Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Romans 7:24

Clarke's Commentary

Verse Romans 7:24. O wretched man that I am, c.] This affecting account is finished more impressively by the groans of the wounded captive. Having long maintained a useless conflict against innumerable hosts and irresistible might, he is at last wounded and taken prisoner and to render his state more miserable, is not only encompassed by the slaughtered, but chained to a dead body; for there seems to be here an allusion to an ancient custom of certain tyrants, who bound a dead body to a living man, and obliged him to carry it about, till the contagion from the putrid mass took away his life! Virgil paints this in all its horrors, in the account he gives of the tyrant Mezentius. AEneid, lib. viii. ver. 485.

Quid memorem infandas caedes? quid facta tyranni?

MORTUA quin etiam jungebat corpora VIVIS,

Componens manibusque manus, atque oribus ora;

Tormenti genus! et sanie taboque fluentes

Complexu in misero, longa sic morte necabat.

What tongue can such barbarities record,

Or count the slaughters of his ruthless sword?

'Twas not enough the good, the guiltless bled,

Still worse, he bound the living to the dead:

These, limb to limb, and face to face, he joined;

O! monstrous crime, of unexampled kind!

Till choked with stench, the lingering wretches lay,

And, in the loathed embraces, died away! Pitt.

Servius remarks, in his comment on this passage, that sanies, mortui est; tabo, viventis scilicet sanguis: "the sanies, or putrid ichor, from the dead body, produced the tabes in the blood of the living." Roasting, burning, racking, crucifying, c., were nothing when compared to this diabolically invented punishment.

We may naturally suppose that the cry of such a person would be, Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this dead body? And how well does this apply to the case of the person to whom the apostle refers! A body-a whole mass of sin and corruption, was bound to his soul with chains which he could not break and the mortal contagion, transfused through his whole nature, was pressing him down to the bitter pains of an eternal death. He now finds that the law can afford him no deliverance; and he despairs of help from any human being; but while he is emitting his last, or almost expiring groan, the redemption by Christ Jesus is proclaimed to him; and, if the apostle refers to his own case, Ananias unexpectedly accosts him with-Brother Saul! the Lord Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way, hath sent me unto thee, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. He sees then an open door of hope, and he immediately, though but in the prospect of this deliverance, returns God thanks for the well-grounded hope which he has of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

The law cannot help (7:1-25)

Through Christ, believers have not only died to sin, they have died to the law also, which means that their lives are now different. Paul gives an example. If a husband dies, the wife is no longer bound to him and is free to marry again. Likewise believers have died to the law so that the bond between them and the law is broken. However, they have been raised to new life and are now united to another, the living Christ (7:1-4). Formerly, they found that the more the law forbids something, the more the human heart wants to do it. But the fruit of that broken law is death (5). Now that they are dead to the law, they can serve God with a willing heart. They no longer live in fear, because they are no longer under the law’s dreadful power (6).
This does not mean that the law is sinful. Quite the opposite; the law is holy, and this holiness shows people how sinful they are. Paul describes his own former experience to show that when there is no law, people do not seem to notice sin. Sin lies motionless, so to speak, as if it were dead. But as soon as people learn about a specific commandment, sin springs to life and stirs up evil desires. It makes people want to do what they are told not to do. Thus the commandment ‘Do not covet’ taught Paul how to covet (7-9). Instead of bringing life, the law stirred up sin which brought death (10-11). The fault lies not with the law, which is holy and good, but with the sinful nature, which is so hopelessly bad that it reacts against what is good (12-13).
Paul refers to his own experience again, to show that the more believers try to live holy lives by keeping the law, the more they fail. Again, the sin lies not in the law but in human beings. They cannot do the things they know they should do; they do the things they know they should not do (14-17). This constant defeat shows the power of indwelling sin and the inability of believers to conquer it in their own strength (18-20). They know that the law is good and they want to obey it, but the law cannot give them power over their sinful nature (21-23). How then can they get the victory? Not through themselves at all, but through Jesus Christ (24-25a).
Before moving on to explain how Jesus Christ gives this victory, Paul summarizes the previous section. The conflict he has described is between the sincere desire to keep God’s law and the pull of the old nature towards sin (25b).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death!

This is the cry of every man who is not saved. In the large view, it is the agonizing cry of all the world, especially of the benighted populations of the pre-Christian ages. Victory was impossible until Jesus came. The law of Moses was indeed a beautiful and spiritual law, but it did not provide people with the power to keep its noble precepts. This failure was due to the fact that the great Enabling Act of man's redemption had not then taken place. The Saviour had not come. Indeed, there were learned pagans, as well as noble and upright Jews, who tried vainly to live as God directed, whether from their own inadequate notions of what God taught, or, as in the case of the Jew, from contemplating the higher and better revelation through Moses; but in every case, and without distinction, all fell short of the glory of God; all failed to acquire holiness; all were unable to achieve justification, sanctification, righteousness, or holiness. It was all a losing battle, start to finish; and the condition of the whole human race in those long pre-Christian ages was one of the uttermost pathos and misery. It was the long, long night of earth' darkness, during which people turned their eager faces to the stars and prayed for daylight. It was truly a night of sin and death, during which the wretchedness of that disastrous defeat in Eden was communicated to every man that ever lived. Hopelessness, despair, shame, misery and death — what a legacy of the reign of the evil one — and then Jesus came!

Body of this death … is one of the most terrible metaphors in the Bible. The besieged soul resisted only to be overthrown. He was captured, enslaved, borne away in sorrow; but that was not all. He was chained to a dead body! Bruce, Clarke and others have explained the metaphor thus:

There seems to be here an allusion to an ancient custom of some tyrants, who bound a dead body to a living man, and obliged him to carry it about, until the contagion from the putrid mass took away his life! Virgil paints this in all its horrors in the account he gives of the tyrant Mezentius. Ibid.

The body of death to which every unregenerate is chained is that of his own unregenerated nature. It is his freedom from that, that a man must have to escape the wretchedness mentioned here. Acceptance of the gospel of Christ, through obedient faith, cuts the chains that bind people to their former selves, enabling them to be born again. After conversion, the sins that people commit do not remain upon them and bind them, as formerly, but are cleansed and forgiven continually during the Christian pilgrimage (1 John 1:7).

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

O wretched man that I am! - The feeling implied by this lamentation is the result of this painful conflict; and this frequent subjection to sinful propensities. The effect of this conflict is,

(1) To produce pain and distress. It is often an agonizing struggle between good and evil; a struggle which annoys the peace, and renders life wretched.

(2) It tends to produce humility. It is humbling to man to be thus under the influence of evil passions. It is degrading to his nature; a stain on his glory; and it tends to bring him into the dust, that he is under the control of such propensities, and so often gives indulgence to them. In such circumstances, the mind is overwhelmed with wretchedness, and instinctively sighs for relief. Can the Law aid? Can man aid? Can any native strength of conscience or of reason aid? In vain all these are tried, and the Christian then calmly and thankfully acquiesces in the consolations of the apostle, that aid can be obtained only through Jesus Christ.

Who shall deliver me - Who shall rescue me; the condition of a mind in deep distress, and conscious of its own weakness, and looking for aid.

The body of this death - Margin, “This body of death.” The word “body” here is probably used as equivalent to flesh, denoting the corrupt and evil propensities of the soul; Note, Romans 7:18. It is thus used to denote the law of sin in the members, as being that with which the apostle was struggling, and from which he desired to be delivered. The expression “body of this death” is a Hebraism, denoting a body deadly in its tendency; and the whole expression may mean the corrupt principles of man; the carnal, evil affections that lead to death or to condemnation. The expression is one of vast strength, and strongly characteristic of the apostle Paul. It indicates,

1. That it was near him, attending him, and was distressing in its nature.

(2)An earnest wish to be delivered from it.

Some have supposed that he refers to a custom practiced by ancient tyrants, of binding a dead body to a captive as a punishment, and compelling him to drag the cumbersome and offensive burden with him wherever he went. I do not see any evidence that the apostle had this in view. But such a fact may be used as a striking and perhaps not improper illustration of the meaning of the apostle here. No strength of words could express deeper feeling; none more feelingly indicate the necessity of the grace of God to accomplish that to which the unaided human powers are incompetent.

Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians

7:24-25: Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? 25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Because Paul was fighting against sin, and he knew that he sometimes lost the fight, he could say that he was a “wretched man.” The word wretched “is translated from talaiporos, which carries the thought of being ‘wretched through the exhaustion of hard labor’” (CBL, Romans, p. 119). This apostle felt as if he were in a “body of death.” This body does not appear to be a reference to Paul’s physical body. Rather, it seems to describe the constant struggle that Paul faced. The text implies that Paul wanted to lead a life that was holy and free from sin. He wanted to be perfect. Since sin prevented him from being perfect, he felt like a wretched man. Paul also wanted to know who would be able to deliver him from his pitiful condition. The answer to this question is in verse 25.

Jesus Christ is the one who is able to deliver all men from sin. This fact made Paul grateful. Christ offers a way out: He died for our sins; He justifies us by His resurrection (4:25); He lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25); He forgives us by His grace (Acts 15:11). It is by His power that we are guarded (1 Peter 1:5).

Lanier’s explanation of So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God is helpful. He said, “The inner man, the willing part of me, serves God, or would do so if not hindered. But occasionally the flesh gets the upper hand and drives me to sin.”

For the end of the verse (“but with the flesh the law of sin”) Lanier says: “Of course one cannot serve the law of God and the law of sin at the same time. If one continually serves the law of sin, he is the servant of sin (Satan) as taught in 6:16. If one served the law of God all the time, continually, he would have attained sinless perfection. But since no one does that, it follows that the Christian serves the law of God most of the time, but occasionally he serves the law of sin and is forgiven by repentance and prayer on his part and grace and mercy on God’s part.”

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

24.Miserable, etc. He closes his argument with a vehement exclamation, by which he teaches us that we are not only to struggle with our flesh, but also with continual groaning to bewail within ourselves and before God our unhappy condition. But he asks not by whom he was to be delivered, as one in doubt, like unbelievers, who understand not that there is but one real deliverer: but it is the voice of one panting and almost fainting, because he does not find immediate help, ⁽²³²⁾ as he longs for. And he mentions the word rescue, ⁽²³³⁾ in order that he might show, that for his liberation no ordinary exercise of divine power was necessary.

By the body of death he means the whole mass of sin, or those ingredients of which the whole man is composed; except that in him there remained only relics, by the captive bonds of which he was held. The pronoun τούτου this, which I apply, as [Erasmus ] does, to the body, may also be fitly referred to death, and almost in the same sense; for Paul meant to teach us, that the eyes of God’s children are opened, so that through the law of God they wisely discern the corruption of their nature and the death which from it proceeds. But the word body means the same as theexternal man and members; for Paul points out this as the origin of evil, that man has departed from the law of his creation, and has become thus carnal and earthly. For though he still excels brute beasts, yet his true excellency has departed from him, and what remains in him is full of numberless corruptions so that his soul, being degenerated, may be justly said to have passed into a body. So God says by Moses,

“No more shall my Spirit contend with man, for he is even flesh,” (Genesis 6:3:)

thus stripping man of his spiritual excellency, he compares him, by way of reproach, to the brute creation. ⁽²³⁴⁾

This passage is indeed remarkably fitted for the purpose of beating down all the glory of the flesh; for Paul teaches us, that the most perfect, as long as they dwell in the flesh, are exposed to misery, for they are subject to death; nay, when they thoroughly examine themselves, they find in their own nature nothing but misery. And further, lest they should indulge their torpor, Paul, by his own example, stimulates them to anxious groanings, and bids them, as long as they sojourn on earth, to desire death, as the only true remedy to their evils; and this is the right object in desiring death. Despair does indeed drive the profane often to such a wish; but they strangely desire death, because they are weary of the present life, and not because they loathe their iniquity. But it must be added, that though the faithful level at the true mark, they are not yet carried away by an unbridled desire in wishing for death, but submit themselves to the will of God, to whom it behoves us both to live and to die: hence they clamor not with displeasure against God, but humbly deposit their anxieties in his bosom; for they do not so dwell on the thoughts of their misery, but that being mindful of grace received, they blend their grief with joy, as we find in what follows.

(232)Ταλαίπωρος, miser, ærumnosus; “it denotes,” says [Schleusner ], “one who is broken down and wearied with the most grievous toils.” It is used by the Septuagint for the word שדוד, wasted, spoiled, desolated. See Psalms 137:8; Isaiah 33:1. — Ed.

(233) “Eripere “ — pluck out, rescue, take away by force; ῥύσεται — shall draw, rescue or extricate; it means a forcible act, effected by power. — Ed.

(234) “This body of death” is an evident Hebraism, meaning “this deadly or mortiferous body;” which is not the material body, but the body of “the old man,” Romans 7:6; called the “body of sin,” when its character is described, and the “body of death,” when the issue to which it leads is intended: it conducts to death, condemnation, and misery. — Ed.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Romans chapter 7.

Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) ( Romans 7:1 )

In other words, I am talking now to the Jews, and how that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. "Don't you realize," Paul said, "you that know the law,"

that the law has dominion over you as long as you live? ( Romans 7:1 )

One example of the law that he brings to show the point,

For the woman which has a husband is bound by the law to the husband as long as he is living; but if the husband is dead, she is freed from the law of the husband. So then if, while her husband is living, she be married to another man, she be called an adulteress: but if her husband is dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man ( Romans 7:2-3 ).

He is using this particular example out of the law to show that the law has power over a person as long as they are living.

Wherefore, my brethren, you have become dead to the law by the body of Jesus Christ ( Romans 7:4 );

Now Paul has just told us in the chapter 6 that we are crucified with Christ, "Know ye not, that the old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be put out of business." So that I have been crucified with Christ, the law no longer has any affect upon me. I am now freed from the law through my death with Christ. It is ended, my relationship with the law as a means for a righteous standing before God. "We have become dead to the law by the body of Christ,"

that we should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God ( Romans 7:4 ).

It isn't that I have been freed from the law that I might live any kind of way that I might want to live after my flesh, fulfilling the desires of my flesh. That is not what he is talking about at all. I have been set free from the law because it could never make me righteous. I have been set free from the law only to be married to another, even unto Jesus Christ, to be joined unto Him. The life that I now live is a life of bearing fruit, but the fruit of the believer's life is actually in many cases living by even a stricter standard than even the law would require. "For the love of Christ constrains me," Paul said. For the love of Christ I would not do that which would cause a weaker brother to stumble. For Christ's sake, married to Christ, joined now unto Christ in this new relationship with God in the new covenant through Jesus Christ does not mean that I am free to indulge in my flesh. Far from it. It means that I am bound now by even a greater law, the law of love. The law of love for Jesus Christ.

And now my life is producing fruit for Him. Whereas, I once was under the law as a standard of my righteousness or my standing before God, which could never give me a consistent standing before God. For those that are under the law are under the works of the law, and those who are in Christ are bearing fruit unto righteousness. For the fruit of the righteous life and that fruit is the proof of my relationship with Him.

"Ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall bring forth much fruit" ( John 15:4-5 ). If your life isn't bringing forth fruit, then it is saying that you are not abiding in Him and His Word isn't abiding in you, because fruit is the natural consequence of relationship.

Now the works could never get me a righteous standing before God. Jesus gave me a righteous standing before God, and because of that, because I am now married unto Him and have this new relationship with God through Christ, my life is bringing forth righteous fruit. Love with its characteristics of joy, and peace, and long-suffering, and gentleness, and goodness, temperance, now these things do not make me righteous, but they are the effect of my righteousness that I now have through my faith in Jesus Christ. I trust you can see the difference.

Once I was trying to do these things so I could be righteous before God. And I was struggling as I was trying to do these things. But when I came to this new relationship with God, dead to the law, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, those things I was struggling so hard to do under the law and failing to do, I now do as just the natural consequence of my abiding in Him, and His life, His love, His fruit, coming forth from me.

For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death ( Romans 7:5 ).

That's the works of the flesh are manifested, which are these, Galatians chapter 5. And Paul gives us that listing. And when we were in flesh we had the fruit of the fleshly life: murders, strife, hatred, seditions, adultery, fornication, all of these works of the flesh are unto death.

But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter of the law ( Romans 7:6 ).

So I serve God, not legally, but I serve God in the spirit now. Rather than a legal relationship with God, I have a loving relationship with God, serving Him in the spirit, in the newness of life in Christ.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. No, I had not known what sin was, but by the law ( Romans 7:7 ):

The law is not sin itself. It reveals what sin is. The law is good if we understand the purpose of the law. The law is not good for what people are seeking to derive from the law. People are seeking to derive a righteous standing before God from the law. You can't do that. Obedience to the law will not give you a righteous standing before God; it will only show you where you have failed to stand before God. "By the law is the knowledge of sin" ( Romans 3:20 ). God never intended the law to make a man righteous. "If righteousness could come by the law, then Christ died in vain" ( Galatians 2:21 ). He wouldn't have had to die if a man could be righteous by keeping the law.

So the law came to show us our bankrupt spiritual state, causing us to realize that I cannot keep the standards of the law, and thus, forcing me to cast myself upon the grace of God that He has offered to me through Jesus Christ. The law was intended by God to force me to come to Jesus Christ, and the law properly understood will do that. Now as the law is misinterpreted, as man is so capable of doing, misinterpreting God's Word. People have then taken the law and used it as a standard of righteousness and have become extremely self-righteous as they seek to obey the law, bending it wherever it doesn't fit their particular circumstance. I can interpret, then, that law so that I am under it. I'm on the good side of it. We have that tendency of taking the law and using it as a standard for holiness or righteousness, and well, I feel like I'm more righteous than you. I am not doing those things that you are doing, or I am doing things that you are not doing that make me more holy. But my righteousness before God is not predicated upon my keeping of the law. The law was to reveal what sin is. Paul said, "I had not known sin except by the law."

for I had not known to lust [or to covet was sin, I didn't know that was a sin,] except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet ( Romans 7:7 ).

I didn't know to have the strong desire was a sin.

You see, as a Pharisee Paul only thought that the fulfilling of the strong desire was sin. You can have a strong sexual attraction to someone, desire a sexual relationship with them, and Paul felt that that wasn't sin. It was sin only if I entered in and had the sexual relationship with them, nothing wrong with the desire, that is not sin. Until one day the Spirit spoke to Paul's heart concerning the law, and it said, "Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt have the strong desire." Whoops! Rather than now feeling self-righteous because I never had relationships sexually with another woman, I feel guilty because I have had a strong desire.

You remember Jesus said, "You have heard that it hath been said by those of old time, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' But I say unto you, whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already in his heart" ( Matthew 5:28 ). In other words, Jesus is pointing out the law is spiritual. Paul didn't know that as a Pharisee, but in his smug, self-righteousness as a Pharisee he felt that he was obedient to the law of God. "Thou shalt not commit adultery, I have never done that. I am innocent." "Thou shalt not have a strong desire for thy neighbor's wife." Oh, oh! So suddenly he realizes that the law itself dealt with a spiritual issue, that strong desire that is there. So I would not have known that to have this strong desire was a sin, except the law should say, "Thou shalt not have the strong desire or covet."

Then sin, taking an occasion by the commandment ( Romans 7:8 ),

Sin capitalizing on this. I discovered I have all kinds of strong desires.

It wrought in me all manner of [strong desires or lusts] ( Romans 7:8 ).

Translated there concupiscence, which is an ardent desire and usually for sex. Paul didn't know that was wrong except the law said, "Thou shalt not have the strong desires, covet."

