2. The History and Experience of Jews under the Law (7:7–25)

In 7:1–6 Paul teaches that people must be released from the bondage of the Mosaic law in order to be joined to Christ because life under the law brings forth only sin and death. This section brings to a climax the negative assessment of the law that is such a persistent motif in Rom. 1–6 and thereby also raises with renewed urgency perhaps the most serious theological issue with which Paul (and early Christianity generally) had to grapple: How can God’s law have become so negative a force in the history of salvation? How could the law be both “good” and an instrument of sin and death? This dilemma can, of course, be avoided if the divine origin of the law is denied, and this is the route followed by Marcion in the second century. But the rejection of the OT and a great deal of the NT required by this simple and superficially attractive cutting of the theological Gordian knot exposes this solution as the heresy it is. And despite Marcion’s appeal to Paul, it is certainly not Paul’s solution. This he makes clear in 7:7–25.

The law, Paul affirms, is “God’s law” (v. 22) and is “good” (vv. 12, 17), “holy” (v. 12), “just” (v. 12), and “spiritual” (v. 14). How, then, could the law come to have so deleterious an effect? How could the good law of God “work wrath” (4:15), “increase the trespass” (5:20), and “arouse sinful passions” (7:5)? This Paul seeks to explain in 7:7–25, pointing to sin as the culprit that has used the law as a “bridgehead” to produce more sin and death (7:7–12) and to the individual “carnal” person, whose own weakness and internal division allows sin to gain the mastery, despite the “goodness” of the law (7:13–25). Romans 7:7–25, therefore, has two specific purposes: to vindicate the law from any suggestion that it is, in itself, “sinful” or evil; and to show how, despite this, the law has come to be a negative force in the history of salvation.

Both major sections of 7:7–25 (7–12; 13–25) follow the dialogical style with which we have become so familiar in Romans: question—emphatic rejection (“by no means!”)—explanation. Paul uses this format in a variety of ways in Romans, but in this case it marks the whole section as something of an excursus. The main line of development proceeds from 7:6b—“serving in newness of Spirit”—to chap. 8, with its focus on the Spirit in the new age (e.g., Barrett). To be sure, there are points of contact between 7:7–25 and chap. 8 (cf. Käsemann). But these are confined to the first few verses of chap. 8 and are in the nature of “counterfoils” to the positive development of Paul’s teaching. In labeling 7:7–25 a parenthesis, we must also stress that we mean by this not that 7:7–25 is an unimportant aside but that it is a detour from the main road of Paul’s argument. No one could dispute the importance of 7:7–25 for Paul’s theology of the law and of human nature.

We may divide this section into two major parts, v. 13 being a “bridge” between the two. In 7:7–12 Paul uses a narrative to show how sin has used the law to bring death. Verses 14–25, on the other hand, use present tense verbs to describe the constant battle between the “mind,” which agrees with God’s law, and the “flesh,” or the “members,” which succumb to “the law of sin.” The result, then, is that the law of God, which aroused sin, is impotent to break the power of sin.

Thus far I have described the teaching of Rom. 7:7–25 without identifying the “I” (egō) who figures so prominently in these verses. This is deliberate, for we must insist again that the central topic of these verses is not human nature, or anthropology, but the Mosaic law. Because this is the case, the most important teaching of the section is the same however the “I” is identified. The law, God’s good, holy, and spiritual gift, has been turned into an instrument of sin because of the “fleshiness” of people. It is therefore unable to deliver a person from the power of sin, and people who look to it for such deliverance will only experience frustration and ultimate condemnation. Having said this, however, the identification of the “I” in this passage is not an insignificant matter. It affects, to some extent, the way we understand Paul’s presentation of the law, but, even more, the way we understand the Christian life. And certainly the identification of this “I” affects dramatically the interpretation of individual verses.

In the history of interpretation, four main identifications of the egō in this passage have been proposed. Not all of these identifications are maintained for the entire passage, and many (perhaps most) scholars now combine one or more of these identifications in their interpretation of the chapter. It might be more accurate, then, to speak of four “directions” in interpretation. In describing these directions, I will include an “expanded paraphrase” of vv. 9–10a because these verses are crucial for the correct identification of this egō.1

1. The autobiographical direction. The average Christian is—understandably!—likely to ask, “What is all the fuss about?” Doesn’t Paul use “I”? Who else except Paul would it be? Most interpreters throughout the history of the church have agreed and concluded that Paul uses egō simply because he is depicting his own experience. Most, however, would quickly add that he describes his experience not because it is unique but because it is typical—the experience of “every person.” Those who defend an autobiographical interpretation differ over what experience in Paul’s life he may be describing in vv. 7–12.2 The following are the main possibilities:

a. The awakening of the sinful impulse at the time of Paul’s “coming of age,” or “bar mitzvah”: “I was living without understanding the real power of sin at one time, but when I became responsible for the commandment, sin sprang to life and I perceived myself to be under condemnation”3 (or “perceived myself to be unable to throw off sin’s power”4).

b. The realization of condemnation just previous to Paul’s conversion: “I thought myself to be ‘alive’ in the days when, as a self-satisfied Pharisee, I thought I was fulfilling the law. But when the Spirit began to make clear to me the real, inward, meaning of God’s law, I saw that I was far short of its demands and was, in fact, under condemnation.”5

In vv. 14–25, then, defenders of the autobiographical view think that Paul is describing his experience as a Jew under the law, his immediate postconversion struggle with the law, or his continuing struggle to obey the law as a Christian. (See, further, the introduction to vv. 14–25.)

2. The Adamic direction. While few have thought that Paul describes the experience of Adam throughout the section, many, from the earliest days of the church, have thought that vv. 7–12 can be applied directly only to Adam. “I was fully alive [spiritually] before the ‘law’ not to eat of the fruit of the tree came. But when that commandment was given, sin [through the serpent] sprang to life and brought upon me spiritual condemnation.” Most contemporary interpreters, while not thinking that vv. 7–11 describe only Adam, think that reference to Adam is present and prominent.6 Interpretations of vv. 14–25 by proponents of this view differ widely, but perhaps the most attractive is that of Longenecker. He argues that after using the idea of corporate solidarity with Adam in vv. 7–13—“I in Adam”—Paul goes on in vv. 14–25 to describe the continuing effects of that solidarity—“Adam in me.”7

3. The Israel direction. Since Chrysostom, some interpreters have understood the egō in at least parts of 7:7–25 (usually vv. 8–10 especially) to be a representation of the people of Israel. “We [the nation Israel] were, relatively-speaking, spiritually ‘alive’ before the giving of the law at Sinai. But when that law was given, it gave sin its opportunity to create transgression and so to deepen and radicalize our spiritual lostness.”8 Most of these interpreters, then, think that Paul in vv. 14–25 describes the continuing situation of Jews under the Mosaic law. This is often called the “salvation-historical” view.

4. The existential direction. Convinced that vv. 7–12 cannot be identified with any particular person or experience, many interpreters identify the egō in 7:7–25 as nobody in particular and everybody in general. Paul, they argue, is using figurative language to describe the confrontation between a “person,” qua person, and the demand of God.9 Paraphrase of vv. 9–10a in this case is both impossible and inappropriate.

In assessing these views, three issues are key: the potential lexical range of egō; the identification of the “law” depicted in the chapter; and the experience described by Paul in vv. 9–10a. When these are considered, we will find that, while elements of all four of these interpretations are present, a combination of views 1 and 3 yields the best explanation of the text. Paul is describing his own, and other Jews’, experience with the law of Moses: how that law came to the Jewish people and brought to them, not “life,” but “death” (vv. 7–12); and how that law failed, because of the reign of the flesh, to deliver Jews from the power of sin (vv. 13–25).

Since the ground-breaking study of Kümmel, it has been widely assumed that egō (or the first person singular verb) could be used as a rhetorical device, without any personal reference being intended at all. And Kümmel is certainly right.10 But this use of egō is not frequent in Paul11 and almost always occurs in conditional or hypothetical statements—a far cry from the sustained narrative and descriptive use in 7:7–25. When Paul’s use of egō is considered—due allowance being made for the influence of Jewish and Greek rhetorical patterns—it is impossible to remove autobiographical elements from egō in Rom. 7:7–25.12

As we have noted, the topic of Rom. 7 is the law; and not just “law” in general, but the Mosaic law. This is clear both from Paul’s general usage of nomos and from the context. For Paul, the law is basically the torah, the body of instruction and commandments given to the people of Israel through Moses at Sinai. This law is the focus of this chapter, which is linked, through 6:14, to 5:20a, where Paul asserts that “the law came in beside”; and this “coming in beside” refers to the giving of the law through Moses (cf. 5:13–14; Gal. 3:19). Moreover, the commandment quoted in v. 7 as representative of the law is from the Decalogue (see, further, the notes on v. 7).

While acknowledging that Paul’s focus is on the Mosaic law, some interpreters nevertheless think that he widens his purview as the chapter proceeds so that he is eventually describing “God’s law” in any form—written and unwritten.13 There is some basis for this view, but it is not finally acceptable; except for several “non-legal” occurrences in vv. 21–23, nomos continues throughout the chapter to denote the Mosaic law (except in v. 21; see the notes on 7:21 and 22). Expansion to the situation of all people comes not through a broadening of the reference to “law,” but through the paradigmatic significance of Israel’s experience with the Mosaic law. While Paul directly describes only this experience in this chapter, it has application to all people because what is true of Israel under God’s law through Moses is true ipso facto of all people under “law” (cf. 2:14–15 and the notes on 7:4).

If Rom. 7 is about the Mosaic law, two conclusions follow. First, it is unlikely that Paul describes in vv. 7–12 the situation of “everybody”—because “everybody” has not been given the Mosaic law—and still more unlikely that he describes the experience of Adam—because Paul insists that the law was given through Moses (cf. 5:13–14), “four hundred and thirty years” after Abraham (Gal. 3:17). To be sure, some argue that Paul, depending on Jewish traditions, could view Adam as bound by the torah;14 but this is unlikely.15 In light of these considerations, while there may be allusion to Adam’s situation in vv. 7–11—in that the situation depicted parallels Adam’s—I cannot think that Paul is describing events in the Garden of Eden.

But there is a second, positive, conclusion to be drawn from the fact that Rom. 7 is about the Mosaic law. This is that “the coming of the commandment” in v. 9 is most naturally taken as a reference to the giving of the law at Sinai. Before we pursue this conclusion, we must discuss the third point: the narrative sequence in vv. 9–10a.

This sequence provides the strongest evidence for the “Adamic” view. For who else in the history of the race could say “I was alive apart from the law” and it was only “when the commandment came”—and I disobeyed—that “I died?” Everyone after Adam and Eve is born as a sinner, “dead” in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1); and to all of us disobeying the law does not bring, but confirms, death. This point, of course, assumes that “I was alive” and “I died” refer, respectively, to eternal life and eternal death, or condemnation. But, while there is legitimate question about “I was alive” (see the notes on 7:9), “I died,” because of the connections in the passage, must refer to the same “death” that is spoken of in vv. 5 and 13. And this is clearly “total death,” the condemnation that comes as a penalty for sin.16 It is this consideration that is most damaging to the identification of egō as either Paul or the people of Israel. Paul “died” spiritually long before his coming to maturity or his alleged pre-conversion “awakening,” and the people of Israel were certainly under condemnation before the giving of the law (see 5:13–14). Yet, as we have seen, the Adamic view suffers from what we think is an even more serious objection: the theologically incongruous attribution to Adam of responsibility for the Mosaic law. Because of this, I prefer to understand “I died” in a theological, but relative, sense: “though ‘I’ had sinned, and was condemned before the law came, the coming of the commandment gave sin greater power and destructiveness than ever before, making me fully and personally responsible for my sin. The coming of the law brought to me, then, not life but death (‘I died’).”17

If these points are valid, Paul could be describing either his own personal confrontation with the law or that of the people of Israel generally. The latter is preferable for two reasons. First, to make the language apply to Paul personally, “without the law” and “when the commandment came” (v. 9) must both be interpreted subjectively: “without being conscious of the [real demands of the] law” and “when I became responsible for, or aware of, the commandment.” Not only should we avoid, if possible, a subjective application of Paul’s apparently objective language, but it is difficult to fit such an experience into what we know, or can surmise, of Paul’s own experience. For there is little evidence that a Jewish child was ever considered to have so little responsibility for the law as to be said to be “without the law” (assumed by view 1a above).18 And, despite its popularity, there is even less evidence that Paul before his conversion was brought to a deeper consciousness of his sinfulness (assumed by view 1b).19

A second factor favoring reference to Israel as a whole is the similarity between the sequence of vv. 9–10a and Paul’s persistent teaching about how the giving of the Mosaic law made the situation of Israel worse, not better. The law, Paul has affirmed, “brings wrath” (4:15), turns sin into transgression (5:14; cf. Gal. 3:19), and “increases the trespass” (5:20a). The prominence of this “salvation-historical” sequence in Paul makes it likely that in vv. 9–10 he is using a vivid narrative style to describe this sequence from a more “personal” angle.

We have reason, then, to think that Paul alludes to the giving of the law to the people of Israel in vv. 9–10. But could he use egō to represent the nation? This is possible, in light of the use of “I” to stand for Jerusalem, or the nation of Israel, in some OT passages.20 But perhaps more likely, in light of the undeniable autobiographical elements in vv. 14–25, is that Paul uses egō to describe himself—and, by extension, other Jews—in solidarity with the experiences of his people. We know that the individual Jew had a lively sense of “corporate” identity with his people’s history. Most famous in this regard, of course, is the Passover ritual, in which each Jew confesses that he or she was a slave in Egypt and was redeemed through the events of the Passover.21 In like manner, I suggest that Paul in vv. 7–11 is describing his own involvement, as a member of the people Israel, with the giving of the law to his people at Sinai.22 In vv. 14–25, then, Paul describes what the coming of the law meant for himself and other Jews. And since this situation was one consciously experienced by Paul, autobiographical elements are more strongly in evidence in vv. 14–25 than in vv. 7–11.

We conclude, then, that egō denotes Paul himself but that the events depicted in these verses were not all experienced personally and consciously by the Apostle. It is in this sense that we argue for a combination of the autobiographical view with the view that identifies egō with Israel. Egō is not Israel, but egō is Paul in solidarity with Israel.23

a. The Coming of the Law (7:7–12)

7What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means! But I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”a 8But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of coveting. For apart from the law sin is dead. 9And I was alive apart from the law at one time; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life again, 10and I died. And the commandment that was unto life proved to be unto death. 11For sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. 12Therefore, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.

This paragraph has two purposes: to exonerate the law from the charge that it is sinful and to delineate more carefully the true relationship among sin, the law, and death. Paul takes care of the first of these purposes at both “ends” of the paragraph: in v. 7a, with the rhetorical question followed by his characteristic strong negative, and in v. 12, with a closing assertion. Between these, Paul cares for his other main purpose. He admits that, though the law is not “sin,” it does have a close relationship to sin. For the law brings recognition of sin and even stimulates sinning (vv. 7b–8). In fact, alluding, as we have seen, to his and other Jews’ solidarity with the people of Israel at Sinai, he argues that the coming of the law brought a “radicalizing” of the sentence of condemnation (vv. 9–10a). Strangely, then, the very commandment that was “unto life” became the instrument of death (v. 10b). Verse 11 summarizes: sin has used the law as a “bridgehead” to deceive and to condemn.

7 “What then shall we say?”24 brings us back to the dialogical style of 6:1–23. As there, the question raised here reflects a criticism of Paul’s gospel that he must often have heard. If Paul teaches that the law “increases the trespass” (5:20) and “arouses sinful passions” (7:5), he must believe that the law is by its nature evil and sinful. Should Paul hold such a view, he would effectively destroy any continuity between the law and his gospel, between the OT and the NT, between Moses and Christ. Indeed, many Jews and Jewish Christians accused Paul of holding just such an opinion. Paul is undoubtedly aware that such charges against him have reached the ears of the Roman Christians; so, to prepare the way for his visit and the enlistment of the Romans in his missionary efforts, he seeks here to dispel any such apprehensions.25 “Is the law sin? By no means!”

