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Was 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. °
Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
For 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.
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

7:15 I do. Note the excessive use of the first person pronoun in this passage—no less than thirty-five times in Romans 7:15-24. The old nature, with which Paul was struggling, and with which every believer must struggle, is self-centered instead of Christ-centered. As long as the measure of things is “I-me-mine,” instead of the will of God, then Paul’s cry must soon be ours—“O wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24).


7:18 no good thing. Paul, before his conversion, could boast that he was, as “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). But then he came to see that all his “righteousnesses [were] as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), and accepted “eternal life through Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:23). If such a man as Paul would have to confess that in his flesh there was nothing good at all, then surely every Christian must say the same.


7:22 inward man. The “inward man” is evidently here the same as the “new man,” for the “old man” (Romans 6:6) could never “delight in the law of God.”


7:23 law of sin. The “law of sin,” which is in our members, is the sin-nature inherited from Adam. It is the spiritual aspect of the universal law of entropy which governs the physical creation ever since God’s curse on the ground because of Adam’s sin.


7:24 who shall deliver me. The question, as rightly phrased by Paul, is not what or how, but who. Only the perfect Son of man can deliver a son of Adam from “the body of this death.” The only solution and victor in the struggle between the old and new natures in the believer is “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25).


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