What’s Wrong With Me? (Romans 7:7-25)

This passage from Romans 7 is one about which Christian expositors have differed greatly. We may be familiar with some of the interpretations. Is Paul here describing his pre-conversion experience, of what happened to him during the time he was being drawn to Christ? Or is he describing his ongoing Christian experience? Or maybe, he is not describing his own experience but is using the personal pronoun in a generic manner.

Four introductory points

I would make four brief comments before we begin examining what Paul writes in this section. The first is that the account is very personal as far as Paul is concerned. In this, Paul is very like some of the psalmists who write graphically about their spiritual experiences. From this, we can deduce that it can be helpful to use our own experiences as illustrations, provided we know the truth about what we are trying to illustrate.

The second detail is the Bible has to interpret our experience and not the other way round. It is possible to have an inner struggle and then wonder if a Bible passage describes it. So it may happen that some Christians have an intense period when they discover some defects in themselves that disturb them and they look for a passage that explains it. Some immediately jump to Romans 7 and don’t ask themselves in the process who Paul is describing.

There are verses elsewhere that clearly describe the inner conflict in Christians and it may be best to take encouragement from them until we know clearly who Paul is speaking about here in Romans 7. For example, Paul writes in Galatians 5:16-17: ‘But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.’ That reference clearly describes the experience of Christians. Yet it is possible to imagine comfort from a passage that is wrongly interpreted. Of course, God is gracious and helps us in our weaknesses, even when we misapply his Word, but we should make an effort to discover what difficult passages in his Word mean. There are plenty helps available for us.

The third detail to realise is that Paul is not a defeatist when he writes this passage. We can see from the last verse of the chapter that he expects to be delivered from his problem, and the opening words of the next chapter indicate that the deliverance occurs in this life and not only after we leave it. It is a mistake to stop reading his argument at the end of this chapter because the first four verses of chapter 8 are connected to it.

The fourth detail is to interpret the passage in its context. We have seen in recent studies that Paul is explaining the relationship between a Christian and God’s law. Basically he has argued that Christians before they were converted were unable to keep the law and were unable to be helped by it because all it did was condemn and imprison them. He also argues that the Holy Spirit, once they have believed in Jesus, enables them to keep it – that is the difference he states in verse 6 when he contrasts the way of the Spirit with the law as an external code.

Paul’s example – the tenth commandment

One possible deduction from Paul’s previous explanations is that someone could deduce that the law by itself is bad, especially since it can stimulate a person to think of sin and perhaps practise it. So Paul has to deal with that issue and he uses his own personal experience of the tenth commandment to show how that possible deduction is wrong.

There was a time in Paul’s life when the tenth commandment – ‘You shall not covet…’ – showed him that he was a sinner. What period of his life is he speaking about? It looks to me as if he is describing the period before his conversion. We can read about his conversion from an external point of view in the Book of Acts, of how he was confronted by the risen Jesus on the Damascus road. I am not sure if he was converted at that moment; perhaps it is more likely he turned to Jesus in faith and repentance during the subsequent days in Damascus, so that when Ananias went to see him Paul had experienced the great change. So it looks to me, and I admit this may be regarded as speculative, that he is either describing what was going on inside him at the time before he met Jesus or the time after Jesus had stopped him on his journey.

If it is describing was what was going on before he met Jesus, this passage might help us to understand the words that Jesus said to Paul when he was informed that it was hard for him to kick against the goads. Was he struggling with this sense of inner failure and that his intense attempts at defending Judaism against the cause of Jesus were attempts to show that he was in the right path, despite what he was discovering about himself? God’s goads – the law – were showing Paul that he was not the man others thought he was.

Or maybe, he thought about his behaviour after he was brought blind into Damascus. He had been rebuked severely and it would have been inevitable that he would search himself. Did he take the Ten Commandments and work his way through them, assessing himself while he did so? And when he came to the tenth, he discovered there was nothing good in him, because coveting covered everything that he thought and did (or as he puts it in verse 8 – ‘all kinds of covetousness’). He realised that he was sinful.

Whether it was one of them, or both of them, or at some other time in his life, Paul had experienced the power of the law. When the law remained silent as it were, he was not aware of his sin (v. 9). But when the law reminded him of his sin, all changed. Instead of thinking that he was alive and that sin was dead (a devout person), he discovered that sin was alive and that he was dead (he had no spiritual life). The law, that promised life if it was kept, now became a means for sin to deceive him (his thinking) and to kill him.

But Paul does not regard that experience as a sign that the law is bad. Instead, discovering how bad he was only showed him how good the law in general is and how good each specific commandment is. The fact that it showed him his sinfulness did not make the law sinful. I suppose one way to understand this is to consider the effect thinking about the law would have had on Jesus because when he thought about it he would realise he was sinless and its instructions would have caused him to obey it. He would have always responded appropriately to it. Jesus was very different from self-righteous, sinful Paul who before the law came to him had imagined he obeyed it. Paul never responded appropriately to the law before his conversion.

