A glance at the dictionary will show that “nature” is a word with a very broad spectrum of meanings; and this breadth carries over when “nature” is linked with “human”. This creates a built-in liability to misunderstandings and “communication barriers”; and many of our discussions — particularly the more argumentative ones — translate that liability into actuality. Again, when an appeal is made to Scripture — which is not always — it is astonishing how often this centers in the 7th chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, particularly verses 13 to 25. Which rather adds to the problem, for this chapter is by no means an easy one.
Let us try to highlight the problem areas by asking some specific questions:
- In various places Paul refers to “law”, e.g. v. 9, “I was once alive apart from the law”. To what law does he refer?
- He makes much use of the personal pronoun. To whom does “I” refer?
- He refers to problems and failures —”the evil I do not want is what I do”. What time period is covered here?
- What is the reason for this failure?
It is worth jotting down the answers that spring to mind before proceeding with our study. I wonder if they are something like this:
- The law of Moses.
- Paul himself.
- Up to and including the time of writing.
- Because the law was too hard to keep, and his human nature too weak.
I am not going to assert that these answers are wrong. But I do insist that they are so over-simplified as to be quite misleading. They create problems not only on the general question of human nature, but even within the chapter itself. They also rob us of a wealth of exhortation and encouragement; and I believe that encouragement and real happiness are primary motives for the writing of this particular Letter, including chapter 7. So let us look a little more closely at our four questions.
What Law?
There is no question that Paul makes many references to the law of Moses. If we go back to 2:17 (most of our quotations being from RSV) we find him addressing certain of the believers, “But if you call yourself a Jew and rely upon the law and boast of your relation to God…”; and there was only one law upon which the Jew relied.
In the opening sentence of chap. 7 Paul throws in a parenthesis, “for I am speaking to those who know the law”. But in this case the Greek has no “the” preceding “law”. The NEB renders, “I am speaking to those who have some knowledge of law”. Not all of his readers would be among those who called themselves Jews; and it would seem unlikely that Paul would base a critical argument on detailed knowledge of the law of Moses. On the other hand, he was writing to the capital city of the empire, and Roman law, law in a broad sense of civil and political as well as moral jurisdiction, was one of the most widely acclaimed features of the realm.
Verse 1 continues, “the law is binding on a person only during his life”. True of the law of Moses? Certainly — and true of every other law by which a man might be bound. But let us not imagine that this is an axiomatic point introduced by the apostle only as the basis for a more telling argument to follow. This seemingly-trivial point is the basis for a contrast which is all-important. Once you were men bound in intimate relationship with law; now you are freed.
The argument closely parallels that in chap. 6 based on slavery. Once you were slaves to a master called Sin; now, having been purchased out of that slavery, you have yielded yourselves as voluntary slaves to a new master whose name is Righteousness. In chap. 6 this change of status was related to death; it is because the old self died with Christ that the old master has no further claim. By exactly similar reasoning, freedom from bondage to law has come through death (v. 4) : “you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another”.
The example given in v. 2, that “a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives”, can likewise be applied, equally readily to the law of Moses or to any other legal system. But what of the example in v. 7, “I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’ “? There is no question that the wording here is from the Mosaic law; but does it follow that the application must be similarly limited? Can we with profit ask why the apostle picked on the one example of coveting? A legitimate answer would be that this was the most “internal” of the ten commandments, and therefore closest to the “law of my mind” to which he would shortly refer. But another answer might be that he wants to direct our minds right back to the garden of Eden, to the incident whereby “sin came into the world through one man” (5:12). Here was the first (and therefore typical) representation of man under law; and the failure to keep that law was due to a coveting of divine powers.
Other laws are involved when we come to v. 22, “I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind”. We are not yet ready to look at the overall meaning of this verse, but we may note that the “law of God” fittingly expresses what we have been coming to see as moral law in its broadest. scope. It is typified by the law of Moses, but surely not confined to that set of ordinances.
