Romanschapter 7
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Speaks with:Romans 7×10Galatians 5×7Romans 6×4Galatians 3×3Romans 8×31 Corinthians 7×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The law has dominion over a man as long as he liveth; believers are dead to the law through the body of Christ, that they should be married to another. Paul then paints the awakened conscience under law: what I would, I do not; what I would not, that I do. O wretched man! Who shall deliver me? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Henry shows the chapter preparing chapter 8's deliverance; Calvin sees in it the believer's continuing humbling under inward sin's pull.
Context
Epistle · Paul — Romans overview
- A. 1–6 Dead to the Law, Joined to Another
- B. 7–13 Is the Law Sin? Sin Exposed by the Commandment
- C. 14–25 The War Within: O Wretched Man That I Am!
The outline
A.Dead to the Law, Joined to Anothervv. 1 to 6
Read vv. 1 to 6 →B.Is the Law Sin? Sin Exposed by the Commandmentvv. 7 to 13
Read vv. 7 to 13 →C.The War Within: O Wretched Man That I Am!vv. 14 to 25
Read vv. 14 to 25 →
The world behind this chapter
Romans 7The history
The opening illustration depends on a legal fact both Jewish and Roman hearers accepted: a wife is bound to her husband while he lives, and his death releases her. Under Jewish law of the time a husband could divorce a wife far more easily than the reverse, so death was the clean example. Paul uses it only to make one point — obligation ends when one party dies.
The commandment he singles out as the one that exposed him is the tenth, against coveting. It is the only one of the ten that no court can prosecute, because it happens entirely inside a person. That is precisely why it works as his example: the Law reached where behaviour could not be policed.
Whether the anguished "I" of the second half describes Paul's present experience, his life before Christ, or a representative figure standing for Israel under the Law has been argued since the church fathers and is not settled. The passage is written to be felt either way.
What it meant to them
For Jewish believers, this chapter defended the Law against a conclusion they might have drawn from everything Paul had said. The Law is holy, righteous, and good; the problem is sin, which used a good commandment as a foothold.
For anyone struggling, the honesty was the gift. The cry of a person who wants what is right and does not do it, ending in a plea for rescue rather than a technique, was as recognizable in a Roman tenement as anywhere since.
Sources cited
- F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Romans 7. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.