But Paul’s rejection of the equation between the law and sin does not mean that he is taking back what he has said earlier (e.g., 5:20; 7:5)—the law has become allied with sin. This relationship he reaffirms and further explains in what follows. The “but”26 that introduces this discussion is therefore not strictly adversative—“no, the law is not sin; on the contrary …”27—but restrictive—“no, the law is not sin, although it is true that.…”28 Although the law is not itself sin, the law and sin do have a definite relationship. Specifically, according to v. 7b, the law brings “knowledge” of sin. Paul first states this relationship in a general assertion—“I would not have known sin except through the law”—then adduces a specific example—“I would not have known29 covetousness if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ ”

But what kind of “knowing” is this? Perhaps the most obvious possibility is that Paul is talking about the law as defining sin: through the law, the revelation of the righteous standard of God, “I” come to know that certain acts are sinful, that, for example, my inner desire to “possess” is nothing but a “coveting” that is prohibited by God.30 This is no doubt true, but Paul implies earlier that such knowledge is available even to those who do not have the (Mosaic) law (1:32; 2:14–16). The context, in which Paul stresses that the law reveals sin to be “sin” and renders sin “utterly sinful” (v. 13), suggests a stronger nuance: that through the law “I” come to “understand” or “recognize” the real nature and power of sin. The law, by branding “sin” as transgression (cf. 4:15; 5:13–14) and bringing wrath and death (4:15; 7:8–11, 13), unmasks sin in its true colors.31 But we should probably go further, and conceive this “understanding” of sin not in a purely noetic way but in terms of actual experience: through the law, “I” have come to experience sin for what it really is. Through the law sin “worked in me” all kinds of sinful desires (v. 8), and through the law sin “came to life” and brought death (vv. 9–11). It is through this actual experience of sin, then, that “I” come to understand the real “sinfulness” of sin.32

Paul’s choice of the commandment he cites in v. 7c, “You shall not covet, or desire” is often thought to reflect his personal history. Gundry, for instance, emphasizing the sexual connotations of “desire,” argues that Paul describes his own awakening to sexual lust as an adolescent.33 However, Pauline usage dictates a broader meaning of “desire,” encompassing illicit desires of every kind.34 In fact, Paul’s citation is almost certainly an abbreviated version of the tenth commandment of the Decalogue (Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21).35 It may still be, of course, that Paul cites this commandment because he himself had experienced the full force of the law through it. But this is certainly not the only explanation. The citation of the prohibition of coveting in general (without naming the objects of the coveting) has Jewish antecedents, where it stands as a representative summation of the Mosaic law.36 This, rather than any personal reasons (for which there is no evidence elsewhere), may be why Paul cites this commandment.37

8 The first sentence in v. 8 elaborates v. 7c. Not only has the commandment “Do not covet” brought “me” to see the true nature of “desire,” but38 sin has taken advantage of the “opportunity”39 afforded “through the commandment”40 to produce41 “all kinds of coveting” in me. The law is not “sin,” nor the originator of sin, but the occasion or operating base that sin has used to accomplish its evil and deadly purpose. Paul again personifies sin, picturing it as a “power” that works actively and purposefully (cf. Gen. 4:7). Paul uses “commandment” instead of “law” (nomos; cf. v. 7) because he is referring to the single commandment he cited in v. 7,42 but the commandment represents the Mosaic law as a whole.43 Paradoxically, what sin produces by taking advantage of the commandment is just what the commandment prohibited: “all kinds of coveting.”44

But how is it that the law can give sin the occasion to stir up all these desires? To some extent, the old adage about “forbidden fruits” can explain what Paul means: people, told not to do something, immediately conclude that there must be something “fun” about it and are motivated all the more, or even perhaps for the first time, to do it.45 Ancient moralists noted this phenomenon, and we are all familiar with it; witness the result of a parent telling her child, “Now do not go outside and jump in that mud puddle!”

Paul, however, probably applies this conception in a more distinctly theological way: Israel, confronted in God’s law with limitations imposed by its rightful sovereign, was stimulated by that very limitation to rebellion.46 It was only after the Israelites had heard the commandment not to make any idols for themselves (Exod. 20:4) that they had Aaron fashion a golden calf for them to worship (Exod. 32). In just this way the law, abused by the sinful tendency already resident in every person, has been instrumental in stimulating all kinds of sinful tendencies.

The last sentence of the verse initiates a sequence of clauses (vv. 8b–10a) in which Paul explains47 the way in which the law has become the “occasion” for the activity of sin. Paul constructs this sequence in a chiastic pattern, in which he portrays “dead” sin coming to “life” at the same moment as the “living” “I” “dies”:

“Apart from the Law”	“When the Commandment came”
“sin is dead” (v. 8c)	“sin sprang to life again” (v. 9b)
“I was alive” (v. 9a)	“I died” (v. 10a)

I have argued above that this sequence portrays the effect of the coming of the Mosaic law for the people of Israel and that egō (“I”), while referring to Paul, refers to him in solidarity with the Jewish people and therefore with the experience of the coming of the law at Sinai. While what is narrated in vv. 7–8a may, therefore, have been experienced by Paul personally, what is narrated in these clauses was experienced by him only through his involvement with the history of his people.

Accordingly, “apart from the law” will not mean “before I became aware of the true meaning, or real force, of the law” (as in the autobiographical view) or “before the law was given to Adam in the Garden” (an interval of time for which the Genesis account does not, in any case, appear to allow48), but, as in 5:13, “before the Mosaic law existed.” In the years before Sinai, Paul asserts, sin was “dead” to Israel. That sin was “dead” does not mean that it did not exist but that it was not as “active” or “powerful” before the law as after.49

9 In this time, “apart from the law,” the egō was “living.” Only if egō designates Adam can this verb be given full theological meaning—“spiritual” life—but we have seen that the identification of egō with Adam is unlikely. Therefore “was living” must be given a milder meaning: either a relative theological sense—compared to the seriousness of “my” situation after the law, I was “living” before it50—or a purely prosaic meaning—“I was existing.” The former interpretation has in its favor the fact that “I was living” stands in contrast to “I died,” which has clear theological meaning. But the prosaic interpretation is not impossible since Paul rarely uses the verb “live” with any theological force.51 In either case, this clause will depict the situation of Israel before the giving of the law at Sinai—when sins were not yet “being reckoned” (5:13).

Paul describes the giving of the Mosaic law with the word “commandment” under the influence of the paradigmatic significance of the tenth commandment cited in v. 7. “When this commandment came”52 “sin sprang to life again.”53

10 Even as sin gained new life, however, egō “died.” As we have seen earlier, proponents of the autobiographical interpretation generally think that Paul is describing his realization that he stood condemned,54 although a few think he refers to the situation of helplessness under the power of sin that ensued with “the coming of the commandment.”55 “I was living” in v. 9 is interpreted accordingly, as meaning a living without an awareness of the seriousness of sin and its consequences. This interpretation is possible, but there is nothing in the context to suggest it. Throughout Rom. 7, “die” and “death” refer to an objective reality, never to a subjective realization (cf. vv. 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13, 24). And this verse is directly related to vv. 5 and 13, making it difficult to think that the “death” mentioned there is any different from the one described here. Accordingly, “I died” will describe that situation according to which the law, by turning “sin” into “transgression,” confirms, personalizes, and radicalizes the spiritual death in which all find themselves since Adam. Israel, in this sense, “died” when the law was given to it.

In saying this, Paul undoubtedly has in mind the tendency among some Jews to accord to the Mosaic law life-giving power.56 What Paul says in these verses confronts such notions head-on: the law has not restrained but stimulated “evil desire” (vv. 7–8a); the law has not led to life but to “death” (vv. 8b–10a). Direct allusion to Adam is, as I have argued, unlikely; but the parallels between Adam and Israel in Jewish literature,57 as well as 5:13–14, would suggest that the experience of Israel with the law depicted here is parallel to and, to some extent, recapitulates the experience of Adam with the commandment of God in the Garden.

It is in light of the traditions quoted above that we are to understand Paul’s qualifying the “commandment” with “unto life.”58 Again, this is often applied, by advocates of the Adamic interpetation, to the Paradise commandment59 or to that commandment as representative of God’s law generally.60 But we will have to understand “commandment” again here to be referring to the Mosaic law. And it is likely that this description of the law reflects the purpose that it was considered to have among many of his Jewish contemporaries.61 But the notion that the law has life-giving potential is asserted in the OT itself. While God never intended the law to be a means of salvation, the law did come with promises of life for obedience (cf. Lev. 18:5 [?] [cf. Rom. 10:5]; Ps. 19:7–10; Ezek. 20:11; Luke 20:28). From these verses, it seems fair to conclude that the law would have given life had it been perfectly obeyed. In this sense the law “promises life,” even though God did not give it with this intention—for he, of course, knew that the power of sin made it impossible for any human being to fulfill the law and so attain the promised life.62 Thus, although the commandment was “unto life,” this same commandment63 “proved to be”64 a cause of death for Israel.

11 Paul now returns to the language of v. 8a. Again he claims that sin has used the commandment as a bridgehead65 and through that bridgehead has brought evil to the egō. In v. 8, however, Paul spoke of the law as instrumental in creating sinful impulses; here he shows it to have been used to “deceive” and “kill.” Many scholars pounce on Paul’s use of the verb “deceive” here as the clearest objective indication that he is thinking of the experience of Adam in the Garden.66 They think that Paul is putting sin in the role of the serpent, which springs to life to use the commandment as a means of deceiving the first human pair and bringing upon them spiritual disaster. These interpreters may be right to see allusion to the paratypical “temptation” experience; but the reference is not at all clear.67 In keeping with Paul’s intention throughout this passage, the direct reference must certainly be to the law’s function within Israel. Probably Paul thinks of the way that the “promise of life” held out by the law “deceived” Israel into thinking that it could attain life through it.68 But the attempts of Israel to find life through the law brought only death—not because obeying the law itself is sinful, or worthy of death, but because the law could not be fulfilled. This is the burden of vv. 14–25: that the Jews found themselves under the “law of sin” because, while honoring the law, they could not practice it. So sin, through the law, “killed” Israel. But although this happened in accordance with the intention of God (cf. 5:20 and Gal. 3:19–26), the ultimate intention this served was positive: that, being “bound under sin,” Israel might learn to look to God and his promise of a Messiah for life and salvation.

12 Having shown that the law is the innocent “cats paw” of sin, Paul can now return and complete the point with which he began the paragraph. “Is the law sin? Of course not! [v. 7a].… The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” Paul introduces this verse69 as the inference to be drawn from the true role of the law in the history that he has sketched in vv. 7b–11. Paul brings together as essentially parallel terms “law” and “commandment”; both refer to the Mosaic law, the former as a body, the latter in terms of the specific commandment that Paul has cited in v. 7 as representative of the whole.70 In calling the law “holy,” Paul is not describing its demand for holiness71 but its origin—it was given by the one who is in his nature “holy.” Again, the description “just” may allude to the function of the law, in that it prescribes “just” conduct, or perhaps to the nature of the law, as demanding no more than what is “right.” But the context encourages us to view “just” in accordance with the legal connotation this word group often has in Paul: the law, being holy, “cannot be charged with anything wrong.”72 “Good,” finally, also denotes the nature of the law, attributing to it that “goodness” which is characteristic, ultimately, of God alone (cf. Mark 10:18).

Although it is the experience of Israel with the Mosaic law that Paul describes in vv. 7–12, their experience, as we have seen, is symptomatic of that of all people who, in various ways, are confronted with God’s “law.” Thus the failure and “death” of Israel should serve to remind all of us that salvation can never be earned by doing the “law,” but only by casting ourselves on the grace and mercy of God in Christ. Augustine says, “God commands what we cannot do that we may know what we ought to seek from him.”73 And Calvin: “In the precepts of the law, God is but the rewarder of perfect righteousness, which all of us lack, and conversely, the severe judge of evil deeds. But in Christ his face shines, full of grace and gentleness, even upon us poor and unworthy sinners.”74 The experience of Israel with the law should also remind Christians never to return to the law—whether the Mosaic or any other list of “rules”—as a source of spiritual vigor and growth.

b. Life under the Law (7:13–25)

13Therefore, did the good become death in me? By no means! But sin, in order that it might be manifest as sin, through the good produced death in me, in order that sin might become exceedingly sinful through the commandment.

14For we know1 that the law is spiritual; but I am fleshly, sold under sin. 15For what I am producing I do not know. For it is not what I will, this I am practicing, but what I am hating, this I am doing. 16Now, if I am doing what I do not will, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17But now it is no longer I who am producing it but sin dwelling in me. 18For I know that the good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. For the willing of the good is present with me, but the producing of the good is not.2 19For I am not doing the good I will, but the evil I am not willing I am practicing. 20But if what I3 am not willing, this I am doing, it is no longer I producing it, but sin dwelling in me.

21Therefore, I find this law: when I will to do the good, evil is present there with me. 22For I rejoice in the law of God4 according to the inner person, 23but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and holding me captive in the law of sin that is in my members. 24Wretched person that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? 25Thanks be to God5 through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, then, I in my mind am serving the law of God, but in my flesh the law of sin.

As we approach this controversial paragraph, we must keep in mind that Paul’s focus is still on the Mosaic law. And what Paul says about the Mosaic law comes to much the same thing, whatever we decide about the identity and spiritual condition of the person whose situation is depicted in these verses. The law, Paul insists again, is God’s law (cf. vv. 22, 25), “spiritual” (v. 14a), “good” (v. 16). Yet, because “I” am unable to do what the good law requires (vv. 15–20, 21), “I” find myself to be a “prisoner” of sin (v. 23), a situation from which only God in Christ can deliver me (v. 24; cf. 8:1–4). In these verses Paul shows again that the Mosaic law is impotent to rescue people from their sin. For the law informs us of our duties before God, but it does not give us the ability to fulfill those duties. As good as God’s law is, it encounters people when they are already “fleshly” (v. 14b), indwelt by sin (vv. 17, 20). From this situation the law does not, and cannot, rescue us; on the contrary, it reveals the depth of the division in our beings, between willing and doing, the “mind” and the “flesh” (vv. 15–20, 25). Paul’s essential teaching about the inability of the Mosaic law to rescue sinful people from spiritual bondage is the same whether that bondage is the condition of the unregenerate person—who cannot be saved through the law—or that of the regenerate person—who cannot be sanctified and ultimately delivered from the influence of sin through the law. I emphasize this point both in order to get started in my exegesis with the right perspective and in order to relieve undecided exegetes of some degree of strain. One can preach this paragraph, in its basic intention, without even making a definite identification of the egō.

Few of us, however, would be satisfied to leave this question unanswered—and even fewer congregations will be satisfied with sermons that fail to deal with the matter! And rightly so. For, while not substantially affecting the main point of the text, our identification of the person whose struggle Paul depicts in this text does have an impact on several theological and practical issues. One of the most important of these is the nature of the Christian life. Should we expect Christian existence to be characterized by the sort of severe struggle described here? Or is this struggle one from which we believers have been rescued by Christ (chap. 8)? Can a Christian suffer the experience described here if he or she fails to live by the Spirit? It is partly because expositors of Rom. 7 exegete this text with an eye on these larger issues that they have divided so sharply over its interpretation. And it may be generally said that the interpretation of few passages has been more influenced by one’s broad theological perspective, experience, and sheer a priori assumptions than Rom. 7:14–25.6

Most of the early church fathers thought that these verses described an unregenerate person.7 This was Augustine’s early view, but, partly as a result of his battle with Pelagius over (among other things) the freedom of the will, he changed his opinion and decided that the person depicted in these verses was a Christian.8 This interpretation was adopted by almost all the Reformers.9 None gave it more theological significance than Luther, who saw in these verses the classic statement of his view of the believer as “at the same time a justified person and a sinner” (simul iustus et peccator). Justification, being an entirely forensic declaration of the believer’s status “before God” (coram Deo), does not remove from the believer the presence and influence of sin. Thus, even the child of God, as long as he is in the earthly body, will struggle with sin and fail to do God’s will. The interpretation of vv. 14–25 in terms of “normal” Christian experience was typical of Lutheran and Reformed theology right into the twentieth century and is still widespread.

A different approach was taken by those theologians, usually called “pietists,” who at the end of the seventeenth century reacted against what they perceived as “dead orthodoxy” in the churches of the Reformation. Thinking perhaps that the “normal” Christian view of this paragraph opened the door too widely to a complacent Christian lifestyle, men like A. H. Francke and J. Bengel ascribed the experience depicted in this paragraph to one who is only “halfway” to true Christian experience—under conviction but not yet “reborn.”10 Similar concerns led Wesley to conclude that vv. 14–25 depict the experience of the unregenerate.11 The nineteenth century saw a bewildering welter of viewpoints, while scholarly study in the twentieth century has been dominated by the 1929 monograph of W. G. Kümmel. He sought to demonstrate that egō in Rom. 7 is a rhetorical figure of speech and need not have any autobiographical reference. Paul is not, therefore, rehearsing his own experience in this chapter, and vv. 14–25 describe an unregenerate person, under the law, from a Christian persective. This interpretation, endorsed and embellished by Bultmann, was for years almost the “orthodox” view in scholarship. On the other hand, Christians in general have shown far less inclination toward this viewpoint. Indeed, the last thirty years have witnessed considerable criticism of the interpretation inaugurated by Kümmel among scholars as well. Many are insisting that autobiographical elements cannot be eliminated from Rom. 7, and the interpretation of egō in vv. 14–25 in terms of “normal” Christian experience is enjoying a resurgence.

The diversity in interpretation that we have just sketched is due not only to differing theological agendas and concerns; the exegetical data do not all point in one direction. Much will depend on the particular perspective from which one approaches the passage and which arguments are given greater weight. Interpreting Rom. 7 is like fitting pieces of a puzzle together when one is not sure of the final outline; the best interpretation is the one that is able to fit the most pieces together in the most natural way. Because of this, it is inconclusive, and even misleading, to cite several arguments in favor of one’s own view and conclude that the issue has been settled. The best interpretation will be the one that is able to do most justice to all the data of the text within the immediate and larger Pauline context. In order to keep my discussion here within reasonable bounds, I will mention at this point the major viewpoints, the key arguments for each viewpoint, and my own brief evaluation and conclusion. I will leave to the verse-by-verse notes thorough evaluation of the arguments given here as well as discussion of additional arguments.

