Back to Home Page | Back to Index of Romans
ROMANS Chapter 7:
Dealing with Our Good Flesh and the Need to be Delivered from the Law of Sin and Death
(Overcomer Wu)
Please read: Rom 7:1-25, 5:20, 6:14, Gal 3:24
Some people felt that this chapter is out of place because towards the end of Romans 6 we already have the way to being dead to sin and be made alive unto God in Jesus Christ. And we can live a consecrated life by presenting our members to righteousness unto sanctification. And yet Romans 7 seems to present to us a severe problem of being in bondage to the flesh under the law. Some have even suggested that this chapter perhaps is speaking about the unbelievers. We know however, that that is clearly not the case bec. (1) from verse 1 of Romans 7, Paul already addressed them as "brothers." (2) v.4 we are said to have been identified with the death of Christ to the law [Gal 2:19]. (3) The order of the chapter comes after the justification by faith in Romans 5, after our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection in chap. 6.
There are important distinctions between Romans 6 and Romans 7: In Romans 6 we are delivered from our old man and our nature of sin; while in Romans 7 we are shown the need to be delivered from our flesh in which the law of sin and death operates. The actual solution for our deliverance from the law of sin and death is of course presented to us in Romans 8. Another distinction between Romans 6 and 7 is that Romans 6 deals with "the body of sin" (6:6), Romans 7 deals with "the body of this death" (7:24). What is the diff. between the body of sin and the body of death? 1 John 3:4 says that "sin is lawlessness." and 1 John 5:17 says, "All unrighteousness is sin." So, we can say that Rom 6 deals main with the problem of violating God's righteousness. While the "body of this death" is speaking more in reference to our condition before God's holy demand to live a life separated unto His purpose and for the sole purpose of doing the will of God expressed in His Word. In this regard, we have been proven to be totally weak and incapable in our good flesh of living such a life up to God's holy demand. Thus, we are liken to have a "body of death," because a dead body is epitomy of weakness, hopelessness, and futility. A dead body is completely useless and powerless.
The issue being dealt with in Romans 7 is the man trying to please God in the flesh. In other words, it is the good flesh that we're dealing with in this chapter. Whenever we try to please God in our flesh, we come under the law and the wretched experience of Romans 7 becomes ours. Having said that, we need to see that by God's design, the experience of Romans 7 is actually necessary to show us at least 3 crucial points for our spiritual advancement:
v.18, that "in our flesh dwells no good thing." I believe that before we come to such a despairing experience in Rom 7, we all think that there is still some goodness in our flesh. Ex: a brother once told me that actually it is too much to say that our flesh is not good for anything. Indeed there is a good flesh in all of us. A flesh so good that it even seeks to please God and serve God. But the vital point that the Lord is trying to convey to us all is that the good intentions and the good deeds does not count if it comes from the wrong source (as we saw in to some extent in Romans 6) or in the wrong realm. The Lord is in fact trying to show us the way of victory, bec. as long as we are in the realm of the flesh, we are subject to the law of sin and death which will inevitably and ultimately subdue us. Ex: The law of gravity
It is indispensable for convincing us of our utter inability to please God in our flesh. In fact Romans 8:8 tells us explicitly that "those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Are we in Christ or are we in our flesh? No matter how good, how civilized, or how religious our flesh is, it cannot please God. It is like Cain trying to please God in his own self-devised way. Only those who are in Christ are well pleasing to God, bec. God is only well please with one person in the universe, and that's Christ (Matt. 3:17b"This is My Beloved Son in Whom I delight").
When we see our flesh as God sees it by experiencing the utter futility of the flesh to please God, and come to the end of our rope and cry, "wretch man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (v.24), it is then that we are convinced to abandon our flesh in its effort to do the will of God under the law.
The discovery of the above is aided by the law. Do you know what is the purpose of the law? The law was given with the intent of exposing the weakness of the flesh (Read Rom 3:20, Gal 2:16b, 21). Do you know that the law was not given by God for us to keep? Rather it was given for us to break. The law is like a child-conductor (Gal 3:24-25) that directs us to Christ after it exposes our inability to meet the righteous demands of God as set forth in the law.
