering Jesus’ death and resurrection is what is behind the argument in this chapter.
Paul never lost a sense of reverence for the law, but he did come to see its place in God’s plan more clearly. Paul’s view of the law would seem to spring from experience, for one could not keep the law in its entirety. The law was passive in that it pointed people to good. The problem was that it gave no help to perform it. Because of the perversity of human nature, the law provoked disobedience. Its effect was to increase condemnation: a) it multiplied sin; b) it worked wrath, c) it brought humanity under a curse. The more intently one thinks of any code of speech or behavior as defining of purity and righteousness, the more likely it will exploit our human weakness and bring us down a path of hatred and violence toward those outside the boundaries defined by the code. The code may define tolerance and respect, for example, but its adherents may use the code self-righteously and in a way that displays lack of both values.
The fault of all this failure was not the law, whether Jewish Law or any code, but rather the miserable weakness of human nature. The law came as a cloud over all humanity. God’s ways are not always bright upon the surface, and God will break away the clouds and pour forth blessing. For that reason, we best understand the use of law in this passage as having several meanings. For example, it can mean the Mosaic Law, as in verses 7, 9, 12, and 16. It can also mean a principle of action, one directed toward good, such as verse 22, 23a, 25b, and the other directed toward evil, such as 21, 23b, 25c. Paul is clearly preparing the way for Chapter 8. After describing what the law does, he will show what the Spirit does. Recognizing the weakness of his flesh, he presses the argument forward in order to show the victory one can have when one lives by the Spirit.[23]
Paul shows that the problem is not with the Law, but with human beings themselves. The trouble is that they are carnal, made of flesh that is weak, and prone to succumb to attacks of sin, which dwells within them. Sin dwells within because of the recurring pattern of behavior in which we duplicate the turn from God, righteousness, and life that we find in Adam. In doing so, we embed this turn from God into our pattern of thinking and behaving. Because of such indwelling sin, human beings fail to achieve what God desires of them. The mind does acknowledge the principle of doing what is right. We can observe another principle at work in the weakness of our humanity in that bodily desire wars against the conscience. The only deliverance possible from the state of confusion is Jesus Christ. These verses become an apology for the law itself in that it signifies its divine origin in urging us toward what is right. Paul shows the uselessness of any attempt to fulfill demands of righteousness based upon adherence to a code apart from God’s grace. The problem is not with the Law itself, but with the human condition. The Ego finds itself on both sides of the division within humanity. There is freedom from the Law because while it can show the sinful condition of humanity, God justifies and gives life, through Christ Jesus. It is a matter of what God does through Christ.
One way to approach the passage is that Paul provides here his own account of the human condition, with which everyone can identify: wanting to do right but ending up doing wrong. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. He is oriented to the good but ends up doing the bad. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. Why not? Why such impotence? Paul blames sin. He is not saying that he is not responsible; he himself does it. That is the problem. It is not that he never does good or that his doing of evil is habitual. Rather, there is no reason for concern over a good action, whereas sin is always a problem for the servant of God. Paul is concentrating on the problem area. He finds sin all too regularly too powerful and too much in control to resist. He is like a slave captive to the law of sin. Problem: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Solution! Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
By underscoring the eventual failure of our fleshly human attempts to employ the law against sin, Paul points us to the only way out -- Christ Jesus and, as he will soon elaborate in Romans 8, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ. Because we cannot handle the warning system of the law, we fall prey to the deadly futility of sin. Only Christ can successfully handle this sin, overcoming it and setting us free for fruitful life in the Spirit. By the end of Romans 7:15-25a, Paul reaches a conclusion that coincides with a shift that occurred in the apostle after his conversion. He shifted “from thinking that one could uphold a right relationship with God by fulfilling the law to an understanding that only by trusting in God can one's relationship to God be rectified, even if one does fulfill the law ... Christ, not the law, is the way to a right relationship with God."[24] Only the reconciling activity of Christ moves us personally and communally toward new life in the power of the Spirit, often without warning. Of this, Paul is certain.