The most important reasons for thinking the experience depicted in vv. 14–25 is that of an unregenerate person are the following:

1. The strong connection of egō with “the flesh” (vv. 14, 18, and 25) suggests that Paul is elaborating on the unregenerate condition mentioned in 7:5: being “in the flesh.”

2. Egō throughout this passage struggles “on his/her own” (cf. “I myself” in v. 25), without the aid of the Holy Spirit.

3. Egō is “under the power of sin” (v. 14b), a state from which every believer is released (6:2, 6, 11, 18–22).

4. As the unsuccessful struggle of vv. 15–20 shows, egō is a “prisoner of the law of sin” (v. 23). Yet Rom. 8:2 proclaims that believers have been set free from this same “law of sin (and death).”

5. While Paul makes clear that believers will continue to struggle with sin (cf., e.g., 6:12–13; 13:12–14; Gal. 5:17), what is depicted in 7:14–25 is not just a struggle with sin but a defeat by sin. This is a more negative view of the Christian life than can be accommodated within Paul’s theology.

6. The egō in these verses struggles with the need to obey the Mosaic law; yet Paul has already proclaimed the release of the believer from the dictates of the law (6:14; 7:4–6).

For those who find these arguments decisive, vv. 14–25 describe the struggle of the person outside Christ to do “what is good,” a struggle that is doomed to failure because it is fought without the power of God that alone is able to break the power of sin. Deliverance from this situation comes with the converting, regenerating work of God in Christ, who transfers the believer from the realm of “sin and death” to the realm of “the Spirit of life” (v. 24b; 8:2). Within this general “unregenerate” interpretation are various subdivisions. Some think that the text portrays Paul’s own experience under the law.12 Others think that Paul is describing Jews under the law generally, or even all people confronted with “the law of God.”13 There is further disagreement over the extent to which the description reflects the conscious experience of those “under the law” and the extent to which Paul portrays the pre-Christian past from a Christian perspective.

The most important reasons for thinking that the experience depicted in 7:14–25 must be that of a regenerate person are the following:

1. Egō must refer to Paul himself, and the shift from the past tenses of vv. 7–13 to the present tenses of vv. 14–25 can be explained only if Paul is describing in these latter verses his present experience as a Christian.

2. Only the regenerate truly “delight in God’s law” (v. 22), seek to obey it (vv. 15–20), and “serve” it (v. 25); the unregenerate do not “seek after God” (3:11) and cannot “submit to the law of God” (8:7).

3. Whereas the “mind” of people outside of Christ is universally presented by Paul as opposed to God and his will (cf. Rom. 1:28; Eph. 4:17; Col. 2:18; 1 Tim. 6:5; 2 Tim. 3:8; Tit. 2:15), the “mind” of egō in this text is a positive medium, by which egō “serves the law of God” (vv. 22, 25).

4. Egō must be a Christian because only a Christian possesses the “inner person”;14 cf. Paul’s only other two uses of the phrase in 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16.

5. The passage concludes, after Paul’s mention of the deliverance wrought by God in Christ, with a reiteration of the divided state of the egō (vv. 24–25). This shows that the division and struggle of the egō that Paul depicts in these verses is that of the person already saved by God in Christ.

If these arguments are found to be decisive, then vv. 14–25 will describe an important aspect of “normal” Christian experience: the continuing battle with sin that will never be won as long as the believer, through his or her body, is related to this age. The new age may have dawned, but the believer, until death or the parousia, remains tied to the old age and its powers of sin, the flesh, and the law. Deliverance will come only when God intervenes to transform the “body of death” (vv. 24b–25a; 8:10–11) into the body conformed to the glorious body of Christ (Phil. 3:20–21).15

Considering the apparently strong arguments that can be mustered for each of these views, it is not surprising that a variety of compromise viewpoints has been proposed. As we noted, some of the pietists saw in this passage the cry of a person under conviction of sin but not yet regenerate, and this view continues to be held.16 It has the advantage of being able to explain how the egō can will the good and be concerned with God’s law at the same time as that willing results in utter defeat. Another compromise view, better represented in popular than in scholarly literature, is that the egō in vv. 14–25, while regenerate, is a new, or immature, believer seeking to live the Christian life in his or her own power. Such a Christian, it is said, must “leave Romans 7 and get into Romans 8.” Various other compromise interpretations are found. One of the more attractive of these holds that egō in vv. 14–25 describes “Adam in me,” the sin-prone “nature” that is to be found in any person, Christian or non-Christian.17

Our conclusion, already indicated in the exegesis of 7:7–12, is that vv. 14–25 describe the situation of an unregenerate person. Specifically, I think that Paul is looking back, from his Christian understanding, to the situation of himself, and other Jews like him, living under the law of Moses. Of course, Paul is not giving us a full picture of that situation; he is concentrating on the negatives because this is what he must do to prove how useless the law was to deliver Jews from their bondage to sin. We might say, then, that Rom. 7:14–25 describes from a personal viewpoint the stage in salvation history that Paul delineates objectively in Gal. 3:19–4:3.

As I have argued above, Paul in Rom. 7 uses egō to represent himself, but himself in solidarity with the Jewish people. Because of this solidarity, Paul can put himself in the shoes of those who received the law at Sinai (vv. 8b–10a). Now, in vv. 14–25, he portrays his own condition as a Jew under the law, but, more importantly, the condition of all Jews under the law. Paul speaks as a “representative” Jew, detailing his past in order to reveal the weakness of the law and the source of that weakness: the human being, the egō. The more personal and emotional flavor of vv. 14–25 in comparison with vv. 7–13 is due to the fact that Paul was not, of course, personally present at Sinai when the law was given—but he has personally experienced the struggle and defeat that he describes in vv. 14–25.

The plausiblity of this interpretation can be gauged only when we have finished the exegesis of this paragraph and seen how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. But—without implying that this has settled the matter—I should mention here the factors that have tipped the scales in favor of this particular view.

Decisive for me are two sets of contrasts. The first is between the description of the egō as “sold under sin” (v. 14b) and Paul’s assertion that the believer—every believer—has been “set free from sin” (6:18, 22). The second contrast is that between the state of the egō, “imprisoned by the law [or power] of sin” (v. 23), and the believer, who has been “set free from the law of sin and death” (8:2). Each of these expressions depicts an objective status, and it is difficult to see how they can all be applied to the same person in the same spiritual condition without doing violence to Paul’s language. In chaps. 6 and 8, respectively, Paul makes it clear that “being free from under sin” and “being free from the law of sin and death” are conditions that are true for every Christian. If one is a Christian, then these things are true; if one is not, then they are not true. This means that the situation depicted in vv. 14–25 cannot be that of the “normal” Christian, nor of an immature Christian. Nor can it describe the condition of any person living by the law because the Christian who is mistakenly living according to the law is yet a Christian and is therefore not “under sin” or a “prisoner of the law of sin.” Other points are significant also—the lack of mention of the Spirit, the links with 7:5 and 6:14, and the connections between vv. 7–12 and 13–25—but I think these arguments are the most important. I do not deny that advocates of other views can marshal good arguments of their own. But when all the data have been weighed, I think that the balance tilts toward the interpretation of the egō in these verses as unregenerate.

This conclusion does not mean that Christians do not struggle with sin. Paul makes it abundantly clear, both explicitly—for instance, Gal. 6:1—and implicitly—by the amount of time he spends scolding Christians in his letters!—that believers are not delivered from the influence of sin. While “transferred” into the new realm, ruled by Christ and righteousness, believers are still prone to obey those past masters, sin and the flesh. I do not, then, deny that Christians struggle with sin—I deny only that this passage describes that struggle. For, while the believer continues to be influenced by both “realms,” Paul makes it clear that he belongs to the new realm. In identification with Christ, he has died to sin (6:2), been taken out of the enveloping power of the flesh (8:9), been made a slave of God (6:22). Either these assertions or the force of what Paul says about the egō in vv. 14–25 must be watered down to make them “fit” together. Dunn, for instance, takes the first alternative when he claims that vv. 14–25 depict the regenerate person “in his belongingness to the epoch of Adam”;18 Cranfield, the second, arguing that vv. 14 and 23 describe the believer’s “continuing sinfulness.”19

Some expositors become more specific in their identification and think that Paul is describing an unregenerate Jew who is under conviction of sin. But it is unlikely that we can be so specific. For vv. 13–25 explain the situation that resulted from the event depicted in vv. 7–12; and this means that, as vv. 7–12 describe the impact of the giving of the law on Israel generally, so vv. 14–25 must describe the situation of the people of Israel generally under that law. These conditions are true for all Jews under the law, not just for those who are under conviction of sin. At the other extreme, I question whether the text can be applied directly to all unregenerate people, under “the law” in one form or another. True, vv. 14–25 speak to the situation of all non-Christians in the sense that the situation of Israel under the law is paradigmatic for the situation of all people confronted with divine law (see the introduction to 7:7–25), and this gives warrant for the Christian expositor to apply this text to non-Christians generally. But, as the salvation-historical sequence in vv. 7–12 makes clear, Paul’s focus throughout this text is on the situation of the Jewish people under the Mosaic law. And this helps to explain how Paul can be so positive about egō’s regard for the law—Jews did, indeed, “rejoice in God’s law,” and Paul never suggests that this was anything but a genuine and proper regard for the law.20 Paul faults Jews not for having insufficient regard for the law, but for misunderstanding its ultimate intention (Rom. 10:1–4) and failing to obey it (Rom. 2:17–29).

More difficult is to decide exactly what perspective Paul is taking in describing this condition of the Jew under the law, and especially in his graphic depiction of the conflict in the egō’s willing and doing. Many deny that egō here is autobiographical because Paul gives no hint elsewhere of this kind of struggle before his conversion. Some, indeed, go so far as to view the struggle described in vv. 15–20 as a “trans-subjective” existential conflict between the egō’s desire for “life” and the resulting failure to attain it. On this view, the struggle is not a conscious one at all (see, further, the notes on v. 15). But we have seen reason to think that Paul’s egō in this passage must include himself, and this paragraph adds further reasons for that conclusion. Paul’s emotional cry in v. 24—“wretched person that I am!”—certainly implies that he identifies with the situation he has been describing, and it would be straining credulity to think that he would not himself have experienced the situation that he is attributing to Jews generally under the law.21

What, then, of the apparent conflict between the despairing struggle in this paragraph and the complacent self-satisfaction of Phil. 3:2–11? In Phil. 3, Paul is describing his status from a Jewish perspective; in Rom. 7, his experience from a Christian perspective. With respect to the Pharisaic definition of righteousness, “the righteousness of the law,” Paul says in Phil. 3, I was “blameless.” But this status of righteousness by Jewish standards does not rule out some degree of frustration in not fulfilling the divine standard, particularly since in Rom. 7 Paul is to some extent looking back at this failure to meet God’s demands from his new, Christian understanding of those demands—much as a new convert will be able to look back at his pre-Christian existence and find there the inner conflict, frustration, and despair that perhaps were not as clear at the time.22 Particularly in vv. 21–23, Paul is characterizing his pre-Christian situation from his present Christian perspective. While, therefore, there is no evidence that Paul’s frustration at failing to fulfill the law was excessive with respect to other Jews, or that this frustration was instrumental in his conversion, there seems to be every reason to believe that he would have sensed, as Peter did, that the law was a “yoke that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear” (Acts 15:10).

Paul’s characterization of the situation of Jews under the law in this paragraph describes, in personal terms, the state that resulted from the event he has narrated in vv. 7–13. This goes some way toward explaining the shift from past to present tense verbs; Paul first narrates past events, then depicts the continuing status of those who were involved in those events.23 But, in describing this continuing state of affairs, this paragraph also fills in a crucial gap that Paul has left in his argument in vv. 7–12.24 How was it possible for sin to use the law to bring death to “me”? Is “sin” a power, outside a person, that can arbitrarily bring to pass so disastrous a state of affairs? Not at all, Paul affirms in vv. 14–20, for sin dwells “in me.” “I” am ultimately at fault; certainly not the law, not even sin. It is “me” and my “carnality,” my helplessness under sin, that enables sin to do what it does. “Sin” has invaded my existence and made me a divided person, willing to do what God wants but failing to do it.

This subjective characterization of the divided situation of the Jew under the law is followed by a more objective characterization in vv. 21–23. Here Paul uses the word nomos with great rhetorical skill to depict the opposing forces that control the non-Christian: the nomos of God, the Mosaic law, with which “my” mind agrees; and the nomos of sin, the power of sin, that controls my body and prevents me from carrying out what my “mind,” in agreement with the law of God, wills. The nomos of sin wins this battle: “I” am a prisoner of that nomos. In personal identification with his own past, as he now views it, Paul decries his wretched, helpless state and cries for deliverance (v. 24). Here Paul can forbear no longer and interjects thanksgiving for the deliverance that has come (v. 25a). Finally, he returns to summarize the divided state of the Jew under the law, serving “two masters”—the nomos of God and yet also the nomos of sin (v. 25b).

13 Many interpreters attach this verse to vv. 7–12 since it summarizes the three main points that Paul has made in that paragraph: the law is good; sin is made “manifest” through the law; and sin works through the law to produce death.25 Like v. 7, however, this verse contains a question and a brief answer, which is then explained in vv. 14–25. Therefore, other interpreters take the verse with what follows.26 These conflicting considerations suggest that v. 13 is a bridge between the two main parts of Paul’s discussion, summarizing the teaching of vv. 7–12 as the starting point for vv. 14–25.

The question Paul asks here restates the basic objection of v. 7. How could “that which is good” (= the commandment/law of v. 12) become the source of death? Does not the intimate involvement of the law in securing the death of egō reveal again its true nefarious nature? As in v. 7, Paul strongly repudiates any such idea: “By no means!”27 But hasn’t Paul already answered this question? In a sense he has, and the explanation he gives in this verse does not really go beyond what he has already said about the relationship of sin, the law, and death in vv. 7–11. However, Paul’s return to the matter suggests that he is not yet fully satisfied with the answer he has given. Accordingly, he moves forward in vv. 14–25 to explain in detail the role of another key player in this drama: egō.

“But”28 introduces Paul’s counterassertion and is probably here (contrast v. 7) fully adversative: “this death is not at all the fault of the law; on the contrary, it is sin that is responsible.” The syntax of the sentence that follows is convoluted but should probably be resolved along the lines assumed in our translation: “sin, in order that it might be manifest as sin, through the good produced death in me, in order that sin might become exceedingly sinful through the commandment.”29 Continuing his main theme from vv. 7–11, Paul places full responsibility for the death of egō on sin, absolving the law from blame by making it an instrument (“through the good”)30 used by sin. The two purpose31 clauses state the divine and ultimately positive purpose behind sin’s destructive use of the law. The first restates the revelatory role of the law that Paul described in v. 7; in bringing death, sin has “been made manifest” for what it really is—“sin.” The second purpose clause elaborates the first. Sin is revealed “as sin” in that the “commandment” causes sin to become “exceedingly sinful.”32 What Paul means, in light of Rom. 4:15, 5:13–14, and 5:20, is that the “good” commandment of God, by strictly defining sin, turns sin into conscious and willful rebellion against God. Sin is always bad; but it becomes worse—even more “sinful”—when it involves deliberate violation of God’s good will for his people. The law, by making sin even worse than before, reveals sin in its true colors.

14 Paul now explains33 how it is that “sin” has been able to “work death in ‘me’ through that which is good” (v. 13). This could happen, Paul asserts, because, while the law is indeed good and “spiritual,” “I” am “fleshly.” Verses 15–25 justify and develop this statement about himself, concluding from his tragic inability to put into practice what he knows to be right (vv. 15–21) that he is controlled by an alien and negative force—“the law of sin” (vv. 22–23). It is because of his captivity to the power of sin that the law can become the instrument of death.

Throughout these verses Paul continues to write in the first person singular, as he portrays his own—typical—experience as a Jew under the law. Yet in v. 14a he breaks this pattern with a first person plural, “we know.” This serves to draw the readers of the letter into the argument. Paul implies that these readers—who “know the law” (7:1)—would already agree that the law is “spiritual.” This militates against Dunn’s suggestion that Paul is beginning to assert here the new attitude toward the law possible under the reign of Christ. Clearly, as well, it is not the Roman Christians whom Paul must convince about the divine origin and “goodness” of the law. Rather, it is Paul’s own “orthodoxy” on this issue that has been called into question—probably by opponents of Paul who have reached Rome. In calling the law “spiritual,” Paul is asserting its divine origin.34 While the OT abounds in similar assertions of the holy origin and character of the law (cf., e.g., Ps. 19:7–11), it is never called “spiritual.” Paul has chosen this word in order to set up the strongest possible contrast between the “spiritual” law and the “fleshly” egō.

In calling himself “fleshly,” Paul may mean no more than that he is human, subject to the frailty of all human beings, whether Christian or not.35 But the contrast with “spiritual” points to a more negative meaning. As in 1 Cor. 3:1–3, where “fleshly” is contrasted with “spiritual,” “fleshly” means “carnal,” subject to, and under the influence of, “this world.”36 Since “fleshly” in 1 Cor. 3:1 is applied to Christians, it is clear that this adjective itself does not require that the egō be unregenerate. Nevertheless, we cannot overlook the fact that v. 5, which anticipates the argument of 7:7–25, describes the non-Christian state as being “in the flesh.”