So he said,

I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I was dead ( Romans 7:9 ).

What is he saying? "As a Pharisee, I thought that I had a standing before God. I thought that I was righteous. Alive unto God once, I thought as a Pharisee." In fact, Paul is writing to the Philippians, he said, "If any man has whereof to boast in the flesh, I have more than anybody else. Hey, I am a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, tribe of Benjamin. I was circumcised the eighth day. I was a Pharisee, and concerning the righteousness which is of the law, I was blameless" ( Philippians 3:4-6 ). He was one of those that Jesus was constantly referring to when He was talking about the Pharisees. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees," that was Paul. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, going around in his long robes, saying his prayers on the street corners, sounding the trumpet before his giving of his offering unto God. That was Paul. "Hey, I was blameless. But when I realized that the law was spiritual . . . " which things Jesus sought to point out in Matthew 5 , the Sermon on the Mount, those five contrasts that He gave with the way the Pharisees were interpreting the law and the way God intended the law; the Pharisees interrupting the law in a physical way, God intending the law in a spiritual way. When Paul came to the realization that the law was spiritual, and it was dealing, really, with the attitudes more than the actions of a man, the attitude from which the actions spring. "Hey, wait a minute, I have never clubbed my brother to death, but I sure would have loved to. I was so mad I could have killed him." And so he suddenly realized that anger that was in him, that hatred that was there was a violation of the law of God. That strong desire that he had was a violation of the law of God. So when the commandment came, sin was there, it was alive and I was dead because the law condemned me to death. The law was now my judge and it had condemned me to death, because I have violated the law spiritually in my heart, in my mind. I am guilty. Thus, the law condemned me to death.

And the commandment, which was [intended to life] ordained to life, I found to be unto death ( Romans 7:10 ).

The law from which I thought I was alive unto God was really a thing that condemned me unto death.

For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and it slew me ( Romans 7:11 ).

The law can do nothing but condemn each of you to death; it cannot make you righteous before God. It cannot make you a righteous standing before God. You can never become righteous before God by your works or by your efforts. All that the law can do, the rules and regulations that you might seek to follow, all they can do is condemn you to death because you have failed to keep them.

Paul acknowledges that,

The law is holy, the commandment is holy, and just, and good ( Romans 7:12 ).

Nothing wrong with the commandment, "Thou shalt not covet." Nothing wrong with the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal." Nothing wrong with the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul." There is nothing wrong with the commandment. It is holy. It is just. It is right. It is good. That is the way I should live. I know I should live that way. It is not the commandment that is at fault. It is me that is at fault.

Was then that which was good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin ( Romans 7:13 ),

It wasn't the law that killed me but my sin that killed me. Actually, the law just declared it. Nothing wrong with the law, but it is my sin that has brought me to death, for the wages of sin is death, the soul that sins it shall surely die. So the commandments . . . it isn't in the commandments, it is in sin in me. The violation of the commandments that brought death.

But sin, that it might appear sinful, working death in me by that which is good; that is the law that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful ( Romans 7:13 ).

Again, the law was intended by God to make the whole world guilty before God so that the whole world would seek that righteousness which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. That righteousness that God has provided to cause man to once and forever desist from trying to have his whole righteous standing before God by his own efforts.

For we know that the law is spiritual ( Romans 7:14 ):

Paul didn't always know that, you see. But now he does. The law is spiritual,

but I am carnal ( Romans 7:14 ),

That's where the rub comes in. Nothing's wrong with the law; holy, just, and good. But I am carnal and my sin brought death.

For that which I do I really don't want to do: for what I would, that I do not do; but what I hate, that I am doing ( Romans 7:15 ).

Now Paul is talking about the struggle in his own life when he came to the realization that the law was spiritual and that he was carnal.

consenting to the law that is good ( Romans 7:16 ).

Recognizing that this is the right way to live and I should be living this way: the good that I would, I do not; that which I do, I allow not. I really am doing things that I don't in my own mind allow. Those things that I am hating I am doing.

Trying to please God in the flesh has to be one of the most frustrating experiences in the world. Trying to attain a righteous standing before God by my works has to be one of the most frustrating things in the world, because I have found with Paul that I do not always do what I know I should do. It is so easy for me to not do the things I should. I have seen people in distress on the freeway, parked on the side, problems. And as I drove by, the Spirit prompted me to help them. And I said, "You can't be serious. You know how busy I am. I have got an appointment and I can't stop." The good that I would I don't, and that which I would not, I do. Someone lays a hot fudge sundae before me, and I know I shouldn't, but I do it. That hot fudge sundae can be many things. I know I shouldn't, but I do it anyhow. That which I hate I do.

Now if then I am doing those things that I don't want to do, and I am consenting to the law that it is good. Then it is no more I that am doing it, but the sin that is dwelling in me ( Romans 7:16-17 ).

I found that there is a dual nature: the flesh and the spirit. These two are warring against each other, and there are times when I yield to the flesh. And I hate myself for yielding to the flesh, because my spirit wants to live after God and please God. When I yield to the flesh I feel miserable. I hate myself for doing what I have done. The real me after the spirit wants to please God. There is another part of me, the flesh that wants to please the flesh. There is that sinful part of me, that fleshly part of me, that oftentimes leads me to do those things I don't want to do. If you really get down to the basic heart of the issue, I want to live to please God. I consent to the law it is good. I want to live a righteous life; I want to live the life that would be pleasing unto the Father.

Now, if I am doing those things that I don't want to do, it really isn't me. It is the sinful flesh, or the sinful nature that is in me.

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) there dwelleth no good thing ( Romans 7:18 ):

Our problem is that we don't believe that yet. For man, it seems, is trying to reform his flesh and improve his flesh. Improve my fleshly performance. It seems that man constantly is looking for some good in the flesh. Some redeeming characteristic, trying in the flesh to give God some cause to love me so that I can boast a little bit in myself and say, "Well, God loves me because I am so sweet. Because I never loose my temper, because I always react in such a kind generous way, so God loves me because I am so kind and generous." Too bad you are not kind and generous, so that God can love you as much as He loves me. We haven't yet come to the full acknowledgement of the truth that in me, that is, in my flesh there dwells no good thing.

I need to come to that truth so that I will learn to have absolutely no confidence in my flesh. I have found in the years of walking with the Lord every area where I had confidence in my flesh God has allowed me to fall, to show me that I don't have the strength, the ability, the power, the capacity that I thought I had. I used to say, "Chuck the rock," and I was stupid enough to believe it. But I'll tell you, He fractured me. Now it's, "Chuck the sand." I mean He crushed me. I know that in me, that is, in my flesh there dwells no good thing. For there is nothing wrong with my will.

my desire, it is present with me ( Romans 7:18 );

The desire to do the right thing, the desire to live for God, the desire to serve the Lord, the desire to pray, the desire to read His Word, the desire to draw closer, that is all there. But taking the desire and putting it into actuality, that is the rub, that is the problem.

how to perform that which I would I don't know ( Romans 7:18 ).

I don't do. My, if I could just be all that I desired to be for God. What a spiritual giant I would be. The desire is there, but how to perform it I just can't find.

For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I am doing that which I would not, it is no more me that do it, but sin that dwells in me ( Romans 7:19-20 ).

He is repeating this point for emphasis. He has already made it in verses Romans 7:16 , and Romans 7:17 , but for emphasis he is repeating it.

I find then there is a law [Murphy's], that, when I would do good, evil is present with me ( Romans 7:21 ).

My desire to do something good for God, but evil is there.

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man ( Romans 7:22 ):

In my heart, in my spirit I delight in God's law.

But I see another law in my body, that is warring against the law of my mind, and it brings me into captivity to the law of sin which is [in my body] in the members of my body. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of sin? ( Romans 7:23-24 )

The body of death. And so Paul's cry. And I have come to that same point in my life where I cried out as Paul cried out, realizing the weakness of my flesh and the failure in my flesh, the inability to perform that good which I would for God and that nagging weakness in doing those things that I didn't want to. I came with Paul to this point of despair, "O wretched man that I am."

Now, unfortunately, when I first came to that point of despair I didn't ask the question that Paul asked. I came to the point of despair and said, "O wretched man that I am, how can I deliver myself from this miserable state?" I was open to another scheme, another try. If I will just count ten, if I will just stop first and think, "What would Jesus do?" We have all of these self-help methods of improvement for myself. How to live a successfully carnal Christian life, in five easy lessons. O wretched man that I am.

One day I came with Paul to the point of despair once more, but this time it was total despair, and with Paul I cried, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" because I had given up on trying to do it myself. I had found out that place of defeat where I ceased from trying to do it myself and turned it over completely to Jesus Christ was the place of the initial victory in my life. It was no longer I, but Christ now in me, and as I began to yield to those forces of God's Spirit that He had made available to me.

Now the net effect and result is, as I have now entered into this glorious victory in Jesus Christ and this glorious relationship with God through Christ, I cannot stand here and brag to you of all that I did and all of my efforts or all that I am doing . . . the hours that I put in serving the Lord and the sacrifices that I have made. God forbid that I should boast save in the cross of Jesus Christ, because therein is my victory. Because I couldn't deliver myself, and I didn't deliver myself, but God by His Spirit delivered me from the bondage of the life after the flesh, and He set me free by His Spirit to serve Him. Now, He allowed me to come to the point of total despair where I ceased trying in myself to do it, so that as the victory came I would not be taking credit for the victory, but I could only give glory unto God who has caused me to always triumph through Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, it seems that God has to let us sink to the bottom and to total despair in ourselves, lest we should boast in what we have become, because of learning some secret whereby I was able to bring my flesh into an acceptable position before God. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of death? And in the very question the fact that he is questioning who, indicates the answer there is one outside of me who can do for me what I can never do for myself. The capacity to do what I should do. The capacity to not to do what I shouldn't do. So Paul concludes,

I thank God ( Romans 7:25 )

This is the answer to the question, who shall deliver me?

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord ( Romans 7:25 ).

He has delivered me, thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then with my mind I serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin ( Romans 7:25 ).

My mind, my heart is what God is looking at. And with my mind and heart I serve the law of God, though I am still in this body. Yet, there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

So here I am. Don't, don't, don't think that I am trying to stand up here before you and tell you I have arrived and I am now perfect. God help me if I made that impression, because I will stumble right before your eyes to prove that I am not. God will allow me to do that. No, I am not perfect. I am still in a body of flesh, and as I am still in this body of flesh, I am going to have emotions of the flesh and sin. Thank God I don't have to yield to them anymore. Thank God I can have victory and power over it. Thank God if I do there is no condemnation because I am in Christ Jesus. It doesn't mean that because there is no condemnation I just go out and willfully live after the flesh. God forbid. But if I stumble, I don't fall. The Lord picks me up; the Lord sustains me. For my mind, my heart I desire God and God's best for my life, and the desire to serve Him with all that I have and with all that I am.

So I have this new relationship, this relationship with God after the spirit, and we'll will get into that in chapter 8, which is really the answer to Paul's chapter 7. As he's been brought to the despair of his self-efforts. He is now brought to the glorious work of God's Spirit within his life and that victory through the Spirit. So next Sunday night Romans 8 . And I'm glad that we'll be able to take a full evening in chapter 8, because even that will not be enough, but we'll just do what we can.

May the Lord be with you and bless you this week. May you experience the power of God's Spirit in your life doing for you what you couldn't do for yourself, bringing you to that place that God would have you to walk in the Spirit after the things of the Spirit. In Jesus' name. Amen. "

Contending for the Faith

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Realizing the futility of his struggle against sin, Paul cries out in despair. His own body is to him a body of sin and of death. Through his own appetites and passions, which control his body, sin drags him along a path of sin and degradation, leading inexorably to eternal death. In desperation Paul cries out for deliverance—not from a foe before his eyes and not from a prison of iron and granite—but from his own body. For sin, his great enemy, has invaded his body and taken control of it. Through the desires of his own body, he is compelled to sin and is held in an ever-tightening bondage to sin. But it is not death for which Paul shrieks. It is freedom from the tyranny of his own body and from a life obedient to its desires for which he cries. Clarke graphically depicts this pitiable scene as Paul, who is representative of all unregenerate men, struggles helplessly against this body of death:

This affecting account is finished more impressively by the groans of the wounded captive. Having long maintained a useless conflict against innumerable hosts and irresistible might, he is at last wounded and taken prisoner; and to render his state more miserable, is not only encompassed by the slaughtered, but chained to a dead body; for there seems to be here an allusion to an ancient custom of certain tyrants, who bound a dead body to a living man, and obliged him to carry it about, till the contagion from the putrid mass took away his life! Virgil paints this in all its horrors in the account he gives of the tyrant Mezentius (Aeneid lib. viii. ver. 485)…We may naturally suppose that the cry of such a person would be, "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this dead body?" And how well does this apply to the case of the person to whom the apostle refers! A body—a whole mass of sin and corruption, was bound to his soul with chains which he could not break; and the mortal contagion, transfused through his whole nature, was pressing him down to the bitter pains of an eternal death. He now finds that the law can afford him no deliverance; and he despairs of help from any human being; but while he is emitting his last, or almost expiring, groan the redemption of Christ Jesus is proclaimed to him; and if the apostle refers to his own case, Ananias unexpectedly accosts him with -- "Brother Saul! The Lord Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way, hath sent me unto thee, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." ["And now why tarriest thou? Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord" (Acts 22:16)—AWB]. He sees then an open door of hope, and he immediately, though but in the prospect of this deliverance, returns God thanks for the well-grounded hope which he has of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Vol. VI 91).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

3. The law’s inability 7:13-25

In Romans 7:13-25 Paul continued to describe his personal struggle with sin but with mounting intensity. The forces of external law and internal sin (i.e., his sinful nature) conflicted. He found no deliverance from this conflict except through the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 7:25). Many students of this passage, including myself, believe what Paul was describing here was his own personal struggle as a Christian to obey the law and so overcome the promptings of his sinful nature (flesh) to disobey it. The present tenses in his testimony support this view. Without God’s help he could not succeed. I will say more in defense of this view later. However what he wrote here is not normal or necessary Christian experience. What is normal and necessary for a Christian is to obey God since the Holy Spirit leads, motivates, and enables us; disobedience is, in this sense, abnormal Christian conduct.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

The agony of this tension and our inability to rid ourselves of our sinful nature that urges us to do things that lead to death come out even more strongly here. What Christian has not felt the guilt and pain of doing things that he or she knows are wrong? We will never escape this battle with temptation in this life. Eugene Peterson recast Paul’s thought in this verse as follows.

"I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me?" [Note: Eugene H. Peterson, The Message, p. 317.]

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 7

THE NEW ALLEGIANCE ( Romans 7:1-6 )

7:1-6 You are bound to know, brothers--for I speak to men who know what law means--that the law has authority over a man only for the duration of his life. Thus, a married woman remains bound by law to her husband as long as he is alive; but, if her husband dies, she is completely discharged from the law concerning her husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she marries another man while her husband is still alive; but, if her husband dies, she is free from the law, and she is no longer an adulteress if she marries another man. Just so, my brothers, you have died to the law, through the body of Jesus Christ (for you shared in his death by baptism) in order that you should enter into union with another, I mean, with him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God. In the days of our unaided human nature, the passions of our sins, which were set in motion by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are completely discharged from the law, because we have died to that by which we were held captive, so that we serve, not under the old written law, but in the new life of the spirit.

Seldom did Paul write so difficult and so complicated a passage as this. C. H. Dodd has said that when we are studying it we should try to forget what Paul says and to find out what he means.

The basic thought of the passage is founded on the legal maxim that death cancels all contracts. Paul begins with an illustration of this truth and wishes to use this picture as a symbol of what happens to the Christian. So long as a woman's husband is alive, she cannot marry another without becoming an adulteress. But if her husband dies, the contract is, so to speak, cancelled, and she is free to marry anyone she likes.

In view of that, Paul could have said that we were married to sin; that sin was slain by Christ; and that, therefore, we are now free to be married to God. That is undoubtedly what he set out to say. But into this picture came the law. Paul could still have put the thing quite simply. He could have said that we were married to the law; that the law was killed by the work of Christ; and that now we are free to be married to God. But, quite suddenly, he puts it the other way, and, in his suddenly changed picture, it is we who die to the law.

How can that be? By baptism we share in the death of Christ. That means that, having died, we are discharged from all obligations to the law and become free to marry again. This time we marry, not the law, but Christ. When that happens, Christian obedience becomes, not an externally imposed obedience to some written code of laws, but an inner allegiance of the spirit to Jesus Christ.

Paul is drawing a contrast between the two states of man--without Christ and with him. Before we knew Christ we tried to rule life by obedience to the written code of the law. That was when we were in the flesh. By the flesh Paul does not mean simply the body, because a man retains a physical body to the end of the day. In man there is something which answers to the seduction of sin; and it is that part of man which provides a bridgehead for sin that Paul calls the flesh.

The flesh is human nature apart from and unaided by God. Paul says that, when our human nature was unaided by God, the law actually moved our passions to sin. What does he mean by that? More than once he has the thought that the law actually produces sin, because the very fact that a thing is forbidden lends it a certain attraction. When we had nothing but the law, we were at the mercy of sin.

Then Paul turns to the state of a man with Christ. When a man rules his life by union with Christ he rules it not by obedience to a written code of law which may actually awaken the desire to sin but by an allegiance to Jesus Christ within his spirit and his heart. Not law, but love, is the motive of his life; and the inspiration of love can make him able to do what the restraint of law was powerless to help him do.

THE EXCEEDING SINFULNESS OF SIN ( Romans 7:7-13 )

7:7-13 What then are we to infer? That the law is sin? God forbid! So far from that, I would never have known what sin meant except through the law. I would never have known desire if the law had not said, "You must not covet." For, when sin had, through the commandment, obtained a foothold, it produced every kind of desire in me; for, without law, sin is lifeless. Once I lived without the law; but, when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, and in that moment I knew that I had incurred the penalty of death. The commandment that was meant for life--I discovered that that very commandment was in me for death. For, when sin obtained a foothold through the commandment, it seduced me, and, through it, killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just and good. Did then that which was good become death to me? God forbid! But the reason was that sin might be revealed as sin by producing death in me, through the very thing which was in itself good, so that, through the commandment, sin might become surpassingly sinful.

Here begins one of the greatest of all passages in the New Testament; and one of the most moving; because here Paul is giving us his own spiritual autobiography and laying bare his very heart and soul.

Paul deals with the torturing paradox of the law. In itself it is a fine and a splendid thing. It is holy. That is to say it is the very voice of God. The root meaning of the word holy (hagios, G40) is different. It describes something which comes from a sphere other than this world. The law is divine and has in it the very voice of God. It is just. We have seen that the root Greek idea of justice is that it consists in giving to man, and to God, their due. Therefore the law is that which settles all relationships, human and divine. If a man perfectly kept the law, he would be in a perfect relationship both with God and with his fellow men. The law is good. That is to say, it is designed for nothing other than our highest welfare. It is meant to make a man good.

All that is true. And yet the fact remains that this same law is the very thing through which sin gains entry into a man. How does that happen? There are two ways in which the law may be said to be, in one sense, the source of sin.

(i) It defines sin. Sin without the law, as Paul said, has no existence. Until a thing is defined as sin by the law, a man cannot know that it is sin. We might find a kind of remote analogy in any game, say tennis. A man might allow the ball to bounce more than once before he returned it over the net; so long as there were no rules he could not be accused of any fault. But then the rules are made, and it is laid down that the ball must be struck over the net after only one bounce and that to allow it to bounce twice is a fault. The rules define what a fault is, and that which was allowable before they were made, now becomes a fault. So the law defines sin.

