Romans 7
In Romans 6 Paul had said the startling thing - believers are not under the law, but under grace - and now he turns to spell out how a person stands toward the law itself. He opens with a principle his readers would grant at once: the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth (v. 1). A law binds the living, not the dead. To make it concrete he reaches for marriage: a woman is bound to her husband while he lives, but if he dies she is loosed from the law of her husband and free to marry another without blame (vv. 2-3). The picture is simple, and the point Paul draws from it is the hinge of the section.3
For believers, Paul says, a death has occurred: ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God (v. 4). The old bond is broken - not by the believer's death but by sharing in Christ's - and a new bond is formed, a union with the risen One that bears the fruit the old life never could. Then Paul anticipates an objection. If sin worked through the law (v. 5), is the law itself sinful? His answer is emphatic: God forbid (v. 7). The law did not make him sin; it exposed the sin already there, naming and unmasking it - until the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good (v. 12).1
The chapter ends in the most searching passage Paul ever wrote about the inner life. He describes a self at war: a mind that delights in the law of God and a flesh that drags it the other way, so that what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I (v. 15). Readers have long debated whose experience this is and at what stage - and the text does not pause to settle that question. It simply lets the war be recognized for what it is, lets the law's helplessness to fix it stand plain, and lets the cry rise: O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (v. 24). And then, breaking through the anguish, the answer: I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord (v. 25).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Romans 7:1-6Dead to the Law by the Body of Christ
1Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? 2For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. 3So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. 4Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. 5For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. 6But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
Paul builds on a principle so obvious his readers will grant it instantly: the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth (v. 1). A law governs the living; it makes no claim on the dead. He is writing, he says, to them that know the law - people for whom this is plain - and he turns it into a picture from the most familiar of bonds, marriage. The woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband (v. 2). While the husband lives, the bond holds, and to go to another man would make her an adulteress; but death dissolves the bond entirely, and she is then free from that law, no adulteress at all, though she marry another (v. 3). The point is not a lesson on marriage; it is a single, sharp truth Paul needs for what follows: a death changes everything. The obligation that was binding while life lasted simply ends when death comes. What was forbidden a moment before is now no transgression. Paul is laying the groundwork to say that, for the believer, exactly such a death has taken place.3
Now Paul draws the conclusion the illustration was built for: Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God (v. 4). The application has a deliberate twist. In the picture it was the husband who died and the woman who went free; here it is the believer who has died - by the body of Christ, sharing in His death on the cross - and so the old bond to the law is broken. The reader who came through it is now free, without any charge of unfaithfulness, to belong to another. And the other is named with care: him who is raised from the dead. The new bond is not to a code but to a living Person, the risen One. Paul even names the purpose of the new marriage - that we should bring forth fruit unto God. A marriage is meant to be fruitful, and this one is too: a life joined to the risen Christ brings forth what the old bond never could. The whole arc is here - a death that frees, a union that follows, and the fruit that union alone can bear.
Paul sets the two unions side by side to show the difference in their fruit. Of the old life he says, when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death (v. 5). It is a grim picture: the sinful impulses, stirred up rather than restrained by the bare commandment, were busy in our members, and the harvest they yielded was death. The law could name and forbid those impulses, but naming them did not stop them; it could even provoke them. But now, Paul says - the great pivot - we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held (v. 6). The thing that held us is dead; we are released from it. And the release is for a purpose, stated in a contrast that will run through the rest of the letter: that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. Note the word - we are freed not from serving but to serve, in a new way. The old way was service measured out as external rule-keeping, the letter that could command but not enliven. The new way is service that springs from the Spirit at work within. Freedom from the law is not freedom to do as one pleases; it is freedom to serve from a living source rather than a written demand.
Romans 7:7-13The Law Is Holy, and the Commandment Holy, and Just, and Good
7What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. 8But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. 9For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. 10And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. 11For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. 12Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. 13Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
Paul has just said that sinful impulses were by the law (v. 5), and he knows the dangerous inference a reader might draw, so he meets it head-on: What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid (v. 7). The phrase he uses to slam the door - God forbid - is his strongest expression of horror at a wrong conclusion; the very thought is unthinkable. Then he explains the law's actual role with a confession: I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. The law did not put the coveting in him; it showed him that the stirring already in him was sin. He picks the tenth commandment deliberately - Thou shalt not covet - because coveting is the inward, hidden sin, the one no one else can see. A person might congratulate himself on not stealing or killing while never noticing the greed in his own heart, until the commandment names it and the hidden thing is dragged into the light. This is the law working exactly as it should: not creating sin but exposing it, holding up a true standard against which the heart's real condition becomes visible. The law is the lamp that reveals the dirt; it is not the dirt.
