Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Romans

[Mel B]

Also do you mind breaking down this tongue-twister in Romans 7: 14-20 I feel like I am going crazy trying to break this down

[jimwalton]

Paul started the book showing how the Gentiles were such outrageous sinners and separated from God, much to the pleasure of his Jewish audience, no doubt. But then in chapter 2 he turned on a dime and said, “You Jews are just as bad!” He concluded in chapter 3 that all humans are tragically separated from God and couldn’t save ourselves. Through chapters 4-6 he provided the solution: Jesus’s death on the cross provides the means for true salvation and access to the presence of God.

He starts chapter 7 with an illustration: a wife is bound to her husband, but once the husband dies she is no longer bound to him and can (if she wants) marry another man. So it is, Paul says, with the Jews relation to the Mosaic Law. God had bound them to it (“in marriage”) and they had to stay submissive. But once the Law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Jews were free to “marry another”: the “law” of grace. They were free to live as if the Law had been fulfilled and to live in the freedom and grace of Jesus.

Does that mean there was something wrong with the law? Was it a “bad husband?” Of course not, Paul says. The Law accomplished very well was it was supposed to accomplish: to show us what sin and guilt were. It was an effective tool.

Then, in the text you are asking about, Paul shows how very effective it was at showing us sin and guilt. It exposes our true nature.

• v. 14: it was like slavery. We were shackled to it and suffered under it.
• v. 15: I couldn’t break the patterns of sin all by myself, like a trained animal that was programmed, and I hated it but couldn’t seem to help it.
• v. 16: And when I caught myself doing sin, then, sure enough, the Law was right: I’m a guilty sinner. Doh!
• v. 17: He knew it all stemmed from his sin nature, but what is there to do about THAT? We can’t change our nature!
• v. 18: No matter how hard I try, I think sin and do sin. So frustrating.
• v. 19-21: Even if I tried to do good, the evil was right there, and I would do that next. There was no escape. Same conclusion: I’m a guilty sinner.
• v. 22: I can generate this desire in me to live for God and be a good person. It’s in there—I feel it and see it often enough.
• v. 23: But there is also in me an enemy, driving me to sin, separating me from God, enslaving me to passions and sin, and warring against the good that is in me.
• v. 24: What a wretched man I am! How can ever be free from this sin monster in me?