Who Am “I”?
As with the first question, there is nothing untrue about the simplest answer. Paul is not at all likely to use the first person singular — or plural — in a sense from which he excluded himself. On the other hand, he might very well use it in a broad sense to cover a group of which he was a member. Writing to Romans who did not know him personally (1:10-13), he could hardly expect full impact if his argument was based merely on personal reminiscence or self-indictment.
There is, of course, one sense in which every normal human being is “alive apart from the law”. In earliest infancy laws are neither imposed on him nor enforced, for the simple reason that they would be meaningless. It is not long before simple prohibitions are introduced by his parents; and as he grows he becomes subject to a wider range of social pressures, and there develops within him the concept of sin. But while all this is true of the human race, to apply it specifically to the infant Saul would be inappropriate: growing up in an orthodox Jewish household, taught to recite from infancy many parts of Old Testament “law”, he would have no recollection of any time when he was “alive apart from the law”.
A possible application is to the Mosaic law in its historical perspective. There was a time between Adam and Moses of which we are told (5:13) that “sin is not counted where there is no law.” But again we can detect a greater scope by going back to that episode which was both unique and typical. During the short interval before he received from God the one typical commandment, Adam was without prohibition, without legal accountability. He was made from the dust of the ground, and in the foreknowledge of God he was destined to return to dust. But he was innocent of moral transgression, his conscience was undefiled, he was not under the penal sentence of death. So we see man in relation to law in its broadest scope, and man in his broadest scope in relation to law.
Does it still seem strange that Paul should say “I” when he intends so wide a coverage? ‘Th example is not unique. Moving foward to chap. 8, we find him in v. 2 still using the first person singular: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death”. In v. 4 he demonstrates that he had no intention of restricting this freedom to himself: “that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us . . .” C.H. Dodd in “The Epistle of Paul to the Romans” gives several other examples, e.g. the alternations of “I” and “we” in the familiar 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.
What Time Period?
Even when considering the application of the chapter to Paul himself, commentators have been sharply divided as to time. Some confine the “failure” period to Saul, the religious Jew prior to conversion; others extend it to Paul the apostle. When we accept the much broader application of the whole chapter, we see that this is no academic exercise. There is a real dilemma: does the Christian walking according to the Spirit still experience the type of failure that Paul describes, or is this something from which he is promised release?
There is one grammatical aspect that cannot be ignored. Verses 7 to 13 are in the past tense (aorist in Greek), verses 14 to 25 in the present tense. If this is not intended to reflect some definite change in the status of the believer, it is hard to understand why so clear-cut a change in wording is used. But personal discussions have formed the impression that the problem has been answered not by an appeal to grammar but by purely subjective reasoning. “Ah, how true! How exactly Paul describes my own innermost feelings! What a comfort to know that so great a man shared the same burden of failure.” Or perhaps this is rationalized to “How well Paul understands human nature!”
But when this approach is brought under the discipline of the context, it falls to the ground; for Paul knows nothing of this type of pessimism. His whole thesis is summed up in verse 6: “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive”. The “hopeless struggle” interpretation would be hard to reconcile with any understanding of “law”; but particularly so when the law of Moses is considered. Elsewhere Paul describes his status apropos that law, and it is not that of a miserable sinner. In Phil chapter 3 v.5-6 he describes his condition before his conversion “circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin … as to righteousness under the law, blameless”.
It will doubtless be objected, “Is it not a fact that Paul speaks in the present tense regarding a continuing struggle? Can he use the pronoun ‘I’ and dissociate himself from the situation?” But the problem really comes to this: with which group is Paul associating himself in this passage? I find some words of Prof. Nigel Watson helpful in this regard:
“The words are in the present tense because Paul is talking about something which is timelessly true. The dilemma of which he speaks is certainly true of him in the past; but it is also something which can be true of him now if he chooses to walk after the flesh rather than after the Spirit”.