Paul presses deeper into how sin uses a good commandment for its own ends: sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead (v. 8). There is something perverse in the way sin works. The very existence of a boundary becomes its foothold - taking occasion by the commandment - so that the prohibition itself provokes the desire, stirring up all manner of forbidden craving. The thing told do not suddenly becomes the thing most wanted. Without the law sin was dead: not absent, but dormant, lying quiet and unprovoked until the commandment came and roused it. Then Paul describes the awakening from his own side: I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died (v. 9). Before the commandment pressed on him, he lived in a kind of untroubled innocence about his condition; once it came, sin sprang to life and his false sense of being alive collapsed - he saw himself condemned. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death (v. 10). The commandment was meant to lead to life - obey and live - yet because his flesh could not obey, the very thing pointing to life became the verdict of death over him. The fault, Paul is careful to say next, is not the commandment's.
Paul names the culprit plainly, and it is not the law: For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me (v. 11). Twice now he has said sin takes occasion by the commandment - it seizes the good rule as its opportunity. And it works by deceit. The language quietly recalls the garden, where the serpent took God's good command and twisted it into a lie that slew; sin still operates that way, using the commandment to deceive and then to kill. Note the careful separation Paul keeps: it is sin that deceives, sin that slays - the commandment is only the thing sin misuses, like a weapon snatched up by a murderer. Then comes the verdict the whole argument has been driving toward: Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good (v. 12). Four times Paul piles up the law's goodness - holy… holy, and just, and good. Whatever death has come, the law is cleared of all blame; it is a true and good word, set apart and right, an expression of the goodness of the God who gave it. The trouble was never with the commandment. The trouble is with sin, and with a flesh too weak to keep what is good. The reader is left in no doubt where the fault lies.
Paul puts the objection one more way, to make the law's innocence unmistakable: Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid (v. 13). Did the good thing - the commandment - become the cause of his death? Again the horrified denial. What actually happened is something far more revealing: But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. Read it slowly, because it states the law's deepest purpose here. By using that which is good to produce death, sin showed its own true colors. It is one thing to break a petty or arbitrary rule; it is another to take something holy, and just, and good and twist it into an instrument of death. When sin does that, it stands fully exposed - it is shown to be exactly what it is, and worse: exceeding sinful. So the law, in the very act of being misused, accomplishes something vital. It does not merely forbid particular wrongs; it unmasks sin as a power, dragging it into the open so it cannot be mistaken for anything harmless. This is why the law had to come before the gospel could be felt as good news: a person who has not seen sin for the deadly, exceeding sinful thing it is will never grasp why deliverance is needed, or why it took the body of Christ to provide it.
Romans 7:14-25Who Shall Deliver Me?... I Thank God Through Jesus Christ
14For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 18For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Now Paul turns from the law to the self that faces it, and the most searching passage in all his letters begins: For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin (v. 14). He sets two things in stark contrast. The law is spiritual - it comes from God, it belongs to the realm of the Spirit, it is everything verse 12 said it was. But I am carnal - of the flesh, weak, earthbound - and worse, sold under sin, like a slave sold into a bondage he cannot buy his way out of. There the trouble lies: not in the standard but in the one who must meet it. The verses that follow are written in the present tense and in the first person, and readers have long asked whose experience this describes - whether Paul speaks as a believer renewed by grace, as a person still under the law without Christ, or as a representative voice standing in for the human struggle as such. The text itself does not pause to settle that question, and it is wise to let it stand as it is written. What it unmistakably describes is real and recognizable to anyone honest: a self in which the will toward good and the pull toward evil are at war, and a law that can name the conflict but cannot end it. Paul lets the experience be felt in full before he names its only cure.3
Here is the line everyone recognizes, said twice for its terrible weight: that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I (v. 15), and again, the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do (v. 19). It is the experience of being divided against oneself - wanting one thing and doing its opposite, hating the very act one keeps committing. Paul draws two conclusions from it, and both are crucial. First: If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good (v. 16). The fact that he hates his own wrongdoing means that, deep down, he agrees with the law; his very revulsion is a vote for the commandment's goodness. Second, twice over: it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me (vv. 17, 20). This is not an excuse - Paul is not dodging responsibility - but a diagnosis. He is distinguishing between the deepest direction of his will, which sides with God, and the power of indwelling sin, which overrides it. Something has taken up residence in him and acts against his own settled desire. The wretchedness of the passage is precisely this: it is not the cry of a person who loves evil and does it freely, but of one who wills the good, hates the evil, and finds himself doing the evil anyway - bound by a power his own willing cannot break.
Paul locates the trouble with great precision: I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not (v. 18). Notice the careful parenthesis - that is, in my flesh. He does not say there is nothing good in him at all; he says no good thing dwells in his flesh, the part of him still bound to the old appetites. And he names the exact shape of his helplessness: the will is there - to will is present with me - but the power to perform is not. He wants the good and even resolves on it; what he cannot find is the strength to carry it out. This is the death-blow to a particular hope - the hope that the answer to sin is simply to try harder, to summon more resolve, to want it badly enough. Paul has the wanting. The wanting is not the problem. The problem is that wanting the good, by itself, does not produce it; the flesh is too weak to deliver what the will commands. Whatever the cure for this condition turns out to be, it cannot be more willpower, because the will is already on the right side and still loses. The deliverance will have to come from somewhere the self cannot reach by trying.