We may take a better analogy. What is pardonable in a child, or in an uncivilized man from a savage country, may not be allowable in a mature person from a civilized land. The mature, civilized person is aware of laws of conduct which the child and the savage do not know; therefore, what is pardonable in them is fault in him.

The law creates sin in the sense that it defines it. It may for long enough be legal to drive a motor car in either direction along a street; then that street is declared one-way; after that a new breach of the law exists--that of driving in a forbidden direction. The new regulation actually creates a new fault. The law, by making men aware of what it is, creates sin.

(ii) But there is a much more serious sense in which the law produces sin. One of the strange facts of life is the fascination of the forbidden thing. The Jewish rabbis and thinkers saw that human tendency at work in the Garden of Eden. Adam at first lived in innocence; a commandment was given him not to touch the forbidden tree, and given only his good; but the serpent came and subtly turned that prohibition into a temptation. The fact that the tree was forbidden made it desirable; so Adam was seduced into sin by the forbidden fruit; and death was the result.

Philo allegorized the whole story. The serpent was pleasure; Eve stood for the senses; pleasure, as it always does, wanted the forbidden thing and attacked through the senses. Adam was the reason; and, through the attack of the forbidden thing on the senses, reason was led astray, and death came.

In his Confessions there is a famous passage in which Augustine tells of the fascination of the forbidden thing.

"There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One

stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our

spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears--not to feast upon

ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just

enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice

pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for

I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to

become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and

that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in that

theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law, in order

that I, a prisoner under rules, might have a maimed counterfeit of

freedom by doing what was forbidden, with a dim similitude of

impotence? ... The desire to steal was awakened simply by the

prohibition of stealing."

Set a thing in the category of forbidden things or put a place out of bounds, and immediately they become fascinating. In that sense the law produces sin.

Paul has one revealing word which he uses of sin. "Sin," he says, "seduced me." There is always deception in sin. Vaughan says that sin's delusion works in three directions. (i) We are deluded regarding the satisfaction to be found in sin. No man ever took a forbidden thing without thinking that it would make him happy, and no man ever found that it did. (ii) We are deluded regarding the excuse that can be made for it. Every man thinks that he can put up a defence for doing the wrong thing; but no man's defence ever sounded anything else but futile when it was made in the presence of God. (iii) We are deluded regarding the probability of escaping the consequences of it. No man sins without the hope that he can get away with it. But it is true that, soon or late, our sin will find us out.

Is, then, the law a bad thing because it actually produces sin? Paul is certain that there is wisdom in the whole sequence. (i) First he is convinced that, whatever the consequence, sin had to be defined as sin. (ii) The process shows the terrible nature of sin, because sin took a thing--the law--which was holy and just as good, and twisted it into something which served the ends of evil. The awfulness of sin is shown by the fact that it could take a fine thing and make it a weapon of evil. That is what sin does. It can take the loveliness of love and turn it into lust. It can take the honourable desire for independence and turn it into the obsession for money and for power. It can take the beauty of friendship and use it as a seduction to the wrong things. That is what Carlyle called "the infinite damnability of sin." The very fact that it took the law and made it a bridgehead to sin shows the supreme sinfulness of sin. The whole terrible process is not accidental; it is all designed to show us how awful a thing sin is, because it can take the loveliest things and defile them with a polluting touch.

THE HUMAN SITUATION ( Romans 7:14-25 )

7:14-25 We are aware that the law is spiritual; but I am a creature of flesh and blood under the power of sin. I cannot understand what I do. What I want to do, that I do not do; but what I hate, that I do. If what I do not want to do I in point of fact do, then I acquiesce in the law, and I agree that it is fair. As it is, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin which resides in me--I mean in my human nature. To will the fair thing is within my range, but not to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do; but the evil that I do not want to do, that is the very thing I do. And if I do that very thing that I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin which resides in me. My experience of the law, then, is that I wish to do the fine thing and that the evil thing is the only thing that is within my ability. As far as my inner self is concerned, I fully agree with the law of God; but I see another law in my members, continually carrying on a campaign against the law of my mind, and making me a captive by the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this fatal body? God will! Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore with my mind I serve the law of God, but with my human nature the law of sin.

Paul is baring his very soul; and he is telling us of an experience which is of the very essence of the human situation. He knew what was right and wanted to do it; and yet, somehow, he never could. He knew what was wrong and the last thing he wanted was to do it; and yet, somehow, he did. He felt himself to be a split personality. It was as if two men were inside the one skin, pulling in different directions. He was haunted by this feeling of frustration, his ability to see what was good and his inability to do it; his ability to recognize what was wrong and his inability to refrain from doing it.

Paul's contemporaries well knew this feeling, as, indeed, we know it ourselves. Seneca talked of "our helplessness in necessary things." He talked about how men hate their sins and love them at the same time. Ovid, the Roman poet, had penned the famous tag: "I see the better things, and I approve them, but I follow the worse."

No one knew this problem better than the Jews. They had solved it by saying that in every man there were two natures, called the Yetser ( H3336) hatob ( H2896) and the Yetser ( H3336) hara' ( H7451) . It was the Jewish conviction that God had made men like that with a good impulse and an evil impulse inside them.

There were Rabbis who believed that that evil impulse was in the very embryo in the womb, there before a man was even born. It was "a malevolent second personality." It was "man's implacable enemy." It was there waiting, if need be for a lifetime, for a chance to ruin man. But the Jew was equally clear, in theory, that no man need ever succumb to that evil impulse. It was all a matter of choice.

Ben Sirach wrote:

"God himself created man from the beginning.

And he left him in the hand of his own counsel.

If thou so desirest thou shalt keep the commandments,

And to perform faithfulness is of thine own good pleasure.

He hath set fire and water before thee,

Stretch forth thy hand unto whichever thou wilt.

Before man is life and death,

And whichever he liketh shall be given unto him....

He hath commanded no man to do wickedly,

Neither have he given any man licence to sin."

( Sir_15:11-20 ).

There were certain things which would keep a man from falling to the evil impulse. There was the law. They thought of God as saying:

"I created for you the evil impulse; I created for you the law as

an antiseptic."

"If you occupy yourself with the law you will not fall into the

power of the evil impulse..."

There was the will and the mind.

"When God created man, he implanted in him his affections

and his dispositions; and then, over all, he enthroned the sacred,

ruling mind."

When the evil impulse attacked, the Jew held that wisdom and reason could defeat it; to be occupied with the study of the word of the Lord was safety; the law was a prophylactic; at such a time the good impulse could be called up in defence.

Paul knew all that; and knew, too, that, while it was all theoretically true, in practice it was not true. There were things in man's human nature--that is what Paul meant by this fatal body--which answered to the seduction of sin. It is part of the human situation that we know the right and yet do the wrong, that we are never as good as we know we ought to be. At one and the same time we are haunted by goodness and haunted by sin.

From one point of view this passage might be called a demonstration of inadequacies.

(i) It demonstrates the inadequacy of human knowledge. If to know the right thing was to do it, life would be easy. But knowledge by itself does not make a man good. It is the same in every walk of life. We may know exactly how golf should be played but that is very far from being able to play it; we may know how poetry ought to be written but that is very far from being able to write it. We may know how we ought to behave in any given situation but that is very far from being able so to behave. That is the difference between religion and morality. Morality is knowledge of a code; religion is knowledge of a person; and it is only when we know Christ that we are able to do what we know we ought.

(ii) It demonstrates the inadequacy of human resolution. To resolve to do a thing is very far from doing it. There is in human nature an essential weakness of the will. The will comes up against the problems, the difficulties, the opposition--and it fails. Once Peter took a great resolution. "Even if I must die with you," he said, "I will not deny you" ( Matthew 26:35); and yet he failed badly when it came to the point. The human will unstrengthened by Christ is bound to crack.

(iii) It demonstrates the limitations of diagnosis. Paul knew quite clearly what was wrong; but he was unable to put it right. He was like a doctor who could accurately diagnose a disease but was powerless to prescribe a cure. Jesus is the one person who not only knows what is wrong, but who can also put the wrong to rights. It is not criticism he offers but help.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

Romans 7:24

O wretched man that I am! -- The feeling implied by this lamentation is the result of this painful conflict within between the desire to do right and the passions, emotions, desires, of the body pulling in the other direction.

It is often an agonizing struggle between good and evil; a struggle which annoys the peace, and renders life wretched.

"Wretched", is talaipôros, originally "wretched through the exhaustion of hard labor" (Vincent).

Who shall deliver me -- Who shall rescue me; the condition of a mind in deep distress, and conscious of its own weakness, and looking for aid.

from this body of death -- The answer of course is Christ! Who in the resurrection will give us an immortal body that never dies! NCV "this body that brings me death."

    There is the illustration that the Romans executed criminals according to their crime. (ex: Nero put Christians to a burning stake for comming the crime of arson, or so they were accused.) And that a man who drowned his enemy was tied to his dead body and he was cast into the river to be pulled down and drowned by the dead body of his victim.)

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

O wretched man that I am,.... Not as considered in Christ, for as such he was a most happy man, being blessed with all spiritual blessings, and secure from all condemnation and wrath; nor with respect to his inward man, which was renewing day by day, and in which he enjoyed true spiritual peace and pleasure; nor with regard to his future state, of the happiness of which he had no doubt: he knew in whom he had believed; he was fully persuaded nothing could separate him from the love of God; and that when he had finished his course, he should have the crown of righteousness laid up for him: but this exclamation he made on account of the troubles he met with in his Christian race; and not so much on account of his reproaches, persecutions, and distresses for Christ's sake; though these were many and great, yet these did not move or much affect him, he rather took delight and pleasure in them; but on account of that continual combat between, the flesh and spirit in him; or by reason of that mass of corruption and body of sin he carried about with him; ranch such a complaint Isaiah makes, Isaiah 6:5, which in the Septuagint is,

ω ταλας εγω, "O miserable I". This shows him to be, and to speak of himself as a regenerate man; since an unregenerate man feels no uneasiness upon that score, or makes any complaint of it, saying as here,

who shall deliver me from the body of this death? or "this body of death"; by which some understand, this mortal body, or the body of flesh subject to death for sin; and suppose the apostle expresses his desire to quit it, to depart out of it, that he might enjoy an immortal life, being weary of the burden of this mortal body he carried about with him: so Philo the Jew s represents the body as a burden to the soul, which νεκροφορουσα, "it carries about as a dead carcass", and never lays down from his birth till his death: though it should be observed, that when the apostle elsewhere expresses an earnest longing after a state of immortality and glory, some sort of reluctance and unwillingness to leave the body is to be observed, which is not to be discerned here; and was this his sense, one should think he would rather have said, when shall I be delivered? or why am I not delivered? and not who shall deliver me? though admitting this to be his meaning, that he was weary of the present life, and wanted to be rid of his mortal body, this did not arise from the troubles and anxieties of life, with which he was pressed, which oftentimes make wicked men long to die; but from the load of sin, and burden of corruption, under which he groaned, and still bespeaks him a regenerate man; for not of outward calamities, but of indwelling sin is he all along speaking in the context: wherefore it is better by "this body of death" to understand what he in Romans 6:6 calls "the body of sin"; that mass of corruption that lodged in him, which is called "a body", because of its fleshly carnal nature; because of its manner of operation, it exerts itself by the members of the body; and because it consists of various parts and members, as a body does; and "a body of death", because it makes men liable to death: it was that which the apostle says "slew" him, and which itself is to a regenerate man, as a dead carcass, stinking and loathsome; and is to him like that punishment Mezentius inflicted on criminals, by fastening a living body to a putrid carcass t: and it is emphatically called the body of "this death", referring to the captivity of his mind, to the law of sin, which was as death unto him: and no wonder therefore he so earnestly desires deliverance, saying, "who shall deliver me?" which he speaks not as being ignorant of his deliverer, whom he mentions with thankfulness in Romans 7:25; or as doubting and despairing of deliverance, for he was comfortably assured of it, and therefore gives thanks beforehand for it; but as expressing the inward pantings, and earnest breathings of his soul after it; and as declaring the difficulty of it, yea, the impossibility of its being obtained by himself, or by any other than he, whom he had in view: he knew he could not deliver himself from sin; that the law could not deliver him; and that none but God could do it; and which he believed he would, through Jesus Christ his Lord.

s De Agricultura, p. 191. t Alexander ab. Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 3. c. 5,

Mitchell's Commentary on Selected New Testament Books

We have here the cry of the human heart— longing to please God, longing to live a

holy life. But the more he tries to keep the law, the more he breaks it. The more he reads the Word of God and sees what the law was made for and what it demands, the more he must cry out, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?”

The law never saved anybody. It was never given to save. It was never given as a means of life for sinners, nor was it given as the rule of life for the believer in Christ.

You say, “Well, Mr. Mitchell, can one use the law today lawfully?”

Yes, in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 9, Paul says, “The law was made for the lawless.” One can use the law to prove to men that they need a Saviour. That’s the purpose of the law. As Paul could say in Galatians 3:24, “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ;” and, having come to Christ, we are no longer under the schoolmaster.

The danger with us is that we know we are saved by grace, saved through the precious blood of Christ. But we think that to be good we must keep the law. The more we try, the more we realize we can’t be good by keeping the law. So we have in this seventh chapter two wonderful things: We are delivered from the law through the death of Christ, and we were delivered so that we can bring forth fruit unto God.

DELIVERANCE FROM THE LAW (7:1-25)

Mitchell's Commentary on Selected New Testament Books

Now, Paul is not concerned with pardon. He is not concerned with the question of being saved. That’s already settled. But he is dealing with the fact of deliverance from indwelling sin.

In chapter 6, man was trying to do it one way or another by keeping sin down.

But here in chapter 7, he tries to do it by keep­ing the law. And the more he tries, the more he fails.

I want to make this thing very clear—and that is why I repeat and repeat each point I want to make. The death of Christ has severed the relationship
between you and the law. The law is not sinful, but the law works in me all manner of lust; and I’m the fellow that’s wrong, not the law. Without the law, sin was dead. Sin was dormant. The old master sin woke up when the law came.

In Romans 7:12-13, Paul vindicates the law. It is just. It is holy. It is good. It is spiritual. It came from God, but it cannot deliver.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the law. I don’t throw the law out as being no good. But I cannot meet the law’s demands. Neither can you. Neither can anybody else. It was not given to save. It was not given to help you be good, but it de­mands that you be good. The law prescribes a holy walk, but it gives no power to do it.

As Christians, we are joined to the risen Christ. We have a new life, new motives. We have new prospects. We have new hopes. Everything is in place.

But here is the exercise of the quickened soul: Desiring to be holy, he can’t be. He wants to please God; but the more he tries to please Him, the more he fails. The old nature is unable to overcome sin in the flesh. He says, “I am carnal; I’m sold under sin. Nothing is wrong with the law; the trouble is me.”

Now let’s read these verses:

Romans 7:14. For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.

Romans 7:15. For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.

Romans 7:16. But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good (that is, I wanted to keep the law but I couldn’t do it).

Romans 7:17. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me.

Now, let me come down to it. I am carnal, sold under sin. Go back to 1 Corinthians 2:14 where we have the natural man, the unsaved man, the unregenerate man who does not understand the Spirit of God. Then in Romans 7:15 we have the spiri­tual man who discerns all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.

In the following chapter, 1 Corinthians 3:1-23, the first four verses, we have the carnal man. He is the Christian who should grow but is not growing. He lives like the unsaved sometimes.

He is the Christian living in the flesh. He loves the law; he wants to be holy; he wants to please God; but he finds that the more he tries, the less he can do it. He is the undelivered believer who lives with indwelling sin. He is the Christian who has not experienced deliverance from the power of sin in his life. He can say:

Romans 7:18. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me (I want to do the right thing), but the doing of the good is not.

Romans 7:19. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish.

Romans 7:20. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

Romans 7:21. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good.

Romans 7:22. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man (in my heart, I want to please God; I really want to please God):

Romans 7:23. But I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

He is saying, “In my flesh there dwells no good thing. My body is full of lusts and desires. Oh, how I want to please God, but the more I seek to please Him the more I fail. Am I really saved?”

Yes, yes. Thank God, you are not saved by what you do or don’t do. You are saved by trusting the Saviour. The more you read the Word of God, the more you want to please God.

But the danger is, if you try to please God in the energy of the flesh, you will fail to realize that in your flesh dwells no good thing. God has no confi­dence in the flesh—neither yours nor mine.

Paul found that out. Can I repeat that? God has no confidence in anybody’s flesh, yours or mine. Paul, speaking here from personal experience, I believe, wants to please God in the flesh; but he finds he can’t make the flesh behave. There are certain desires there.

But we can get deliverance; he speaks of it here:

Romans 7:24. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

It’s a cry for help, a cry for a deliverer. How can I be free of this thing? Help must come from the outside.

Do you know what he is saying here in this “who will set me free from the body of this death?”

It is said that if a criminal, a prisoner in a Ro­man jail, didn’t behave himself, his guards would take the body of a prisoner who had died and tie it to the back of the prisoner who didn’t behave him­self. And wherever he went, he carried that body of decaying flesh. The stench of this corrupt body was ever with him. Wherever he went, he carried it with him.

And he cried out, “Who shall deliver me from this body of death?”

It’s the cry of Paul.

He says, “Here I am living in a body that is full of desire. When I want to do the right thing, I do the bad thing. When I want to leave a thing alone, I can’t do it.”

It’s like the man who says, “I can take it or leave it.” Well, you and I know what he will do. He will take it. And sometimes we begin to wonder if there is any deliverance from indwelling sin for us. Is there any way we can keep our body from doing the things it does?

Now let’s be realistic about it. Don’t try to live like an ascetic and then tell me, “Well, Mr. Mitchell, I’m holy and I don’t sin.”

I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. If you don’t sin in action, you are thinking thoughts and words and deeds. All of us do to a more or less de­gree. Of course, we can see the badness in the other fellow; but he sees the badness in us. We criticize each other, and we are both bad. Oh, how quick we are to judge the weakness and failure and frailty in some other Christian. And the world is very quick, of course, to judge that sin in us.

So there is a yearning in my heart, and I try to make my body behave itself. I’m trying to keep the lust down, and I try the law of God. The law says, “Don’t you do such-and-such.” But I go ahead and do it. The law says, “You must die.” It is a body of death.

You say, “Who will deliver me?”

I say the deliverance must come from the out­side. So the last verse says:

Romans 7:25. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

See, he learned something. He learned that sin was dwelling in his body, and he was powerless against it. Is that your experience, my friend?

Notice something else. The sinful self was not the real self. The real self wanted God. The new man panted after God. The old man panted after sin.

Deliverance is found in one place—in Jesus Christ. The channel, the course of our deliverance, is found only in Him. So now the law of the risen Christ Himself is the rule of the believer. That’s why chapter 8 is full of the Spirit of God.

Did you notice chapter 7 doesn’t mention the Holy Spirit? Here is a man who is trying to be holy and good without the power of the Holy Spirit. He is trying by his own strength to conquer frailty and weakness and failure in his life. He wants to please God and finds he can’t do it. He is trying by himself.

As the old saying goes, he is trying to lift himself up by his own bootstraps.

But he learns something. He learns that sin is in his members. He learns that he is powerless against it. He learns that he has a new life pat­terned after God even though sin is in his mem­bers.

And he learns that there is only One who can deliver him and that is Jesus Christ, the risen Son of God. Sometimes the Lord has to get us right down into failure and to the bottom of things be­fore we really trust Him.

