Romans Commentary Project, chapter 7

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 10^th 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.