Sep 30, 2009
Romans 7: The Struggle Against Sin
I’ll be continuing my series of meditations on the book of Romans with chapter seven today…
After you’ve read Romans 4-6, you have to be wondering what exactly to make of the law and its relation to Christians. As Paul discusses the problems the Romans, both Jews and Gentiles, have with sin and begins walking the fine line of saying the law is good, then it was mishandled by sin, but now it is fulfilled, chapter seven begins to reach a kind of conclusion to this part of his argument.
The issue is this: if Christ has made us free from sin on the basis of his free gift, then we need to figure out what the newly formed Christian community of Jews and Gentiles will do with it. This is revolutionary for a Jew to talk about the law being fulfilled.
Paul argues that just as they have died to sin through Christ’s cross, they have also died to the obligations of the law. Trying to live holy lives under the law was rendered impossible by sin, but now those who had died and risen with Christ are empowered to obey God through the Spirit. The struggle now is between the sin-controlled and the Spirit-controlled natures of the Roman Christians.
So the law isn’t their problem. In fact, it remains good. Regardless of God’s good law and man’s good intentions, the problem is the struggle with sin.
Sin has tremendous power to influence us in doing what we don’t want to do. Paul says he is rotten through and through under the sway of the sinful nature. Moral living is hindered through the influence of sin, making humanity a hopeless case on their own.
Even God’s law only shows where the Romans fell short without providing the power to overcome sin. The law in verse 23 is ambiguous, but it seems to refer to the principles and tendencies we wrestle with under sin.
At the end of this chapter, Paul offers a note of gratitude for God’s deliverance from his shameful, sinful misery. The stage is set in chapter eight as he explains in detail the new way of life in the Spirit that fulfills the law and conquers sin.