Many have often said, “We trust God for our eternal souls—but, oh, how difficult it is to trust Him the next 24 hours with our daily walk in life.”

My friend, may I say, if you’re a discouraged Christian and you’ve tried to live for God and you’ve failed, there is a place of deliverance. When we come to the next chapter, you will find it is full of the Spirit of God. In chapter 7, it was “I,” “me” and “mine,” “what I can do,” “what I hope to do,” “what I am trying to do.” And the answer to that is failure. In chapter 8, it is no longer I—but Christ.

Under the law with its terrible lash,
Learning at last how true;
The more I tried,
The sooner I died
While the law cried, “You, You, You.”

Hopelessly stilled did the battle rage;
“O wretched man,” my cry.
And deliverance I thought
By some penance bought

While my soul cried, “I, I, I.”

Then came a day when my struggling ceased;
And, trembling in every limb,

At the foot of the tree

Where One died for me

I sobbed out, “Him, Him, Him.”

Oh, when we just stop our deadly doing and trust the Lord, what wonderful things happen.

Friend, again, are you struggling? Are you dis­couraged? You’re trying to live for God, and your life has been full of weakness and failure? Just turn the whole business over to the Saviour.

You cry, “Who will deliver me?” Then comes the answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Say with Paul in chapter 8, “We over­whelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

Now may the Lord make it wonderfully real to you.

Isn’t it wonderful to have a Saviour who not only saves us from the penalty and guilt of sin, but a Saviour who can deliver you and me daily from the power of sin and from the curse of a broken law?

Light of Israel Bible Commentary

A CRY FOR DELIVERANCE

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Romans 7:24-25

The language used here is not that of a newly awakened sinner but rather it is the cry of an agonized believer who is burdened down under a load which he longs to shake off.<footnote>Brown, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, v. 7:24. In commenting here Witmer adds (7:24-25), "Significantly Paul's description of himself is part of John's picture of the church of Laodicea – "wretched" (Revelation 3:17 ).</footnote> Paul is not saying "What a wretched man I was!" but "What a wretched man I am!" The load he carries is one of flesh and legalism, man's attempt to please God, which leaves one weary and frustrated. The Greek word used here for "wretched" according to Morris has the meaning of being "wretched through the exhaustion of hard labor."<footnote>Quoted in Guzik, Romans, David Guzik's Commentaries on the Bible, v. 7:24.</footnote> In this instance, Paul is a man who is completely worn out. He has at this point sunk back into legalism momentarily, failing to keep the demands of the law through the efforts of his flesh. He is now at last ready to call upon the Lord for help.

In my own experience I have so often arrived at this point. There is no telling how many times in the last half-century that this minister and Bible teacher has cried out in desperation, "I called to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I have been saved from my enemies. The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears" (Psalm 18:3-6). Always, in just a short period of time, the Lord comes with his mighty Holy Spirit and restores my soul. He lifts my sagging spirit to new and wonderful heights.

What an inspiration and encouragement it must be to every believer to realize that even the great Saint Paul had his problems of occasionally reverting to legalistic and carnal type thinking. In his final years, the Apostle Paul probably understood the scripture better than anyone alive. After all, he had actually visited in the heavenly places and heard things that were unspeakable as we have seen earlier. He had probably done more than all the other apostles in evangelizing the planet by taking the gospel to the ends of the known world. We are aware that Saint Peter once lapsed into carnal and legalistic thinking and had to be publicly rebuked by Paul (Galatians 2:11-16). But it is hard to imagine Paul doing so. Yet, it is obvious here that he did at times. If Paul had to constantly fight against the flesh, we should no longer be ashamed or dismayed at our own struggles.

There comes a point of desperation in which we finally give up on ourselves. Some time back as a Christian I joined Paul in penning a few frustrations of my own. I cried out, "I give up! I surrender! I am sick and tired of trying to be a good Christian. I am sick and tired of failing and watching other Christians fail! I have lived too long in Romans 7 and now I want to live in Romans 8. I am tired of 'doing' and I want to hear again the word that 'it's done!' I want to finally relax and realize that Christ has done it all – that my salvation and my justification are 'done deals.' I want to finally understand that there is 'no condemnation,' not now, not ever. AMEN!

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      14b -- But I am carnal, sold under sin.   15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.   16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.   17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.   18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.   19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.   20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.   21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.   22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:   23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.   24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?   25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

      Here is a description of the conflict between grace and corruption in the heart, between the law of God and the law of sin. And it is applicable two ways:-- 1. To the struggles that are in a convinced soul, but yet unregenerate, in the person of whom it is supposed, by some, that Paul speaks. 2. To the struggles that are in a renewed sanctified soul, but yet in a state of imperfection; as other apprehend. And a great controversy there is of which of these we are to understand the apostle here. So far does the evil prevail here, when he speaks of one sold under sin, doing it, not performing that which is good, that it seems difficult to apply it to the regenerate, who are described to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; and yet so far does the good prevail in hating sin, consenting to the law, delighting in it, serving the law of God with the mind, that it is more difficult to apply it to the unregenerate that are dead in trespasses and sins.

      I. Apply it to the struggles that are felt in a convinced soul, that is yet in a state of sin, knows his Lord's will, but does it not, approves the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and yet lives in the constant breach of it, Romans 2:17-23; Romans 2:17-23. Though he has that within him that witnesses against the sin he commits, and it is not without a great deal of reluctancy that he does commit it, the superior faculties striving against it, natural conscience warning against it before it is committed and smiting for it afterwards, yet the man continues a slave to his reigning lusts. It is not thus with every unregenerate man, but with those only that are convinced by the law, but not changed by the gospel. The apostle had said (Romans 6:14; Romans 6:14), Sin shall not have dominion, because you are not under the law, but under grace, for the proof of which he here shows that a man under the law, and not under grace, may be, and is, under the dominion of sin. The law may discover sin, and convince of sin, but it cannot conquer and subdue sin, witness the predominancy of sin in many that are under very strong legal convictions. It discovers the defilement, but will not wash it off. It makes a man weary and heavy laden (Matthew 11:28), burdens him with his sin; and yet, if rested in, it yields no help towards the shaking off of that burden; this is to be had only in Christ. The law may make a man cry out, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me? and yet leave him thus fettered and captivated, as being too weak to deliver him (Romans 8:3; Romans 8:3), give him a spirit of bondage to fear, Romans 8:15; Romans 8:15. Now a soul advanced thus far by the law is in a fair way towards a state of liberty by Christ, though many rest here and go no further. Felix trembled, but never came to Christ. It is possible for a man to go to hell with his eyes open (Numbers 24:3; Numbers 24:4), illuminated with common convictions, and to carry about with him a self-accusing conscience, even in the service of the devil. He may consent to the law that it is good, delight to know God's ways (as they, Isaiah 58:2), may have that within him that witnesses against sin and for holiness; and yet all this overpowered by the reigning love of sin. Drunkards and unclean persons have some faint desires to leave off their sins, and yet persist in them notwithstanding, such is the impotency and such the insufficiency of their convictions. Of such as these there are many that will needs have all this understood, and contend earnestly for it: though it is very hard to imagine why, if the apostle intended this, he should speak all along in his own person; and not only so, but in the present tense. Of his own state under conviction he had spoken at large, as of a thing past (Romans 7:7; Romans 7:7, c.): I died the commandment I found to be unto death; and if here he speaks of the same state as his present state, and the condition he was now in, surely he did not intend to be so understood: and therefore,

      II. It seems rather to be understood of the struggles that are maintained between grace and corruption in sanctified souls. That there are remainders of indwelling corruption, even where there is a living principle of grace, is past dispute; that this corruption is daily breaking forth in sins of infirmity (such as are consistent with a state of grace) is no less certain. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 1 John 1:8; 1 John 1:10. That true grace strives against these sins and corruptions, does not allow of them, hates them, mourns over them, groans under them as a burden, is likewise certain (Galatians 5:17): The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. These are the truths which, I think, are contained in this discourse of the apostle. And his design is further to open the nature of sanctification, that it does not attain to a sinless perfection in this life; and therefore to quicken us to, and encourage us in, our conflicts with remaining corruptions. Our case is not singular, that which we do sincerely strive against, shall not be laid to our charge, and through grace the victory is sure at last. The struggle here is like that between Jacob and Esau in the womb, between the Canaanites and Israelites in the land, between the house of Saul and the house of David; but great is the truth and will prevail. Understanding it thus, we may observe here,

      1. What he complains of--the remainder of indwelling corruptions, which he here speaks of, to show that the law is insufficient to justify even a regenerate man, that the best man in the world hath enough in him to condemn him, if God should deal with him according to the law, which is not the fault of the law, but of our own corrupt nature, which cannot fulfil the law. The repetition of the same things over and over again in this discourse shows how much Paul's heart was affected with what he wrote, and how deep his sentiments were. Observe the particulars of this complaint. (1.) I am carnal, sold under sin,Romans 7:14; Romans 7:14. He speaks of the Corinthians as carnal, 1 Corinthians 3:1. Even where there is spiritual life there are remainders of carnal affections, and so far a man may be sold under sin; he does not sell himself to work wickedness, as Ahab did (1 Kings 21:25), but he was sold by Adam when he sinned and fell--sold, as a poor slave that does his master's will against his own will--sold under sin, because conceived in iniquity and born in sin. (2.) What I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that do I,Romans 7:15; Romans 7:15. And to the same purport, Romans 7:19; Romans 7:21, When I would do good, evil is present with me. Such was the strength of corruptions, that he could not attain that perfection in holiness which he desired and breathed after. Thus, while he was pressing forward towards perfection, yet he acknowledges that he had not already attained, neither was already perfect, Philippians 3:12. Fain he would be free from all sin, and perfectly do the will of God, such was his settled judgment; but his corrupt nature drew him another way: it was like a clog, that checked and kept him down when he would have soared upward, like the bias in a bowl, which, when it is thrown straight, yet draws it aside. (3.) In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good,Romans 7:18; Romans 7:18. Here he explains himself concerning the corrupt nature, which he calls flesh; and as far as that goes there is no good to be expected, any more than one would expect good corn growing upon a rock, or on the sand which is by the sea-side. As the new nature, as far as that goes, cannot commit sin (1 John 3:9), so the flesh, the old nature, as far as that goes, cannot perform a good duty. How should it? For the flesh serveth the law of sin (Romans 7:25; Romans 7:25), it is under the conduct and government of that law; and, while it is so, it is not likely to do any good. The corrupt nature is elsewhere called flesh (Genesis 6:3; John 3:6); and, though there may be good things dwelling in those that have this flesh, yet, as far as the flesh goes, there is no good, the flesh is not a subject capable of any good. (4.) I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind,Romans 7:23; Romans 7:23. The corrupt and sinful inclination is here compared to a law, because it controlled and checked him in his good motions. It is said to be seated in his members, because, Christ having set up his throne in his heart, it was only the rebellious members of the body that were the instruments of sin--in the sensitive appetite; or we may take it more generally for all that corrupt nature which is the seat not only of sensual but of more refined lusts. This wars against the law of the mind, the new nature; it draws the contrary way, drives on a contrary interest, which corrupt disposition and inclination are as great a burden and grief to the soul as the worst drudgery and captivity could be. It brings me into captivity. To the same purport (Romans 7:25; Romans 7:25), With the flesh I serve the law of sin; that is, the corrupt nature, the unregenerate part, is continually working towards sin. (5.) His general complaint we have in Romans 7:24; Romans 7:24, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The thing he complains of is a body of death; either the body of flesh, which is a mortal dying body (while we carry this body about with us, we shall be troubled with corruption; when we are dead, we shall be freed from sin, and not before), or the body of sin, the old man, the corrupt nature, which tends to death, that is, to the ruin of the soul. Or, comparing it to a dead body, the touch of which was by the ceremonial law defiling, if actual transgressions be dead works (Hebrews 9:14), original corruption is a dead body. It was as troublesome to Paul as if he had had a dead body tied to him, which he must have carried about with him. This made him cry out, O wretched man that I am! A man that had learned in every state to be content yet complains thus of his corrupt nature. Had I been required to speak of Paul, I should have said, "O blessed man that thou art, an ambassador of Christ, a favourite of heaven, a spiritual father of thousands!" But in his own account he was a wretched man, because of the corruption of nature, because he was not so good as he fain would be, had not yet attained, neither was already perfect. Thus miserably does he complain. Who shall deliver me? He speaks like one that was sick of it, that would give any thing to be rid of it, looks to the right hand and to the left for some friend that would part between him and his corruptions. The remainders of indwelling sin are a very grievous burden to a gracious soul.

      2. What he comforts himself with. The case was sad, but there were some allays. Three things comforted him:--

      (1.) That his conscience witnessed for him that he had a good principle ruling and prevailing in him, notwithstanding. It is well when all does not go one way in the soul. The rule of this good principle which he had was the law of God, to which he here speaks of having a threefold regard, which is certainly to be found in all that are sanctified, and no others. [1.] I consent unto the law that it is good,Romans 7:16; Romans 7:16, symphemi--I give my vote to the law; here is the approbation of the judgment. Wherever there is grace there is not only a dread of the severity of the law, but a consent to the goodness of the law. "It is a good in itself, it is good for me." This is a sign that the law is written in the heart, that the soul is delivered into the mould of it. To consent to the law is so far to approve of it as not to wish it otherwise constituted than it is. The sanctified judgment not only concurs to the equity of the law, but to the excellency of it, as convinced that a conformity to the law is the highest perfection of human nature, and the greatest honour and happiness we are capable of. [2.] I delight in the law of God after the inward man,Romans 7:22; Romans 7:22. His conscience bore witness to a complacency in the law. He delighted not only in the promises of the word, but in the precepts and prohibitions of the word; synedomai expresses a becoming delight. He did herein concur in affection with all the saints. All that are savingly regenerate or born again do truly delight in the law of God, delight to know it, to do it--cheerfully submit to the authority of it, and take a complacency in that submission, never better pleased than when heart and life are in the strictest conformity to the law and will of God. After the inward man; that is, First, The mind or rational faculties, in opposition to the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh. The soul is the inward man, and that is the seat of gracious delights, which are therefore sincere and serious, but secret; it is the renewing of the inward man, 2 Corinthians 4:16. Secondly, The new nature. The new man is called the inner man (Ephesians 3:16), the hidden man of the heart,1 Peter 3:4. Paul, as far as he was sanctified, had a delight in the law of God. [3.] With the mind I myself serve the law of God,Romans 7:25; Romans 7:25. It is not enough to consent to the law, and to delight in the law, but we must serve the law; our souls must be entirely delivered up into the obedience of it. Thus it was with Paul's mind; thus it is with every sanctified renewed mind; this is the ordinary course and way; thitherward goes the bent of the soul. I myself--autos ego, plainly intimating that he speaks in his own person, and not in the person of another.

      (2.) That the fault lay in that corruption of his nature which he did really bewail and strive against: It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. This he mentions twice (Romans 7:17; Romans 7:20), not as an excuse for the guilt of his sin (it is enough to condemn us, if we were under the law, that the sin which does the evil dwelleth in us), but as a salvo for his evidences, that he might not sink in despair, but take comfort from the covenant of grace, which accepts the willingness of the spirit, and has provided pardon for the weakness of the flesh. He likewise herein enters a protestation against all that which this indwelling sin produced. Having professed his consent to the law of God, he here professes his dissent from the law of sin. "It is not I; I disown the fact; it is against my mind that it is done." As when in the senate the major part are bad, and carry every thing the wrong way, it is indeed the act of the senate, but the honest party strive against it, bewail what is done, and enter their protestation against it; so that it is no more they that do it.--Dwelleth in me, as the Canaanites among the Israelites, though they were put under tribute: dwelleth in me, and is likely to dwell there, while I live.

      (3.) His great comfort lay in Jesus Christ (Romans 7:25; Romans 7:25): I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. In the midst of his complaints he breaks out into praises. It is a special remedy against fears and sorrows to be much in praise: many a poor drooping soul hath found it so. And, in all our praises, this should be the burden of the son, "Blessed be God for Jesus Christ." Who shall deliver me? says he (Romans 7:24; Romans 7:24), as one at a loss for help. At length he finds an all-sufficient friend, even Jesus Christ. When we are under the sense of the remaining power of sin and corruption, we shall see reason to bless God through Christ (for, as he is the mediator of all our prayers, so he is of all our praises)--to bless God for Christ; it is he that stands between us and the wrath due to us for this sin. If it were not for Christ, this iniquity that dwells in us would certainly be our ruin. He is our advocate with the Father, and through him God pities, and spares, and pardons, and lays not our iniquities to our charge. It is Christ that has purchased deliverance for us in due time. Through Christ death will put an end to all these complaints, and waft us to an eternity which we shall spend without sin or sigh. Blessed be God that giveth us this victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

The Fainting Warrior

A Sermon

(No. 235)

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, January 23rd, 1859, by the

REV. C. H. Spurgeon

At the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

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"O wretched man that I am I who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 7:24-25 .

IF I chose to occupy your time with controversial matter, I might prove to a demonstration that the apostle Paul is here describing his own experience as a Christian. Some have affirmed that he is merely declaring what he was before conversion, and not what he was when he became the recipient of the grace of God. But such persons are evidently mistaken, and I believe wilfully mistaken; for any ample-hearted, candid mind, reading through this chapter, could not fall into such an error. It is Paul the apostle, who was not less than the very greatest of the apostles it is Paul, the mighty servant of God, a very prince in Israel, one of the King's mighty men it is Paul, the saint and the apostle, who here exclaims, "O wretched man that I am!"

Now, humble Christians are often the dupes of a very foolish error. They look up to certain advanced saints and able ministers, and they say, "Surely, such men as these do not suffer as I do; they do not contend with the same evil passions as those which vex and trouble me." Ah! if they knew the heart of those men, if they could read their inward conflicts, they would soon discover that the nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart, and the more his Master honors him in his service, the more also doth the evil of the flesh vex and tease him day by day. Perhaps, this error is more natural, as it is certainly more common, with regard to apostolic saints. We have been in the habit of saying, Saint Paul, and Saint John, as if they were more saints than any other of the children of God. They are all saints whom God has called by his grace, and sanctified by his Spirit; but somehow we very foolishly put the apostles and the early saints into another list, and do not venture to look on them as common mortals. We look upon them as some extraordinary beings, who could not be men of like passions with ourselves. We are told in Scripture that our Saviour was "tempted in all points like as we are;" and yet we fall into the egregious error of imagining that the apostles, who were far inferior to the Lord Jesus, escaped these temptations, and were ignorant of these conflicts. The fact is, if you had seen the apostle Paul, you would have thought he was remarkably like the rest of the chosen family: and if you had talked with him, you would have said, "Why, Paul, I find that your experience and mine exactly agree. You are more faithful, more holy, and more deeply taught than I, but you have the self same trials to endure. Nay, in some respects you are more sorely tried than I." Do not look upon the ancient saints as being exempt either from infirmities or sins, and do not regard them with that mystic reverence which almost makes you an idolater. Their holiness is attainable even by you, and their faults are to be censured as much as your own. I believe it is a Christian's duty to force his way into the inner circle of saintship; and if these saints were superior to us in their attainments, as they certainly were, let us follow them; let us press forward up to, yea, and beyond them, for I do not see that this is impossible. We have the same light that they had, the same grace is accessible to us, and why should we rest satisfied until we have distanced them in the heavenly race? Let us bring them down to the sphere of common mortals. If Jesus was the Son of man, and very man, "bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh;" so were the apostles; and it is an egregious error to suppose that they were not the subjects of the same emotions, and the same inward trials, as the very meanest of the people of God. So far, this may tend to our comfort and to our encouragement, when we find that we are engaged in a battle in which apostles themselves have had to fight.

