In order to understand what Paul is saying in this passage, we must put away our preconceived ideas. Let us look at this passage within its context. Having shown us the exceeding sinfulness of mankind through the law, Paul makes this concluding statement in Romans 7:14 NKJV: “For we know that the law is spiritual.” Paul has already mentioned in verse 12 that the law is holy, good and just, therefore it is spiritual. It is in harmony with the nature of God because God is a Spirit. He continues: “But I am carnal, sold under sin.” (NKJV) When we dealt with the universal sin problem, Paul concluded, in Romans 3:9, that both Jews and Gentiles are under sin. Then, in Romans 5:19, he told us that the reason we are under sin, dominated by sin, is because, when Adam fell, he made all of his children, his posterity, sinners. We were made sinners, sinful, by the Fall. Now, Paul says that, while the law is spiritual, this is not true about us. He has proven it from every conceivable point. We are carnal, sold as slaves under sin. We have no freedom to do righteousness apart from grace. We may choose and want to do what is good but this is impossible, from the true, godly point of view, because of our sinful nature. We will look at the word “I” in this passage and what Paul means when he says, “I am carnal. I am sold under sin.” He is not referring to himself only. The personal pronoun “I” here is really a generic term. It refers to anybody. But Paul does have a specific people in mind when he uses the word “I” here. In Romans 7:1, Paul, in brackets, makes a statement: “For I speak to those who know the law.” He has the Jews in mind in this statement. The Jews, Jewish Christian believers, were insisting that the law is still binding on the believer as a requirement for salvation. This was the big issue in Acts 15:10 that led to the first Jerusalem Council. The disciples, especially Peter, said: “Why are you placing a burden on the Gentiles, a burden that neither we nor our fathers could carry?” Sinful man and the holy law are incompatible because we, through the Fall, have been sold as slaves to sin. A slave needs a deliverer. A slave cannot liberate himself. He is incapable of doing it. Here, Paul is proving a point which the Jewish Christians especially needed to know. He brings this point out very clearly in the book of Galatians. He asks a question in Galatians 4:21 to the Galatian Christians who were trapped in a subtle form of legalism by the Judaizers. “Tell me, you who desire to be under the law (who want to contribute towards your salvation through the law), do you not hear the law?”(NKJV) Here, Paul is showing that, to live under law or even to live partially under the law, is impossible. This is because the law is spiritual and we are carnal, sold under sin. Our nature does not change through conversion. Our mind does. There is a transformation of the mind and, therefore, we are God-centered as Christians in the mind but our nature is still a tool of the devil. It still belongs to the realm of sin. In Romans 7:15, Paul is simply proving this point. The word “I”, used twenty-five times in this passage, is not referring to Paul specifically but to any human being who is trying to contribute to his salvation by living under the law.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 02:08:49 +0000
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