Paul gathers the struggle into the image of competing laws - rival governing powers pulling at him at once. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me (v. 21): a settled principle he keeps colliding with, that the very moment he reaches for good, evil is right there. Then he names the two sides. On one side: I delight in the law of God after the inward man (v. 22). This is no grudging assent - he delights in God's law in his deepest, inward self; the truest direction of his being loves what God commands. On the other side: I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members (v. 23). There is a second power lodged in his members - in the flesh, the habits, the body's appetites - that wars against the law his mind loves and drags him into captivity. Two forces, and they are not equal in his affections: the inward man delights in God's law, while the law of sin merely overpowers. But the language of war and captivity is honest about the outcome of the conflict in his own strength - he is taken prisoner. A self that loves the good and is dragged by a stronger force toward the evil it hates: this is the misery the law has exposed and cannot relieve. The pressure of the passage has been building toward a single, breaking cry - and now it comes.
The whole agonized description finally bursts into a cry and then, without pause, into an answer. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (v. 24). It is the sound of a person who has reached the end of himself - not feigned despair but the honest verdict of one who has seen his bondage clearly and knows he cannot break it. The body of this death is the self in its mortal weakness, the flesh that cannot perform the good the will desires, the carcass of the old life he is chained to. And notice what the cry is: not what shall deliver me but who. Paul has already shown that no rule, no resolve, no harder trying can free him; what he needs is not a method but a rescuer. The answer breaks through at once: I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord (v. 25). There is the whole weight of the chapter. The deliverer is a Person, and He has a name. Not the law, which could only expose the misery; not the self, which could only will and fail; but Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul does not even spell out the mechanics here - that floods in with the next chapter - he simply names the One through whom God answers the cry, and turns the wretchedness into thanksgiving. Then he sums up the divided life soberly: with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. The war is named honestly even at the end - but the cry has found its answer, and the answer is a Lord who is alive.
Further study
- The Greek text of Romans 7 word by word, each term linked to its lexical entry - useful for nomos (“law,” threaded through the chapter in several senses), for sarx (“flesh,” vv. 18, 25), and for talaipōros (“wretched,” v. 24, the cry of the divided self).
- Romans 7 ↔ Romans 6 & 8 · Galatians 5 · John 15Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Romans 7 to the rest of Scripture - the believer dead to the law and married to the risen One (vv. 4-6) read alongside I am the vine, ye are the branches (John 15:5), the war of will and flesh (vv. 15-23) beside the flesh lusteth against the Spirit (Gal. 5:17), and the cry for deliverance (v. 24) opening onto no condemnation… in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1).
- Romans 7 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Romans 7 - the marriage illustration and the law's dominion only during life (vv. 1-3), the much-discussed defense of the law against the charge that it is sin (vv. 7-13), and the long debate over the “I” of verses 14-25 and the divided self it describes.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Dead to the Law by the Body of Christ
- Romans 6:6Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed.The death behind verse 4 - the old self crucified with Christ, so the old bond to the law is broken.
- John 15:4-5Abide in me, and I in you... for without me ye can do nothing.Why only union with the risen One bears fruit (v. 4) - the branch is fruitful only while joined to the living vine.
- Galatians 2:19-20For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God... Christ liveth in me.Paul’s own parallel to verses 4-6 - dead to the law in order to live unto God, now in union with the indwelling Christ.
- Romans 8:2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.The “newness of spirit” of verse 6 - service from a living source, the Spirit who sets free.
- Colossians 1:10That ye might walk worthy of the Lord... being fruitful in every good work.The fruit unto God of verse 4 - the harvest the new union is meant to bear.
The Law Is Holy, and the Commandment Holy, and Just, and Good
- Romans 3:20by the law is the knowledge of sin.The law’s true office in verses 7-13 - not to save, but to make sin known.
- Romans 8:3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son... condemned sin in the flesh.What the holy-but-helpless law of verse 12 could not accomplish - done instead by God in His Son.
- Galatians 3:24Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.The law of verses 7-13 pointing beyond itself - the schoolmaster whose work is to lead to Christ.
- Exodus 20:17Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house... nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.The very commandment Paul names in verse 7 - the one that exposes the hidden sin of the heart.
- Psalm 19:7The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure.The goodness of the law affirmed in verse 12 - perfect, sure, and life-giving in its own right.
Who Shall Deliver Me?... I Thank God Through Jesus Christ
- Galatians 5:17For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other.The same inner war as verses 15-23 - flesh and Spirit pulling against each other in the believer.
- Romans 8:1There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.Where the cry of verse 24 opens out - the very next breath of the letter, no condemnation in Christ.
- Romans 8:3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son... condemned sin in the flesh.The answer to the helplessness of verse 18 - what the will and the law could not do, God did in His Son.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.The pattern of verses 24-25 - deliverance found not in the strength of the self but at the end of it.
- 1 Corinthians 15:57But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.The thanksgiving of verse 25 echoed - the victory over sin and death given through the same Lord.