And now we shall notice this morning, first, the two natures, secondly their constant battle; thirdly, we shall step aside and look at the weary warrior, and hear him cry, "O wretched man that I am;" and then we shall turn our eye in another direction, and see that fainting warrior girding up his loins to the conflict, and becoming an expectant victor, while he shouts, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

I. First, then, THE TWO NATURES. Carnal men, unrenewed men, have one nature a nature which they inherited from their parents, and which, through the ancient transgression of Adam, is evil, only evil, and that continually. Mere human nature, such as is common to every man, has in it many excellent traits, judging of it between man and man. A merely natural man may be honest, upright, kind, and generous, he may have noble and generous thoughts, and may attain unto a true and manly speech; but when we come to matters of true religion, spiritual matters that concern God and eternity, the natural man can do nothing. The carnal mind, whose ever mind it may be, is fallen, and is at enmity to God, does not know the things of God, nor can it ever know them. Now, when a man becomes a Christian, he becomes so through the infusion of a new nature. He is naturally "dead in trespasses and sins," "without God and without hope." The Holy Spirit enters into him, and implants in him a new principle, a new nature, a new life. That life is a high, holy and supernatural principle, it is, in fact the divine nature, a ray from the great "Father of Lights;" it is the Spirit of God dwelling in man. Thus, you see, the Christian becomes a double man two men in one. Some have imagined that the old nature is turned out of the Christian: not so, for the Word of God and experience teach the contrary, the old nature is in the Christian unchanged, unaltered, just the same, as bad as ever it was; while the new nature in him is holy, pure and heavenly; and hence, as we shall have to notice in me next place hence there arises a conflict between the two.

Now, I want you to notice what the apostle says about these two natures that are in the Christian, for I am about to contrast them. First, in our text the apostle calls the old nature "the body of this death." Why does he call it "the body of this death?" Some suppose he means these dying bodies; but I do not think so. If it were not for sin, we should have no fault to find with our poor bodies. They are noble works of God, and are not in themselves the cause of sin. Adam in the garden of perfection, felt the body to be no encumbrance, nor if sin were absent should we have any fault to find with our flesh and blood. What, then, is it? I think the apostle calls the evil nature within him a body, first, in opposition to those who talk of the relics of corruption in a Christian. I have heard people say that there are relics, remainders and remnants of sin in a believer. Such men do not know much about themselves yet. Oh! it is not a bone, or a rag which is left; it is the whole body of sin that is there the whole of it, "from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot." Grace does not maim this body and cut away its members; it leaves it entire, although blessed be God, it crucifies it, nailing it to the cross of Christ. And again, I think he calls it a body because it is something tangible. We all know that we have a body; it is a thing we can feel, we know it is there. The new nature is a spirit subtle, and not easy to detect, I sometimes have to question myself as to whether it is there at all. But as for my old nature, that is a body, I can never find it difficult to recognize its existence, it is as apparent as flesh and bones. As I never doubt that I am in flesh and blood, so I never doubt but what I have sin within me. It is a body a thing which I can see and feel, and which, to my pain, is ever present with me."

Understand, then, that the old nature of the Christian is a body; it has in it a substance or, as Calvin puts it, it is a mass of corruption. It is not simply a shred, a remnant the cloth of the old garment, but the whole of it is there still. True, it is crushed beneath the foot of grace; it is cast out of its throne; but it is there, there in all its entireness, and in all its sad tangibility, a body of death. But why does he call it a body of death? Simply to express what an awful thing this sin is that remains in the heart. It is a body of death. I must use a figure, which is always appended to this text, and very properly so. It was the custom of ancient tyrants, when they wished to put men to the most fearful punishments, to tie a dead body to them, placing the two back to back; and there was the living man, with a dead body closely strapped to him, rotting, putrid, corrupting, and this he must drag with him wherever he went. Now, this is just what the Christian has to do. He has within him the new life; he has a living and undying principle, which the Holy Spirit has put within him, but he feels that every day he has to drag about with him this dead body, this body of death, a thing as loathsome, as hideous, as abominable to his new life, as a dead stinking carcase would be to a living man. Francis Quarles gives a picture at the beginning of one of his emblems, of a great skeleton in which a living man is encased. However quaint the fancy, it is not more singular than true. There is the old skeleton man, filthy, corrupt and abominable. He is a cage for the new principle which God has put in the heart. Consider a moment the striking language of our text, "The body of this death," it is death incarnate, death concentrated, death dwelling in the very temple of life. Did you ever think what an awful thing death is? The thought is the most abhorrent to human nature. You say you do not fear death, and very properly; but the reason why you do not fear death is because you look to a glorious immortality. Death in itself is a most frightful thing. Now, inbred sin has about it all the unknown terror, all the destructive force, and all the stupendous gloom of death. A poet would be needed to depict the conflict of life with death to describe a living soul condemned to walk through the black shades of confusion, and to bear incarnate death in its very bowels. But such is the condition of the Christian. As a regenerate man he is a firing, bright, immortal spirit; but he has to tread the shades of death. He has to do daily battle with all the tremendous powers of sin, which are as awful, as sublimely terrific, as even the power's of death and hell.

Upon referring to the preceding chapter, we find the evil principle styled "the old man." There is much meaning in that word "old." But let it suffice us to remark, that in age the new nature is not upon an equal footing with the corrupt nature. There are some here who are sixty years old in their humanity, who can scarce number two years in the life of grace. Now pause and meditate upon the warfare in the heart. It is the contest of an infant with a full-grown man, the wrestling of a babe with a giant. Old Adam, like some ancient oak, has thrust his roots into the depths of manhood; can the divine infant uproot him and cast him from his place? This is the work, this is the labor. From its birth the new nature begins the struggle, and it cannot cease from it until the victory be perfectly achieved. Nevertheless, it is the moving of a mountain, the drying up of an ocean the threshing of the hills, and who is sufficient for these things? The heaven-born nature needs, and will receive, the abundant help of its Author, or it would yield in the struggle, subdued beneath the superior strength of its adversary and crushed beneath his enormous weight.

Again, observe, that the old nature of man, which remains in the Christian is evil, and it cannot ever be anything else but evil, for we are told in this chapter that "in me," that is, in my flesh "there dwelleth no good thing." The old Adam-nature cannot be improved; it cannot be made better; it is hopeless to attempt it. You may do what you please with it, you may educate it, you may instruct it, and thus you may give it more instruments for rebellion, but you cannot make the rebel into the friend, you cannot turn the darkness into light; it is an enemy to God, and an enemy to God it ever must be. On the contrary, the new life which God has given us cannot sin. That is the meaning of a passage in John, where it is said, "The child of God sinneth not; he cannot sin, because he is born of God." The old nature is evil only evil, and that continually, the new nature is wholly good; it knows nothing of sin, except to hate it. Its contact with sin brings it pain and misery, and it cries out, "Woe is me that I dwell in Meshech, that I tabernacle in the tents of Kedar."

I have thus given you some little picture of the two natures. Let me again remind you that these two natures are essentially unchangeable. You cannot make the new nature which God has given you less divine; the old nature you cannot make less impure and earthly. Old Adam is a condemned thing. You may sweep the house, and the evil spirit may seem to go out of it, but he will come back again and bring with him seven other devils more wicked than himself. It is a leper's house, and the leprosy is in every stone from the foundation to the roof; there is no part sound. It is a garment spotted by the flesh; you may wash, and wash, and wash, but you shall never wash it clean; it were foolish to attempt it. Whilst on the other hand the new nature can never be tainted spotless, holy and pure, it dwells in our hearts; it rules and reigns there expecting the day when it shall cast out its enemy, and without a rival it shall be monarch in the heart of man for ever.

II. I have thus described the two combatants; we shall now come in the next place to THEIR BATTLE. There was never deadlier feud in all the world between nations than there is between the two principles, right and wrong. But right and wrong are often divided from one another by distance, and therefore they have a less intense hatred. Suppose an instance: right holds for liberty, therefore right hates the evil of slavery. But we do not so intensely hate slavery as we should do if we saw it before our eyes: then would the blood boil, when we saw our black brother, smitten by the cow-hide whip. Imagine a slaveholder standing here and smiting his poor slave until the red blood gushed forth in a river; can you conceive your indignation? Now it is distance which makes you feel this less acutely. The right forgets the wrong, because it is far away. But suppose now that right and wrong lived in the same house; suppose two such desperate enemies, cribbed, cabined, and confined within this narrow house, man; suppose the two compelled to dwell together, can you imagine to what a desperate pitch of fury these two would get with one another. The evil thing says, "I will turn thee out, thou intruder; I cannot be peaceful as I would, I cannot riot as I would, I cannot indulge just as I would; out with thee, I will never be content until I slay thee." "Nay," says the new born nature, "I will kill thee, and drive thee out. I will not suffer stick or stone of thee to remain. I have sworn war to the knife with thee; I have taken out the sword and cast away the scabbard, and will never rest till I can sing complete victory over thee, and totally eject thee from this house of mine." They are always at enmity wherever they are; they were never friends, and never can be. The evil must hate the good, and the good must hate the evil.

And mark although we might compare the enmity to the wolf and lamb, yet the new-born nature is not the lamb in all respects. It may be in its innocence and meekness, but it is not in its strength; for the new-born nature has all the omnipotence of God about it, whilst the old nature has all the strength of the evil one in it, which is a strength not easily to be exaggerated, but which we very frequently underestimate. These two things are ever desperately at enmity with one another. And even when they are both quiet they hate each other none the less. When my evil nature does not rise, still it hates the newborn nature, and when the new-born nature is inactive, it has nevertheless a thorough abhorrence of all iniquity. The one cannot endure the other, it must endeavor to thrust it forth. Nor do these at any time allow an opportunity to pass from being revenged upon one another. There are times when the old nature is very active, and then how will it ply all the weapons of its deadly armoury against the Christian. You will find yourselves at one time suddenly attacked with anger, and when you guard yourself against the hot temptation, on a sudden you will find pride rising, and you will begin to say in yourself; "Am I not a good man to have kept my temper down?" And the moment you thrust down your pride there will come another temptation, and lust will look out of the window of your eyes, and you desire a thing upon which you ought not to look, and ere you can shut your eyes upon the vanity, sloth in its deadly torpor surrounds you, and you give yourself up to its influence and cease to labor for God. And then when you bestir yourselves once more, you fled that in the very attempt to rouse yourself you have awakened your pride. Evil haunts you go where you may, or stand in what posture you choose. On the other hand the new nature will never lose an opportunity of putting down the old. As for the means of grace, the newborn nature will never rest satisfied unless it enjoys them. As for prayer, it will seek by prayer to wrestle with the enemy. It will employ faith, and hope, and love, the threatenings, the promises, providence, grace, and everything else to cast out the evil. Well," says one, "I don't find it so." Then I am afraid of you. If you do not hate sin so much that you do everything to drive it out, I am afraid you are not a living child of God. Antinomians like to hear you preach about the evil of the heart, but here is the fault with them, they do not like to be told that unless they hate that evil, unless they seek to drive it out and unless it is the constant disposition of their new-born nature to root it up, they are yet in their sins. Men who only believe their depravity, but do not hate it, are no further than the devil on the road to heaven. It is not my being corrupt that proves me a Christian, nor knowing I am corrupt, but that I hate my corruption. It is my agonizing death struggle with my corruptions that proves me to be a living child of God. These two natures will never cease to struggle so long as we are in this world. The old nature will never give up; it will never cry truce, it will never ask for a treaty to be made between the two. It will always strike as often as it can. When it lies still it will only be preparing for some future battle. The battle of Christian with Apollyon lasted three hours; but the battle of Christian with himself lasted all the way from the Wicket-gate to the River Jordan. The enemy within can never be driven out while we are here. Satan may sometimes be absent from us, and get such a defeat that he is glad to go howling back to his den, but old Adam abideth with us from the first even to the last. He was with us when we first believed in Jesus, and long ere that, and he will be with us till that moment when we shall leave our bones in the grave, our fears in the Jordan, and our sins in oblivion.

Once more observe, that neither of these two natures will be content in the fight without bringing in allies to assist. The evil nature has old relations, and in its endeavor to drive out the grace that is within, it sends off messengers to all its helpers. Like Cherdorlasmer, the King of Elam, it bringeth other kings with it, when it goeth out to battle. "Ah!" says old Adam, "I have friends in the pit." He sends a missive down to the depths, and willing allies come therefrom spirits from the vasty deep of hell; devils without number come up to the help of their brother. And then, not content with that, the flesh says: "Ah! I have friends in this world;" and then the world sends its fierce cohorts of temptation, such as the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. What a battle, when sin, Satan, and the world, make a dead-set upon the Christian at once. "Oh," says one, "it is a terrible thing to be a Christian." I assure you it is. It is one of the hardest things in the world to be a child of God; in fact, it is impossible, unless the Lord makes us his children, and keeps us so.

Well, what does the new nature do? When it sees all these enemies, it cries unto the Lord, and then the Lord sends it friends. First comes in to its help, Jehovah, in the everlasting counsel, and reveals to the heart its own interest in the secrets of eternity. Then comes Jesus with his blood. "Thou shalt conquer," says he; "I will make thee more than a conqueror through my death." And then appears the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. With such assistance, this new-born nature is more than a match for its enemies. God will sometimes leave that new nature alone, to let it know its own weakness; but it shall not be for long, lest it should sink in despair. Are you fighting with the enemy to-day, my dear Christian brethren? Are Satan, the flesh, and the world that hellish trinity all against you? Remember, there is a divine trinity for you. Fight on, though like Valiant-for-Truth, your blood runs from your hand and glues your sword to your arm. Fight on! for with you are the legions of heaven; God himself is with you; Jehovah Nissi is your banner, and Jehovah Rophi is the healer of your wounds. You shall overcome; for who can defeat Omnipotence, or trample divinity beneath his foot?

I have thus endeavored to describe the conflict; but understand me, it cannot be described. We must say, as Hart does in his hymn, when after singing the emotions of his soul, he says

"But, brethren, you can surely guess,

For you perhaps have felt the same."

If you could see a plain upon which a battle is fought, you would see how the ground is torn up by the wheels of the cannon, by the horse hoofs, and by the trampling of men. What desolation is where once the golden crops of harvest grew. How is the ground sodden with the blood of the slain. How frightful the result of this terrible struggle. But if you could see the believers' heart after a spiritual battle, you would find it just a counterpart of the battle-field as much cut up as the ground of the battle-field after the direst conflict that men or fiends have ever waged. For, think: we are combating man with himself; nay, more, man with the whole world; nay, more, man with hell; God with man, against man, the world and hell. What a fight is that! It were worth an angel's while to come from the remotest fields of ether to behold such a conflict.

III. We come now to notice THE WEARY COMBATANT. He lifts up his voice, and weeping he cries, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" It is the cry of a panting warrior. He has fought so long that he has lost his breath, and he draws it in again; he takes breath by prayer. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" He will not give up the conflict; he knows he cannot, and he dare not. That thought does not enter into his mind; but the conflict is so sore, the battle so furious, that he is almost defeated; he sits down to refresh himself, and thus he sighs out his soul; like the panting hart, longing for the water brook, he says, "O wretched man that I am." Nay, it is more than that. It is the cry of one who is fainting. He has fought till all his strength is spent, and he falls back into the arms of his Redeemer with this fainting gasp, "O wretched man that I am!" His strength has failed him; he is sorely beaten in the battle, he feels that without the help of God he is so totally defeated that he commences his own wail of defeat, "O wretched man that I am." And then he asks this question, "Who shall deliver me?" And there comes a voice from the Law, "I cannot and I will not." There comes a voice from Conscience, "I can make thee see the battle, but I cannot help thee in it." And then there comes a cry from old Human Nature, and that says, "Ah! none can deliver thee, I shall yet destroy thee; thou shalt fall by the hand of thine enemy; the house of David shall be destroyed, and Saul shall live and reign for ever." And the poor fainting soldier cries again, "Who shall deliver me?" It seems a hopeless case, and I believe that sometimes the true Christian may think himself hopelessly given over to the power of sin.

The wretchedness of Paul, I think, lay in two things, which are enough to make any man wretched. Paul believed the doctrine of human responsibility, and yet he felt the doctrine of human inability. I have heard people say sometimes "You tell the sinner that he cannot believe and repent without the help of the Holy Spirit, and yet you tell him that it is his duty to believe and repent. How are these two to be reconciled? We reply that they do not want any reconciliation; they are two truths of Holy Scripture, and we leave them to reconcile themselves, they are friends, and friends do not need any reconciliation. But what seems a difficulty as a matter of doctrine is clear as daylight as a matter of experience. I know it is my duty to be perfect, but I am conscious I cannot be. I know that every time I commit sin I am guilty, and yet I am quite certain that I must sin that my nature is such that I cannot help it. I feel that I am unable to get rid of this body of sin and death, and yet I know I ought to get rid of it. These two things are enough to make any man miserable to know that he is responsible for his sinful nature, and yet to know that he cannot get rid of it to know that he ought to keep it down, and yet to feel he cannot to know that it is his business to keep God's law perfectly, and walk in the commandments of the law blameless, and yet to know by sad experience that he is as unable to do so as he is to reverse the motion of the globe, or dash the sun from the center of the spheres. How will not these two things drive any man to desperation? The way in which some men avoid the dilemma, is by a denial of one of these truths. They say, "Well, it is true I am unable to cease from sin;" and then they deny their obligation to do so; they do not cry, "O wretched man that I am;" they live as they like, and say they cannot help it. On the other hand, there are some men who know they are responsible; but then they say, "Ay but I can cast off my sin," and these are tolerably happy. The Arminian and the hyper-Calvinist both of them get on very comfortably; but the man who believes these two doctrines, as taught in God's Word, that he is responsible for sin and yet that he is unable to get rid of it, I do not wonder that when he looks into himself he finds enough to make him sigh and cry, ever, to faintness and despair, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death."

And now says one, "Ah, I would be a Christian, if that is the way in which he faints it be is always to be fighting with himself; and even until he despairs of victory." Stop a moment. Let us complete the picture. This man is fainting; but he will be restored by-and-bye. Think not that he is hopelessly defeated, he falls to rise, he faints but to be revived afresh. I know a magic, which can awaken his sleeping hopes and shoot a thrill along the freezing current of his blood. Let us sound the promise in his ear, see how soon he revives. Let us put the cordial to his lips; see how he starts up and plays the man again. "I have been almost defeated" says he, "almost driven to despair. Rejoice not over me, O mine enemy; though I fall, yet shall I rise again." And he lets fly against him once more, shouting, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." So on he goes again, more than a conqueror, through him that has loved him.