But it is the additional description, “sold under sin,” that clinches the argument for a description of a non-Christian here. Cranfield is representative of those who argue that this language can appropriately be applied to the Christian, inasmuch as the Christian continues to be sinful, and can therefore be said to be “under the power of sin.”37 However, while it is true that Christians are still very much influenced by sin, and will, perhaps, never finally overcome sin’s influence in this life, Paul appears to say more than that here. His language points to a condition of slavery under sin’s power.38 And I question whether Rom. 6 allows us to say that the Christian is “under the power of sin” in this sense. In fact, Paul is saying just the reverse in that chapter; Christians have “died to the power of sin” (v. 2) and are therefore no longer “slaves of sin” (vv. 18, 22). However much it is true, as chap. 6 also asserts, that this freedom from sin’s power must be lived out, appropriated, and put into action, and that Christians will sometimes fail to do this (cf., e.g., 1 Cor. 3:1–3), that freedom from sin’s power is absolute and irreversible (cf. 6:8–10). Yet v. 14b asserts, in what certainly appears to be an objective assessment of status, that this egō has been sold so as now to be “under sin.” Earlier in Romans (3:9), Paul summarizes his teaching about people outside of Christ by asserting that they are all “under sin.” Christ delivers the believer from this condition, but the egō here in Rom. 7 confesses that he is still in that condition.

15 In one of the most famous passages of the epistle, Paul now graphically portrays his failure to do what he wills. The conflict between “willing”39 and “doing”40 dominates the narration of this conflict (vv. 15–20) and the inference Paul draws from it (v. 21). What Paul wills is that “good” required by God’s law; the “evil” that he does, which he hates and does not acknowledge, is, then, a collective term for those things prohibited and in conflict with God’s law.41 As I have argued above, the conflict Paul depicts here, leading to defeat (v. 23) and despair (v. 24), is a conflict he experienced as a Jew under the Mosaic law. To what extent Paul was conscious of this conflict and his failure at the time of that conflict is difficult to ascertain.

Undoubtedly his perspective as a Christian enables him to see that conflict more clearly and more radically than he did at the time. This helps explain why Paul can be so pessimistic about Jewish failure to keep the law. Surely Paul knew that he, along with other Jews, succeeded in keeping many of the commandments and infringed only a small percentage of the whole. It is this knowledge, coupled with his pre-Christian, Jewish interpretation of “righteousness,” that enables Paul to claim that he was “blameless according to the righteousness of the law” (Phil. 3:6). But, as a Christian, Paul has a new perspective on God’s law. He now sees it as a unity, an expression of God’s will for his people that, when broken in any part, is broken in the whole.42 That which Paul “willed” to do was keep the law; and it is just this, in the light shed on God and his law by Christ, that he failed as a Jew to do. The fact that Paul is describing the experience of the Jew under the Mosaic law does not mean, of course, that the conflict described here is peculiar to the Jew. All non-Christians are in a similar situation, and many—probably most—Christians can find in this description of nagging failure to do what is good an all-too-accurate reflection of their own experience. But, without denying the similarity, I must say again that the conflict Paul describes here is indicative of a slavery to the power of sin as a way of life (v. 14b) that is not typical, nor even possible, for the Christian.

Verses 15–20 are related to v. 14 in two ways. First, they show how, in willing to do the good the law demands, Paul attests to the divine origin of the law (v. 16). Second, and more important for Paul’s purpose, the conflict between willing and doing reveals that he is indeed “fleshly,” and under sin’s power; for only the presence of such an alien influence—“sin dwelling in my flesh” (vv. 17b–18a)—can explain his radical failure to do what he wills. Recognizing the close parallelism between vv. 15–16 and vv. 19–20, some expositors divide vv. 15–20 into two parts, each of which explains a different part of v. 14—vv. 15–16 the “spirituality” of the law (cf. v. 16b—“the law is good”) and vv. 17–20 the “fleshiness” of egō.43 But no such neat division is possible, for the paragraph is pervaded throughout by the conflict between willing to do the right (e.g., what the law demands) and the failure to put it into practice.

With these overall perspectives established, we can turn to the specifics of the text. Paul begins with a general assertion that he does not “know,” or, better, “approve,”44 what he “does.” In v. 15b, Paul explains in what sense he does not “approve” what he is doing: “For it is not what I will,45 this I am practicing, but what I am hating, this I am doing.” Paul’s confession is similar to others found in the ancient world, the most famous being that in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 7.21: “I see and approve the better course, but I follow the worse.”46

16 The fact that he does not do what he purposes to do means that he “agrees”47 with those who say—as Paul has done in vv. 12, 13, and 14—that the law is good. Assumed in Paul’s argument is that what he wills to do (v. 15b) is what the law demands. And because he does not do what the law demands, it could be concluded that he rejects the law as a moral guide. But Paul wants to draw the opposite conclusion; the very fact that he has a will that conflicts with the evil actually done shows that there is a part of this person—the “part” that has to do with the will—that acknowledges the just demands of God’s law.

17 “But now … no longer” is logical, not temporal; it states what must “now,” in light of the argument of vv. 15–16, “no longer” be considered true. And what is no longer true, Paul says, is that he can be considered the one who is “doing” these actions that he deplores. At first sight, Paul would appear to be saying something unlikely and, indeed, dangerous: that he is not responsible for his actions. But this is not what he means. His point is that his failure to put into action what he wills to do shows that there is something besides himself involved in the situation. If we had only to do with him, in the sense of that part of him which agrees with God’s law and wills to do it, we would not be able to explain why he consistently does what he does not want to do. No, Paul reasons, there must be another “actor” in the drama, another factor that interferes with his performance of what he wants to do. This other factor is indwelling sin. Sin is not a power that operates “outside” the person, making him do its bidding; sin is something resident in the very being, “dwelling”48 within the person, ruling over him or her like a master over a slave (v. 14b).49

Because of this power of “sin dwelling in me,” Paul is frustrated in carrying out what he knows to be God’s good will. Paul does not, then, transfer responsibility for doing wrong from the individual Jew to an outside influence; he fixes that responsibility on that power within the person which leads that person to do what is wrong. Because of our involvement in the sin of Adam, “sin” has become resident in all people; and those outside Christ—such as the Jew under the law, as Paul once was—cannot ultimately resist sin’s power. Thus they are unable to do the good that God requires of them (cf. 3:9–18; 8:7–8).

18 The assertion in v. 17 that indwelling sin is finally responsible for Paul’s tragic failure to do God’s will is the center of vv. 15–20. Verses 15–16 have led up to it; vv. 18–20 expand on it.50 Verse 18a is closely related to v. 17b, continuing with the language of “dwelling in me.” Paul has just said that “sin dwells in me”; now he restates this same basic point from the negative side: “good51 does not dwell in me.” Not “good,” but “sin,” has taken control of him, and is determining his actions. But Paul adds a very important qualification to this statement: “that is, in my flesh.” Those who find in this passage a description of Christian experience think this phrase qualifies the statement that “good does not dwell in me” by leaving room for the Holy Spirit. On this view, “flesh” could mean “the whole fallen human nature” (Cranfield; cf. Nygren). Others, however, who think that Paul is describing an unregenerate situation, take the “that is” clause as a definition of “me,” rather than as a qualification: “nothing good dwells in me, I who am a person fallen and alienated from God.”52

Both these views take “flesh” in its typical Pauline “ethical” meaning, and v. 14b can lend support to this conclusion. But the word is more likely to have a simple material meaning here. This is suggested by v. 25, where “flesh” is contrasted with “mind,” and by v. 23, where the “other law,” “the law of sin,” is said to be “in my members.”53 While Paul’s anthropology is essentially “monistic” rather than dualistic—that is, he usually regards people as wholes, in relationship to other things, instead of, as the Greeks did, as divided into two distinct “parts,” body (or flesh) and soul (or spirit, or mind)—there is an undeniable element of anthropological dualism as well.54 This dualism is probably more to the fore in this passage than anywhere else in Paul.55 This is deliberate; Paul wants to reveal the “dividedness” of Jews under the law as a way of explaining how sincere respect for that law could be combined with failure to perform it. It is not that Paul is viewing the “flesh” as inherently evil, or as necessarily leading to evil,56 but that he considers the material body to be that “part” of the person which is particularly susceptible to sin, and which in the non-Christian falls under the dominion of sin. On this view, “that is, in my flesh” qualifies the absolute assertion that “good does not dwell in me.” For “good,” the will to do the good, is, as Paul has already asserted, part of the egō (Lietzmann).

Verse 18b reasserts the conflict between “willing” and “doing” as a way of demonstrating the extent to which the “flesh” has fallen under the control of sin. “The willing of the good is present57 with me, but the producing of good is not.” We should make clear that, in attributing this “performing” to the sphere of the material body (v. 18a), Paul does not mean to suggest that the mind and will of the non-Christian is pure and only the body corrupted. As the whole context, and the fact that the “will” is unable to carry out its desires, makes clear, Paul is drawing a dichotomy between a certain element within the “mind” or “will” of the non-Christian and the “rest” of that non-Christian—the flesh. His point is that the Jew under the law, and, by extension, other non-Christians, do have a genuine striving to do what is right, as defined by God (cf. also 2:14–15). But this striving after the right, because of the unbroken power of sin, can never so “take over” the mind and will that it can effectively and consistently direct the body to do what is good.

19 This verse repeats the substance of v. 15b, with the difference that the “good” that is willed and the “evil” that is done are made explicit.58

20 Paul continues to go over the same ground, making sure that his point gets across. In this verse, he brings together a clause from v. 16b and v. 17b in a new combination, but he does not go beyond what he has already said there.

21 On the basis of the unsuccessful struggle to do the good demanded by the Mosaic law, Paul now draws a conclusion: “Therefore,59 I find this law: when I will to do the good, evil is present there with me.”60 Consistency would suggest that the “law” (nomos) Paul refers to here is the Mosaic law, in accordance with his usual use of the term and its meaning throughout 7:4–20. We would then translate “I find, with respect to the law, that.…”61 But it makes better sense to give nomos here its well-established meaning “principle.”62

22 Verses 22–23 belong together antithetically, as Paul once again contrasts the conflicting tendencies toward the Mosaic law within himself: genuine, deep-seated delight in that law and acceptance of it in “the mind”; unrelieved and successful resistance to the demands of that law in “the members.” These verses, then, restate in objective terms the conflict that Paul has subjectively described in vv. 15–20. His immediate purpose is to explain63 the “rule” he has discovered with respect to himself in v. 21.

He begins with the positive side: “I rejoice64 in the law of God according to the inner person.” “The law of God” is again the Mosaic law, the torah, to which Paul as a Jew was devoted.65 One of the strongest arguments in favor of identifying the egō in this passage with the Christian is that only those regenerated by God’s Spirit can truly “delight in” God’s law. There is weight to this argument; but it is not conclusive. Leaving aside the question of the propriety of calling OT saints (who certainly delighted in God’s law—cf., e.g., Pss. 19 and 119) regenerate Christians, we have abundant evidence that Jews in Paul’s day professed a delight in God’s law, and passages such as Rom. 10:2—“for I bear witness that they [Israel] have a zeal for God”—show that Paul regarded that delight as genuine. Certainly these people did not fully understand, and did not fully obey, the law—but neither do Christians. This is not to deny that many Jews paid only lip-service to the law and could certainly not be said to “delight in the law of God according to the inner person.” But Paul, reflecting his own experience, focuses in this passage on a “pious” Jew—one who took his religion seriously and sought to do what was required of him. Taking as his example the “best” in the non-Christian world, Paul reveals the utter helplessness of the person apart from Christ who has nothing but his “works” on which to rely for salvation.

But advocates of the Christian interpretation of these verses insist that the last phrase in the verse settles the matter. “Inner person”66 occurs only twice elsewhere in Paul, and both times the reference is undoubtedly to a Christian (2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16). But this does not mean that the phrase is a “technical” designation for a Christian. In other words, a phrase, or word, may be used to describe a Christian without that phrase or word necessarily denoting what is distinctive to Christians. This seems to be the case with “inner person.”67 This phrase was used in secular Greek to denote “man … according to his Godward, immortal side.”68 In this sense, “inner person” must be distinguished from “new person” (cf. 6:6)—which does have a clearly soteriological meaning.69 Certainly, the context of Rom. 7 favors an anthropological interpretation. Throughout this passage, Paul has used words to contrast the “outer,” or bodily, aspect of the person with the “inner,” or mental, or spiritual, aspect of the person: “flesh” (vv. 18, 25) and “members” (v. 23) on the one hand and “mind” (vv. 23, 25) on the other. And these words, as we have seen, correspond to the two contrasting activities of “willing” and “doing” (vv. 15–21). In this context, it is much more likely that “inner person” has its well-attested anthropological meaning than a questionable soteriological meaning.

23 Now comes the negative objective evaluation of the condition of egō. Ranged against his delight in God’s law is “another law,” “in my members,” “fighting against the law of my mind and holding me captive in the law of sin that is in my members.”70 The three occurrences of nomos (“law”) in this verse, coming after the debated occurrences of the same word in vv. 21 and 22, provide fertile ground for exegetical debate—particularly when the equally debated occurrences of nomos in 8:2 are brought into the picture. We have two main options.

(1) Steadily gaining adherents in the last few decades has been the view that all the occurrences of nomos in 7:22–25 (as well as those in 8:2) refer to the Mosaic law, or (for those who interpret “law of God” in v. 22 broadly) to the law of God generally. Paul, it is argued, has throughout this context been detailing the “duality” of the law: “good,” “holy,” “just,” “spiritual,” and “for life,” yet the stimulator of sin, an “imprisoning” force, and an instrument of death. It is this duality that Paul, it is alleged, now brings to a climax in these verses by contrasting the law as it comes from God (v. 22), and with which the “mind” agrees (“the law of my mind”), with that same law as it is twisted by sin (“the law of sin”). The distinction, on this view, is not between two different laws but between the different operations and effects of the same law. It is, on the one hand, the law that, because of the flesh, arouses sin and brings death (cf. 8:2)—“the law of sin”; but it is also God’s law, with which the mind agrees—“the law of my mind”—the law that is “unto life” (v. 10) and, through the Spirit, can produce that life (8:2).71

However, there are serious objections to this view, both exegetical and theological. The greatest exegetical difficulty is Paul’s qualification of the nomos in v. 23a as “another”: if Paul had intended to refer in v. 23a to the same law as in v. 22, even if viewed from a different perspective, or with a different function, or even as “renewed and transformed,” he would not have called it “another” or “different” law.72 Another difficulty with this view is that it entails a shift from the perspective of vv. 15–21. In these verses, the chief protagonists are the egō that agrees with God’s law and the egō, defined as “sin dwelling in the flesh,” that prevents egō from carrying out that law. Yet if “another law”/“law of sin” in v. 23 is the law of God, then the chief protagonists in vv. 22–25 are both God’s law. To put it another way: what is “in the flesh/members” according to v. 18 is “sin,” not the law. The Mosaic law is ranged on the side of the will but not on the side of the flesh, in the sense that it indwells or compels the flesh to sin. And this brings us to the main theological difficulty. If “the other law”/“the law of sin” is identified as the Mosaic law, Paul would be giving to the Mosaic law just the active role in creating his predicament that he has been at pains to deny throughout this context. While the Mosaic law has been used by sin, it never, even when so used, ceases to be God’s good, holy, spiritual law (cf. vv. 7–13). It is sin using the law, or the failure of egō to do the law, that is the problem, never the law in itself.

(2) For these reasons, I believe that “the other law” is not God’s law in any form, but an “authority” or “demand” that is like, but opposed to, the Mosaic law.73 As in 3:27, Paul plays on the word nomos to create a rhetorically effective antithesis: “I, in my inner being, delight in and accept the authority of the Mosaic law; but I see a competing ‘authority,’ operating in my members.”74 What, then, of the other two “laws” in v. 23—“the law of my mind” and “the law of sin”? That the former is closely related to “the law of God” and the latter to the “other law” is clear. Some consider these to be the subjective counterparts to the two external, objective “laws”: “the law of my mind” the inner moral monitor that responds to, and appropriates, God’s law; “the law of sin” the individual’s natural propensity to sin, or concupiscence, that answers to the demand and call of sin.75 It is, however, simpler to take “law of my mind” and “law of sin” as two further and more specific designations of the “law of God” and the “other law,” respectively.76 The Mosaic law is that law with which the mind agrees, that “I” confess to be good and seek to obey (vv. 15–20—and note v. 25, where egō claims to serve the law of God “with the mind”), while the “other law” is nothing more than that authority or demand of sin which works through, and becomes resident in, my “members” (cf. vv. 17b–18a: sin dwelling in the flesh).

Thus sin, working in and through the flesh, makes demands on and gains authority over egō; thus Paul calls it “the law of sin.” Using military language, Paul describes this “law of sin” as “waging war”77 against “the law of my mind.” “Mind” refers to the reasoning side of a person.78 Paul makes clear that this “reason” of people apart from Christ is perverted and darkened, preventing them from thinking correctly about God and the world.79 Here, however, Paul implies that the mind is an ally of God’s law; many therefore conclude that Paul must be describing a Christian, with a “renewed” mind able to respond favorably to God’s will.80 But this does not follow. Granted that the mind of people apart from Christ is tragically and fatally flawed, it does not follow that the mind cannot understand and respond to God at all. All that Paul is saying is that the “reason” or “will” of the non-Christian is capable of approving the demands of God in his law. Especially if, as we have argued, Paul is speaking of his own experience under the law as typical of others, this capability cannot be denied (cf. 1:32; 2:14–15).

