Romans 7:7-25 is one of today’s readings in the St. James reader, and it is typically read this way: “I am just so sinful that even though I want to do right, I can’t. Nor can I not do the wrong I don’t want to do. This is the daily struggle of the Christian–look, even Paul admits that he is prone to defeat! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thankfully, God through Jesus when he takes me to heaven and forever rids me of this split self! Until then, I’ll always suffer this war within.”

How bleak. Thankfully, that’s not what Paul is saying at all.

The key to reading this tricky section rightly is to have 7:1-6, which precedes it, firmly in mind as you read. In those verses, Paul says:

• “…you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God” (7:4; note the tense; this is past action with ongoing significance).
• “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (7:5; note the past time “while we were.” This situation no longer applies).
• “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (7:6; note the new situation in which we currently live–released from the law, which echoes 7:4).

So who is the “I”? The most likely answer is that Paul is referring to the Jew who seeks justification–being counted as righteous by God–according to the law and not according to faith in Christ. As soon as he sees where the boundary line is, his sinfulness presses him to contrive a way to circumvent it. The emphasis is on the interplay between the law and one’s sinfulness, but there is no mention of Jesus or the Spirit until the very end.

Jesus is not a solution for once we’re dead, but for this life. He lived to please his Father and thus fulfilled the law (8:3-4). When we enter into his faithfulness, the Spirit begins to undo all of the destructive patterns, what Paul calls “the sin that dwells within” (7:17; 20; 23). This good news that we serve according to the Spirit who changes us from the inside out rises to a climax in 8:11: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” We are not doomed to always fail to do what we want to or not do what we don’t want to. The Holy Spirit is resurrecting our dead obedience receptors.

To summarize, Romans 7:7-25 best fits the situation of a God-seeking Jew who wants to keep the law but recognizes that his sinfulness short-circuits his obedience. This is in no way the situation of the Christ-follower who is being renewed from the inside out by the Spirit of God dwelling within. Rather, “the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many” (Romans 5:15; and 5:12-21 as a whole).

Kelly