IV. This brings me to this last point, that THE CHRISTIAN IS TO BE A CONQUEROR AT LAST. Do you think that we are for ever to be the drudges and the slaves of sin? Am I for ever to be the galley-slave of my own nature, to tug for freedom and never to escape? Am I always to have this dead man chained to my back, and sniff the pestiferous exhalations of his putrid body? No, no, no, that which is within my heart, is like a caged eagle; and I know that soon the bars which confine me shall be broken; the door of my cage shall be opened, and I shall mount with my eye upon the sun of glory, soaring upward, true to the line, moving neither to the right hand nor to the left, flying till I reach my eyrie in the everlasting rocks of God's eternal love. No, we that love the Lord are not for ever to dwell in Mesech. The dust may besmear our robes and filth may be upon our brow, and beggared may be our garment, but we shall not be so for ever. The day is coming when we shall rise and shake ourselves from the dust, and put on our beautiful garments. It is true we are now like Israel in Canaan. Canaan is full of enemies; but the Canaanites shall and must be driven out. Amalek shall be slain, Agag shall be hewn in pieces; our enemies shall, every one of them, be dispersed, and the whole land from Dan to Beersheba shall be the Lords. Christians, rejoice! You are soon to be perfect, you are soon to be free from sin, totally free from it, without one wrong inclination, one evil desire. You are soon to be as pure as the angels in light; nay, more, with your Master's garments on you are to be "holy as the holy one." Can you think of that? Is not that the very sum of heaven, the rapture of bliss, the sonnet of the hill-tops of glory that you are to be perfect? No temptation can reach you from eye, or ear, or hand; nor if the temptation could reach you would you be hurt by it; for there will be nothing in you that could in any way foster sin. It would be as when a spark falls upon an ocean, your holiness would quench it in a moment. Yes, washed in the blood of Jesus, afresh baptized with the Holy Spirit, you are soon to walk the golden streets, white-robed and white-hearted too, and perfect as your Maker, you are to stand before his throne, and sing his praises to eternity.

Now, soldiers of Christ, to arms again! Once more rush into the fight, you cannot be defeated; you must overcome. Though you faint a little, yet take courage; you shall conquer through the blood of the Lamb.

And now, turning aside for a minute, I shall conclude by making an observation or two to many now present. There are some here who say, "I am never disturbed in that fashion." Then I am sorry for you. I will tell you the reason of your false peace. You have not the grace of God in your hearts. If you had you would surely find this conflict within you. Do not despise the Christian because he is in the conflict, despise yourself because you are out of it. The reason why the devil lets you alone is, that he knows you are his. He does not need to trouble you much now; he will have time enough to give you your wages as the last. He troubles the Christian because he is afraid of losing him; he thinks that if he does not tease him here, he shall never have the chance to do it in eternity, so he will bite him, and bark at him while he may. That is why the Christian is vexed more then you are. As for you, you may well be without any pain, for dead men feel no blows. You may well be without prickings of conscience; for men that are corrupt are not likely to feel wounds, though you stab them from head to foot. I pity your condition, for the worm that dieth not is preparing to feed upon you; the eternal vulture of remorse shall soon wet his horrid beak with the blood of your soul. Tremble; for the fires of hell are hot and unquenchable, and the place of perdition is hideous beyond a madman's dream. Oh that you would think of your last end. The Christian may have an evil present, but he has a glorious future; but your future is the blackness of darkness for ever. I adjure you by the living God, you that fear not Christ, consider your ways. You and I must give an account for this morning's service. You are warned, men; you are warned. Take heed to yourselves, that ye think not this life to be everything. There is a world to come; there is "after death the judgment." If you fear not the Lord, there is after judgment eternal wrath and everlasting misery.

And now a word to those who are seeking Christ. "Ah!" says one, "sir, I have sought Christ, but I feel worse than I ever was in my life. Before I had any thoughts about Christ I felt myself to be good, but now I feel myself to be evil." It is all right, my friend; I am glad to hear you say so. When surgeons heal a patient's wound, they always take care to cut away the proud flesh, because the cure can never be radical while the proud flesh remains. The Lord is getting rid of your self-confidence and self-righteousness. He is just now revealing to your soul the deadly cancer which is festering within you. You are on the sure road to healing, if you are on the way to wounding. God wounds before he heals; he strikes a man dead in his own esteem before he makes him alive. "Ah," cries one, "but can I hope that I ever shall be delivered?" Yes, my brother, if you now look to Christ. I care not what your sin nor what your despair of heart; if you will only turn your eye to him who bled upon the tree, there is not only hope for you, but there is a certainty of salvation. I myself, while thinking over this subject, felt a horror of great darkness rush over my spirit, as I thought what danger I was in lest I should be defeated, and I could not get a glimpse of light into my burdened spirit, until I turned my eye, and saw my Master hanging on the tree. I saw the blood still flowing; faith laid hold upon the sacrifice, and I said, "This cross is the instrument of Jesu's victory, and shall be the means of mine." I looked to his blood; I remembered that I was triumphant in that blood, and I rose from my meditations, humbled, but yet rejoicing; cast down, but not in despair; looking for the victory. Do likewise. "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: believe that. You are an awakened, conscious and penitent sinner; therefore, he came to save you. Believe his word; trust him. Do nothing for your own salvation of yourself, but trust him to do it. Cast yourself simply and only on him; and, as this Bible is true, you shall not find the promise fail you "He that seeketh findeth; to him that knocketh it shall be opened."

May God help you, by giving you this new life within! May he help you to look to Jesus, and though long and hard be the conflict, sweet shall be the victory.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

The circumstances under which the epistle to the Romans was written gave occasion to the most thorough and comprehensive unfolding, not of the church, but of Christianity. No apostle had ever yet visited Rome. There was somewhat as yet lacking to the saints there; but even this was ordered of God to call forth from the Holy Ghost an epistle which more than any other approaches a complete treatise on the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, and especially as to righteousness.

Would we follow up the heights of heavenly truth, would we sound the depths of Christian experience, would we survey the workings of the Spirit of God in the Church, would we bow before the glories of the person of Christ, or learn His manifold offices, we must look elsewhere in the writings of the New Testament no doubt, but elsewhere rather than here.

The condition of the Roman saints called for a setting forth of the gospel of God; but this object, in order to be rightly understood and appreciated, leads the apostle into a display of the condition of man. We have God and man in presence, so to speak. Nothing can be more simple and essential. Although there is undoubtedly that profoundness which must accompany every revelation of God, and especially in connection with Christ as now manifested, still we have God adapting Himself to the very first wants of a renewed soul nay, even to the wretchedness of souls without God, without any real knowledge either of themselves or of Him. Not, of course, that the Roman saints were in this condition; but that God, writing by the apostle to them, seizes the opportunity to lay bare man's state as well as His own grace.

Romans 1:1-32. From the very first we have these characteristics of the epistle disclosing themselves. The apostle writes with the full assertion of his own apostolic dignity, but as a servant also. "Paul, a bondman of Jesus Christ" an apostle "called," not born, still less as educated or appointed of man, but an apostle "called," as he says "separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets." The connection is fully owned with that which had been from God of old. No fresh revelations from God can nullify those which preceded them; but as the prophets looked onward to what was coming, so is the gospel already come, supported by the past. There is mutual confirmation. Nevertheless, what is in nowise the same as what was or what will be. The past prepared the way, as it is said here, "which God had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, [here we have the great central object of God's gospel, even the person of Christ, God's Son,] which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (ver. 3). This last relation was the direct subject of the prophetic testimony, and Jesus had come accordingly. He was the promised Messiah, born King of the Jews.

But there was far more in Jesus. He was "declared," says the apostle, "to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" ( ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν , ver. 4). It was the Son of God not merely as dealing with the powers of the earth, Jehovah's King on the holy hill of Zion, but after a far deeper manner. For, essentially associated as He is with the glory of God the Father, the full deliverance of souls from the realm of death was His also. In this too we have the blessed connection of the Spirit (here peculiarly designated, for special reasons, "the Spirit of holiness"). That same energy of the Holy Ghost which had displayed itself in Jesus, when He walked in holiness here below, was demonstrated in resurrection; and not merely in His own rising from the dead, but in raising such at any time no doubt, though most signally and triumphantly displayed in His own resurrection.

The bearing of this on the contents and main doctrine of the epistle will appear abundantly by-and-by. Let me refer in passing to a few points more in the introduction, in order to link them together with that which the Spirit was furnishing to the Roman saints, as well as to show the admirable perfectness of every word that inspiration has given us. I do not mean by this its truth merely, but its exquisite suitability; so that the opening address commences the theme in hand, and insinuates that particular line of truth which the Holy Spirit sees fit to pursue throughout. To this then the apostle comes, after having spoken of the divine favour shown himself, both when a sinner, and now in his own special place of serving the Lord Jesus. "By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith." This was no question of legal obedience, although the law came from Jehovah. Paul's joy and boast were in the gospel of God. So therefore it addressed itself to the obedience of faith; not by this meaning practice, still less according to the measure of a man's duty, but that which is at the root of all practice faith-obedience obedience of heart and will, renewed by divine grace, which accepts the truth of God. To man this is the hardest of all obedience; but when once secured, it leads peacefully into the obedience of every day. If slurred over, as it too often is in souls, it invariably leaves practical obedience lame, and halt, and blind.

It was for this then that Paul describes himself as apostle. And as it is for obedience of faith, it was not in anywise restricted to the Jewish people "among all nations, for his (Christ's) name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ" (verses 5, 6). He loved even here at the threshold to show the breadth of God's grace. If he was called, so were they he an apostle, they not apostles but saints; but still, for them as for him, all flowed out of the same mighty love, of God. "To all that be at Rome, beloved of God, called saints" (ver. 7). To these then he wishes, as was his wont, the fresh flow of that source and stream of divine blessing which Christ has made to be household bread to us: "Grace and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 7). Then, from ver. 8, after thanking God through Jesus for their faith spoken of everywhere, and telling them of his prayers for them, he briefly discloses the desire of his heart about them his long-cherished hope according to the grace of the gospel to reach Rome his confidence in the love of God that through him some spiritual gift would be imparted to them, that they might be established, and, according to the spirit of grace which filled his own heart, that he too might be comforted together with them "by the mutual faith both of you and me" (vv. 11, 12). There is nothing like the grace of God for producing the truest humility, the humility that not only descends to the lowest level of sinners to do them good, but which is itself the fruit of deliverance from that self-love which puffs itself or lowers others. Witness the common joy that grace gives an apostle with saints be had never seen, so that even he should be comforted as well as they by their mutual faith. He would not therefore have them ignorant how they had lain on his heart for a visit (ver. 13). He was debtor both to the Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise; he was ready, as far as he was concerned, to preach the gospel to those that were at Rome also (ver. 14, 15). Even the saints there would have been all the better for the gospel. It was not merely "to those at Rome," but "to you that be at Rome." Thus it is a mistake to suppose that saints may not be benefited by a better understanding of the gospel, at least as Paul preached it. Accordingly he tells them now what reason he had to speak thus strongly, not of the more advanced truths, but of the good news. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (ver. 16).

Observe, the gospel is not simply remission of sins, nor is it only peace with God, but "the power of God unto salvation." Now I take this opportunity of pressing on all that are here to beware of contracted views of "salvation." Beware that you do not confound it with souls being quickened, or even brought into joy. Salvation supposes not this only, but a great deal more. There is hardly any phraseology that tends to more injury of souls in these matters than a loose way of talking of salvation. "At any rate he is a saved soul," we hear. "The man has not got anything like settled peace with God; perhaps he hardly knows his sins forgiven; but at least he is a saved soul." Here is an instance of what is so reprehensible. This is precisely what salvation does not mean; and I would strongly press it on all that hear me, more particularly on those that have to do with the work of the Lord, and of course ardently desire to labour intelligently; and this not alone for the conversion, but for the establishment and deliverance of souls. Nothing less, I am persuaded, than this full blessing is the line that God has given to those who have followed Christ without the camp, and who, having been set free from the contracted ways of men, desire to enter into the largeness and at the same time the profound wisdom of every word of God. Let us not stumble at the starting-point, but leave room for the due extent and depth of "salvation" in the gospel.

There is no need of dwelling now on "salvation" as employed in the Old Testament, and in some parts of the New, as the gospels and Revelation particularly, where it is used for deliverance in power or even providence and present things. I confine myself to its doctrinal import, and the full Christian sense of the word; and I maintain that salvation signifies that deliverance for the believer which is the full consequence of the mighty work of Christ, apprehended not, of course, necessarily according to all its depth in God's eyes, but at any rate applied to the soul in the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not the awakening of conscience, however real; neither is it the attraction of heart by the grace of Christ, however blessed this may be. We ought therefore to bear in mind, that if a soul be not brought into conscious deliverance as the fruit of divine teaching, and founded on the work of Christ, we are very far from presenting the gospel as the apostle Paul glories in it, and delights that it should go forth. "I am not ashamed," etc.

And he gives his reason: "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith." That is, it is the power of God unto salvation, not because it is victory (which at the beginning of the soul's career would only give importance to man even if possible, which it is not), but because it is "the righteousness of God." It is not God seeking, or man bringing righteousness. In the gospel there is revealed God's righteousness. Thus the introduction opened with Christ's person, and closes with God's righteousness. The law demanded, but could never receive righteousness from man. Christ is come, and has changed all. God is revealing a righteousness of His own in the gospel. It is God who now makes known a righteousness to man, instead of looking for any from man. Undoubtedly there are fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, and God values them I will not say from man, but from His saints; but here it is what, according to the apostle, God has for man. It is for the saints to learn, of course; but it is that which goes out in its own force and necessary aim to the need of man a divine righteousness, which justifies instead of condemning him who believes. It is "the power of God unto salvation." It is for the lost, therefore; for they it is who need salvation; and it is to save not merely to quicken, but to save; and this because in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.

Hence it is, as he says, herein revealed "from faith," or by faith. It is the same form of expression exactly as in the beginning of Romans 5:1-21 "being justified by faith" ( ἐκ πίστεως ). But besides this he adds "to faith." The first of these phrases, "from faith," excludes the law; the second, "to faith," includes every one that has faith within the scope of God's righteousness. Justification is not from works of law. The righteousness of God is revealed from faith; and consequently, if there be faith in any soul, to this it is revealed, to faith wherever it may be. Hence, therefore, it was in no way limited to any particular nation, such as those that had already been under the law and government of God. It was a message that went out from God to sinners as such. Let man be what he might, or where he might, God's good news was for man. And to this agreed the testimony of the prophet. "The just shall live by faith" (not by law). Even where the law was, not by it but by faith the just lived. Did Gentiles believe? They too should live. Without faith there is neither justice nor life that God owns; where faith is, the rest will surely follow.

This accordingly leads the apostle into the earlier portion of his great argument, and first of all in a preparatory way. Here we pass out of the introduction of the epistle. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness" (ver. 18). This is what made the gospel to be so sweet and precious, and, what is more, absolutely necessary, if he would escape certain and eternal ruin. There is no hope for man otherwise; for the gospel is not all that is now made known. Not only is God's righteousness revealed, but also His wrath. It is not said to be revealed in the gospel. The gospel means His glad tidings for man. The wrath of God could not possibly be glad tidings. It is true, it is needful for man to learn; but in nowise is it good news. There is then the solemn truth also of divine wrath. It is not yet executed. It is "revealed," and this too "from heaven." There is no question of a people on earth, and of God's wrath breaking out in one form or another against human evil in this life. The earth, or, at least, the Jewish nation, had been familiar with such dealings of God in times past. But now it is "the wrath of God from heaven;" and consequently it is in view of eternal things, and not of those that touch present life on the earth.

Hence, as God's wrath is revealed from heaven, it is against every form of impiety "against all ungodliness." Besides this, which seems to be a most comprehensive expression for embracing every sort and degree of human iniquity, we have one very specifically named. It is against the "unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." To hold the truth in unrighteousness would be no security. Alas! we know how this was in Israel, how it might be, and has been, in Christendom. God pronounces against the unrighteousness of such; for if the knowledge, however exact, of God's revealed mind was accompanied by no renewal of the heart, if it was without life towards God, all must be vain. Man is only so much the worse for knowing the truth, if he holds it ever so fast with unrighteousness. There are some that find a difficulty here, because the expression "to hold" means holding firmly. But it is quite possible for the unconverted to be tenacious of the truth, yet unrighteous in their ways; and so much the worse for them. Not thus does God deal with souls. If His grace attract, His truth humbles, and leaves no room for vain boasting and self-confidence. What He does is to pierce and penetrate the man's conscience. If one may so say, He thus holds the man, instead of letting the man presume that he is holding fast the truth. The inner man is dealt with, and searched through and through.

Nothing of this is intended in the class that is here brought before us. They are merely persons who plume themselves on their orthodoxy, but in a wholly unrenewed condition. Such men have never been wanting since the truth has shone on this world; still less are they now. But the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against them pre-eminently. The judgments of God will fall on man as man, but the heaviest blows are reserved for Christendom. There the truth is held, and apparently with firmness too. This, however, will be put to the test by-and-by. But for the time it is held fast, though in unrighteousness. Thus the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against (not only the open ungodliness of men, but) the orthodox unrighteousness of those that hold the truth in unrighteousness.

And this leads the apostle into the moral history of man the proof both of his inexcusable guilt, and of his extreme need of redemption. He begins with the great epoch of the dispensations of God (that is, the ages since the flood). We cannot speak of the state of things before the flood as a dispensation. There was a most important trial of man in the person of Adam; but after this, what dispensation was there? What were the principles of it? No man can tell. The truth is, those are altogether mistaken who call it so. But after the flood man as such was put under certain conditions the whole race. Man became the object, first, of general dealings of God under Noah; next, of His special ways in the calling of Abraham and of his family. And what led to the call of Abraham, of whom we hear much in the epistle to the Romans as elsewhere, was the departure of man into idolatry. Man despised at first the outward testimony of God, His eternal power and Godhead, in the creation above and around him (verses 19, 20). Moreover, He gave up the knowledge of God that had been handed down from father to son (ver. 21). The downfall of man, when he thus abandoned God, was most rapid and profound; and the Holy Spirit traces this solemnly to the end ofRomans 1:1-32; Romans 1:1-32 with no needless words, in a few energetic strokes summing up that which is abundantly confirmed (but in how different a manner!) by all that remains of the ancient world. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," etc. (verses 22-32.) Thus corruption not only overspread morals, but became an integral part of the religion of men, and had thus a quasi-divine sanction. Hence the depravity of the heathen found little or no cheek from conscience, because it was bound up with all that took the shape of God before their mind. There was no part of heathenism practically viewed now, so corrupting as that which had to do with the objects of its worship. Thus, the true God being lost, all was lost, and man's downward career becomes the most painful and humiliating object, unless it be, indeed, that which we have to feel where men, without renewal of heart, espouse in pride of mind the truth with nothing but unrighteousness.

In the beginning ofRomans 2:1-29; Romans 2:1-29 we have man pretending to righteousness. Still, it is "man" not yet exactly the Jew, but man who had profited, it might be, by whatever the Jew had; at the least, by the workings of natural conscience. But natural conscience, although it may detect evil, never leads one into the inward possession and enjoyment of good never brings the soul to God. Accordingly, in chapter 2 the Holy Spirit shows us man satisfying himself with pronouncing on what is right and wrong moralizing for others, but nothing more. Now God must have reality in the man himself. The gospel, instead of treating this as a light matter, alone vindicates God in these eternal ways of His, in that which must be in him who stands in relationship with God. Hence therefore, the apostle, with divine wisdom, opens this to us before the blessed relief and deliverance which the gospel reveals to us. In the most solemn way he appeals to man with the demand, whether he thinks that God will look complacently on that which barely judges another, but which allows the practice of evil in the man himself (Romans 2:1-3). Such moral judgments will, no doubt, be used to leave man without excuse; they can never suit or satisfy God.

Then the apostle introduces the ground, certainty, and character of God's judgment (verses 4-16). He "will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: to them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile."