Religion, symbolized in law, spells disruption, discord, and the absence of peace. This notion universalizes the human experience of law. A person at one with oneself does yet perceive the human plight. Our behavior proves us to be in no way at one with ourselves. Therefore, our relation to God is a disturbed relation. Religion discloses the questionable quality of my ego. In fact, one should not delude oneself into recommending religion for peace, enrichment of life, or a valuable addition to civilization. Religion is the human possibility of remembering that we must die. Religion is the place where, in the world of time, things, and people, one formulates the intolerable question – who, then, are you? Religion breaks people into two halves, in inward spirit and outer person of the natural world.
The law is good because it expresses the created goodness of humanity, which humanity must face because humanity also experiences estrangement from it. Paul wants to deal with the problem of moral motivation and the motivating power of the law. The attitude toward the law of the greatest religious people in the world finds a reflection in the Jewish people. As Paul puts it, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just, and good. The law is spiritual. He delights in the law and recognizes he is subject to the law of God as a rational being. The law gives acquaintance with sin. The law is the expression of what humanity essentially is and therefore ought to be, but what humanity is not in its history or individual lives, as the law shows. The law commands, but we do not do, and under a power that contradicts our true being. The law shows our essential nature and our estrangement from it. It also awakens the sleeping sin in us. Therefore, the law is not a power of moral motivation. The commanding law produces all kinds of wrong desires but does not motivate the conquest of these desires and the reunion of the “actual” will with the “essential” will. All of this suggests we can separate his argument from the historically conditioned religious framework. A humanist with insight into the spiritual predicament of humanity would agree with Paul.[25] As such, Paul unites himself with many morally sensitive people who have experienced the enigma of their behavior.
One way to understand the reaction of Paul to Law is as a means of salvation. For Judaism, the Law was the remedy for the predicament in which humanity found itself. Yet, the point Paul is making broader than that. If sin is a universal condition of humanity, then law as Paul explains it must also be a universal human experience. For Paul, existence under the law has its embodiment in the person who knows the law, wants to keep it, assents to it, but who also falls under its judgment because of the failure to observe it. One cannot balance virtuous deeds against bad deeds, and thus humanity cannot absolve itself from the part of the Law it could not obey. The true effect of the Law is to nail humanity to its sin. The law holds humanity within the prison of sin. The law prevents any attempt to secure righteousness before God. This is what Paul means when he writes of the weakness of the law. The Law cannot overcome sin and it cannot give life. Law expresses the will and purpose of God toward life and wholeness but discloses the sin that dominates human life in the divided self and the divided law. Paul could not abide the judgment that any human experience of law could lead to its salvation. Judaism knew no other way of salvation than that of Torah. In doing so, it becomes the supreme example, given the setting of Paul, for a general human tendency to construct the law as a means of salvation. The light that has arisen in the death and resurrection of Christ reveals the inadequacy of the Law as a means of salvation. The Torah, and every other experience of the law, is now in the shadow of Christ and has become superfluous. Humanity faces a new situation with the death and resurrection of Christ. One can no longer boast in the works of Torah, or of any other law, whether Hindu yoga, Buddhist eight-fold path, Islam, or any secular version (dialectical materialism). God saves both Jew and Gentile. Since this calling to the gentile is central for Paul, the Torah fails specifically because of its demand for everyone to become Jewish. Gentiles cannot live by Torah, since Torah is the possession of Israel and an ethnic group within the Roman Empire. His Gentile mission and his recognition that one God has one foundation for salvation dethroned Torah in the thinking of Paul. Yet, any form of law cannot become a means of salvation. Therefore, God gave Torah to show that humanity could not keep it. Humanity will always experience its inadequacy in the presence of Law. Instead of orienting humanity toward God, Torah (and every other law) stirs up sin. This weakness of Torah, and therefore every form of law, can lead one to recognize the insufficiency of human work and prepare one for the way of faith.
