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Wretchedness Under The Law - Romans 7
Wretchedness Under The Law - Romans 7
“Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” What would make Paul write such a thing? Did he write it as a Christian? Did he write it as a Pharisee under the law? This has been and will continue to be debated by Bible Students. Of a truth, all of us who try to serve God have felt the same frustration concerning our failures. We have agreed that God’s teaching is best and we have set out to follow it only to find that we fail to keep it. The one difference I see is that we KNOW that there is forgiveness with Jesus. We know that, as John said, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin,” but we also know that John continued: "But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1-2).
I understand this section (Rom. 7:7-25) to be Paul’s illustration of what it would be like for a sincere Godly person to try and live under the law. The law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good (vs. 12). The problem is that he didn’t keep it. He was ‘free from the law’ (when a child and thus innocent). When the law came (he became aware of God and God’s instructions in the law), he sinned. He did the very thing that he had learned was wrong. It wasn’t that he was wicked, evil, and ungodly but sin is simply that deceptive (11). He wanted to keep it, he intended to keep it, he even tried to keep it. Yet with all his good intentions, he sinned. Whether one sins because he is evil or whether one sins because he was deceived, the result is that he has sinned and is under the penalty of the law.
A godly man trying and failing to keep the law and knowing that the penalty was the wrath of God would indeed cry out: "Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" I believe this is what Paul was writing about. The godly man that understands that Christ has freed us from the law and saves us from the wrath of God will also cry out: "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” (vs. 25).
"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:1-4)
Praise God for this good news concerning salvation in Jesus from the wrath of God. Let us make sure we then walk according to the Spirit and NOT after the flesh.
Hugh DeLong