It is not here a question of how a man is to be saved, but of God's indispensable moral judgment, which the gospel, instead of weakening asserts according to the holiness and truth of God. It will be observed therefore, that in this connection the apostle shows the place both of conscience and of the law, that God in judging will take into full consideration the circumstances and condition of every soul of man. At the same time he connects, in a singularly interesting manner, this disclosure of the principles of the eternal judgment of God with what he calls "my gospel." This also is a most important truth, my brethren, to bear in mind. The gospel at its height in no wise weakens but maintains the moral manifestation of what God is. The legal institutions were associated with temporal judgment. The gospel, as now revealed in the New Testament, has linked with it, though not contained in it, the revelation of divine wrath from heaven, and this, you will observe, according to Paul's gospel. It is evident, therefore, that dispensational position will not suffice for God, who holds to His own unchangeable estimate of good and evil, and who judges the more stringently according to the measure of advantage possessed.

But thus the way is now clear for bringing the Jew into the discussion. "But if [for so it should be read] thou art named a Jew," etc. (ver. 17.) It was not merely, that he had better light. He had this, of course, in a revelation that was from God; he had law; he had prophets; he had divine institutions. It was not merely better light in the conscience, which might be elsewhere, as is supposed in the early verses of our chapter; but the Jew's position was directly and unquestionably one of divine tests applied to man's estate. Alas! the Jew was none the better for this, unless there were the submission of his conscience to God. Increase of privileges can never avail without the soul's self-judgment before the mercy of God. Rather does it add to his guilt: such is man's evil state and will. Accordingly, in the end of the chapter, he shows that this is most true as applied to the moral judgment of the Jew; that uone so much dishonoured God as wicked Jews, their own Scripture attesting it; that position went for nothing in such, while the lack of it would not annul the Gentile's righteousness, which would indeed condemn the more unfaithful Israel; in short, that one must be a Jew inwardly to avail, and circumcision be of the heart, in spirit, not in letter, whose praise is of God, and not of men.

The question then is raised in the beginning ofRomans 3:1-31; Romans 3:1-31, If this be so, what is the superiority of the Jew? Where lies the value of belonging to the circumcised people of God? The apostle allows this privilege to be great, specially in having the Scriptures, but turns the argument against the boasters. We need not here enter into the details; but on the surface we see how the apostle brings all down to that which is of the deepest interest to every soul. He deals with the Jew from his own Scripture (verses 9-19). Did the Jews take the ground of exclusively having that word of God the law? Granted that it is so, at once and fully. To whom, then, did the law address itself? To those that were under it, to be sure. It pronounced on the Jew then. It was the boast of the Jews that the law spoke about them; that the Gentiles had no right to it, and were but presuming on what belonged to God's chosen people. The apostle applies this according to divine wisdom. Then your principle is your condemnation. What the law says, it speaks to those under it. What, then, is its voice? That there is none righteous, none that doeth good, none that understandeth. Of whom does it declare all this? Of the Jew by his own confession. Every mouth was stopped; the Jew by his own oracles, as the Gentile by their evident abominations, shown already. All the world was guilty before God.

Thus, having shown the Gentile in Romans 1:1-32 manifestly wrong, and hopelessly degraded to the last degree having laid bare the moral dilettantism of the philosophers, not one whit better in the sight of God, but rather the reverse having shown the Jew overwhelmed by the condemnation of the divine oracles in which he chiefly boasted, without real righteousness, and so much the more guilty for his special privileges, all now lies clear for bringing in the proper Christian message, the. gospel of God. "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets" (verses 20, 21).

Here, again, the apostle takes up what he had but announced in chapter 1 the righteousness of God. Let me call your attention again to its force. It is not the mercy of God., Many have contended that so it is, and to their own great loss, as well as to the weakening of the word of God. "Righteousness" never means mercy, not even the "righteousness of God." The meaning is not what was executed on Christ, but what is in virtue. of it. Undoubtedly divine judgment fell on Him; but this is not "the righteousness of God," as the apostle employs it in any part of his writings any more than here, though we know there could be no such thing as God's righteousness justifying the believer, if Christ had not borne the judgment of God. The expression means that righteousness which God can afford to display because of Christ's atonement. In short, it is what the words say "the righteousness of God," and this "by faith of Jesus Christ."

Hence it is wholly apart from the law, whilst witnessed to by the law and prophets; for the law with its types had looked onward to this new kind of righteousness; and the prophets had borne their testimony that it was at hand, but not then come. Now it was manifested, and not promised or predicted merely. Jesus had come and died; Jesus had been a propitiatory sacrifice; Jesus had borne the judgment of God because of the sins He bore. The righteousness of God, then, could now go forth in virtue of His blood. God was not satisfied alone. There is satisfaction; but the work of Christ goes a great deal farther. Therein God is both vindicated and glorified. By the cross God has a deeper moral glory than ever a glory that He thus acquired, if I may so say. He is, of course, the same absolutely perfect and unchangeable God of goodness; but His perfection has displayed itself in new and more glorious ways in Christ's death, in Him who humbled Himself, and was obedient even to the death of the cross.

God, therefore, having not the least hindrance to the manifestation of what He can be and is in merciful intervention on behalf of the worst of sinners, manifests it is His righteousness "by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe" (ver. 22). The former is the direction, and the latter the application. The direction is "unto all;" the application is, of course, only to "them that believe;" but it is to all them that believe. As far as persons are concerned, there is no hindrance; Jew or Gentile makes no difference, as is expressly said, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the [passing over or praeter-mission, not] remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (verses 23-26). There is no simple mind that can evade the plain force of this last expression. The righteousness of God means that God is just, while at the same time He justifies the believer in Christ Jesus. It is His righteousness, or, in other words, His perfect consistency with Himself, which is always involved in the notion of righteousness. He is consistent with Himself when He is justifying sinners, or, more strictly, all those who believe in Jesus. He can meet the sinner, but He justifies the believer; and in this, instead of trenching on His glory, there is a deeper revelation and maintenance of it than if there never had been sin or a sinner.

Horribly offensive as sin is to God, and inexcusable in the creature, it is sin which has given occasion to the astonishing display of divine righteousness in justifying believers. It is not a question of His mercy merely; for this weakens the truth immensely, and perverts its character wholly. The righteousness of God flows from His mercy, of course; but its character and basis is righteousness. Christ's work of redemption deserves that God should act as He does in the gospel. Observe again, it is not victory here; for that would give place to human pride. It is not a soul's overcoming its difficulties, but a sinner's submission to the righteousness of God. It is God Himself who, infinitely glorified in the Lord that expiated our sins by His one sacrifice, remits them now, not looking for our victory, nor as yet even in leading us on to victory, but by faith in Jesus and His blood. God is proved thus divinely consistent with Himself in Christ Jesus, whom He has set forth a mercy-seat through faith in His blood.

Accordingly the apostle says that boast and works are completely set aside by this principle which affirms faith, apart from deeds of law, to be the means of relationship with God (verses 27, 28). Consequently the door is as open to the Gentile as to the Jew. The ground taken by a Jew for supposing God exclusively for Israel was, that they had the law, which was the measure of what God claimed from man; and this the Gentile had not. But such thoughts altogether vanish now, because, as the Gentile was unquestionably wicked and abominable, so from the law's express denunciation the Jew was universally guilty before God. Consequently all turned, not on what man should be for God, but what God can be and is, as revealed in the gospel, to man. This maintains both the glory and the moral universality of Him who will justify the circumcision by faith, not law, and the uncircumcision through their faith, if they believe the gospel. Nor does this in the slightest degree weaken the principle of law. On the contrary, the doctrine of faith establishes law as nothing else can; and for this simple reason, that if one who is guilty hopes to be saved spite of the broken law, it must be at the expense of the law that condemns his guilt; whereas the gospel shows no sparing of sin, but the most complete condemnation of it all, as charged on Him who shed His blood in atonement. The doctrine of faith therefore, which reposes on the cross, establishes law, instead of making it void, as every other principle must (verses 27-31).

But this is not the full extent of salvation. Accordingly we do not hear of salvation as such in Romans 3:1-31. There is laid down the most essential of all truths as a groundwork of salvation; namely, expiation. There is the vindication of God in His ways with the Old Testament believers. Their sins had been passed by. He could not have remitted heretofore. This would not have been just. And the blessedness of the gospel is, that it is (not merely an exercise of mercy, but also) divinely just. It would not have been righteous in any sense to have remitted the sins, until they were actually borne by One who could and did suffer for them. But now they were; and thus God vindicated Himself perfectly as to the past. But this great work of Christ was not and could not be a mere vindication of God; and we may find it otherwise developed in various parts of Scripture, which I here mention by the way to show the point at which we are arrived. God's righteousness was now manifested as to the past sins He had not brought into judgment through His forbearance, and yet more conspicuously in the present time, when He displayed His justice in justifying the believer.

But this is not all; and the objection of the Jew gives occasion for the apostle to bring out a fuller display of what God is. Did they fall back on Abraham? "What shall we then say that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God." Did the Jew fancy that the gospel makes very light of Abraham, and of the then dealings of God? Not so, says the apostle. Abraham is the proof of the value of faith in justification before God. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. There was no law there or then; for Abraham died long before God spoke from Sinai. He believed God and His word, with special approval on God's part; and his faith was counted as righteousness (ver. 3). And this was powerfully corroborated by the testimony of another great name in Israel (David), in Psalms 32:1-11. "For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding-place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye."

In the same way the apostle disposes of all pretence on the score of ordinances, especially circumcision. Not only was Abraham justified without law, but apart from that great sign of mortification of the flesh. Although circumcision began with Abraham, manifestly it had nothing to do with his righteousness, and at best was but the seal of the righteousness of faith which he had in an uncircumcised state. It could not therefore be the source or means of his righteousness. All then that believe, though uncircumcised, might claim him as father, assured that righteousness will be reckoned to them too. And he is father of circumcision in the best sense, not to Jews, but to believing Gentiles. Thus the discussion of Abraham strengthens the case in behalf of the uncircumcised who believe, to the overthrow of the greatest boast of the Jew. The appeal to their own inspired account of Abraham turned into a proof of the consistency of God's ways in justifying by faith, and hence in justifying the uncircumcised no less than the circumcision.

But there is more than this in Romans 4:1-25 He takes up a third feature of Abraham's case; that is, the connection of the promise with resurrection. Here it is not merely the negation of law and of circumcision, but we have the positive side. Law works wrath because it provokes transgression; grace makes the promise sure to all the seed, not only because faith is open to the Gentile and Jew alike, but because God is looked to as a quickener of the dead. What gives glory to God like this? Abraham believed God when, according to nature, it was impossible for him or for Sarah to have a child. The quickening power of God therefore was here set forth, of course historically in a way connected with this life and a posterity on earth, but nevertheless a very just and true sign of God's power for the believer the quickening energy of God after a still more blessed sort. And this leads us to see not only where there was an analogy with those who believe in a promised Saviour, but also to a weighty difference. And this lies in the fact that Abraham believed God before he had the son, being fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able to perform. and therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. But we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. It is done. already. It is not here believing on Jesus, but on God who has proved what He is to us in raisin, from among the dead Him who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification (verses 13-25).

This brings out a most emphatic truth and special side of Christianity. Christianity is not a system of promise, but rather of promise accomplished in Christ. Hence it is essentially founded on the gift not only of a Saviour who would interpose, in the mercy of God, to bear our sins, but of One who is already revealed, and the work done and accepted, and this known in the fact that God Himself has interposed to raise Him from among the dead a bright and momentous thing to press on souls, as indeed we find the apostles insisting on it throughout the Acts. Were it merely Romans 3:1-31 there could not be full peace with God as there is. One might know a most real clinging to Jesus; but this would not set the heart at ease with God. The soul may feel the blood of Jesus to be a yet deeper want; but this alone does not give peace with God. In such a condition what has been found in Jesus is too often misused to make a kind of difference, so to speak, between the Saviour on the one hand, and God on the other ruinous always to the enjoyment of the full blessing of the gospel. Now there is no way in which God could lay a basis for peace with Himself more blessed than as He has done it. No longer does the question exist of requiring an expiation. That is the first necessity for the sinner with God. But we have had it fully in Romans 3:1-31. Now it is the positive power of God in raising up from the dead Him that was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justifying. The whole work is done.

The soul therefore now is represented for the first time as already justified and in possession of peace with God. This is a state of mind, and not the necessary or immediate fruit of Romans 3:1-31, but is based on the truth of Romans 4:1-25 as well as 3. There never can be solid peace with God without both. A soul may as truly, no doubt, be put into relationship with God be made very happy, it may be; but it is not what Scripture calls "peace with God." Therefore it is here for the first time that we find salvation spoken of in the grand results that are now brought before us in Romans 5:1-11. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." There is entrance into favour, and nothing but favour. The believer is not put under law, you will observe, but under grace, which is the precise reverse of law. The soul is brought into peace with God, as it finds its standing in the grace of God, and, more than that, rejoices in hope of the glory of God. Such is the doctrine and the fact. It is not merely a call then; but as we have by our Lord Jesus Christ our access into the favour wherein we stand, so there is positive boasting in the hope of the glory of God. For it may have been noticed from chapter 3 to chapter 5, that nothing but fitness for the glory of God will do now. It is not a question of creature-standing. This passed away with man when he sinned. Now that God has revealed Himself in the gospel, it is not what will suit man on earth, but what is worthy of the presence of the glory of God. Nevertheless the apostle does not expressly mention heaven here. This was not suitable to the character of the epistle; but the glory of God he does. We all know where it is and must be for the Christian.

The consequences are thus pursued; first, the general place of the believer now, in all respects, in relation to the past, the present, and the future. His pathway follows; and he shows that the very troubles of the road become a distinct matter of boast. This was not a direct and intrinsic effect, of course, but the result of spiritual dealing for the soul. It was the Lord giving us the profit of sorrow, and ourselves bowing to the way and end of God in it, so that the result of tribulation should be rich and fruitful experience.

Then there is another and crowning part of the blessing: "And not only so, but also boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation." It is not only a blessing in its own direct character, or in indirect though real effects, but the Giver Himself is our joy, and boast, and glory. The consequences spiritually are blessed to the soul; how much more is it to Teach the source from which all flows! This, accordingly, is the essential spring of worship. The fruits of it are not expanded here; but, in point of fact, to joy in God is necessarily that which makes praise and adoration to be the simple and spontaneous exercise of the heart. In heaven it will fill us perfectly; but there is no more perfect joy there, nor anything. higher, if so high, in this epistle.

At this point we enter upon a most important part of the epistle, on which we must dwell for a little. It is no longer a question of man's guilt, but of his nature. Hence the apostle does not, as in the early chapters of this epistle, take up our sins, except as proofs and symptoms of sin. Accordingly, for the first time, the Spirit of God fromRomans 5:12; Romans 5:12 traces the mature of man to the head of the race. This brings in the contrast with the other Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we have here not as One bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, but as the spring and chief of a new family. Hence, as is shown later in the chapter, Adam is a head characterized by disobedience, who brought in death, the just penalty of sin; as on the other hand we have Him of whom he was the type, Christ, the obedient man, who has brought in righteousness, and this after a singularly blessed sort and style "justification of life." Of it nothing has been heard till now. We have had justification, both by blood and also in virtue of Christ's resurrection. But "justification of life" goes farther, though involved in the latter, than the end of Romans 4:1-25; for now we learn that in the gospel there is not only a dealing with the guilt of those that are addressed in it; there is also a mighty work of God in the presenting the man in a new place before God, and in fact, too, for his faith, clearing him from all the consequences in which he finds himself as a man in the flesh here below.

It is here that you will find a great failure of Christendom as to this. Not that any part of the truth has escaped: it is the fatal brand of that "great house" that even the most elementary truth suffers the deepest injury; but as to this truth, it seems unknown altogether. I hope that brethren in Christ will bear with me if I press on them the importance of taking good heed to it that their souls are thoroughly grounded in this, the proper place of the Christian by Christ's death and resurrection. It must not be, assumed too readily. There is a disposition continually to imagine that what is frequently spoken of must be understood; but experience will soon show that this is not the case. Even those that seek a place of separation to the Lord outside that which is now hurrying on souls to destruction are, nevertheless, deeply affected by the condition of that Christendom in which we find ourselves.

Here, then, it is not a question at all of pardon or remission. First of all the apostle points out that death has come in, and that this was no consequence of law, but before it. Sin was in the world between Adam and Moses, when the law was not. This clearly takes in man, it will be observed; and this is his grand point now. The contrast of Christ with Adam takes in man universally as well as the Christian; and man in sin, alas! was true, accordingly, before the law, right through the law, and ever since the law. The apostle is therefore plainly in presence of the broadest possible grounds of comparison, though we shall find more too.

But the Jew might argue that it was an unjust thing in principle this gospel, these tidings of which the apostle was so full; for why should one man affect many, yea, all? "Not so," replies the apostle. Why should this be so strange and incredible to you? for on your own showing, according to that word to which we all bow, you must admit that one man's sin brought in universal moral ruin and death. Proud as you may be of that which distinguishes you, it is hard to make sin and death peculiar to you, nor can you connect them even with the law particularly: the race of man is in question, and not Israel alone. There is nothing that proves this so convincingly as the book of Genesis; and the apostle, by the Spirit of God, calmly but triumphantly summons the Jewish Scriptures to demonstrate that which the Jews were so strenuously denying. Their own Scriptures maintained, as nothing else could, that all the wretchedness which is now found in the world, and the condemnation which hangs over the race, is the fruit of one man, and indeed of one act.

Now, if it was righteous in God (and who will gainsay it?) to deal with the whole posterity of Adam as involved in death because of one, their common father, who could deny the consistency of one man's saving? who would defraud God of that which He delights in the blessedness of bringing in deliverance by that One man, of whom Adam was the image? Accordingly, then, he confronts the unquestionable truth, admitted by every Israelite, of the universal havoc by one man everywhere with the One man who has brought in (not pardon only, but, as we shall find) eternal life and liberty liberty now in the free gift of life, but a liberty that will never cease for the soul's enjoyment until it has embraced the very body that still groans, and this because of the Holy Ghost who dwells in it.

Here, then, it is a comparison of the two great heads Adam and Christ, and the immeasurable superiority of the second man is shown. That is, it is not merely pardon of past sins, but deliverance from sin, and in due time from all its consequences. The apostle has come now to the nature. This is the essential point. It is the thing which troubles a renewed conscientious soul above all, because of his surprise at finding the deep evil of the flesh and its mind after having proved the great grace of God in the gift of Christ. If I am thus pitied of God, if so truly and completely a justified man, if I am really an object of God's eternal favour, how can I have such a sense of continual evil? why am I still under bondage and misery from the constant evil of my nature, over which I seem to have no power whatever? Has God then no delivering power from this? The answer is found in this portion of our epistle (that is, from the middle of chapter 5).