Continuing the military metaphor, Paul claims that the result of the battle between “the law of sin” and “the law of my mind” is an unqualified victory for the former: “I” have become a “captive to the law of sin.” That the struggle between the law of God, the mind, and the will, on the one hand, and the “law of sin,” the flesh/members, and what is done, on the other, has so negative an outcome is an important reason for thinking that Paul must be describing the experience of a non-Christian. The believer, while he or she may, and will, struggle with sin, commit sins, and even be continually overcome by a particular, individual sin, has been freed from sin’s power (chap. 6; 8:2) and could therefore hardly be said to be “held captive in the ‘power’ or ‘authority’ of sin.”

24 Paul has now concluded the description of his pre-Christian situation, as a Jew who reverences the Mosaic law but finds that the power of sin is too strong to enable him to comply with the demands of that law. As he has put it in v. 14b, “I am fleshly, sold under sin.” No wonder, then, that he decries his condition and calls out for deliverance: “Wretched81 person that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Certainly the Christian who is sensitive to his or her failure to meet God’s demands experiences a sense of frustration and misery at that failure (cf. 8:23); but Paul’s language here is stronger than would be appropriate for that sense of failure.82 Nor is it fair to say that this cry of despair is contrived and “theatrical” if Paul is not describing his own present feelings. First, as I have argued, Paul is describing an experience he has, to some extent at least, shared. Second, Paul well knows that this very condition characterizes most of his “kinfolk according to the flesh” as he writes. Third, however, we must recognize that, while this cry is uttered by a Jew under the law, it is written by a Jew who in Christ has discovered just how “wretched” his past condition really was; and this Christian insight undoubtedly colors the narrative.

Paul’s cry for deliverance from “the body of this death”83 might express his longing, as a Christian, for physical resurrection (cf. 8:10)84 or his desire, as a non-Christian, for rescue from spiritual frustration and condemnation. In light of Paul’s use of “death” language throughout this chapter, and especially in v. 13, which is the immediate launching pad for vv. 14–25, I think the latter is preferable. Paul has been showing how egō, through, and despite, the law, has been brought into condemnation because of the reigning power of sin. Here, in the personal plea that brings to a climax the narrative of vv. 7–23, the condition from which deliverance is sought can be nothing but the condition Paul has depicted in these verses: the status of the person under sentence of spiritual death, condemned, bound for hell.85

25 Paul immediately supplies the answer to the plea of v. 24b: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Yet the chapter does not end on this triumphant note but returns to a final description of egō in conflict, as this has been delineated in vv. 15–23. This sequence is one of the most oft-cited arguments in favor of the view that Paul is describing Christian experience in 7:14–25. For Paul’s renewed confession of struggle, after the thanksgiving for deliverance, suggests that the “divided” egō is precisely that egō which knows that deliverance comes through God’s work in Christ. Without, however, denying the force of the argument, I do not think that it is decisive.86 On any reading of the passage, v. 25a is anticipatory of a victory yet to come: on the regenerate view, anticipatory of the final deliverance from the “mortal body” depicted in 8:10, 23; on the unregenerate view, anticipatory of deliverance from sin and death depicted in 8:2–4. On the unregenerate view, it must be assumed that Paul, the Christian, has at this point interjected his own thanksgiving.87 And perhaps it could be argued that the use of the plural (“our”) rather than the “I” style of the surrounding context signals the presence of such an interjection.

“Now, then,” introduces v. 25b as a summarizing recapitulation of the “dividedness” of theegō that Paul has portrayed in vv. 15–23. For the first time in this context, Paul contrasts his two responses, or situations, in terms of “serving,” but the other terms reflect the language Paul has already used: serving “the law of God” (v. 22) “with the mind” (cf. v. 23) versus serving “the law of sin” (v. 23) “with the flesh”88 (v. 14b, 18). Some interpreters think that the emphatic “I myself”89 means “I, by myself [without the help of the Spirit],” but there is no reason to see such a nuance. The emphatic pronoun is used to stress that, when all allowance has been made for the different “parts” and “directions” of this egō, as they have been delineated in vv. 15–23, there remains one person, who is caught in the conflict between mental assent to God’s word and practical failure to do it.

While Paul is not, in my opinion, depicting a Christian situation in this paragraph, there are important theological applications for the Christian. First, we are reminded of our past—unable to do God’s will, frustrated perhaps at our failure—so that we may praise God for his deliverance with deeper understanding and greater joy. Second, we are warned that the Mosaic law, and, hence, all law, is unable to deliver us from the power of sin; the multiplication of “rules” and “commands,” so much a tendency in some Christian circles, will be more likely to drive us deeper into frustration than to improve the quality of our walk with Christ.

D. ASSURANCE OF ETERNAL LIFE IN THE SPIRIT (8:1–30)

The inner sanctuary within the cathedral of Christian faith; the tree of life in the midst of the Garden of Eden; the highest peak in a range of mountains—such are some of the metaphors used by interpreters who extol chap. 8 as the greatest passage within what so many consider to be the greatest book in Scripture.1 While the varied riches of God’s Word make any such comparisons precarious, Rom. 8 deserves to be put in the front rank for its rich and comprehensive portrayal of what it means to be a Christian. Prominent in this description is the work of the Holy Spirit.

The word pneuma occurs 21 times in Rom. 8, and all but two (those in vv. 15a and 16b) refer to the Holy Spirit.2 This means that the Spirit is mentioned in this chapter almost once every two verses, while its closest competitor, 1 Cor. 12, mentions the Spirit a little over once every three verses. Nevertheless, despite the prominence of the Holy Spirit, Rom. 8 is not really about the Spirit. For one thing, the Spirit is not equally prominent throughout, being mentioned 15 times in vv. 1–17 but only four times in vv. 18–39. For another, Paul’s focus is not so much on the Spirit as such, but on what the Spirit does. And perhaps this is the best way to learn about the Spirit. For, as important as it may be to define the nature of the Holy Spirit and his relation to Christ and the Father, the Spirit is best known in his ministry on behalf of Christians. It is those blessings and privileges conferred on believers by the Spirit that are the theme of this chapter.

If we were to sum up these blessings is a single word, that word would be assurance. From “no condemnation” at the beginning (v. 1) to “no separation” at the end (v. 39) (Godet), Paul passes in review those gifts and graces that together assure the Christian that his relationship with God is secure and settled. The chapter contains no sharp breaks,3 but four major sections emerge.

(1) In vv. 1–13, the key word is life. “The Spirit of life” (v. 2) confers life both in the present—through liberating the believer from both the penalty (justification) and power (sanctification) of sin—and in the future—by raising the “mortal body” from the dead. Yet this life is not attained without the believer’s active participation in the Spirit’s progressive work of “mortification” (vv. 12–13).

(2) The Spirit is also the “Spirit of adoption,” conferring on us the status of God’s own dearly loved children and making us aware of that status at the same time (vv. 14–17).

(3) In the last verse of the second section, Paul makes the transition into the theme of hope, which dominates the last part of Rom. 8. To be a child of God means to be his heir (v. 17)—and an heir must wait for the full realization of what has been promised. So believers in this age of warfare between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan suffer and groan—but their groans are not the despairing cries of the hopeless. Rather, they are the impatient yearnings of those who have been saved in hope and hunger for that “glory” which has been promised them (vv. 18–30).

(4) Paul celebrates this comforting expectation in vv. 31–39, a hymn of triumph that caps off and applies the exposition of Christian privileges given in vv. 1–30, as well as bringing to a conclusion the exposition of chaps. 5–8 generally.

How does this portrait of the new life and hope of the believer relate to what has come before in Romans? The “therefore” at the beginning of the chapter indicates that Paul is drawing a conclusion. What immediately follows is the assertion that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1). This language forges a link with Rom. 5:12–21: the word “condemnation”4 occurs only here and in 5:16 and 18 in the NT, and “in Christ Jesus” succinctly summarizes the relationship of believers to Christ that is developed in that great paragraph. Nor do these parallels stand alone. In both 5:12–21 and 8:1–13 Paul assures the believer of the reality and finality of life in Christ, and shows how this life is the product of righteousness (cf. 5:17, 18, 21; 8:10).5 We are justified, then, in thinking that 8:1–13 or, probably, 8:1–17, restates and elaborates 5:12–21. This restatement is made with particular respect to the threats of sin and the law (cf. v. 2: “the law of sin and death”) that occupied Paul in chaps. 6 and 7, and, as we have seen, with a new focus on the ministry of the Spirit. Since the second part of Rom. 8 is closely related to 5:1–11 (see the introduction to 5:1–11), the result is a “ring composition” in which 8:18–39 picks up 5:1–11, as 8:1–17 does 5:12–21.6

This scheme captures the main development of Paul’s discussion but does not tell the whole story. For there are other connections between Rom. 8 and the rest of the epistle that must not be overlooked. A connection with what has immediately preceded at the end of Rom. 7 is unlikely.7 But, in keeping with Paul’s habit in Romans of touching on topics that are to be developed later, the reference to “newness of Spirit” in 7:6b anticipates and prepares for the concentrated focus on the Spirit in chap. 8.8 Further, we cannot ignore the way in which 8:2–4 sketches the solution to the dilemma of egō in 7:7–25. God’s work in Christ, mediated by the Spirit, is what overcomes the inability of the law, weakened as it is by the flesh (v. 3a), and liberates the believer from “the law of sin and death” (v. 2). While not to be ignored, however, neither 7:6b nor 7:7–25 is to be seen as the main jumping-off point for chap. 8. Both are subordinate connections taken up within Paul’s reiteration of the theme of Christian assurance and eschatological victory. Further, while Rom. 8 does, in some ways, summarize and bring to a climax the discussion of the entire epistle to this point,9 the particular connection with chap. 5 that I have sketched cannot be ignored. Like a snowball rolling downhill, Rom. 8 picks up many of the earlier themes of the letter as it reiterates and expands on the assurance of eschatological life that the believer has in Christ.

1. The Spirit of Life (8:1–13)

1Now, therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.10 2For the law of the Spirit of life has, through Christ Jesus, set you11 free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do, in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did: by sending his own Son in the form of sinful flesh and concerning sin he condemned sin in the flesh, 4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

5For those who are according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, while those who are according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. 6For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace, 7because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not submit to the law of God, for it cannot do so. 8Now those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit12 who is dwelling in you.

12Therefore, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—13for if you are living according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you are putting to death the practices of the body, you will live.

In this first paragraph of Rom. 8, Paul reasserts the triumphant conclusion of 5:12–21: that for those who are “in Christ” eternal life replaces the condemnation and death that were the lot of everybody in Adam. But this reassertion of the believer’s assurance of life takes a new form, being modeled from the material with which Paul has been working in chaps. 6–7. The Spirit now plays the dominant role, as Paul returns to his preparatory reference to “serving in newness of Spirit” in 7:6b. And the “powers” against which the Spirit is ranged in these verses are those “authorities” of the old age that have been portrayed in the two previous chapters. The Spirit battles against and conquers the hostility and power of the flesh (vv. 5b–9; cf. 7:5, 14, 18, 25), rescues the believer from captivity to sin and death, both “spiritual” and “physical” (v. 2; for sin, see v. 3 and chap. 6; for death, see vv. 6, 10–11, 13 and 6:12, 13, 16, 21, 23; 7:5, 9–11, 13, 24), and, accomplishing what the law itself could not do (v. 3a; cf. 7:7–25), enables the law, for the first time, to be “fulfilled.” Thus Paul weaves together various threads from chaps. 6–7 in a new argument for the assurance of eternal life that the believer may have in Christ.

Most commentators put a major break in the flow of Paul’s argument after v. 11.13 But the break is better placed after v. 13.14 The antithesis between “flesh” and “Spirit” that is central to vv. 4b–9a becomes a matter of application and exhortation in vv. 12–13, and these latter verses should therefore be considered part of the same basic block of material. In addition to this, the central theme of vv. 1–11 is continued right through v. 13. This theme is “life.” The “no condemnation” that heads this paragraph is grounded in the reality of the believer’s transfer from death to life. In vv. 2–4, this transfer emanates from “the Spirit of life,” who applies to the believer the benefits won by Christ on the cross, thereby enabling the fulfillment of the law’s just demand. Verses 5–9 teach that the flesh is necessarily in opposition to God, turning every person into a rebel against God and his law and reaping death in consequence. This explains why it is only by “being in the Spirit” (v. 9) and “walking according to the Spirit” (v. 4b) that life and peace can be had. And the life that the Spirit gives is by no means ended by the grave, for the presence of the Spirit guarantees that the bodies of believers will be raised from physical death (vv. 10–11). Verses 12–13 cap off this proclamation of life in Christ by reminding us that God’s gift of eternal life does not cancel the complementary truth that only by progressing in holiness will that eternal life be attained.

1 The combination “therefore, now”15 is an emphatic one, marking what follows as a significant conclusion. As we have seen, these verses pick up various themes from chaps. 6–7 to restate the assuring message of 5:12–21 that Christ has secured eternal life for all who belong to him. The “now” alludes to the new era of salvation history inaugurated by Christ’s death and resurrection (see also 3:21; 5:9; 6:19, 22; 7:6). “For those who are in Christ Jesus,” this era is marked by the wonderful announcement that “there is no condemnation.” Many interpreters, noting that Paul focuses in this context on the new life in Christ (vv. 5–13), think that “no condemnation” includes the breaking of sin’s power in all its aspects.16 It is, of course, important that we not separate the destruction of sin’s power from the removal of its penalty. But the judicial flavor of the word “condemnation” strongly suggests that Paul is here thinking only of the believer’s deliverance from the penalty that sin exacts.17 Like “death,” a parallel term (cf. 5:16 and 17; 5:18 and 21; and 8:1 and 6), “condemnation” designates the state of “lostness,” of estrangement from God that, apart from Christ, every person will experience for eternity. Those “in Christ Jesus” are removed from this state—and removed forever from it, as the emphatic “no”18 indicates. No more will condemnation of any kind be a threat (cf. 8:34). How can this happen for those “in Christ”? Because those in Christ experience the benefits of Christ’s death “for us”: “He was for us in the place of condemnation; we are in him where all condemnation has spent its force” (cf. 2 Cor. 5:21).19 Paul’s judicial “for us” language and his “participationist” “in him” language combine in perfect harmony.

2 The “for”20 indicates that this verse is the ground of the “no condemnation in Christ” announced in v. 1. A liberation has taken place through the Holy Spirit, and this liberation is the basis on which the person “in Christ” is forever saved from condemnation. In describing this liberation, Paul uses the word nomos to characterize both “sides” of the situation: “the nomos of the Spirit of life has, through Christ Jesus,21 set you free from the nomos of sin and death.” Why does he do so?

(1) Nomos in both parts of the verse might refer to the Mosaic law. Paul would then be suggesting that the Mosaic law has a dual role. In the context of the “flesh,” it is misunderstood as nothing more than a series of demands. As such, the law becomes an instrument of sin, leading to death (7:5, 7–13). However, in the context of the Spirit, the law is experienced in all its fuller and truer nature—as promise, and thus as calling for faith. It can then become an instrument of righteousness leading to life (cf. 7:10—the commandment is “unto life”). In support of this interpretation are (a) the undoubted preference of Paul to use nomos to refer to the Mosaic law and (b) the fact that this dual understanding of the law is, allegedly, present in the immediately preceding paragraph (see 7:22–23, 25b). On this view, then, Paul is teaching that the Spirit for the first time puts the law of God in its proper focus and context, and enables it thereby to free the sinner from the narrow and death-dealing misuse of the law.22

(2) Nomos in both parts of the verse might have a figurative meaning, contrasting the “principle,” “authority,” or “power” of sin and death with the “principle,” “authority,” or “power” of the Spirit.23 As we have seen (see the note on 3:27), nomos can mean “binding authority” or “power,” so this translation is lexically acceptable. And this interpretation is clearly preferable to the first.

The first occurrence of nomos, at least, cannot refer to the Mosaic law. The immediate context stresses the incapacity of the law to do what v. 2 describes. It was God acting through his Son who accomplished “what the law could not do” (v. 3). To make the Mosaic law the liberating agent in v. 2 would be to make v. 2 contradict v. 3. But, more seriously, giving the law this kind of role would contradict a central and oft-repeated tenet of Paul’s theology. Throughout his letters, and not least in Romans, Paul pictures the Mosaic law as ranged on the opposite side of the Spirit, righteousness, and life. God’s righteousness has come “apart from the law” (3:21; cf. Gal. 2:15–3:14); the promise can be attained only through faith and not through the law (4:12–15; cf. Gal. 3:15–18); the believer must be “released from” the law through union with Christ in order to produce fruit pleasing to God (7:4–6; cf. Gal. 2:19–20). To be sure, Paul affirms that the law is God’s law and that it was given with a positive purpose within the overall plan of salvation (7:7–13; cf. Gal. 3:19–4:5). But this purpose is not the liberation of the believer from a misunderstanding or misuse of the law, or from the power of sin and death. The Pauline pattern, enunciated in v. 3, is clear: the impotence of the law has been met not with a new empowering of the law but with God’s gracious activity in Jesus Christ.24 As Chrysostom put it, “The other [the Mosaic law] was merely given by the Spirit, but this [the law of the Spirit] even furnishes those that receive it with the Spirit in large measure.” To these points may be added the incongruity, however the qualifying genitives be construed and the concept paraphrased, of the nomos liberating the believer from the same nomos. Nor does appeal to the context help; as I have argued, it is unlikely that Paul in 7:21–25 refers to a dual role of the Mosaic law.