The reason sin still dwells in us is that we experience reiterating the turn away from spirit and toward flesh that we find Adam did. The intensity of the struggle that Paul describes reveals the character of the Law, sin, and the divided self that we are. Sin is our turn from life and toward death. The sin of Adam, which human beings re-create in their lives, shows its true character when confronted with the Law. When we hear from the Law of God, which is spirit and life, the sin of Adam continues to work its will in turning us away from the good intent of the Law. He makes the point that he cannot recognize himself in his actions and achievements because of the remnants of the choice that Adam made and that I have repeated in my life.
Paul acknowledges that sin lives within him. He knows he is responsible for this divided self. He has two principles at war with each other in him. One principle acknowledges the good and life-giving qualities of the Law of God and the other principle rebels against it. In a sense, the sin of Adam repeated in each of us works with the Law of God to create a divided and enslaved self. At this point, of course, Paul will part with his Jewish heritage, which would have pointed to the Law as the source of deliverance from this enslavement. Yet, we must also raise another question. Paul is clearly pointing to the Jewish experience of the Torah here. Yet, his argument seems to assume in a tacit way that every human being has the struggle of the divided self. If so, the law must refer to a universal principle, something like we would call religion, for his argument to make sense. Religion introduces the principle of trying to redeem the self through our effort. Our inability to satisfy the requirements of religion disrupts our relationship with God in a profound way, for we now know only slavery. Religion might even reveal what could be true of humanity, but instead reveals the actuality of our estrangement from self, others, and God. We hear the command, but do not perform it. We experience estrangement from our true self.[26] In some sense, then, if sin is a universal human experience, then the experience of Law is as well. I might suggest that Torah is a specific instance of a universal principle of law that God has given humanity. Once the Law arrives in our lives, it places us in a prison, working with our sin to accomplish this. The weakness of Law, and therefore of religion, is that it cannot overcome sin and thus cannot give life. Law or religion reveals the divine purpose to move us toward life and wholeness, but it only has the power to disclose the divided self and the divided law. He experiences this battle as a form of slavery to the repetition of the decision of Adam to turn from God, life, and righteousness and toward self, sin, and death. He cannot free himself from this enslavement. His actions condemn him to slavery.
The argument is difficult to follow. If read in public, most of us find it difficult to not get tongue-tied at some point. However, let us see if we can make some sense of it. Paul describes the plight of humanity as that of the divided self. He shows the conflict that many in the ancient world noted, that of knowing the right thing to do and being incapable of finding the moral capacity to do it. Socrates proposed that we do not do what is good because of our ignorance of what is good. Paul is suggesting that the problem humanity faces is deeper than that. When we know what the good, we are not able to do it. Aristotle said that if Socrates were right, then no one would be responsible for his or her actions. His point is that people do evil because they choose it, even when they know what is good. He sees a war within between the person we want to be, but are not, and the person we are but do not want to be. Many people "who appear never to overcome the recurrent insurgence of their own underworld," but who are nonetheless "deeply Christian."[27] Ovid said, "I will to do good, but do evil." As Faust declared in the old German legend, "Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast / And one is striving to forsake its brother." Such persons can distinguish between good and evil. People who cannot do that are sociopaths or may have some form of mental illness. Their problem is the division between knowing what is right and doing what is right. The plight of humanity may well be that evil and suffering is natural to this world as it is, and that goodness has arrived somewhat mysteriously. I hope that such goodness is spreading.[28]