Paul’s assessment – new understanding of himself

I don’t suppose people have too much difficult accepting that so far, in verses 6-12, Paul has been describing what happened when he experienced conviction of sin at his conversion. The problem now is whether or not he is still speaking about that time in the next section that runs from verse 13 to verse 20. In order to try and work out the answer, we will need to focus on a couple of verses in more detail.

The meaning of verse 13 is obvious: ‘Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was 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.’ Paul discovered through the good law’s conviction of his sin that he was exceptionally sinful, far more than he had previously imagined he was.

The second half of verse 14 – ‘For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin’ – is more difficult to understand. The first point to note is that he is speaking of himself and not of part of himself. He then says that he is a slave of sin. What kind of person does he have in mind when he says he is a slave of sin? He goes on to describe him in the next few verses, although as he does so we have to bear in mind that he is now describing a person who also knows that the law is spiritual and desirable.

Paul says that he found himself unable to do what he wanted. He does not say that he was doing some things that he wanted to do and some things that he did not want to do. Instead he says that all he did was wrong, but there is now another important aspect in that he now hated his wrongdoing. Yet he also discovered that he could not liberate himself from the power that he hated, even though he now knew that what he was doing was wrong.

At the very least, we can say that Paul is describing himself as an enlightened man. What has he discovered? He now knows that the law is good and that he is bad. He now knows that in his current spiritual state, which he describes as ‘in my flesh’, he cannot do any good. Yet he now wants to do what is right, which must mean that he now wants to obey the law as it should be obeyed. But no matter how much he wants to obey it, the power of indwelling sin prevents him. He is still its slave, but a reluctant one.

Is Paul describing an unconverted man in this section? I would say that he is describing an enlightened man, who if he is not converted is on the way to being converted. Yet it is impossible to imagine an unconverted person having such estimations of the spirituality of God’s law. So I think Paul is describing a true believer.

What Paul is doing in this chapter is giving reasons why the law of God is good. He has given us two reasons so far. The law is good because it points out our sinfulness at our conversions and it is good because it becomes our desire after we are converted. Yet as we have seen, having a new desire is not enough because by itself it does not bring about obedience to the law, nor does the desire overcome our sinful tendencies and practices.

Paul’s conclusion

If that was all Paul had to say, his readers might have wondered if anything else could be expected in the Christian life. Is it sufficient to know that there will be an inner ongoing spiritual warfare about which nothing can be done? Is it the case that all we can expect is being held captive by our sinfulness despite the fact that we hate it? Paul’s estimation of such a scenario is wretchedness, and while that is an accurate assessment, it is not his conclusive assessment. Yet Paul is saying that after conversion, no matter how strong our sense of conviction may have been then, we have to realise that there will be an ongoing, inner conflict with sin.

It is important to note that Paul says there will be an inner conflict. Often we focus on outward behaviour, especially if we think it is questionable. Obviously, a person’s behaviour will reveal whether or not he is truly converted because we usually do what we want to do outwardly. Yet it is also the case that we might not do outwardly what we want because of other pressures. So while a changed lifestyle is an important means of evidence that a person has become a Christian, I would say that greater evidence is the presence of an inner conflict in which we are dealing with inner change.

Who will help Paul deal with this inner conflict? He tells us that Jesus Christ will do so as part of his Lordship. This is a reminder of how the Shorter Catechism describes the ongoing office of Jesus as our King: ‘Christ executeth the office of a king, in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.’ So although Paul is in a conflict, he is full of hope.

We can close our study by asking if this chapter helps us understand who a Christian is. The chapter tells us that a Christian is a man with two perspectives and two cries. His perspectives are that he is a sinner and that Jesus is a powerful Saviour. But perspectives may only be observations and a Christian is more than an observer. So in addition to having two observations he has two cries, one about himself and the other about Jesus. His cry about himself tells us that he feels he is a great sinner and his cry about Jesus tells us that he feels his ongoing need of the help from the Saviour.

The wise words of David Brown summarises how we should think about this chapter: ‘It is sad when such topics as these are handled as mere questions of biblical interpretation or systematic theology. Our great apostle could not treat of them apart from personal experience, of which the facts of his own life and the feelings of his own soul furnished him with illustrations as lively as they were apposite. When one is unable to go far into the investigation of indwelling sin, without breaking out into an, “O wretched man that I am!” and cannot enter on the way of relief without exclaiming “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” he will find his meditations rich in fruit to his own soul, and may expect, through Him who presides in all such matters, to kindle in his readers or hearers the like blessed emotions (Rom. 7:24; 7:25). So be it even now, O Lord!’