Released from the Law, Joined to Christ (7:1–6)

As Paul has suggested in 6:14 (see comments), the law of Moses belongs to the old age. In order to belong to the new age, therefore, believers must be released from the domination of the Mosaic law. In this paragraph Paul asserts that release and explains its consequences.

I am speaking to men who know the law (7:1). The “law” here, as throughout chapter 7, is probably the Mosaic law. We might therefore conclude that “[those] who know the law” must be Jews. But this is not necessarily the case. A substantial number of Gentiles in the ancient world were attracted to the Jewish religion. They regularly attended synagogue meetings, knew the Old Testament, and endeavored to follow the law as much as possible. But they were not considered Jews because they stopped short of becoming circumcised. These Gentile sympathizers, called “God-fearers” (see, e.g., Acts 13:26), were probably numerous in the early Christian churches, and many of the Gentiles Paul addresses in Rome were probably drawn from their number.

The law has authority over a man only as long as he lives (7:1). Paul refers to what may have been a well-known maxim in his day. See, for instance, b. Šabb. 30a: “If a person is dead, he is free from the Torah and the fulfilling of the commandments.”43

TORAH SCROLL

This is a replica of a Qumran scroll.

If she marries another man (7:3). The Greek phrase means, literally, “become to a man” (ginomai andri). It is a colloquialism for “marry,” as the LXX reveals, so the NIV rendering is accurate.44 But Paul may use this particular wording so that he can create a better parallel with the believer’s being “joined to” Christ (7:4, the Greek there is the same).

When we were controlled by the sinful nature (7:5). “Sinful nature” is the NIV rendering of the Greek word sarx, whose literal meaning is “flesh.” The word has this literal meaning in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:39), but Paul particularly often uses sarx as a metaphor to denote the sinful tendency that governs people apart from Christ. As in this verse, the NIV generally chooses to translate this word with the phrase “sinful nature” when it has this metaphorical connotation.

Paul’s use of this particular word in this way is striking and has created considerable controversy. A few scholars have thought that Paul might be influenced by certain Greek traditions that tended to view the physical body as evil. But a more likely background is the Old Testament use of the Hebrew word bāsār (“flesh”) to denote the human being, and particularly the human being in his or her weakness, frailty, and proneness to sin (see Gen. 6:3, 12; Ps. 78:39). This background makes it clear that “flesh” is not a part of the human being (as the NIV translation may suggest), but the whole person looked upon as tied to this world, with its sin and corruption. Paul extends this basic sense a bit further, conceiving of sarx as virtually a power that exercises control over people outside of Christ. This, in turn, fits nicely into his two-age salvation-historical scheme. Sarx becomes another one of those ruling powers of the old age, from which believers are released through conversion to Christ. This is why Paul can in this verse describe our pre-Christian past as, literally, the time when we were “in the flesh.”

The Coming of the Law (7:7–12)

The beginning of Romans 7 is the climax in Paul’s negative assessment of the Mosaic law in Romans (see also 3:20, 28; 4:15; 5:20; 6:14, 15). Like sin, the law is something that people must “die to” if they are to enjoy the benefits of incorporation into Christ. As a seasoned preacher and teacher, Paul well knows the conclusion that people might draw from this negative assessment. So he himself brings this faulty inference out into the open at the beginning of this paragraph: “What shall we say, then? Is the law sin?” He then shows why the inference is a faulty one, arguing that sin, not the law, is at fault in bringing about the human plight of death.

I would not have known what sin was except through the law (7:7). The Hebrew verb for “know” (yd ʿ) often has the sense “experience, be in relationship with.” The NIV obscures this sense of “know” by choosing other English renderings where the verb has this sense. But a more literal translation quickly reveals this usage. See, for instance, Jeremiah 9:6: “‘You live in the midst of deception; in their deceit they refuse to know [NIV acknowledge] me,’ declares the LORD.” What the Lord is rebuking the people for is their failure to maintain their relationship with him. This same meaning occurs frequently in the New Testament with the comparable Greek verbs for “know.” Second Corinthians 5:21, which claims that Christ did not “know” sin, is a good example.

Some interpreters apply this meaning to the verbs in this verse. Paul is then claiming that Israel did not “experience” sin until the law came. But this experiential sense of the verbs is by no means common in the New Testament. Nevertheless, Paul seems to be claiming more than that the law simply “defined” what sin was. What he probably means is that the law gave to Israel a sense for what sin really is, in all its heinousness (see Rom. 7:13).

“Do not covet” (7:7). A few scholars, thinking that Paul refers to the experience of Adam and Eve throughout this paragraph, argue that Paul here refers to the prohibition that the Lord gave to the first human pair in the Garden of Eden. They note that the Aramaic targum Neofiti I uses a word that could be translated “desire” in Genesis 3:6 and that a rabbinic text claims that “desire” was injected into Eve by the serpent.45 But these connections are tenuous at best. The words are almost certainly an abbreviated citation of the tenth commandment of the Decalogue (Ex. 20:17; Deut. 5:21). There is Jewish precedent for such an abbreviation.46 Paul probably quotes this commandment because some Jews viewed “coveting,” or illicit desire, as the root evil.47 The prohibition could then become a representative summation of the Mosaic law as a whole.48 Paul uses the commandment in just this sense. He is writing about Israel’s experience with the Mosaic law as a whole—not one person’s experience (the “I”) with one commandment.