Bob Dylan recalls his grandmother teaching him one of his most important lessons. He was to be kind, because everyone you will meet is fighting a hard battle.[29] Such observations require some honesty. We tend to our rationalize actions. We tend to cover up how deep the human plight of humanity is. Many in psychology have observed that we have a self-serving bias. We suffer from giving ourselves a higher self-assessment than we deserve. We overestimate the goodness of our actions. We suffer from a superiority complex. We will even rationalize the behavior of others. We move quickly from the evil nature of an act to what made the person do it to feeling sorry for the person that is the perpetrator of evil who now becomes a victim of circumstances. We seem quite unwilling to look at the evil that resides in the human heart.[30] Of course, Paul does not have that problem. Paul highlights "the gulf between willing and [non] achievement" as well as "the grip of sin as indwelling power."[31] Corresponding to this is the observation that "Paul has in view here the religious person, the responsible member of the human community, the one who wants to be a contributing member of society. Despite every attempt to accomplish good for other and for self, the efforts of the religious person come to nothing."[32]
Law here is the possibility of religion, of which Roman Christians already had awareness. In stressing this, we expand the focus of Paul on the Jewish Law to the universal human experience of law. Therefore, above all the occurrences of human life, there hangs a smoke screen of religion, sometimes heavy, and sometimes light. We cannot escape the possibility of religion. For this reason, any attempt to occupy a position in the air denotes a lack of prudence and circumspection on our part. We may move from one department to another, but we cannot escape from the store to wander away into the blue. The religious person easily changes color. Religion is always a thing amid other things.[33]
Barth, in his colorful language, says that the mature and well-balanced person, standing firmly with both feet on the earth, who has never experienced the scandal of the brokenness of his or her life, is existentially a godless person. He thinks Feuerbach has penetrated the truth when he points out that the possibility of religion awakens sinful passion. In religion, the supreme competence of human possibility attains its consummation and final realization. He sees religion as the crowning of all other passions with the passion of eternity, the endowment of what is finite with infinity, the most exalted consecration of the passions of humanity. Religion skillfully administers its drug upon humanity. It does not counteract human illusion. Rather, it introduces an alternative condition of pleasurable emotion. If Christ is the end of the Law, then Christ is the end of religion. We are prisoners, even though it seemed to us as pure, upright, and unbroken. Our acts of piety suggest as much. People cling to religion to bring life, but religion must die.[34]
To make the matter clear, let us reflect with Paul on a startling image of our plight. Humanity is the fellowship of a people under the influence of law and sin and therefore a body of death. To be a body of death is to be a body of people without a future, hopeless, and without redemption. The dignity of human destiny as shown in Christ becomes a judgment upon the present plight of law and sin. Law and sin reveal the plight of the human situation. Human conduct reveals the plight of the human situation. Humanity is not just in want, suffering from oppression, or frail. Our plight stands in contrast to the human destiny of human fellowship with God.[35] Humanity in this situation does not recognize who it is for sin finds success. We are strangers to ourselves.[36] The Torah and every other form of Law or religion are under the shadow of the coming of Christ, which ends the reign of sin and law. One can no longer boast in the works of Torah, or of any other law, whether Hindu yoga, Buddhist eight-fold path, Islam, or any secular version (dialectical materialism). God gave Torah to show that humanity could not keep it. Humanity will always experience its inadequacy in the presence of Law. Instead of orienting humanity toward God, Torah (and every other law) stirs up sin. This weakness of Torah, and therefore every form of law, can lead one to recognize the insufficiency of human work and prepare one for the way of faith. If Christ is the end of the Law, then Christ is the end of religion. We are prisoners, even though it seemed to us as pure, upright, and unbroken. Our acts of piety suggest as much. People cling to religion to bring life, but religion must die.[37]
To bring us back to the point of the section of Chapters 6-8, let us also be clear what the coming of Christ means. The coming of Christ throws light on the actual plight of the human situation. The only freedom humanity will find is in the grace it will find in Jesus Christ. The only deliverance for humanity will come in fellowship with Jesus Christ, who has come to release humanity from sin and death, reconstituting the destiny of humanity as participating in the eschatological life of Christ.
People have accused me of asking too many questions. Sometimes, when Suzanne asks me to do so something, and the reason does not seem obvious to me, my question is, “Why?” It frustrates because usually she is on a mission and just wants me to do it. The other is that it reminds her of the questions asked by her children when they were young.
Learning to ask good questions is important as we read the Bible. In fact, life itself should stimulate some questions. Are you ready for some humorous questions? Not important questions, but questions nonetheless:
Why do snooze buttons only give you nine more minutes of sleep?