Why the Failure?
Any answer to this question will be found to be based on an expressed or implied contrast. The usual answer, “Because God’s law is too hard and human nature too weak”, implies a contrast between a desire to obey God’s laws and a simultaneous but stronger desire to serve fleshly desires in opposition to God’s laws. We must ask ourselves whether this is the contrast of which Paul speaks.
What he actually describes is a contrast between what he wants to achieve and what he does in fact achieve. Is this the same contrast as the one we have just expressed? A little reflection shows that it is by no means the same. True, moral weakness is one way in which such a lack of attainment could arise; and all of us, conscious of our own sins of weakness, are likely to seize upon it as the obvious cause. But it is not the cause Paul has in mind; and it is not the most serious of the various causes.
Jesus’ complaint against the Pharisees was not lack of obedience to the Law, but the inadequacy of their brand of righteousness. Their tithing of garden herbs was an admirable exhibition of obedience — as far as it went. But it failed — failed completely — to embrace the spirit of the Law, which was a spirit of universal kindness, kindness in situations not specifically covered by its ordinances. Paul’s own life provided a classic example of this sort of failure; and it was undoubtedly because he had himself experienced such a revolution of thinking on the nature of righteousness that he gave it such emphasis in his letters. When we find him looking back in sorrow on his former way of life, what was it which characterized that life — weakness of the flesh? Nothing could be further from the truth. Look at Gal. 1:13: “For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond any of my own age among the people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers”.
Paul wanted to be right with God, and he exerted himself strenuously to be right. With what result? The harder he tried, the wider of the mark he fell. Because of weakness? No, because of strength; because of the basic error of thinking that any form of human endeavour was a way to peace with God. Needless to say, we are not claiming that he was without weakness or failure from this source; his claim to being “blameless” as to righteousness under the law must be placed alongside his own quotation in Rom. 3:10 that “none is righteous, no, not one”. Edward Schweizer expresses it this way: “Thus Paul learned clearly what sin is: not ethical imperfection, which depends in:” large measure on our natural tendencies, but basic concentration on one’s self, one’s own righteousness, based on strict observance of the law, one’s own wisdom, gained by strenuous efforts, or one’s own pleasure, attained by all possible means, good or ill”. Paul’s own answer to the dilemma was to renounce all such efforts, “and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith”.
Conclusion
When we find Paul speaking about warring laws, therefore, we feel no call to deny the existence of conflict, nor the fact that it stems from a clash of interests between God’s will and those natural appetites which we all share. It is not necessary to assume that the appetites are themselves evil, and in fact it is very obvious that they are not. Basic sex urges are shared with all other “higher” animals as a divinely appointed contribution both to individual happiness and to the continuance of the race. The question becomes: when does that warfare end?
One answer — and a not unscriptural one —is that it can end only when mortality is swallowed up in immortality, when all appetites are directed in a single direction so that the inherent ingredients of tension are removed.
But this is not the answer with which Paul is here concerned. In chap. 6, one could interpret the hope that “we too might walk in newness of life” as a hope of sharing the resurrection of Jesus at some future date. But Paul repudiates any such idea in v. 11, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”. Unless there is a change to a new life now, there never will be any resurrection to immortality! So in chap. 7 Paul’s answer to those who have entered upon that new life is that the unsuccessful struggle will continue for just so long as man seeks to demonstrate his righteousness by any sort of law, to attain to mastery over law. The harder he engages in this struggle, the more acutely his conscience is sharpened, the more he will become aware of its hopelessness; law is his master as long as he contends with it. ‘Success comes not with conquest but with a death to that whole relationship with law, and the fixing of man’s hopes on a righteousness which is the gift of God, on a grace which is beyond law.
When we have followed him into this haven, we will not fall into the error of reading as if the chapter finished with the words “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” We will find ourselves able to echo the apostle’s triumphant shout, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”, and to move into the sunshine of chapter 8: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”.
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay