1 Or do you not know,
brothers, I speak to those knowing Torah, since the Torah lords over a man upon
what time he might live
Chapter 7 begins continuing the theological theme of chapter
6 (deliverance from Torah) with a new analogy. (Release from matrimony instead
of exodus from slavery.) Both analogies are explanations of 5:12-21. Those in the Messiah are no longer
bound to Adam and the Adamic problems, but are now free to be bound to the
Messiah. Paul will explain in v.7 how the entrance of Torah into the Adamic
problem (sin and death) creates a complex bifurcation,
but these first verses serve to restate in different language the
bond/freedom idea of the previous chapter. The marriage language starts in this
chapter. When Paul speaks to those knowing (ginoskousin)
Torah he uses the same term for a man’s “knowing”
a woman. In other words, he speaks to those bound by covenant to Torah.
“Speaking to” is the best way to render the cases, but it doesn’t mean that
Paul is addressing Jews and everyone else doesn’t need to listen…rather Paul is
speaking about or with reference to those “knowing” Torah.
“Lords over” is kurieuei, from the
same stem as kurios. Simplest way to
translate the end of the verse is probably “as long as he’s alive.”
2 For a married woman
is given by law to a living husband. But if the man might die, she is released
from the law concerning the man
By law could also be according to or in the law. (I’m
translating nomos as law instead of
Torah a few times here for clarity’s sake, although it’s really continuing to
evoke the specifically Jewish law as well.) Released is the same word (katargeo) as nullify earlier, but it
changes meanings in the passive with the preposition apo. Nomos and andros are both in the genitive, nomos because of the preposition. Could
also be translated with some liberties: the bond to the man is
nullified/emptied of power. (Basic idea: Death ends the power of Torah.)
3 Therefore she is
called adulterer if she come to another man with her husband yet living. But if
the man might die she is free from the law
The Torah has power as long as the old bonds are intact
(i.e., there has been no redemptive death) and that power is quite real, enough
to make one an adulterer. This passage is about the Torah’s authority, not
about practical advice for church discipline.
4 So that, my
brothers, you also have died with reference to Torah through the body of the
Messiah, unto your becoming to another, to him raised from the dead, that we
might bear fruit to God
By participating in the Messiah’s death the bond to the old
man (still referencing Adam here) is broken. In that sense we really have
“died.” We are now bound (become, as in v.3) to another man, in order that we
might bear fruit to God. The bearing fruit idea completes the marriage analogy,
because offspring are a necessary part of a successful and blessed marriage in
the ancient world, not just an extra bit of trivia on the “happily ever after”
page. Our marriage to the Messiah is a blessed and fertile one.
5 For when we were in
the flesh, the passions of sins which were enroused through the Torah were in
your members, unto your bearing fruit unto death
The only hope we had of offspring (and hope of/for offspring
is another major O.T. theme) in our bond to the old man was unto death. We have
here the beginning of the bifurcation language that gets sorted out in vv.
7-25. Though the Torah was the covenant marker and blessing from God, somehow
it was Torah that enroused (energeito)
the passions of sins, leading ultimately to a legacy of death.
6 But now we are
released from Torah dying to what we were held down by, so us to serve in the
newness of the spirit and not the oldness of the letter
Released is katergethemen
again. In the Messiah we have died to what bound us. Not quite sure how to
translate the end. There is no subject, “us” appears to govern the verb, and
there is no object. Some have read new life and old life, but zoe doesn’t appear anywhere. I think
I’ve seen “new” and “old” modifying spirit and letter respectively, but that
doesn’t seem right either. I welcome an explanation.
7 What then will we
say? That the Torah is sin? May it not be! But I did not know sin except for
Torah. For I did not know coveting except the Torah said You shall not covet
One of the more controversial points I’ll argue here (argued
much more convincingly elsewhere by Wright, to whom I owe pretty much
everything I’ll say about the next chapter and half) is that the following
passage is not Paul speaking autobiographically. Rather, the I (ego) is a continuation of the discussion
started in 7:1 (I speak now concerning those knowing/bound to Torah) and the
larger narrative of the Israel story redone by the Messiah, which began in ch.5
in Eden, went to Egypt and the Red Sea in ch.6, and now is at Mt. Sinai. We
should not, then, read the following chapters as a revelation of Paul’s
personal interior sin. (As some would have it, his discovery of sexual desire
around the time he started reading the Pentateuch for his Bar-Mitzvah.) If you
presume a personal reading the argument is full of starts and stops, and makes
no sense. Context demands that, as elsewhere, Paul writes the “I” as Israel.
(He writes vv. 7-12, by the way, the aorist tense—as history, and vv. 13-24 in
the present tense as the “current problem.”) There’s a lot more to say about why
Paul did this, but I’ll leave the argument hanging for now.
We need to, for the whole section, keep Paul’s question of
whether or not the Torah is sin(ful), at hand. It is certainly not (see v. 12)
but Sin used Torah, which was holy and good, to accomplish what it couldn’t
otherwise. (The image here of the arrival of Torah on top of the mountain is
most certainly linked to the arrival of the golden calf below)
8 And Sin receiving
the opportunity through the command accomplished in me all coveting. For
without Torah sin was dead.
Accomplished (ergazomenoi)
could also be worked or wrought. When Israel
was bade to have no other gods or idols, they immediately were filled with the
lust/desire (epithumia, though Paul is
evoking the 10th commandment specifically from the LXX translation)
to have them. As the child who is told to do anything but go in the one closet
(which, unbeknownst to him, holds the poisonous spider), the command itself
serves to implant the burning desire to disobey it.
9 But I lived
formerly without Torah, and receiving the command Sin came to life.
Even though the giving of Torah was supposed to be the
initial seal to the life giving covenant, it roused sin to life within Israel
and led to all the painful history of Israel’s failure to live up to its
covenant vocation. Though the Torah-bound people were supposed to be a light
and life to the world, their own failure to keep Torah amplified Sin’s effect.
(Still keep the question in v. 7 in mind)
10 And I died and the
commandment found to be life unto me, the same was unto death.
So Israel
wanders in wilderness and eventually overrun by pagan oppressors, because of
their failure to stay faithful to the good law given them…but the same law that
convicts them of their failure
11 For sin receiving
the opportunity through the command deceived me and through it killed me
Deceived, or led astray, once again using golden-calf
language and evoking the failure at the foot of Sinai where, at the giving of
Torah, Israel
failed
12 So that the Torah
is holy and the command holy and just and good.
Here is the answer to the question in 7, although now the
question of why Torah must be
addressed in the context of God’s faithfulness to the promises for Israel.
For the next verses, we’ll see that we’re looking a psychological treatment not
of the pre or post conversion Christian, but of the Israel of Paul’s day.
13 Therefore did that
good become death in me? May it not be! But rather sin, through the good
accomplished death in me, that it might be shown sin, that sin might become
overaboundingly sinful through the command.
The concept of this verse is vitally important to all that
follows in chapters 8&9, and also serves to explain what Paul mentioned
earlier when he said that the Torah came (5:20)
that sin might “abound.” What he begins to explain here is that sin, in being
made “aboundingly sinful” is collected in one place, or drawn up to its full
stature. As we shall see later, the Messiah conquered sin and death by taking
this “heaped-up” sin, which was concentrated on Israel,
as Israel’s
king and representative, upon himself. This is, perhaps of all the verses that
follow, the most clearly non-autobiographical verse as well. (Though of course,
the sections that follow do find an authentic parallel in the way that most of
us deal with the problem of interior temptation and virtue.) Note the question
again that Paul seeks to address: Did the Torah become (or effect) death in Israel?
(Answer, no)
14 For we know that
the Torah is spiritual, but I am sold fleshly by sin
It is an implicit reference, but the “sold by sin” is a
continuation of the slave language from the previous chapter. Vv. 15-19 serve
as the explanation for this imbalance. Fleshly is sarkinos, spiritual pneumatikos.
15 For what I work I
do not know. For this I will I do not do, but this I do which I hate.
In plainer English (I’ve tried to play the Greek as it lies
in the translations throughout) I don’t
understand my own actions. I don’t do what I want, but I do the thing I hate.
It is very easy to read this, as was said earlier, in context of a private
morality struggle, but I think Paul is actually referring to the failure of the
covenant people to keep the very laws that sealed their covenant. Though Israel
would be the light of the world, they instead are idolatrous, unfaithful, and
exiled. The very things they ought to hate, they do.
16 But if I do this
which I will not, I agree with the law that it is good.
If I do what I don’t
want, I agree that the law is good.
However, Torah itself is exonerated from the charge of evil,
for by my “not willing” to do these things I uphold its goodness.
17 But now no longer
do I accomplish this but sin dwelling in me
But it’s no longer me
that does it, but sin dwelling in me.
So then, Torah is not responsible for “my” death, but the
sin revealed by Torah. Torah is not to blame for the (apparently) catastrophic
failure of God’s chosen people Israel
in the world, but the sin in that people that their covenant law reveals.
18 For I know that
good lives not in me, that is in my flesh. For that present to me to will, and
this good to accomplish not.
For I know that
nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I
can’t do it.
Though Israel
would do what is right, she is unable, because of the indwelling sin exposed by
Torah. In her “practical” living out of the covenant, Israel
admits failure. Good does not live in her.
19 For not this good
I will do I do, but this ill which I do not will I do.
For I don’t do the
good I want, but the evil I don’t want is what I do.
Good and evil/ill throughout are kalon/agathon and kakon.
20 But if I do this
which I do not will, no longer do I accomplish it but sin living in me.
Now if I do what I don’t
want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me.
It’s important to note here that at the end of this analysis
Torah and “I” are both exonerated. In other words, God himself is exonerated and can be considered still faithful, for
the promise always was that the solution would come through Israel.
Since Israel,
corrupted though she is by indwelling sin, must be the solution, she must
provide a way despite the indwelling sin for God to deal decisively with that
sin.
21 Therefore I find
this concerning Torah, to do good by my own willing, that evil is present to
me.
This verse should NOT read “Therefore I find a law.” The
sense in readable English is “So I find
concerning Torah that when I want to do good voluntarily, evil is close at hand.”
Close at hand/present is parakeitai,
which is literally “laid-next to.” I wonder (though I’ve never read it anywhere
else) whether this might be evoking the marriage analogies from the beginning
of the chapter. Though I am willing and eager to do good, I’m bound, conjugally, to sin and death.
22 For I delight in
God’s Torah according to the inner man
Inner man is eso
anthropon. Full analysis next verse.
23 But I see another law
in those members of mine warring with the law in my mind and making me captive
to the law of sin being in my members
But yet I am a bifurcated man. Torah seems good and holy to
one part of me, but to another part it is the instrument by which I am sold to
the slavery of sin/death. (v. 14 again.) Here is the answer to the question of
v. 13. Torah has become to me both a holy thing and a dreadful thing, just as I
am become both a holy thing and a dreadful thing. I am split in half.
24 I am a wretched
man. Who will save me from this deathly body?
Since I am at war and taken captive/made a slave, who is it
that will deliver me? Who will save wretched Israel, will solve this muddle of
what was supposed to be God’s faithful promise to fallen humanity, will end the
war, and redeem the one sold into slavery?
25 But thanks to God
through the Messiah Jesus our Lord. Therefore then I myself in the mind on the
one hand serve God’s Torah and in the flesh the Torah of sin
This will be done through the Messiah’s victory. (Explained
fully in chapter 8.) The contrast between spirit and flesh serve to underscore
the state of bifurcated Israel
apart from the Messiah’s dramatic
rescue. I’ll add as a final note to this chapter that those who insist on
reading this passage only in terms of private obedience have been justifiably
confused by this “conclusion,” and would be tempted to understand that Paul is
advocating them to live as exactly as he has said NOT to in the previous
chapters and throughout the rest of his writing: as dualist Gnostics who can do
whatever they want in the flesh because their “salvation” is from the
head/spirit.