Why can you not tickle yourself?
Those big clocks in the hall way or sometimes in large rooms — why do we call them “grandfather clocks?”
It is unlikely that these questions have crossed your mind, but they have crossed someone’s mind. The editors at MentalFloss, a trivia magazine, have even included them in an article called “The 25 most important questions in the history of the universe” (November-December 2004). Tongue firmly planted in cheek. More of Life's Unanswered Questions:
* If pro is the opposite of con, is progress the opposite of Congress?
* If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?
* If the cops arrest a mime, do they have to tell him he has the right to remain silent?
* If the Energizer Bunny attacks someone, is it charged with battery?
* Why does Hawaii have Interstate highways?
* If you spend your day doing nothing, how do you know when you are done?
* Should vegetarians eat animal crackers?
* Why are there Braille signs on drive-up ATMs?[38]
Such questions are kind of like riddles. They do not intend to bring an answer. They just intend to make us puzzle and humor us.
How do rabbits travel? By hareplane.
What did the sock say to the foot? You’re putting me on.
What do whales like to chew? Blubber gum.
Questions intrigue us, even if they are trivial or humorous in a grade-school sort of way. Questions are how we learn as human beings. Questions are how we grow in our faith.
Then sometimes we are hit with questions that stop us in our tracks, conundrums that confuse us and paradoxes that perplex. Like the dilemma the apostle Paul poses in Romans 7: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (7:15). He repeats himself in verse 19: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”
The human problem is deeper than many of us think. Jeremiah said it; “The heart is deceitful about all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” Give Paul credit for seeing these forces within himself. Remember, he used to persecute Christians until Jesus got to him. Jesus himself said, ‘no man is good,” and Paul wrote that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” It is in the recognition and admission of these forces within us that our hope lies.
Human beings are such social beings that we naturally want to find a place in the human community. We want to be a responsible member of a community and to contribute to it. Most people have within them a drive to do what is right, as defined by parents and the immediate community in which they live. Yet, such individuals also have a profound weakness within. Such individuals may want to do right but end up doing wrong. Ovid said, "I will to do good, but do evil." Such persons can distinguish between good and evil. People who cannot do that are sociopaths or may have some form of mental illness. Their problem is the division between knowing what is right and doing what is right. The person will to do right is weak.
Our naïve qualities emerge when this basic human problem surprises us. We note the failure to choose rightly in our lives and in the lives of others. We often fail to reflect properly upon the power of sin in us and among us. The problem is not simply what we do in a moment. What we do reflects who we are as sinners. The human problem consists of the sins we commit, to be sure. At a deeper level, the human problem is the Sin that clings to us, giving us mixed motives in almost everything we do.
Some people want to read this in a psychological way. All of us wrestle at times with the difference between who we are and what we desire to be. Sometimes, our thoughts and actions make us feel like strangers to ourselves. When we see the difference – that was not me, we say, when we know it really was part of us – it causes us to ask questions. All of that is true.
Yet, I think Paul is wrestling with another matter. He has been writing about the universal nature of sin and its turn away from God. Yet, God has turned toward us to redeem us in Jesus Christ. He has also wrestled with the Jewish Law, for it promised to bring redemption as well, especially through its ethical guidance, as well as its purity legislation (mostly related to foods and Sabbath observance) and its various sacrifices. Yet, in Jesus Christ, the Law no longer holds sway over the Christian (7:1-6). True, the Law represents what holy, good and true, but our best efforts do not bring us to the goal of the Law. His point is that as long as you are trying to obey the Law, you will never have the peace with God for which you long.
I would like to extend the argument a bit. Today, we often hear the distinction between religion and relationship. In this chapter, that distinction works well. Religion becomes your best effort to get right with God. Frankly, I wish more people today would at least make that effort. Many people could care less today. Yet, the speaker at the Indiana Annual Conference in 2014, the writer of Renovate or Die, noted that the biggest mistake he made was to make sure his children had a relationship with the church. He was not so good about making sure they had a relationship with Jesus Christ. You see, I think many people in our churches are trying to get the church thing right. Yet, we are not following a church. We as a community are people who seek to make disciples of Jesus who will then transform the world.