Some commentators of Romans 7-8:2 talks about 3 laws and some may have even talk about 5 laws, There is no right or wrong answer on this matter, it all depends on how you cut the cake, right? For myself, I will cut the cake into 5 pieces; that is, I will briefly discuss the 5 important laws at work in Romans 7-8:2 :
(1) The law of God makes demand on me, then (2) the law of good in my mind responds by making an effort to keep the law of God. (3) Here is a law that not many Bible readers may notice in v.7:21, which is a law that automatically activates the law of sin whenever the law of good is at work. I call it the law of automatic-engagement.(4) Then the law of sin in our members which war against the law of good (5) Every time the law of good gets into a war with the law of sin and death; ultimately and every time the war will be won by the law of sin and death, because we are in the domain of the law of sin and death as long as we are trying to keep the law of God in our flesh. We may win a little battle here and there trying to do the law of God in our flesh, but ultimately, the war is always decidedly won by the law of sin and death. And I would call this law/principle, the law of ultimate defeat. Ex: The killer whale is a fearsome and powerful killer in the realm of the water. It can kill a much bigger gray whale or sharks; but if the killer whales try to fight against the elephant or the tiger on the realm of the dry land, it is no match against them, bec. it is not operating in the realm that it was created to survive in. Likewise with us, if we try to keep the law of God in our flesh, we are bound to be defeated bec. we are operating in the realm where the law of sin and death dominates. This is like a law of physics at work and we cannot escape it except when we are living by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus – the (6)th law. Praise the Lord for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed us from the law of sin and death!
Elaborate a little about the metaphor(dead body of the murdered victim is chain to the body of the convicted murderer until he too dies from the putrefying gangrene spreading to the murderer) of us being bounded to the "body of this death" as long as we are living in our flesh in attempting to please God. As long as we are living in our flesh, we have already been condemned to death. What's going to kill us is the law of sin and death in our flesh. But praise the Lord that there is no more condemnation to those in Christ Jesus (8:1); thus we are freed from from the dead sentence of being chained to the dead body of our flesh. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord for giving us a way of deliverance from the law of sin and death!
The Root of Our Problem – Self and Our Good Flesh
The revelation of our self-life and and the utter untrustworthiness of our flesh, even our good flesh, is one of the most crucial and indispensable revelations necessary for the growth of our Christian life. Learning the utter and complete depravity of what dwells in our flesh – "For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells" (Rom 7:18) – is a mandatory step for us to condemn our flesh as God condemns it: that not an ounce of good intention and good work originating from our flesh is of any value to Him. Furthermore, it seems that we also have to experience the weakness of our self/flesh to do the "good" that we wish to do as articulated in Rom 7:19 and the repeated failures until we come to the point of utter frustration that we cry out: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me form the body of this death?" (Rom 7:24) and seek the deliverance of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Many who have read Romans 7 would like to quickly dismiss it as something of a struggle that an immature Christian goes through in the early stages of their lives. Actually, as we saw previously in Romans 6, the Christian going through this struggle has actually gone through the lesson and experiences of being identified with Christ in His dead and was made alive unto God in Jesus Christ; Moreover, the Christian at this stage of his/her spiritual life has been living a consecrated life by presenting our members to righteousness unto sanctification. Yet the Lord knows that we need to go through the heart-breaking experience of the repeated failure as facilitated by the law of sin and death operating in our members in order for us to finally and vehemently forsake our self-life or our fleshly life (which is a much deeper stage of the Lord's dealing with us in order for us to be brought on unto the full measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ), and take Christ as our true life, by Whom we live day by day. It is only then that we truly know the meaning in our experience of: "It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20).
If we find ourselves in the agony of conflict of Romans 7 -- the desire to do law of God in order to please Him but bound for defeat in each attempt in our good flesh – we should actually thank the Lord for this as it is a great blessing to finally see our self and our good flesh as the Lord sees it: that in my flesh, absolutely NOTHING GOOD dwells (7:18). There are many Christians who feel that their good flesh still has some redeemable value and that we don't need to reject all of our fleshly efforts and striving as long as it is for a good cause. Sorry to say that such Christians have not yet been enlighten by the Lord to see the inner depravity of their flesh and the abhorrence of their self-life before God. For this reason, the struggle and frustration of Romans 7 experience is a prerequisite for us to enter into the victory of deliverance in Christ, and experience the liberty of the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:2). Oftentimes, God's way seems paradoxical: Success comes from failure; victory through defeat; and life out of death. We may not always fathom His ways, but we praise Him for His ways which is astronomically higher than ours.