The “nomos of the Spirit” cannot, then, refer to the Mosaic law. It may, however, allude to the “law written on the heart” (cf. Jer. 31:31–34), the “law” of the New Covenant that, according to the parallel text in Ezek. 36:24–32, is closely related to the Spirit.25 But it is not clear that the “law” in Jeremiah is anything but an internalized Mosaic law; and it is not, in any case, the liberating power of the new age. This also rules out any notion of “the law of the Spirit” being a new, Christian ethical standard that takes the place of the law of Moses (as some interpret “the law of Christ” [Gal. 6:2]). Paul’s use of nomos here may be rhetorically dependent on his customary use of nomos,26 but he does not use it in order to suggest that the Spirit is, or conveys, a norm that functions like, or can be substituted for, the Mosaic law. Others think the nomos is the gospel, the new “rule” of which the Spirit is the author.27 This is possible, but the other texts in which Paul uses nomos in a “nonlegal” manner (cf. 3:27; 9:31–32), and especially the immediate context (7:21–25), point rather to nomos meaning “power,” or “binding authority,” with the following genitive specifying that authority or power. Paul always uses nomos with this meaning in contexts where he has been talking about the Mosaic law. This suggests an intentional play on the word, as Paul implicitly contrasts the law of Moses with a different “law,” in this case the “ ‘law’ of the Spirit who confers life.”28 The actor in the situation is, then, the Spirit himself. It is God’s Spirit, coming to the believer with power and authority, who brings liberation from the powers of the old age and from the condemnation that is the lot of all who are imprisoned by those powers.

More difficult to decide is whether the second nomos in the verse designates the Mosaic law or whether it, too, means “binding authority” or “power.” In favor of the former is the fact that nomos in v. 3a refers to the Mosaic law; and certainly Paul’s discussion in 7:7–25 would justify describing the Mosaic law as, in some sense, a “law of sin and death” (cf. also 1 Cor. 15:56). Though given by God, the law of Moses comes to sinful, “fleshly” people, for whom that law therefore becomes an instrument of sin and death.29 While this interpretation fits both the context and Paul’s theology, another factor tilts the scales slightly in favor of rendering this second nomos also as “binding authority” or “power.” This factor is the occurrence of the almost identical phrase, “the nomos of sin,” in 7:23, where, because it is called “the other law,” in distinction from the Mosaic law (v. 22), it must mean the “authority” or “power” of sin. That these similar phrases mean the same thing is suggested also by the material relationship between 7:23 and 8:2; we can hardly miss the fact that the “liberation” of 8:2 is the answer to the “imprisonment” of 7:23.30 We might, then, paraphrase this second phrase, “the binding authority of sin that leads to death.”31 The real contrast in the verse is then between the Spirit on the one hand and sin and death on the other. As sin and death are those powers that rule the old age (cf. chaps. 6–7), so the Spirit and the eschatological life conferred by the Spirit are those powers that rule the new age.32

But what is the nature of the liberation Paul depicts here? Since v. 1, as I have argued, has to do with justification, the liberation of v. 2 may also be restricted to the believer’s being freed from the penalty of sin.33 Others, however, while not excluding justification, think that v. 2 is focusing more on sanctification; for “the law of sin,” it is argued, is the internal, regulating power of sin.34 But the liberation here is not just from “the law of sin,” but from “the law of sin and death.” And this expanded phrase appears to be deliberately chosen in order to summarize the total situation of the sinner as Paul has described it in chaps. 6 and 7: helpless under sin’s power, doomed thereby to death and condemnation.35 This being the case, we cannot restrict the application of v. 2 to either “justification” or “sanctification”; indeed, the very introduction of these terms at this point in Paul’s discussion may unnecessarily complicate matters. “No condemnation” is the banner triumphantly flying over all those who are “in Christ” (v. 1) only because “in Christ” we have been set free by the Spirit from that realm, ruled by sin, in which condemnation (= death) is one’s ineluctable fate. Verse 2, we might say, is speaking directly about neither justification nor sanctification but about that “realm transfer” that is the presupposition of both. As such, it significantly advances the discussion of chaps. 5–7 by introducing the Spirit as a key agent of liberation from the old realm of sin and death.

3 Nevertheless, as the “in Christ Jesus” in v. 2—and in v. 1—has already indicated, the Spirit’s liberating work takes place only within the situation created by Christ. Verse 3 spells this out, showing that the Spirit can liberate the believer from sin and death only because in Christ and his cross God has already “condemned” sin. Believers are no longer “condemned” (v. 1) because in Christ sin has been “condemned”: “For what the law could not do,36 in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did: by sending his own Son in the form of sinful flesh and concerning sin he condemned sin in the flesh.”37

Nomos is now clearly the Mosaic law, and the clause succinctly states the most important point Paul makes about this law in the epistle—that it has proved incapable of rescuing people from the domain of sin and death (cf. 3:19; 3:28; 4:12–15; 7:7–25). But the law should not be criticized for this—for in a phrase that echoes 7:14b (“I am fleshly”), Paul reminds us that the law has failed only because “it was weakened by the flesh.” Nor should we think of the flesh as frustrating the intentions of the law, for the law was never given as a means to secure righteousness.38

“Flesh,” as in 7:5, is not the flesh of our bodies, or the bodies themselves, but the “this-worldly” orientation that all people share. It is this power that the law cannot break; indeed, as Paul has made clear, the law serves to strengthen the power of sin (cf. 5:20; 7:5). Luther uses a very appropriate analogy to make the point:

It is as with a sick man who wants to drink some wine because he foolishly thinks that his health will return if he does so. Now if the doctor, without any criticism of the wine, should say to him: “It is impossible for the wine to cure you, it will only make you sicker,” the doctor is not condemning the wine but only the foolish trust of the sick man in it. For he needs other medicine to get well, so that he then can drink his wine. Thus also our corrupt nature needs another kind of medicine than the Law, by which it can arrive at good health so that it can fulfill the Law (Scholium on 8:3).

In light of this criticism of the law in Romans, and the focus on liberation from sin and death in v. 2, “what the law could not do” is not to condemn sin (e.g., Godet), but to break sin’s power—or, to put it positively, to secure eschatological life.39

It is God himself who has done what the law could not do, and he has done it through the sending40 of “his own Son.”41 In most references to the “sending” of the Son the focus is on the incarnation. But the sacrificial allusions later in this verse show that, without eliminating allusion to the incarnation, Paul’s application of the language is broader, with a particular focus on the redemptive death of the Son (cf. also Gal. 4:4).42 Paul’s description of the way in which God sent the Son contributes to this sacrificial focus. “In the form of sinful flesh” emphasizes the full participation of the Son in the human condition.43 Like the phrases “born from a woman, born under the law” in Gal. 4:4, it shows that the Son possesses the necessary requirement to act as our substitute. But why does Paul say that Christ came in “the homoiōma of sinful flesh”? Certainly, in light of “in the flesh” later in this very verse, Paul cannot mean that Christ had only the “appearance” of flesh.44 Moreover, the word homoiōma here probably has the nuance of “form” rather than “likeness” or “copy.” In other words, the word does not suggest superficial or outward similarity, but inward and real participation or “expression.” It may be, then, that Paul wants simply to say that Christ really took on “sinful flesh.”45 But this may be going too far in the other direction. Paul uses homoiōma here for a reason; and it is probably, as in 6:5 and 5:14, to introduce a note of distinction. The use of the term implies some kind of reservation about identifying Christ with “sinful flesh.”46 Paul is walking a fine line here. On the one hand, he wants to insist that Christ fully entered into the human condition, became “in-fleshed” (in-carnis), and, as such, exposed himself to the power of sin (cf. 6:8–10). On the other hand, he must avoid suggesting that Christ so participated in this realm that he became imprisoned “in the flesh” (cf. the negative use of this phrase in 7:5 and 8:8, 9) and became, thus, so subject to sin that he could be personally guilty of it. Homoiōma rights the balances that the addition of “sinful” to “flesh” might have tipped a bit too far in one direction.

Sacrificial allusions are probably also present in the next phrase, “concerning sin.” Paul might mean no more than that Christ’s mission generally “had to do” with sin.47 But the phrase so frequently means “sin offering” in the LXX48 that it is likely to mean that there too: God sent his own Son “to be a sin offering.”49 This brings us to the end of the subordinate material and, finally, to the (grammatical) main clause: God, in sending his Son, “condemned sin in the flesh.”50 “In the flesh” naturally implies the humanity of Christ, but it also alludes to that sphere of human weakness into which Christ entered to accomplish his work. The flesh that made the law ineffective in dealing with sin was conquered from within.

But what does Paul mean when he says that God “condemned sin in the flesh”? Putting together the natural meaning of the term51 with the context, we can conclude that what Paul must mean is a judicial action that was accomplished through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and that had as its object that “the just requirement of the law be fulfilled” in Christians (v. 4a). The focus on sacrifice means that Paul is probably not referring to the “overpowering” of sin through Christ’s incarnation (Lagrange) or to the “living condemnation of sin” represented in Christ’s sinless life (Godet). Also excluded is the popular interpretation according to which Paul means that God in Christ “broke the power of” sin.52 While it fits the context, and may be an implication of what Paul is saying, this view illegitimately eliminates the judicial connotations of “condemn.” The interpretation that best meets the criteria above sees the condemnation of sin to consist in God’s executing his judgment on sin in the atoning death of his Son. As our substitute, Christ “was made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21) and suffered the wrath of God, the judgment of God upon that sin (cf. hilastērion in Rom. 3:25; Gal. 3:13).53 In his doing so, of course, we may say that sin’s power was broken, in the sense that Paul pictures sin as a power that holds people in its clutches and brings condemnation to them. In executing the full sentence of condemnation against sin, God effectively removed sin’s ability to “dictate terms” for those who are “in Christ” (v. 2). The condemnation that our sins deserve has been poured out on Christ, our sin-bearer; that is why “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1).

4 Verse 4 states the purpose54 for which God has condemned sin in the flesh: “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.” What Paul means by this depends a great deal on how we interpret the word we have translated “righteous requirement.” Based on its meaning55 and use earlier in Romans, it could mean either (1) “just decree,” “ordinance that decrees punishment” (cf. 1:32); (2) “righteousness” (see 5:16 and our notes there); or (3) “just requirement,” the reference being either to the behavior required by the law (2:26) or to the righteousness demanded by the law. The first would fit the context very nicely; the sentence of judgment executed on sin in Christ (v. 3) “fulfills” that “decree of the law” which demands death for sin (cf. 3:19).56 However, it has against it the positive flavor of Paul’s language in the rest of the verse: “fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”57 The second is unlikely because the meaning of “righteousness” for this term in 5:16 is very much dependent on the rhetorical contrast in that context. Probably, then, especially in light of the qualification “of the law,” Paul uses the word with its usual LXX meaning, “right or just requirement.” But what is this “just requirement”? And how is it accomplished?

Since Paul singles out the command to love as the “fulfillment” and “summary” of the law (cf. 13:8–10 and Gal. 5:14), the “just requirement” or “legal claim” of the law may well be love, and its fulfillment a consistent lifestyle of love on the part of Spirit-led Christians.58 Besides, however, the fact that Paul has done nothing to prepare his Roman readers for this application, the language “in us” is inappropriate as a way of indicating Christians’ acts of love (contrast the active formulation in 13:8).59 We must, then, give the phrase its simplest and broadest meaning: the summary (note the singular, as opposed to the plural of 2:26) of what the law demands of God’s people. Through God’s breaking of the power of sin (v. 3), the “right requirement” of the law is accomplished by those who “walk according to the Spirit.” To quote Augustine’s famous formulation, “Law was given that grace might be sought, grace was given that the law might be fulfilled.”60

But we still must pin down the nature of this “fulfillment.” Some think that Christians, participants in the New Covenant, with the “law written on the heart” and the Spirit empowering within, fulfill the demand of the law by righteous living.61 However, while it is true that God’s act in Christ has as one of its intents that we produce “fruit” (cf. 6:15–23; 7:4), and that the law cannot be cavalierly dismissed as of no significance to the Christian life, we do not think that this is what Paul is saying here.

Two points may be made. First, the passive verb “might be fulfilled” points not to something that we are to do but to something that is done in and for us.62 Second, the always imperfect obedience of the law by Christians does not satisfy what is demanded by the logic of this text. The fulfilling of the “just decree of the law” must answer to that inability of the law with which Paul began this sentence (v. 3a). As we have seen, “what the law could not do” is to free people from “the law of sin and death”—to procure righteousness and life. And it could not do this because “the flesh” prevented people from obeying its precepts (see 8:7 and 7:14–25). The removal of this barrier consists not in the actions of believers, for our obedience always falls short of that perfect obedience required by the law. As Calvin puts it, “the faithful, while they sojourn in this world, never make such a proficiency, as that the justification of the law becomes in them full or complete. This [v. 4a] then must be applied to forgiveness; for when the obedience of Christ is accepted for us, the law is satisfied, so that we are counted just.”

If, then, the inability of the law is to be overcome without an arbitrary cancellation of the law, it can happen only through a perfect obedience of the law’s demands (cf. 2:13 and our comments there). This, of course, is exactly what Jesus Christ has done. As our substitute, he satisfied the righteous requirement of the law, living a life of perfect submission to God. In laying upon him the condemnation due all of us (v. 3b; cf. v. 1), God also made it possible for the righteous obedience that Christ had earned to be transferred to us. Verses 3–4 then fit into a pattern in Paul’s presentation of the work of Christ that has been called an “interchange”—Christ becomes what we are so that we might become what Christ is.63 In this sense, then, we may interpret “the righteous requirement of the law” to be the demand of the law for perfect obedience, or for righteousness.64 And the law’s just demand is fulfilled in Christians not through their own acts of obedience but through their incorporation into Christ.65 He fulfilled the law; and, in him, believers also fulfill the law—perfectly, so that they may be pronounced “righteous,” free from “condemnation” (v. 1). It is in this way that Paul’s stress on faith “establishes the law” (3:31), for, in grasping Christ by faith, people are accounted as really having “done the law.” Indeed, as Paul makes clear in this letter, it is only through faith in Christ that the law can really be accomplished.66

If this interpretation of the first part of v. 4 is correct, then the participial clause modifying “us” is not instrumental—“the just decree of the law is fulfilled in us by our walking not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit”67—but descriptive, characterizing those in whom the just decree of the law is fulfilled as “those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”68 The reference to Christian behavior in this phrase69 shows that Paul does not separate the “fulfillment” of the law from the lifestyle of Christians. But, this does not mean that Christian behavior is how the law is fulfilled—a conclusion that is incompatible with the considerations adduced in the last paragraph. Rather, Christian behavior is the necessary mark of those in whom this fulfillment takes place. God not only provides in Christ the full completion of the law’s demands for the believer, but he also sends the Spirit into the hearts of believers to empower a new obedience to his demands. Christians now are directed by the Spirit and not by the flesh.70 As I have noted elsewhere (see on 7:5 and the introduction to chap. 8), flesh and Spirit stand over against each other not as parts of a person (an anthropological dualism),71 nor even as impulses or powers within a person, but as the powers, or dominating features, of the two “realms” of salvation history. “To walk according to the flesh,” then, is to have one’s life determined and directed by the values of “this world,” of the world in rebellion against God.72 It is a lifestyle that is purely “human” in its orientation.73 To “walk according to the Spirit,” on the other hand, is to live under the control, and according to the values, of the “new age,” created and dominated by God’s Spirit as his eschatological gift.

5 In vv. 5–13, Paul continues to use this opposition between flesh and Spirit to expand on the life that is given to believers in and through God’s Spirit. He begins by asserting again the unbreakable connection between Spirit and life on the one hand and flesh and death on the other (vv. 5–8). His purpose here is more on the negative side, as he elaborates particularly on the “weakness of the flesh” (v. 3a; cf. 7:14–25). Paul then (vv. 9–11) turns to a more positive point, as he expresses his confidence that the Romans themselves are firmly on the “Spirit” side of this contrast (cf. vv. 3b–4).74 In the concluding verses of this section (vv. 12–13), however, Paul reminds his readers that the life-giving power of God’s Spirit is finally effective only in those who continue to let the Spirit change their lives.