Having shown first, then, the sources and the character of the blessing in general as far as regards deliverance, the apostle sums up the result in the end of the chapter: "That as sin hath reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life," the point being justification of life now through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is applied in the two chapters that follow. There are two things that might make insuperable difficulty: the one is the obstacle of sin in the nature to practical holiness; the other is the provocation and condemnation of the law. Now the doctrine which we saw asserted in the latter part ofRomans 5:1-21; Romans 5:1-21 is applied to both. First, as to practical holiness, it is not merely that Christ has died for my sins, but that even in the initiatory act of baptism the truth set forth there is that I am dead. It is not, as in Ephesians 2:1-22, dead in sins, which would be nothing to the purpose. This is all perfectly true true of a Jew as of a pagan true of any unrenewed man that never heard of a Saviour. But what is testified by Christian baptism is Christ's death. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?" Thereby is identification with His death. "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." The man who, being baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or Christian baptism, would assert any license to sin because it is in his nature, as if it were therefore an inevitable necessity, denies the real and evident meaning of his baptism. That act denoted not even the washing away of our sins by the blood of Jesus, which would not apply to the case, nor in any adequate way meet the question of nature. What baptism sets forth is more than that, and is justly found, not in Romans 3:1-31, but inRomans 6:1-23; Romans 6:1-23. There is no inconsistency in Ananias's word to the apostle Paul "wash away thy sins, calling upon the name of the Lord." There is water as well as blood, and to that, not to this, the washing here refers. But there is more, which Paul afterwards insisted on. That was said to Paul, rather than what was taught by Paul. What the apostle had given him in fulness was the great truth, however fundamental it may be, that I am entitled, and even called on in the name of the Lord Jesus, to know that I am dead to sin; not that I must die, but that I am dead that my baptism means nothing less than this, and is shorn of its most emphatic point if limited merely to Christ's dying for my sins. It is not so alone; but in His death, unto which I am baptized, I am dead to sin. And "how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" Hence, then, we find that the whole chapter is founded on this truth. "Shall we sin," says he, proceeding yet farther (ver. 15), "because we are not under the law, but under grace?" This were indeed to deny the value of His death, and of that newness of life we have in Him risen, and a return to bondage of the worst description.

In Romans 7:1-25 we have the subject of the law discussed for practice as well as in principle, and there again meet with the same weapon of tried and unfailing temper. It is no longer blood, but death Christ's death and resurrection. The figure of the relationship of husband and wife is introduced in order to make the matter plain. Death, and nothing short of it, rightly dissolves the bond. We accordingly are dead, says he, to the law; not (as no doubt almost all of us know) that the law dies, but that we are dead to the law in the death of Christ. Compare verse 6 (where the margin, not the text, is substantially correct) with verse 4. Such is the principle. The rest of the chapter (7-25) is an instructive episode, in which the impotence and the misery of the renewed mind which attempts practice under law are fully argued out, till deliverance (not pardon) is found in Christ.

Thus the latter portion of the chapter is not doctrine exactly, but the proof of the difficulties of a soul who has not realised death to the law by the body of Christ. Did this seem to treat the law that condemned as an evil thing? Not so, says the apostle; it is because of the evil of the nature, not of the law. The law never delivers; it condemns and kills us. It was meant to make sin exceeding sinful. Hence, what he is here discussing is not remission of sins, but deliverance from sin. No wonder, if souls confound the two things together, that they never know deliverance in practice. Conscious deliverance, to be solid according to God, must be in the line of His truth. In vain will you preach Romans 3:1-31, or even 4 alone, for souls to know themselves consciously and holily set free.

From verse 14 there is an advance. There we find Christian knowledge as to the matter introduced; but still it is the knowledge of one who is not in this state pronouncing on one who is. You must carefully guard against the notion of its being a question of Paul's own experience, because he says, "I had not known," "I was alive," etc. There is no good reason for such an assumption, but much against it. It might be more or less any man's lot to learn. It is not meant that Paul knew nothing of this; but that the ground of inference, and the general theory built up, are alike mistaken. We have Paul informing us that he transfers sometimes in a figure to himself that which was in no wise necessarily his own experience, and perhaps had not been so at any time. But this may be comparatively a light question. The great point is to note the true picture given us of a soul quickened, but labouring and miserable under law, not at all consciously delivered. The last verses of the chapter, however, bring in the deliverance not yet the fulness of it, but the hinge, so to speak. The discovery is made that the source of the internal misery was that the mind, though renewed, was occupied with the law as a means of dealing with, flesh. Hence the very fact of being renewed makes one sensible of a far more intense misery than ever, while there is no power until the soul looks right outside self to Him who is dead and risen, who has anticipated the difficulty, and alone gives the full answer to all wants.

Romans 8:1-39 displays this comforting truth in its fulness. From the first verse we have the application of the dead and risen Christ to the soul, till in verse 11 we see the power of the Holy Ghost, which brings the soul into this liberty now, applied by-and-by to the body, when there will be the complete deliverance. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." A wondrous way, but most blessed! And there (for such was the point) it was the complete condemnation of this evil thing, the nature in its present state, so as, nevertheless, to set the believer as before God's judgment free from itself as well as its consequences. This God has wrought in Christ. It is not in any degree settled as to itself by His blood. The shedding of His blood was absolutely necessary: without that precious expiation all else had been vain and impossible. But there is much more in Christ than that to which too many souls restrict themselves, not less to their own loss than to His dishonour. God has condemned the flesh. And here it may be repeated that it is no question of pardoning the sinner, but of condemning the fallen nature; and this so as to give the soul both power and a righteous immunity from all internal anguish about it. For the truth is that God has in Christ condemned sin, and this for sin definitely; so that He has nothing more to do in condemnation of that root of evil. What a title, then, God gives me now in beholding Christ, no longer dead but risen, to have it settled before my soul that I am in Him as He now is, where all questions are closed in peace and joy! For what remains unsolved by and in Christ? Once it was far otherwise. Before the cross there hung out the gravest question that ever was raised, and it needed settlement in this world; but in Christ sin is for ever abolished for the believer; and this not only in respect of what He has done, but in what He is. Till the cross, well might a converted soul be found groaning in misery at each fresh discovery of evil in himself. But now to faith all this is gone not lightly, but truly in the sight of God; so that he may live on a Saviour that is risen from the dead as his new life.

Accordingly Romans 8:1-39 pursues in the most practical manner the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. First of all, the groundwork of it is laid in the first four verses, the last of them leading into every-day walk. And it is well for those ignorant of it to know that here, in verse 4, the apostle speaks first of "walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." The latter clause in the first verse of the authorised version mars the sense. In the fourth verse this could not be absent; in the first verse it ought not to be present. Thus the deliverance is not merely for the joy of the soul, but also for strength in our walking after the Spirit, who has given and found a nature in which He delights, communicating withal His own delight in Christ, and making obedience to be the joyful service of the believer. The believer, therefore, unwittingly though really, dishonours the Saviour, if he be content to walk short of this standard and power; he is entitled and called to walk according to his place, and in the confidence of his deliverance in Christ Jesus before God.

Then the domains of flesh and Spirit are brought before us: the one characterized by sin and death practically now; the other by life, righteousness, and peace, which is, as we saw, to be crowned finally by the resurrection of these bodies of ours. The Holy Ghost, who now gives the soul its consciousness of deliverance from its place in Christ, is also the witness that the body too, the mortal body, shall be delivered in its time. "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by [or because of] his Spirit that dwelleth in you."

Next, he enters upon another branch of the truth the Spirit not as a condition contrasted with flesh (these two, as we know, being always contrasted in Scripture), but as a power, a divine person that dwells in and bears His witness to the believer. His witness to our spirit is this, that we are children of God. But if children, we are His heirs. This accordingly leads, as connected with the deliverance of the body, to the inheritance we are to possess. The extent is what God Himself, so to speak, possesses the universe of God, whatever will be under Christ: and what will not? As He has made all, so He is heir of all. We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.

Hence the action of the Spirit of God in a double point of view comes before us. As He is the spring of our joy, He is the power of sympathy in our sorrows, and the believer knows both. The faith of Christ has brought divine joy into his soul; but, in point of fact, he is traversing a world of infirmity, suffering, and grief. Wonderful to think the Spirit of God associates Himself with us in it all, deigning to give us divine feelings even in our poor and narrow hearts. This occupies the central part of the chapter, which then closes with the unfailing and faithful power of God for us in all our experiences here below. As He has given us through the blood of Jesus full remission, as we shall be saved by this life, as He has made us know even now nothing short of present conscious deliverance from every whit of evil that belongs to our very nature, as we have the Spirit the earnest of the glory to which we are destined, as we are the vessels of gracious sorrow in the midst of that from which we are not yet delivered but shall be, so now we have the certainty that, whatever betide, God is for us, and that nothing shall separate us from His love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Then, in Romans 9:1-33; Romans 10:1-21; Romans 11:1-36, the apostle handles a difficulty serious to any mind, especially to the Jew, who might readily feel that all this display of grace in Christ to the Gentile as much as to the Jew by the gospel seems to make very cheap the distinctive place of Israel as given of God. If the good news of God goes out to man, entirely blotting out the difference between a Jew and a Gentile, what becomes of His special promises to Abraham and to his seed? What about His word passed and sworn to the fathers? The apostle shows them with astonishing force at the starting-point that he was far from slighting their privileges. He lays down such a summary as no Jew ever gave since they were a nation. He brings out the peculiar glories of Israel according to the depth of the gospel as he knew and preached it; at least, of His person who is the object of faith now revealed. Far from denying or obscuring what they boasted of, he goes beyond them "Who are Israelites," says he, "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed for ever." Here was the very truth that every Jew, as such, denied. What blindness! Their crowning glory was precisely what they would not hear of. What glory so rich as that of the Christ Himself duly appreciated? He was God over all blessed for ever, as well as their Messiah. Him who came in humiliation, according to their prophets, they might despise; but it was vain to deny that the same prophets bore witness to His divine glory. He was Emmanuel, yea, the Jehovah, God of Israel. Thus then, if Paul gave his own sense of Jewish privileges, there was no unbelieving Jew that rose up to his estimate of them.

But now, to meet the question that was raised, they pleaded the distinguishing promises to Israel. Upon what ground? Because they were sons of Abraham. But how, argues he, could this stand, seeing that Abraham had another son, just as much his child as Isaac? What did they say to Ishmaelites as joint-heirs? They would not hear of it. No, they cry, it is in Isaac's seed that the Jew was called. Yes, but this is another principle. If in Isaac only, it is a question of the seed, not that was born, but that was called. Consequently the call of God, and not the birth simply makes the real difference. Did they venture to plead that it must be not only the same father, but the same mother? The answer is, that this will not do one whit better; for when we come down to the next generation, it is apparent that the two sons of Isaac were sons of the same mother; nay, they were twins. What could be conceived closer or more even than this? Surely if equal birth-tie could ensure community of blessing if a charter from God depended on being sprung from the same father and mother, there was no case so strong, no claim so evident, as that of Esau to take the same rights as Jacob. Why would they not allow such a pretension? Was it not sure and evident that Israel could not take the promise on the ground of mere connection after the flesh? Birthright from the same father would let in Ishmael on the one hand, as from both parents it would secure the title of Esau on the other. Clearly, then, such ground is untenable. In point of fact, as he had hinted before, their true tenure was the call of God, who was free, if He pleased, to bring in other people. It became simply a question whether, in fact, God did call Gentiles, or whether He had revealed such intentions.

But he meets their proud exclusiveness in another way. He shows that, on the responsible ground of being His nation, they were wholly ruined. If the first book in the Bible showed that it was only the call of God that made Israel what they were, its second book as clearly proved that all was over with the called people, had it not been for the mercy of God. They set up the golden calf, and thus cast off the true God, their God, even in the desert. Did the call of God. then, go out to Gentiles? Has He mercy only for guilty Israel? Is there no call, no mercy, of God for any besides?

Hereupon he enters upon the direct proofs, and first cites Hosea as a witness. That early prophet tells Israel, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi were of awful import for Israel; but, in presence of circumstances so disastrous, there should be not merely a people but sons of the living God, and then should Judah and Israel be gathered as one people under one head. The application of this was more evident to the Gentile than to the Jew. Compare Peter's use in1 Peter 2:10; 1 Peter 2:10. Finally he brings in Isaiah, showing that, far from retaining their blessing as an unbroken people, a remnant alone would be saved. Thus one could not fail to see these two weighty inferences: the bringing in to be God's sons of those that had not been His people, and the judgment and destruction of the great mass of His undoubted people. Of these only a remnant would be saved. On both sides therefore the apostle is meeting the grand points he had at heart to demonstrate from their own Scriptures.

For all this, as he presses further, there was the weightiest reason possible. God is gracious, but holy; He is faithful, but righteous. The apostle refers to Isaiah to show that God would "lay in Zion a stumbling-stone." It is in Zion that He lays it. It is not among the Gentiles, but in the honoured centre of the polity of Israel. There would be found a stumblingstone there. What was to be the stumbling-stone? Of course, it could hardly be the law: that was the boast of Israel. What was it? There could be but one satisfactory answer. The stumbling-stone was their despised and rejected Messiah. This was the key to their difficulties this alone, and fully explains their coming ruin as well as God's solemn warnings.

In the next chapter (Romans 10:1-21) he carries on the subject, showing in the most touching manner his affection for the people. He at the same time unfolds the essential difference between the righteousness of faith and that of law. He takes their own books, and proves from one of them (Deuteronomy) that in the ruin of Israel the resource is not going into the depths, nor going up to heaven. Christ indeed did both; and so the word was nigh them, in their mouth and in their heart. It is not doing, but believing; therefore it is what is proclaimed to them, and what they receive and believe. Along with this he gathers testimonies from more than one prophet. He quotes from Joel, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. He quotes also from Isaiah "Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed." And mark the force of it whosoever." The believer, whosoever he might be, should not be ashamed. Was it possible to limit this to Israel? But more than this "Whosoever shall call." There. is the double prophecy. Whosoever believed should not be ashamed; whosoever called should be saved. In both parts, as it may be observed, the door is opened to the Gentile.

But then again he intimates that the nature of the gospel is involved in the publishing of the glad tidings. It is not God having an earthly centre, and the peoples doming up to worship the Lord in Jerusalem. It is the going forth of His richest blessing. And where? How far? To the limits of the holy land? Far beyond. Psalms 19:1-14 is used in the most beautiful manner to insinuate that the limits are the world. Just as the sun in the heavens is not for one people or land alone, no more is the gospel. There is no language where their voice is not heard. "Yea verily, their sound went forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." The gospel goes forth universally. Jewish pretensions were therefore disposed of; not here by new and fuller revelations, but by this divinely skilful employment of their own Old Testament Scriptures.

Finally he comes to two other witnesses; as from the Psalms, so now from the law and the prophets. The first is Moses himself. Moses saith, "I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people," etc. How could the Jews say that this meant themselves? On the contrary, it was the Jew provoked by the Gentiles "By them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you." Did they deny that they were a foolish nation? Be it so then; it was a foolish nation by which Moses declared they should be angered. But this does not content the apostle, or rather the Spirit of God; for he goes on to point out that Isaiah "is very bold" in a similar way; that is, there is no concealing the truth of the matter. Isaiah says: "I was found of them who sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me." The Jews were the last in the world to take such ground as this. It was undeniable that the Gentiles did not seek the Lord, nor ask after Him; and the prophet says that Jehovah was found of them that sought Him not, and was made manifest to them that asked not after Him. Nor is there only the manifest call of the Gentiles in this, but with no less clearness there is the rejection, at any rate for a time, of proud Israel. "But unto Israel he saith, All day long have I stretched out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people."

Thus the proof was complete. The Gentiles the despised heathen were to be brought in; the self-satisfied Jews are left behind, justly and beyond question, if they believed the law and the prophets.

But did this satisfy the apostle? It was undoubtedly enough for present purposes. The past history of Israel was sketched inRomans 9:1-33; Romans 9:1-33; the present more immediately is before us inRomans 10:1-21; Romans 10:1-21. The future must be brought in by the grace of God; and this he accordingly gives us at the close of Romans 11:1-36. First, he raises the question, "Has God cast away his people?" Let it not be! Was he not himself, says Paul, a proof to the contrary? Then he enlarges, and points out that there is a remnant of grace in the worst of times. If God had absolutely cast away His people, would there be such mercy? There would be no remnant if justice took its course. The remnant proves, then, that even under judgment the rejection of Israel is not complete, but rather a pledge of future favour. This is the first ground.

The second plea is not that the rejection of Israel is only partial, however extensive, but that it is also temporary, and not definitive. This is to fall back on a principle he had already used. God was rather provoking Israel to jealousy by the call of the Gentiles. But if it were so, He had not done with them. Thus the first argument shows that the rejection was not total; the second, that it was but for a season.

But there is a third. Following up with the teaching of the olive-tree, he carries out the same thought of a remnant that abides on their own stock, and points to a re-instatement of the nation, And I would just observe by the way, that the Gentile cry that no Jew ever accepts the gospel in truth is a falsehood. Israel is indeed the only people of whom there is always a portion that believe. Time was when none of the English, nor French, nor of any other nation believed in the Saviour. There never was an hour since Israel's existence as a nation that God has not had His remnant of them. Such has been their singular fruit of promise; such even in the midst of all their misery it is at present. And as that little remnant is ever sustained by the grace of God, it is the standing pledge of their final blessedness through His mercy, whereon the apostle breaks out into raptures of thanksgiving to God. The day hastens when the Redeemer shall come to Zion. He shall come, says one Testament, out of Zion. He shall come to Zion, says the other. In both Old and New it is the same substantial testimony. Thither He shall come, and thence, go forth. He shall own that once glorious seat of royalty in Israel. Zion shall yet behold her mighty, divine, but once despised Deliverer; and when He thus comes, there will be a deliverance suited to His glory. All Israel shall be saved. God, therefore, had not cast off His people, but was employing the interval of their slip from their place, in consequence of their rejection of Christ, to call the Gentiles in sovereign mercy, after which Israel as a whole should be saved. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first liven to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever."

The rest of the epistle takes up the practical consequences of the great doctrine of God's righteousness, which had been now shown to be supported by, and in no wise inconsistent with, His promises to Israel. The whole history of Israel, past, present, and future falls in with, although quite distinct from, that which he had been expounding. Here I shall be very brief.

Romans 12:1-21 looks at the mutual duties of the saints. Romans 13:1-14; Romans 13:1-14 urges their duties towards what was outside them, more particularly to the powers that be, but also to men in general. Love is the great debt that we owe, which never can be paid, but which we should always be paying. The chapter closes with the day of the Lord in its practical force on the Christian walk. In Romans 14:1-23 and the beginning ofRomans 15:1-33; Romans 15:1-33 we have the delicate theme of Christian forbearance in its limits and largeness. The weak are not to judge the strong, and the strong are not to despise the weak. These things are matters of conscience, and depend much for their solution on the degree to which souls have attained. The subject terminates with the grand truth which must never be obscured by details that we are to receive, one another, as Christ has received us, to the glory of God. In the rest of chapter 15 the apostle dwells on the extent of his apostleship, renews his expression of the thought and hope of visiting Rome, and at the same time shows how well he remembered the need of the poor at Jerusalem. Romans 16:1-27; Romans 16:1-27 brings before us in the most. instructive and interesting manner the links that grace practically forms and maintains between the saints of God. Though he had never visited Rome, many of them were known personally. It is exquisite the delicate love with which he singles out distinctive features in each of the saints, men and women, that come before him. Would that the Lord would give us hearts to remember, as well as eyes to see, according to His own grace! Then follows a warning against those who bring in stumbling-blocks and offences. There is evil at work, and grace does not close the eye to danger; at the same time it is never under the pressure of the enemy, and there is the fullest confidence that the God of peace will break the power of Satan under the feet of the saints shortly.

Last of all, the apostle links up this fundamental treatise of divine righteousness in its doctrine, its dispensational bearings, and its exhortations to the walk of Christians, with higher truth, which it would not have been suitable then to bring out; for grace considers the state and the need of the saints. True ministry gives out not merely truth, but suited truth to the saints. At the same time the apostle does allude to that mystery which was not yet divulged at least, in this epistle; but he points from the foundations of eternal truth to those heavenly heights that were reserved for other communications in due time.