When I read this passage, the question that comes to my mind is how can I move from being a religious person, no matter how well intended I might be, no matter how good and true the religion is, to being a person who abides in Jesus Christ?
In other words, even people who have a strong desire to do good recognize their need for a savior in their inability to choose well. God has provided a gracious way to gain victory, not through our efforts, but through Jesus Christ. The one who saves and delivers is Jesus Christ.
If we will submit ourselves and our inner, wrongful, tendencies to God we can be saved. Oscar Wile wrote Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a man kept a painting of himself in his attic. He, a selfish, thoughtless man, maintained the outward appearance of handsome charm. However, the painting slowly grew ugly and hateful looking. At last, the man died and was revealed in all his ugliness. We, too, can often appear to others as good people. However, unless we deal with those other forces, let God help us overcome them, we could also die in ugliness.
Paul may put it better. All that Law and religion can do is show me that I am a sinner, for I am locked in this dilemma of not performing what the Law tells me. His question, then, is, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” His answer comes next: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Let that be our answer as well.
Paul is describing what it is like to have sin enslave us. He sets the stage for the freedom of life in the Spirit he will discuss in Chapter 8. Freedom is a precious notion to the modern consciousness in general and to Americans in particular.
The experience I had at the Independence Day celebration at Carmelfest in 2014 struck me differently than in the past. Part of it was looking at the rich diversity of people, many with patriotic clothing. Part of it was the music: Jazz, traditional, and Rock. I liked elements of it all. The food was great. This time, the fireworks seemed to have synchronized with the music. The patriotic music, especially those asking God to bless this land, clearly inspired some in the crowds. One song reminded that this nation received its independence because people were willing to fight for it. People willing to fight for freedom. Such has always been the case, for some people want to take it away. Freedom is precious. Freedom is also fragile. When we look upon the history of humanity, freedom is not its normal condition. Even in the world today, freedom is not the experience of millions of people.
This nation is unique in world history. The world has had dominant world powers in the past. However, they have only been over areas of the world, such as Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Today, America is the only recognized superpower in the world. With that power comes a great responsibility. The words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence still sound sweet to our freedom-loving ears.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among us, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Signed on the evening of July 4, 1776, that powerful dream is still frightening tyrants around the world and giving hope to the people.
A movie about the Scottish fight for independence from the English, "Braveheart," is the story about Sir William Wallace. At the end of the movie, as he is about to be executed, he is offered the chance to pledge his allegiance to the English king. After being beaten and tortured, he struggles to shout out one word: "Freedom!" Freedom. I must admit that the word still sounds good to this American. The movie “Amistad,” which is about slavery in America, has the same theme. When the African learned his first few words in English, they were, “Give me freedom.”
The order in our constitution of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” may seem obvious. Yet, if we switch order, putting liberty or happiness before life, we run the risk of moral poverty. John Adams put it this way:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Augustine defined the freedom to choose as a minor freedom. The primary freedom is to choose rightly and virtuously, to be whom God created us to be.
We human beings tend to abuse our freedom and independence. Among the most important ways the church can be a healing influence in American society is to help people use their freedom well.
[1]
[2] J. Christiaan Beker (Paul the Apostle [Philadephia Fortress, 1980] 238-9).
[3] (Byrne, Romans. Sacra Pagina 6. [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1996] 226).
[4] Beverly Gaventa (Text for Preaching: [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995] 393).
[5] Knox, Sanday and Headlam, and to a certain extent Greathouse, believe this passage to be a part of Paul’s present experience. The point here is that Paul speaks so deeply and movingly, and then uses the cry of despair and hope so effectively, that he must necessarily be speaking from personal experience as a Christian. One should also note that this passage might not express the normal experience of the believer. Paul here is relating an aspect of his life that has covered some twenty years of preaching and persecution. This is simply a focusing on one aspect of experience, but clearly not the normal experience, as expressed in verse 25a and Chapter 8. One might find rather appealing Knox’s point that the passage reflects the experience of any morally sensitive person.