The antithesis between flesh and Spirit stated in v. 4b in terms of “walking according to” is pursued in vv. 5–9 with several different expressions:

v. 5a:	“being according to the flesh/according to the Spirit”
v. 5b:	“thinking the things of the flesh/of the Spirit”
v. 6:	“the mind of the flesh/Spirit”
vv. 8–9:	“being in the flesh/in the Spirit”

To begin at the end of the sequence: what Paul says in vv. 8–9 makes clear that the contrast between “being in the flesh” and “being in the Spirit” is a contrast between non-Christian and Christian. As in 7:5, Paul uses “in” to connote the idea of “realm,” with flesh and Spirit denoting those “powers” that dominate the two realms of salvation history. To become a Christian means to be transferred from the realm dominated by the flesh to the realm dominated by the Spirit. The “mind” (phronēma) of the flesh/Spirit (v. 6) will then denote the mind-set or attitude that characterizes those who belong to these two respective realms, with “thinking” (phronousin) the things of the flesh/Spirit (v. 5b) a rhetorical equivalent. Finally, considering the connection between vv. 4b and 5, “being according to the flesh/Spirit” and “walking according to the flesh/Spirit” may mean roughly the same thing: the “lifestyle” or daily conduct of a person.75 But the logic of Paul’s argument suggests rather that “being according to the flesh” in v. 5 is the same as “being in the flesh” in v. 8: that is, a “positional” rather than a “behavioral” concept.

Paul’s purpose in pursuing this series of contrasts is not “paraenetic”; that is, he is not warning Christians about two different possibilities they face in order to encourage them to live according to the Spirit.76 Paul certainly does this, and in language similar to the language here (cf. Gal. 5:16–26). But, as we have noted, “being in the flesh” (v. 8) is not a possibility for the believer; and when we add to this the lack of any imperatives and the general, third person, language of the paragraph, we are warranted in concluding that Paul’s interest here is descriptive rather than hortatory.77 In some sense, then, it is fair to say that Paul is contrasting two groups of people: the converted and the unconverted.78 But Paul’s main purpose is to highlight the radical differences between the flesh and the Spirit as a means of showing why only those who “walk/think/are” after the Spirit can have eschatological life.79 This is the connection between vv. 1–4 and vv. 5–8. Life, eschatological life, is conferred only on those who “walk according to the Spirit” (cf. v. 4b). “For”80 those who are “according to the flesh” can never escape death (v. 6); the flesh prevents people from obeying God’s law (v. 7) or from pleasing him (v. 8). It is the Spirit, “the Spirit of life” (v. 2), who reverses this situation, making it possible, through Christ, for believers to “fulfill the law” (v. 4) and to be delivered from condemnation (v. 1). In vv. 9–11 Paul draws out these life-giving consequences of the Spirit. To begin with, however, he notes the basic tendencies of both the flesh and the Spirit (vv. 5–6), and then develops the negative side of the situation in vv. 7–8: the natural situation of the person in this world—life in the flesh—as a situation of death. These verses thus recapitulate the main themes of chap. 7.

In vv. 5–6, Paul uses a logical progression to contrast the ends to which the flesh and the Spirit lead. In this progression Paul uses the language of “thinking” as the “middle term” to connect existence determined by flesh or Spirit (“those who are according to flesh/Spirit”) with the contrasting destinies of death on the one hand and life and peace on the other. Both words, “think” in v. 5 and “mind” in v. 6, come from the same Greek root, a root that connotes not a purely mental process but, more broadly, the general direction of the will, encompassing “all the faculties of the soul—reason, understanding, and affections.”81

6 The “for”82 is neither causal nor explanatory, but continuative.83 The “mind” of the flesh/Spirit, the attitude characterized and determined by the flesh/Spirit,84 is simply the substantival equivalent of thinking “the things of the flesh/Spirit” (v. 5b). The accent falls on what results from these contrasting mind-sets. Those who have the mind-set of the flesh, who, we might say, have a strictly “this-worldly” attitude, experience death. As throughout Rom. 5–8, this is death in its broadest aspect, certainly including eschatological condemnation (see vv. 1–4), but not confined to that. “Death” reigns in this life over all those who are outside Christ (cf. 5:12, 15, 21). Likewise, “life” and “peace” denote that state of freedom from “the law of sin and death” that begins for the believer in this life, albeit in less than its final and definitive form.85 The words do not denote a subjective state of mind (e.g., “peace of mind and heart”) but the objective reality of the salvation into which the believer, who has “the mind of the Spirit,” has entered.86 The “peace” here is that “peace with God” given through justification (see 5:1; cf. also 14:17), the state that is in contrast to the non-Christian’s “enmity toward God” (see v. 7).

7–8 Verses 7–8 explain why87 the mind-set of the flesh must lead to death. As shorthand for the principle and power of the godless world, “flesh” and the mind-set characteristic of it are necessarily hostile to God and all his purposes. No neutrality is possible; without the Spirit’s mind-set, found only through union with Christ (see vv. 9–10), people can only order their lives in a way that is hostile to God and that will incur his wrath. The second part of v. 7 and v. 8 explain88 this hostility to God. The “mind-set produced by the flesh” does not, and cannot, submit to God’s law. Those “in the flesh”—the “natural” person apart from Christ—cannot please God. In light of vv. 3–4 (and chap. 7), we might expect “law of God” to refer to the Mosaic law.89 On the other hand, this may be one of those verses in which Paul uses nomos to depict the demand of God generally rather than any particular expression of that demand.90 In either case, we may draw two important implications from these statements.

First, the “law of God” remains a standard by which the conduct of unbelievers can be measured and condemned. Believers are no longer “under the law” (Rom. 6:14, 15), subject to its binding authority (7:4); but unbelievers are subject still to this power of the “old age.” Second, Paul’s assessment of persons apart from Christ may justly be summed up in the theological categories of “total depravity” and “total inability.” “Total depravity” does not mean that all people are as evil as they possibly could be—that all people commit every possible sin—nor does it deny that there is knowledge of the good within each person. What is meant rather is that every person apart from Christ is thoroughly in the grip of the power of sin, and that this power extends to all the person’s faculties. This Paul has enunciated clearly by accusing all non-Christians of having a “mind-set,” a total life-direction, that is innately hostile to God (v. 7). All people, by nature derived from Adam, are incurably “bent” toward their own good rather than the good of others or of God. The various sins to which we are attracted—desire for riches, or station in life, or power, or sexual pleasure—are but different symptoms of this same sickness, this idolatrous bent toward self-gratification.91 Once again, we must remember that Paul is not here using “flesh” as we often do, to denote sexual sin specifically. To be “in the flesh,” or “carnal,” or “fleshly,” includes, in the sense Paul is using flesh here, all sins. The person who is preoccupied with his or her own success in business, at the expense of others and of God, is just as much dominated by the flesh as the person who commits adultery. Both persons are manifesting, in different ways, that destructive, self-centered rebellion against God and his law which can be overcome only by the power of God’s Spirit in Christ. Verse 8, on the other hand, plainly shows that no person can rescue himself from this condition. As long as that person is “in the flesh”—and only the Spirit can rescue us from this envelopment in the flesh—he or she is “totally unable” to please God.

9 Paul signals a change in direction with the adversative “but.”92 From the situation of those apart from Christ, Paul turns his attention to the Roman Christians, whom he now begins addressing directly: “those ‘in the flesh’ can never please God; but you93 are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.…” As we noted earlier, the contrast between being “in the flesh” and “in the Spirit” is a contrast between belonging to the old age of sin and death and belonging to the new age of righteousness and life. So characteristic of these respective “ages” or “realms” are flesh and Spirit that the person belonging to one or the other can be said to be “in” them. In this sense, then, no Christian can be “in the flesh”; and all Christians are, by definition, “in the Spirit.” We miss Paul’s intention if we think of being “in the flesh” here as the condition of mortality that continues to characterize even believers (Nygren), or as the moral weakness and proneness to sin that, more lamentably, we still possess (Dunn). For the rest of the verse makes absolutely clear that (1) to be a Christian is to be indwelt by God’s Spirit; and (2) to be indwelt by God’s Spirit means to be “in the Spirit” and not “in the flesh.” Paul’s language is “positional”: he is depicting the believer’s status in Christ, secured for him or her at conversion.94 Paul certainly views the Christian as, in some sense, affected by both realms of salvation history. But it is probably overstating the matter to say that the believer is situated “between” these two ages or realms (as does, e.g., Nygren). For this formulation misses the decisive past transfer of the believer into the new age of life and peace that Paul is celebrating in these chapters. Subject to physical decay and death, prone to sin, tempted to let the flesh take control of us again we may be—but, to do justice to Paul, we must insist that the believer is freed from “the law of sin and death” (8:2; cf. 5:12–21), “dead to sin’s power” (6:1–23), and no longer “in the flesh.”

To be sure, a condition is placed on this being “in the Spirit”: having the Spirit of God dwelling in the person. But, as 1 Cor. 3:16 shows—addressed to the “carnal” (cf. 3:1–3) Corinthian Christians, no less!—Paul believes that every Christian is indwelt by the Spirit of God. Indeed, this is just what Paul affirms in the last part of the verse, where he denies that the person who does not have the “Spirit of Christ” can make any claim to being a Christian at all. In other words, for Paul, possession of the Spirit goes hand-in-hand with being a Christian. However much we may need to grow in our relationship to the Spirit; however much we may be graciously given fresh and invigorating experiences of God’s Spirit, from the moment of conversion on, the Holy Spirit is a settled resident within.95 That Paul in the same verse can speak of the believer as “in the Spirit” and the Spirit as being “in” the believer reveals the metaphorical nature of his language. In the one case, the Spirit is pictured as entering into and taking control of the person’s life; in the other, the believer is pictured as living in that realm in which the Spirit rules, guides, and determines one’s destiny.

The conditional language Paul uses here (“if” … “if”96) could mean that he is not convinced that all his readers are truly indwelt by the Spirit.97 Since, however, both words can be translated “since,” Paul may, on the other hand, be assuming the reality of his readers’ Christian experience.98 The context in this case strongly suggests that Paul is, indeed, assuming the reality of the Christian experience of his readers.99 Here (see vv. 15–16), and throughout the letter (see, e.g., 1:8; 15:14), Paul addresses the Romans as believers; and the shift from the general third person in vv. 7–8 to the second plural of direct address in v. 9 (and note the shift back to the third person in v. 9b!) reveals Paul’s attitude about his readers.

10 Paul now contrasts the situation he has just described in v. 9b100 at the same time as he resumes the main thread of his teaching from v. 9a. Significantly, Paul now speaks of “Christ” being in the Roman Christians, whereas in v. 9 it was “the Spirit of God” who was said to be dwelling in believers. What this means is not that Christ and the Spirit are equated or interchangeable, but that Christ and the Spirit are so closely related in communicating to believers the benefits of salvation that Paul can move from one to the other almost unconsciously. Again, it is clear that the believer who by faith has come to be joined with Christ (see Rom. 6:1–11) has not only Christ but also the Spirit resident within. The indwelling Spirit and the indwelling Christ are distinguishable but inseparable. Moreover, the quick and unstudied movement from “Spirit of God” (v. 9a) to “Spirit of Christ” (v. 9b) to “Christ” (v. 10a) to “Spirit” (vv. 10b–11) reveals the “practical trinitarianism” that already characterizes the NT. Note also, once more, the flexibility of Paul’s theological metaphors. The union of the believer with Christ, our representative head (cf. 5:12–21), can be conveyed both by the language of the believer being “in” Christ and of Christ being “in” the believer.101

Paul spells out the benefits secured for the believer by the indwelling Christ in two parallel clauses: “the body is dead because of sin”; and “the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” In the first clause, “body” (sōma) might refer to the “person” as a whole, dead “with reference to” sin, in the sense of Rom. 6—that is, that the person has “died to,” been freed from, the dominion of sin.102 But it is better to think of the body’s “deadness” here as a negative condition, the state of condemnation—a condition that has come about “because of sin.”103 And the “body” is probably the physical body specifically, its deadness consisting in the penalty of physical death that must still be experienced by the believer.104

Adopting this interpretation, we will then give the first clause a concessive thrust—“although the body is ‘subject to death’ because of sin …”—and the main point will come in the second clause. Here again, there is considerable difference of opinion over the meaning of the clause. Many English versions (cf., e.g., RSV, NIV, NASB) translate pneuma in an anthropological sense: “your spirit is alive because of righteousness.”105 However, although the undeniably anthropological meaning of “body” favors this view, it is better to understand pneuma as a reference to the Holy Spirit (note NRSV [in contrast to RSV], REB, TEV).106 Pneuma, as we have seen, consistently refers to the Holy Spirit in Rom. 8, and it certainly does so in v. 11, which explains v. 10b. Moreover, identifying pneuma as the Holy Spirit makes better sense of the other words in the clause.107 Paul is teaching that the believer, although still bound to an earthly, mortal body, has residing within him or her the Spirit, the power of new spiritual life, which conveys both that “life,” in the sense of deliverance from condemnation enjoyed now and the future resurrection life that will bring transformation to the body itself. All this takes place “because of righteousness,” this “righteousness” being that “imputed righteousness” which leads to life (see 5:21).108

11 In a fourth consecutive conditional sentence, Paul caps off his rehearsal of the life given in and by the Spirit with an affirmation of the Spirit’s instrumentality in securing bodily transformation. Appropriate to this point, the Spirit is now designated as “the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead.” The reference, of course, is to God the Father (see Col. 2:12; Rom. 6:4), but the focus is on the Spirit. Since reference to resurrection is so plain in the first part of the sentence, “will make alive” must also refer to future bodily transformation109—through resurrection for dead believers—rather than, for instance, to spiritual vivification in justification,110 or to the “mortification” of sin in the Christian life.111 Paul certainly stresses the certainty and unbrokenness of life, a theme that is prominent in the rest of the chapter,112 but the future is genuinely temporal. The cause-and-effect relationship between Christ’s resurrection and the believer’s, made so plain in Rom. 6:5 (cf. 8:17), lies behind Paul’s affirmation that God will give life to “our mortal bodies” just as he raised Christ from the dead. And in keeping with Paul’s focus throughout this part of Rom. 8, it is the Spirit who is the instrument by whom God raises the body of the Christian.113 As in v. 9, the indwelling of the Spirit suggests that the Spirit has “made his home” in the believer; and since the Spirit is “life” (v. 10b; cf. v. 2: “the Spirit of life”), his presence cannot but result in life for that body which he inhabits. The Spirit’s life-giving power is not circumscribed by the mortality of the body but overcomes and transforms that mortality into the immortality of eternal life in a resurrected body.

12 Although many commentators think v. 12 commences a new paragraph,114 we prefer to attach vv. 12–13 to vv. 1–11. In vv. 5–11 Paul has delineated the contrary natures and tendencies of the two great powers of salvation history: flesh and Spirit. He has put the Roman Christians—and, by implication, all Christians—on the side of the Spirit, and has drawn out the consequences of that relationship: life, in the full theological sense of the word, life that will transcend and overcome physical death itself. Now, with the emphatic inferential “now, therefore,”115 Paul shows that there are consequences of this new relationship for the day-to-day life of the believer. Specifically, Paul claims, “we”—Christians generally—have no more “obligation” to the flesh, “to live according to it,”116 to follow its dictates or obey its will.

Once more, we note that flesh refers not only to our physical, or “animal,” appetites (e.g., for food, or drink, or sex); nor does it refer even to a “nature” within us (as the NIV rendering “sinful nature” can imply). “Flesh” sums up what we often call “the world”: all that is characteristic of this life in its rebellion against God. It is to this “power” of the old age that we are no longer “obliged” to render obedience. Against Dunn, this does not imply that believers “belong to the realm of the flesh, inescapably”; rather, it means that our (definitive) rescue from “the realm of the flesh” (see 7:5 and 8:9) has not removed us from contact with, and influence from, the flesh. Still “embodied” (see 8:10 and v. 13), we have in this life a continuing relationship to that old realm of sin and death—but we no longer “belong” to it. Like freed slaves who might, out of habit, obey their old masters even after being released—“legally” and “positionally”—from them, so we Christians can still listen to and heed the voice of that old master of ours, the flesh.

13 Paul abandons the syntactical structure he had used in v. 12117 in order to warn his readers (note the shift to second plural—“you”) that if they continue to live118 by the dictates of the flesh they will certainly die.119 This death is not, of course, physical death, for it would hardly make sense to make physical death, the fate of all who do not live until the Lord’s return—believers and unbelievers alike—the penalty only for those who live according to the flesh. What is meant is death in its fullest theological sense: eternal separation from God as the penalty for sin. We must not eviscerate this warning; Paul clearly affirms that his readers will be damned if they continue to follow the dictates of the flesh. As Murray puts it, “The believer’s once-for-all death to the law of sin does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members; it makes it necessary and possible for him to do so.”

On this point Calvinists and Arminians are agreed. The difference lies elsewhere. The Arminian believes that a regenerate believer may, indeed, fall back into a “fleshly” lifestyle so that the threat of this verse becomes real. But the Calvinist believes that the truly regenerate believer, while often committing “fleshly” acts, will be infallibly prevented from living a fleshly lifestyle by the Spirit within. I believe that the strength of the assurances Paul has given to justified believers throughout these chapters (see especially 5:9–10, 21; 8:1–4, 10–11), along with the finality of justification itself, favors the “Calvinist” interpretation. But such an interpretation in no way mitigates the seriousness of the warning that Paul gives here. In a way that we cannot finally synthesize in a neat logical arrangement, Paul insists that what God has done for us in Christ is the sole and final grounds for our eternal life at the same time as he insists on the indispensability of holy living as the precondition for attaining that life.120 Neither the “indicative”—what God has done for us in Christ—nor the “imperative”—what we are commanded to do—can be eliminated. Nor can they be severed from one another; they are inextricably connected. The point of that connection in this passage is the Spirit. The same Spirit that “set us free from the law of sin and death” has taken up residence within us, producing in us that “mind-set” which tends toward the doing of God’s will and resists the ways of the flesh.

