Chapter 7

2023 - According to the MSB outline, Paul is still talking about sanctification, and will be through 8:39.

Death to the law through the death of Christ.  The Law is no more.

Freed from the Law through Christs' death, now free to "marry another", that same Christ, since it is no longer adultery.

2025 - This is addressed directly to the Jews.  Only Jews were bound to the Law and the Roman church had both Jews and Gentiles.  Paul is speaking to them separately.  This surely must be seen as Paul anticipating that the Judaizers would come also to the church at Rome and undermine the doctrine of grace by requiring continued "faithfulness" to the Law, which was just a dead husband.  He wants them to see that they can absolutely drop the law and be bound not by Law but by the Spirit.

This verse:

4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. [Rom 7:4 ESV]  This is perhaps another point anticipating the heresy that may come to the Roman church.  The Judaizers will want you to keep the law still.  But you no longer serve that law.  You violated that law, and in Christ you died for those violations, and you CANNOT DIE AGAIN for the same offenses.  You do not need, you should not ever, return to serving that law.  Here is the freedom of grace without the law:

6 ...so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. [Rom 7:6b ESV]  I would note that this written code is the Mosaic law.  The written scriptures - OT and NT - are still commands!

2023 - I like the way this extends the metaphor of our dying in Christ when he was crucified from Chapter 6 as it spoke about baptism, and now applies it to marriage.  When we died in Christ, it freed us from marriage to the Law, and when we rose in Christ, we were - we are - free to follow Christ since we are no longer obligated to be faithful to our previous spouse. 

2025 - Wait wait wait...!!!  Is this saying that the Gentiles, post-Jesus, do not have sin imputed to them because the Law is dead?  Are we "blessed is the man to whom God will not impute sin"?  Is THAT why in these times - Paul's first and ours now - we don't bring sacrifices, we don't throw stones at adulterers...that whole Law is now dead!  The Holy Spirit now warns us of our sin, keeps us from our sin, and the standard is much higher!  Jesus said we can longer just do the Law, we have to be pure of heart and mind, as revealed to us by the Spirit, because we could never achieve it, or even recognize it without sin.  But once we are saved by his blood, sin is no longer imputed to us...That is what David foresaw!!!

I have to summarize this....I need to expand on this!

2021-2, This verse:

8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. [Rom 7:8 ESV]

I am not sure about all the implications of this verse.  It seems to say that had there never been a prohibition against coveting, then no one ever would have coveted, and that sin would not exist.  But since the law defined it and said not to do it, people "began" to covet things and so brought sin upon themselves.  MSB says the idea is that the Law - actually breaking the law - is not about how cool it is to covet now that we know what coveting is and also know that we shouldn't - but provides a basis on which to assert our own will in conflict with God's will.  And this is what sin does, this is exactly the kind of illogical self-destructive thinking that Adam's sin first introduced.  When we go our own way outside of God's way - and it is built into all born sinners to do exactly this, as if it were part of the "software" - that is sin.  So the Law itself did not "generate" sin.  There was already sin.  What the Law did was give us a list of things we could rebel against, because rebellion is what is built into us.

2025 - I think this verse - 8 - is restating what we saw earlier in Chapter 5 maybe? - That from Adam to Moses there was no commandment and where there isn't one there is no sin...yet all sinned.  Actually, where there is no law sin is not imputed.  Sin from Adam to Moses was different than the sin of Adam.  Adam transgressed.  Adam directly violated a rule.  From then until the Law, no one else did  that.  But once the law came, detailing what things were NOT to be done, transgression increased.  Once people knew not to covet, they just did it, even knowing it was wrong.  So once the law came, sin that was exactly like Adam's sin exploded in the world.  God had not previously "charged those sins to their accounts", he had not "put that on your bill" previously.  People did it, but God did not require atonement for it at that time.  There was only faith or no faith.

2025 - But...I am not prepared to say that those from Adam to Moses had no need of Christ's atoning death.  They still sinned...because they were sinners.  In Adam they had sinned.  And even though sin was not imputed to them from Adam to Moses, they still indeed sinned because the flesh was corrupt.  But God did not impute that sin to them.  Even so, atonement  had to be made.  I am going with that for now.

2021 - Just reading on through 7.  Next year, 7!

The central verse of chapter 7:

15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. [Rom 7:15 ESV]

...and this one:

20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. [Rom 7:20 ESV]

Isn't Paul sort of doing the same thing the Greeks were doing?  He is saying that his spirit, which has been saved, has a new nature, and would never decide to willingly sin, is coerced into sin anyway by the corruption of the physical body?  The corrupt physical flesh, attached and part of the corrupt world, still pulls him into doing the things of the world, despite the fact that his spirit would have it otherwise.  This is the struggle, and the reason that we continue to sin after we are saved.  I would rather read a good, quality book, but instead I watch a TV gameshow.  My spirit knows what is best, but my body likes game shows.  And we can never escape this physical body, short of death.

2024 - Paul condenses this complicated chapter into a single verse: 

21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. [Rom 7:21 NASB95].  I really like the way NASB95 does this.  Instead of calling it a "law", as most translations do, they translate it principle, which I think is much clearer.  Here are a few that use "law":

21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. [Rom 7:21 KJV]

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. [Rom 7:21 ESV].

NASB95 is just way better in my opinion.  Evil is present in every man, so long as he has flesh and blood around him.  Flesh and blood, no matter what else is going on within us, PREFERS evil.  The first priority of the flesh is to satisfy it's own desires.  It has no regard for anything else.  While we have the power, through a saved spirit, to resist this sin, we don't always do it.  Think of a starfish opening a clam.  The starfish "surrounds" the clam, and begins to pull the halves away from each other.  The starfish is not Arnold Schwarzenegger.  It doesn't pull so hard it overpowers the clam.  But the starfish never stops pulling.  It needs no rest...the clam does.  When the clams rests a little, the halves give a little, and eventually, by this process, the starfish wins.  So with our spirit battling the lust of the flesh. The pressure is constant to sin because we live in a corrupt body...an incurably corrupt body...until the day we die.  Then we are spirit only, until the "last day" when we are resurrected from the dead at Jesus' coming.  On that day, our flesh and blood is changed, and made perfect, so that we can live as men and women, in the flesh, and beyond the power of sin.  We will walk and talk and laugh, but we will not even be tempted to sin.

The chapter closes thus:

25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. [Rom 7:25 ESV]

Surely that says we are divided beings, pure in mind because of salvation, yet sinful in the body of flesh.