Rom. 7 Rom. 7:1–3 No law having power over a person longer than he lives, Rom. 7:4 we therefore, being become dead to the law by the body of Christ, are left free to place ourselves under a happier dispensation. Rom.

The apostle, having showed in a former chapter how believers are freed from the dominion of sin, proceeds in this chapter to declare, that they are free also from the yoke of the Mosaical law, because that was dead to them, and they to it.

He here exemplifies and illustrates the foregoing assertion. The woman is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth: see a parallel place, 1 Cor. 7:39. This is the general rule, yet there is an exception in the case of fornication or desertion: see Matt. 5:32, 1 Cor. 7:15.

Ye also are become dead to the law; i.e. ye are taken off from all hopes of justification by it, and from your confidence in obedience to it, Gal. 2:19. The opposition seems to require that he should have said, the law is dead to us; but these two phrases are much the same. Question.

For: q.d. For bringing forth of which fruit unto God, we have now better helps than formerly we had; or we are in much better circumstances than formerly we were: and so he proceeds to show how our present state does differ from the former. When we were in the flesh; i.e.

But now; i.e. being brought out of our fleshly state. We are delivered from the law: see the notes on Rom. 7:4. That being dead wherein we were held; the relative is not in the Greek text, but it is well supplied to fill up the sense.

Is the law sin? God forbid: here is another anticipation of an objection, which might arise from what the apostle had said, Rom. 7:5, that sin was powerful in us by the law. Some might object and say, that the law then was sin, i.e. that it was the cause of it, and a factor for it.

But sin; i.e. the corruption of our nature, the depraved bent and bias of the soul, called before lust. Taking occassion by the commandment; i.e. being stirred up or drawn forth by the prohibition of the law. The law did not properly give occasion, but sin took it.

For I was alive without the law once: q.d. Take me, if you please, for an instance. Before I knew the law aright, and understood the Divine and spiritual meaning of it, or whilst the law stood afar off, and was not brought home to my conscience, I was alive, that is, in my own conceit; I thought…

q.d. So it came to pass, that the commandment, which was ordained to be a rule of life, and, if I could have kept it, a means of life also, Rom. 10:5, Gal.

For sin, taking occasion by the commandment: see the notes on Rom. 7:8. Deceived me; i.e. seduced and drew me aside, Heb. 3:13, James 1:14. And by it slew me; i.e. it drove me into despair, or delivered me over to death and damnation, and made me obnoxious thereunto.

Wherefore the law is holy; and so the objection, Rom. 7:7, was a groundless objection: for though the law were the occasion of sin, or were made advantage of by sin, as Rom. 7:8, yet it was not the cause of it; that, on all hands, is acknowledged to be holy, &c.

Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid: another anticipation. The apostle denies that the holy law was in its own nature deadly, or the cause of death to him; the fault was not in the law, but in his own depraved nature: but the plain case is this that follows.

He goes on to clear the law, and excuse it, giving it another commendation, that it is spiritual; i.e. it requires such obedience as is not only outward, but inward and spiritual; it forbids spiritual as well as fleshly sins. Read Christ’s exposition of it, in Matt. 5. I am carnal; i.e.

For that which I do; i.e. what I do contrary to the command of God. I allow not: in the Greek it is, I know not: q.d. Many times I am surprised and overtaken, not knowing or considering what I do. Or when he says, I know not, his meaning is, (as our translation renders it), I allow or approve not.

This very thing is an argument, that the law is such as I have before asserted, Rom. 7:12, Rom. 7:14. This shows my consent to the holiness and goodness of the law; I vote with it, and for it, as the only rule of right or righteousness.

It is no more I that do it; i.e. it is not I as spiritual or renewed, it is not my whole self, but it is sin that dwelleth in me, that inhabits in me as a troublesome inmate, that I cannot get rid of, that will not out so long as the house stands; as the fretting leprosy in the walls of a house…

In my flesh; i.e. in my fleshly part, or my nature in and of itself. No good thing; no goodness at all, or no spiritual good. For to will is present with me; i.e.

These two verses are a repetition of what he had said, Rom. 7:15, Rom. 7:17. Every new man is two men; there is in him an I and an I. The apostle in his unregenerate state, could make no such distinction as now he doth.

This verse hath greatly vexed interpreters. The apostle speaking simply and abstractly of a law, the question is: What law he means? Some take the word improperly, for a decree or condition, which was imposed upon him, and to which he was necessarily subject, that when he would do good, evil should…

This shows yet more expressly that the apostle speaketh in the person of a regenerate man, or of himself as regenerate. Certainly, to delight in the law of God is an inseparable property of such a one: see Ps. 1:2, Ps. 119:77, Ps. 119:111. The inward man; i.e.

Another law in my members; i.e. a law quite different from the law of God, mentioned in the foregoing verse. By the law in the members understand natural corruption, which, like a law, commandeth and inclineth by sensual rewards and punishments; and by the law in the mind understand a principle of…

O wretched man that I am! The word signifies one wearied out with continual combats. Who shall deliver me? It is not the voice of one desponding or doubting, but of one breathing and panting after deliverance: the like pathetical exclamations are frequent: see Ps. 55:6.

I thank God; who hath already delivered me from the slavery and dominion of sin; so that though it wars against me, I still resist it, and, by the strength of Christ, do frequently overcome it, 1 Cor. 15:57.