In the same way as “die” signifies “theological” death, so the life promised to those who “put to death121 the practices of the body” in the second sentence of the verse denotes spiritual life (as in vv. 10 and 11). Paul’s use of the phrase “the practices of the body” to depict sin is troublesome; for he seems to violate his careful distinction between “flesh”—in its “ethical” sense, as the evil influence of this world—and “body”—the “neutral” body, or person, interacting with the world, capable of serving God, the object not of destruction but of transformation. Some122 think that this is a case in which Paul does, in fact, use body as equivalent to flesh.123 But it may be better to retain the usual meaning of body and find the pejorative connotation in an implicit carryover from flesh at the beginning of the verse: “deeds worked out through the body under the influence of the flesh.”124

While the Christian is made responsible for this “mortification” of sins, he or she accomplishes this only “through the Spirit.”125 Holiness of life, then, is achieved neither by our own unaided effort—the error of “moralism” or “legalism”—nor by the Spirit apart from our participation—as some who insist that the key to holy living is “surrender” or “let go and let God” would have it—but by our constant living out the “life” placed within us by the Spirit who has taken up residence within.126 We face here another finely nuanced balance that must not be tipped too far in one direction or the other. Human activity in the process of sanctification is clearly necessary; but that activity is never apart from, nor finally distinct from, the activity of God’s Spirit. Deidun puts it like this: the Christian imperative “demands the Christian’s continuing ‘yes’ to an activity which does not originate in himself, but which is nevertheless already real and actual in the core of his being.”127

2. The Spirit of Adoption (8:14–17)

14For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again unto fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, in whom we cry “Abba, Father!” 16The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. 17And if we are children, we are also heirs: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ—if, indeed, we suffer with him so that we might be glorified with him.

If “life” is the ruling idea in vv. 1–13, being “sons” (v. 14; cf. “sonship/adoption” in v. 15) or “children” (vv. 16, 17) of God dominates vv. 14–17. The way these verses focus on this concept justifies their being treated as a separate unit of thought.1 Nevertheless, the connections between this paragraph and what precedes and follows are particularly close. On the one hand, being sons of God explains further why those who are placed under the dominion of the Spirit experience eschatological life (v. 14, in relation to v. 13). On the other hand, being children of God also places believers squarely in the “already-not yet” tension created by their belonging to the new realm of righteousness at the same time as they continue to live in the midst of the old realm of sin and death. In a word, being a “child” of God means to be an “heir” of God also, and thereby one who must look to the future for the full enjoyment of “sonship” (v. 17, in relation to vv. 18–30).2 These points carry the basic thrust of the paragraph, with vv. 15–16 a somewhat parenthetical elaboration and justification of the assertion that those led by the Spirit are sons of God.3 This paragraph, then, carries forward Paul’s theme of assurance in three ways: (1) it gives further reason for the triumphant proclamation that believers who have God’s Spirit will “live”; (2) it adds to the growing list another important description—“sons of God”—of believers as God’s people, the heirs of God’s promises; and (3) it provides yet further justification for Paul’s categorical assertion that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1).4

The movement of thought in this paragraph is very similar to that of Gal. 4:1–7.5 In both texts, Paul affirms that believers are transformed from slaves to sons of God through the redeeming sacrifice of Christ, “sent” as one like us. In both, this new status is called “adoption” and is tied to the indwelling Spirit, the Spirit who makes us deeply aware that we now belong to God as his dearly loved children (cf. “Abba”). And in both, being God’s children leads to our being his heirs. We have to do here with what must have been an important way of conceptualizing what Paul understands a Christian to be. As the Galatians passage suggests, this conceptualization may have grown out of the question of the identity of Israel. But in both Galatians and Romans, Paul makes clear that the slave/son/heir language can be applied more generally to the status of all people within his salvation-historical scheme. Before the cross, the people of Israel, “under the law,” lived as “minors,” little better than slaves; in a similar way, Gentiles were enslaved under the “elementary principles of the world” (Gal. 4:9), subject to the “spirit of bondage” (Rom. 8:15). Those who accept Christ, however, whether Jew or Gentile, receive the Holy Spirit and become both “sons” and “heirs” of God.

14 As I suggested above, the “for”6 shows that this verse explains and justifies the conclusion that Paul has just reached in v. 13: that putting to death the misdeeds of the body through the power of the Spirit will bring eschatological life. The imperatival accent of v. 13, which, in itself, could mislead the reader into thinking that life could be gained through works, is immediately qualified in an “indicative” direction. This is signaled by the passive “as many as7 are led.”8 To be “led by the Spirit” probably means not to be guided by the Holy Spirit9 but, as in Gal. 5:18, to have the direction of one’s life as a whole determined by the Spirit.10 The phrase is thus a way of summarizing the various descriptions of the life of the Spirit that Paul has used in vv. 4–9.11 Paul may well want to include in this “being led” an “inner compulsion” and the involvement of the emotions, but the context and the parallel in Gal. 5:18 make it unlikely that the idea is specifically “ecstatic” or “charismatic.”12 The active “you put to death through the Spirit” of v. 13 is one aspect of the passive “being led by the Spirit,” pointing again to the inextricable relationship between “indicative” and “imperative” in Paul’s teaching about the Christian life.13

The result of this Spirit-dominated existence is being “sons of God”: the one necessarily includes the other. Despite Gal. 4:6, Paul probably does not mean that the Spirit is the agent by which we are made sons of God. Verses 15–16 suggest, rather, that “being led by the Spirit” is a “distinguishing sign” of being a son of God.14 The phrase “son of God” is used in the OT and Judaism to denote Israel as the people whom God has called to be “his own”;15 correspondingly, Yahweh is pictured as Israel’s “father.”16 The plural “sons of God” is less often applied to the people of Israel, but it occurs often enough to make it likely that this is the source for Paul’s use of the phrase.17 If this is so, then the connection between vv. 13 and 14 becomes even clearer; the “sonship” attested to by God’s Spirit brings life because “life” is inherent in belonging to God’s people, the people of promise.18 But we must not overlook a source for this “sonship” idea even more intimately related to Paul’s theology—the unique sonship of Christ. Note, in this context, Rom. 8:29—God’s ultimate purpose is that believers be “conformed to the image of his Son”—and the reference to Jesus as God’s Son in v. 3. The next verse, where Paul attributes to Christians the “Abba” address to God that was peculiarly Jesus’ own, confirms that this dimension is very much present here.

15 Before moving on to the last element in the sequence that forms the backbone of this paragraph—Spirit-sonship-heir—Paul pauses to explain a bit more the relationship between the first two in the chain.19 Paul’s description of the Spirit’s work in conferring sonship forms one the most beautiful pictures of the believer’s joy and security anywhere in Scripture. The heart of v. 15 is an antithesis between two “spirits”: the “spirit of slavery,” which believers have not received, and the “spirit of adoption,” which we have.20 What are these “spirits”? A few interpreters think that both refer to the human spirit, in the sense of an inner attitude or disposition, with “received” being interpreted rhetorically.21 But, in light of the manifest connection between the Holy Spirit and the believer’s sonship in v. 14 and v. 23—not to mention Gal 4:6: “God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts”—the “Spirit of adoption” must refer to the Holy Spirit. Because of this, many expositors conclude that the “Spirit of slavery” must also designate the Holy Spirit. Many of the Puritans (followed by Lloyd-Jones) saw a reference here to the sense of “slavery” created by the working of God’s law in the heart of the person under conviction by God’s Spirit.22 Others take a less individualistic and more salvation-historical tack, viewing “Spirit of slavery” as the Spirit’s work in the old age under the law.23

Certainly there is support for such a conception in Paul, since he claims that the law is “spiritual” (7:14) and yet argues that it has brought, or confirmed, bondage to sin (7:23). In Gal. 4:1–7 the idea of slavery is specifically tied to the situation of being “under the law” (see also the contrast in Heb. 12:18–24, cited by Calvin). But it may be questioned whether Paul would speak of this effect of the law as brought about by God’s Spirit, in light of the contrast between “letter” and “Spirit” in 7:6 and 2 Cor. 3:6–18. This makes it unlikely that “spirit of slavery” refers directly to the Holy Spirit. Paul may, then, refer to the human spirit, enslaved to sin;24 but more likely he uses the word rhetorically, as a hypothetical antithesis to the “Spirit of adoption”: “the Spirit that you have received is not a ‘spirit of bondage’ but a Spirit of adoption.”25

With this interpretation, “again” will modify “unto fear”: the Spirit that believers have received does not bring about “again” that anxiety and fear of judgment which they suffered in their pre-Christian state (compare Gal. 4:8–10). Since Paul has pictured the law as bringing awareness of sin and the corresponding penalty of condemnation (see 3:20; 7:7–13), he probably alludes to the ministry of the law. Contrasted with this inner sense of dread before God, the righteous judge, is the sense of peace and security before God, our heavenly Father, that is produced by God’s Spirit in the heart of Christians. Paul could hardly have chosen a better term than “adoption” to characterize this peace and security. The word denoted the Greek, and particularly Roman, legal institution whereby one can “adopt” a child and confer on that child all the legal rights and privileges that would ordinarily accrue to a natural child.26 However, while the institution is a Greco-Roman one,27 the underlying concept is rooted in the OT and Judaism. “Adoption” is one of the privileges of Israel (Rom. 9:4), and Israel, as we have seen, is regularly characterized as God’s “son” or “sons” in the OT and Judaism (see the notes on v. 14). Once again, then, Paul has taken a term that depicts Israel’s unique status as God’s people and “transferred” it to Christians.28

Since adoption, according to 8:23, takes place when the body is redeemed, some interpret “Spirit of adoption” here in the sense of “the Spirit that anticipates, or pledges, our adoption.”29 But this flies in the face of the immediate context, in which the stress is on the present enjoyment of our status as God’s children.30 We should, then, attribute the apparent contradiction between this verse and 8:23 to the “already-not yet” tension of the Christian’s eschatological status: “already” truly “adopted” into God’s family, with all its benefits and privileges, but “not yet” recipients of the “inheritance,” by which we will be conformed to the glorious image of God’s own Son (see 8:29).31 Since in Gal. 4:5–6 the Spirit’s testimony of our being God’s sons follows, and is the result of, God’s having adopted us as sons; since vv. 15b–16 focus on the Spirit’s ministry of making us aware of our status as sons; and since the image naturally suggests God the Father as the “adopter,” we may be right to take “Spirit of adoption” in the sense of “the Spirit who confirms adoption” rather than “the Spirit who brings about adoption.” But this may be overly subtle; and since the Spirit is presented as the Father’s agent in conferring “life” (see v. 11), it may be better to think of the Spirit as the agent through whom the believer’s sonship is both bestowed and confirmed.

As the spirit that we have not received, the “spirit of slavery,” would produce a sense of “fear” before God, so the Spirit of adoption that we have received causes to well up within us a comforting conviction that we are God’s own children. The Spirit not only bestows “adoption” on us; he also makes us aware of this new relationship: “we have not only the status, but the heart of sons.”32 The NRSV takes the last part of v. 15 with v. 16—“When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness …”—but it is better to follow most English translations and commentators and attach these words to what precedes: “in whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ ”33 In using the verb “crying out,” Paul stresses that our awareness of God as Father comes not from rational consideration nor from external testimony alone but from a truth deeply felt and intensely experienced.34 If some Christians err in basing their assurance of salvation on feelings alone, many others err in basing it on facts and arguments alone. Indeed, what Paul says here calls into question whether one can have a genuine experience of God’s Spirit of adoption without its affecting the emotions.

In crying out “Abba, Father,” the believer not only gives voice to his or her consciousness of belonging to God as his child but also to having a status comparable to that of Jesus himself. The Aramaic abba was the term Jesus himself used in addressing his Father, and its preservation in the Greek Gospel of Mark (14:36) and in the Greek-speaking Pauline churches attests to the fact that it was remembered and treasured as distinctive and meaningful. In ascribing to Christians indwelt by the Spirit the use of this same term in addressing God, Paul shows that Christians have a relationship to God that is like (though, of course, not exactly like) Christ’s own relationship to the Father. In “adopting” us, God has taken no half measures; we have been made full members of the family and partakers of all the privileges belonging to members of that family.35 Luther’s comments on the believer’s use of this word “Abba” are worth reproducing:

This is but a little word, and yet notwithstanding it comprehendeth all things. The mouth speaketh not, but the affection of the heart speaketh after this manner. Although I be oppressed with anguish and terror on every side, and seem to be forsaken and utterly cast away from thy presence, yet am I thy child, and thou art my Father for Christ’s sake: I am beloved because of the Beloved. Wherefore this little word, Father, conceived effectually in the heart, passeth all the eloquence of Demosthenes, Cicero, and of the most eloquent rhetoricians that ever were in the world.36

16 This verse is not connected syntactically to v. 15, but its function, clearly enough, is to explain how it is that “receiving the Spirit of adoption” enables us to cry out “Abba, Father!” The Holy Spirit is not only instrumental in making us God’s children; he also makes us aware that we are God’s children. While the first occurrence of pneuma denotes the Holy Spirit, the second, modified as it is by “our,” refers to the human “spirit.”37 This is, then, the only occurrence of pneuma in Rom. 8 that does not refer to the Holy Spirit.38 Paul refers to the human spirit here because he wants to stress that the witness of “the Spirit himself”39 about our adoption as sons affects the deepest and innermost part of our beings. It is because of this that we cry so sincerely and spontaneously, “Abba, Father!” Indeed, taking the verb Paul uses here to mean “bear witness with,”40 Paul involves our own spirit in the very process of testifying to us that we are “children of God.”41

17 This verse is transitional, connecting Paul’s description of the adoption as children that believers enjoy at the present time (vv. 14–16) with his moving portrait of the culmination and full benefits of that adoption that await the believer in the future (vv. 18–30).42 Paul uses the concept “inheritance” to introduce his qualification of our adoption in terms of its future aspects. In many ways this concept is a natural one; a child who has been adopted into a family, while truly a part of that family, does not (usually) receive all the benefits of that adoption until a later time. In both Gal. 4:1–7 and in this text, Paul uses this idea to emphasize the necessarily incomplete nature of those privileges inherent in the believer’s adoption into God’s family.

But there is a deeper, theological, purpose behind Paul’s use of the “inheritance” idea. While the concept of inheritance was well known in Roman law (and this background undoubtedly contributes to Paul’s use of the imagery),43 the language of inheritance is also very prominent in the OT and Judaism. In the OT, the “inheritance” is particularly the land, promised to Abraham and his “seed,” a promise that is renewed after the disaster of the Exile.44 In later Judaism, however, the “inheritance” did not always maintain a distinctive spatial focus and came to be used to describe eschatological life.45 Paul follows in this line by awarding the “inheritance” promised to Abraham to all those who have faith (see Rom. 4:13–15). As he puts it in Galatians, it is Christ who is “the seed of Abraham” and heir to all that has been promised to Abraham; thus, it is those who are “in Christ” who also become the seed of Abraham and heirs of the promise (3:16–18, 29). All this informs Paul’s description of believers in this verse as both “children” and “heirs.” Christians are God’s people of the new age, “children of God,” and, as such, also the recipients of what God has promised to his people.46

Christians are, then, “heirs of God”—meaning probably not that Christians inherit God himself,47 but that they inherit “what God has promised.”48 In immediately adding “fellow heirs with Christ,” Paul is not correcting the first description but filling it out by reminding us that Christians inherit the blessings of God’s kingdom only through, and in, Christ.49 We, “the sons of God,” are such by virtue of our belonging to the Son of God; and we are heirs of God only by virtue of our union with the one who is the heir of all God’s promises (see Mark 12:1–12; Gal. 3:18–19; Heb.1:2).

But, in a typical NT preservation of the “eschatological reservation,” Paul adds that this glorious inheritance is attained only through suffering (cf. the similar transition in 5:1–4). Because we are one with Christ, we are his fellow heirs, assured of being “glorified with him.” But, at the same time, this oneness means that we must follow Christ’s own road to glory, “suffering with him” (cf. also Phil. 1:29; 3:10; 2 Cor. 1:5). Both the present tense of the verb and the continuation of the thought in v. 18 show that this suffering is not identical to that “dying with Christ” which takes place at conversion. Rather, the suffering Paul speaks of here refers to the daily anxieties, tensions, and persecutions that are the lot of those who follow the one who was “reckoned with the transgressors” (Luke 22:37). Paul makes clear that this suffering is the condition for the inheritance; we will be “glorified with” Christ (only) if50 we “suffer with him.”51 Participation in Christ’s glory can come only through participation in his suffering.52 What Paul is doing is setting forth an unbreakable “law of the kingdom” according to which glory can come only by way of suffering. For the glory of the kingdom of God is attained only through participation in Christ, and belonging to Christ cannot but bring our participation in the sufferings of Christ. Just as, then, Christ has suffered and entered into his glory (1 Pet. 1:11), so Christians, “fellow heirs with Christ,” suffer during this present time in order to join Christ in glory.