[6] Adam Clark and Dr. Dayton follow traditional holiness interpretation by saying the passage refers only to those under the law. Since the Christian is under grace, Paul does not apply this passage to the Christian. Thus, it clearly does not express Paul’s present experience, although it may represent Paul’s experience as a Pharisee. The use of the personal pronoun, then, is a literary device to represent those under the law. The interpreter today ought not apply the passage to the experience of the believer.
[7] One debate concerning this passage is whether Romans 7:15-25a is an autobiographical confession of Paul's personal sin or an anthropological construct of the sinful condition of humankind. Most likely both of these assessments are true and complementary. Whatever the case may be, I am following in the line of Krister Stendahl here.
[8]
[9] In his seminal article, “The worm at the core of the apple: Exegetical reflections on Romans 7” (in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn, ed. R.T. Fortna and B.R. Gaventa [Nashville: Abingdon, 1990], 62-84).
[10] From the Mills Brothers, “You Always Hurt the One You Love.”
[11]
[12] (Byrne 1996, 227)
[13]
[14] --e.e. cummings.
[15] George Eliot
[16] Phaedrus
[17] When I discover who I am, I'll be free.--Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man.
[18] --William Shakespeare, "Polonius to Laertes," in Hamlet, III.1.
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22] Ivens, Michael. "Healing the divided self." The Way, July 1976, 163-75, theway.org.
[23] Sanday and Headlam
[24] (Achtemeier, Romans [Atlanta: John Knox, 1985] 128-9).
[25]
[26]
[27] Michael Ivens
[28] Scott Peck, Christianity Today (February 2005).
[29] Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One
[30] Thomas G. Long, Theology Today, Jy 1993.
[31] (Byrne, Romans. Sacra Pagina 6. [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1996] 226).
[32] Beverly Gaventa (Text for Preaching: [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995] 393).
[33]
[34]
[35]
[36]
[37] Barth, Romans, 235-39.
[38] --Life's Unanswered Questions, Bored.com/questions.htm.
your use of code for behavior is in a Taylor sense? It does fit Taylor. Code becomes a way to reduce the tension of transcendence yet we fail at it. The only answer is Christ.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things i have been wrestling with in Romans is that Paul is reasonably clear of that Christ sin is a universal problem to which Christ is God's answer. His discussion of Law tends to be reasonably clear that it focuses on Jewish Law. or Torah. Yet, the way he discusses the close connection of sin, death, flesh, and law, it seems to me that all of them must be universal human predicaments to which Christ is the answer. Barth is a step in this direction, as he views references to Law as showing the weakness of all religion, even if religion is often the best that human beings can do in reaching out to God. Yes, our reading of Taylor is helping me formulate the way in which reliance upon code is a universal condition and always creates division, self-righteousness, moral superiority, and opens the door for violence. As much as God may have designed all law or codes to stimulate respect for God and others, they do not have the ability to do that because we are the types of weak creatures who take good things and make them usable for bad purposes. Hence, political correctness, which i think started with a desire to urge respect for others, especially those different from us, as descended into the abyss of division, getting people fired who do not adhere to the code perfectly, and even toward violence. It takes the perpetrators of violence and turns them into victims, thereby justifying hatred and violence toward the breakers of the code. The point Taylor makes is that this code-like behavior is universal, not just with religion, but with political ideology and atheist communities as well. If there is to be reconciliation and peace, it may well be that we will have to face our weakness, our reliance upon law, and our tendency to use even good things to advance division, hate, moral suiperiority, and open the door to violence, by turning to Christ is the demonstration of the love, grace, and forgiveness of God extended to us and that we can then, in fellowship with the Trinity, extend the same qualities toward others.
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