Produced in me every kind of covetous desire (7:8). This language has been taken to refer to Paul’s own sexual awakening at the time of his puberty.49 But the word “desire” (epithymeō) generally has a broader meaning in Paul; moreover, as we have seen, a reference to Paul’s individual experience in this paragraph is unlikely. Several other interpreters have suggested that Paul may be thinking of his bar mitzvah. But the ceremony was unknown in Paul’s day; it was a medieval creation.50

The very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death (7:10). Interpreters who think Paul is describing the experience of Adam (as a representative person) in this paragraph argue that this language can only properly be applied to Adam and Eve. For only they actually experienced death when “the commandment came” and they sinned against the Lord. All other human beings since them were born in sin, condemned to death already.

But the commandment, in light of the context, must refer to a representative commandment from the Mosaic law (see 7:7). To be sure, Jewish tradition sometimes claimed that Adam and Eve were subject to the law itself. One of the Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament, Neofiti I, translates Genesis 2:15–16: “And the Lord God took man and caused him to dwell in the Garden of Eden, in order to keep the Law and to follow his commandments.” But it is vital to Paul’s understanding of salvation history to claim that the law came only with Moses, introduced 430 years after Abraham (Gal. 3:17). He would hardly give up such a vital point here.

What we must understand is that Paul is writing to counteract a certain Jewish tradition about the Mosaic law. That tradition, rooted in the Old Testament itself (Lev. 18:5; Ps. 19:7–10; Ezek. 20:11), ascribed virtual salvific power to the law (see, e.g., t. Šabb. 15.17: “The commands were given only that men should live through them, not that men should die through them”51). Paul turns this tradition on its head: The law brought not life, but death. Paul does not mean that the people of Israel experienced spiritual death for the first time when the law came. But what he does mean is that they were driven more deeply into spiritual helplessness because of the way the law so clearly spelled out the divine demands. When failure to meet these demands inevitably ensued, Israel’s penalty for its sin was simply made all the greater (see also Rom. 4:15; 5:13–14).

Sin . . . deceived me (7:11). Advocates of the “Adamic” interpretation of these verses view this assertion as an allusion to Genesis 3:13, in which Eve claims that “the serpent deceived me, and I ate” (note that Paul uses this same verb to describe Eve’s deception in 2 Cor. 11:13; 1 Tim. 2:14). Paul puts sin in the role of the serpent. But Paul uses the verb elsewhere with no allusion to the Fall.52 That some allusion to the experience of Adam might be present in these verses need not be denied. In fact, Jewish tradition sometimes paralleled Adam and Israel. But Paul’s main focus is on the Mosaic law and therefore on Israel, not Adam.

Life Under the Law (7:13–25)

Scholars and laypeople have debated for centuries over the interpretation of this passage. This commentary is not the place to discuss the matter. Suffice it to say that we think Paul is referring to the experience of the Jewish people (before Christ) under the law.53 In 7:7–12, he describes what happened when the law “came” to the people of Israel. Now he turns to the nature of their experience living under that law.

Sold as a slave to sin (7:14). The NIV “as a slave” is an inference from one common application of the verb that Paul uses here. The verb itself means simply “sell,” but it refers specifically to the selling of slaves in eleven of its twenty-four LXX occurrences and in one of its nine New Testament uses (Matt. 18:25). The slave imagery is further suggested by Paul’s use of a preposition (hypo) that means “under” (see 3:9).

What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do (7:15). This confession of frustration at not being able to put into practice what one knows to be the right thing to do is similar to many found in the ancient world. Certainly the most famous comes from the Latin writer Ovid: “I see and approve the better course, but I follow the worse.”54

That is, in my sinful nature (7:18). Or “flesh” (sarx); see comments on 7:5.

I see another law at work in the members of my body (7:23). Paul’s introduction of a second “law,” alongside “God’s law” (7:22), is problematic. What is this “another law”? Since Paul has consistently used the word “law” to refer to the Mosaic law throughout this passage, this other law may simply be the Mosaic law in another guise. As a revelation of God’s righteous will for his people, this law is “holy, righteous and good” (7:12). But when perverted by sin, that same law brings frustration and death (7:7–11). However, the word “another” makes it difficult to think that this second law has any relationship to the Mosaic law. Paul seems to be talking about a different law altogether. Ancient writers could sometimes use the word “law” (nomos) to refer to a general authority, norm, or power (see comments on 2:12). A contrast between God’s law and an evil “law” is found elsewhere in Jewish literature, as in T. Naph. 2.6: “As a person’s strength, so also is his work . . . as is his soul, so also is this thought, whether on the Law of the Lord or on the law of Beliar.”

What a wretched man I am! (7:24). “Wretched” (talaipōros) is a strong word. This word and its cognates are used several times in the Old Testament to refer to the “misery” or “distress” that come on the wicked in God’s judgment (e.g., Isa. 47:11; Jer. 6:7).55