Romans 7: Who Was Paul Talking About?

There have been centuries of Christian debate over the subject of Romans 7:7-25. Was Paul describing his experience with sin as a non-Christian, or was he describing his experience with sin as a Christian? This becomes an important question because Christian leaders use various interpretations to support other teachings. Calvinists oppose the first view, partly because they think that the unregenerate cannot think or feel the way Paul describes. Wesleyan and “Victorious Life” teachers say that it’s Paul describing himself as a Christian fighting the power of sin in his own strength, because that fits their template of an additional “higher life” step that chapter 8 allegedly goes on to describe.

If we skim the section first, this is what we will find:

Paul asks if Moses’ law is sinful, and then absolutely denies this idea (7:7a). Paul’s critics might have accused him of teaching such a thing, because he had just said that the law stimulates sinful desires in the non-Christian (7:5). But Paul rejects the notion that the law has a sinful character, and instead says the opposite is true: God’s law is how we know the difference between good and evil (7:7b).

Instead, the power of sin in the unsaved person reacts to the knowledge of good and evil, and produces sinful desires of every kind. Sin in the heart is dormant (“dead”) apart from knowledge of moral law. This is why Jacob and Esau in the womb could do neither good nor evil (Romans 9:11). We are born with sinful natures, but we don’t become sinners by choice until we know God’s commandments and willfully break them. At that point God passes judgment (“died”, 7:10a). Romans 8:9-10 gives foundation for an age of accountability. This is consistent with Revelation 20:12, which says that God will judge each person on the basis of their own works. No one is in hell because they are a child of Adam.

No, Paul is as far away from saying that the law is sinful as a man can be. God’s laws are holy, just, good, and intended to be a source of life (7:10, 12). It is the force of sin within us, reacting against the law, that deceives and destroys us (7:11).

Paul asks another question: does God’s good law cause death? Absolutely not! (7:13). Again, it is sin that produces death in us, as it reacts against God’s good law, which reveals just how utterly sinful sin really is (7:13). And here is where the really crucial part of Romans 7 begins. Paul says, “God’s law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, and sold into sin’s power” (7:14). Here he goes on to describe what this condition looks and feels like in practice (14-23).

1. He is baffled by his own behavior, because on one hand he does not do what he wants to do, and on the other hand he does other things that he hates (7:15).

2. When he does not want to sin, he, by not wanting to do it, is agreeing with God’s law, and by implication affirming that God’s law is good (7:16).

3. Since he is doing the opposite of what he mentally wants to do, then something other than his mind is controlling him. That “something else” is the evil of sin within (7:17, 20, 21).

4. Nothing good at all exists in sin, which Paul dubs “the flesh.” Paul wants to do good (such as “not covet”, see 7:7), but he has no ability to do it (7:19).

5. Intellectually, Paul joyfully supports and agrees with God’s laws, But his physical body is waging war against his mind, and imprisons him to the wicked power of sin (7:23). This makes him a wretched, lamenting man, crying out for deliverance from his sin-riddled body (7:24).

So, was Paul describing himself as a Christian, or as a non-Christian?

One thing we should set aside is any interpretation driven by feelings of empathy. Any halfway-aware Christian can read this section and instantly feel kinship with Paul. However, that feeling of kinship does not prove a view. Christians also struggle against sin within (see Galatians 5:17), but Paul could still be talking about himself as a non-believer in Romans 7.

Paul’s shift to using present tenses (in 14-25) by itself alone does not automatically prove that Paul was talking in those verses as a Christian. I have been taught many generalizations about the Greek present tense which turned out not to be true. For example, one of my Greek professors in seminary continually translated all the present tenses in 1st John with the preface “keep on...”, as in “keep on sinning.” But I discovered later, from classic Greek scholar A.T. Robertson, that the Greek present tense does not always denote continuous action (Robertson, Greek Grammar, p.864).

Was Paul using the present tense to be dramatic? There is a present-tense form called the historical/dramatic present, which is used in narratives to portray a past event vividly, for rhetorical effect (Dr. Daniel Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, p.526). Dr. Wallace does not believe that Paul was using the historical/dramatic present in Romans 7:14ff, because Paul wrote this section in the first person (p.531). However, Greek tenses need to be interpreted in terms of a context. What does the context tell us?

Paul says that he is “of the flesh”, and “sold into sin’s power” (7:14). In contrast, he had just said in the first section of Romans 7 that all Christians are free from the sinful power of the flesh because they are freed from the law’s condemning power, and receive the Holy Spirit (7:6). He further says that all who are in Christ Jesus have been set free by the Holy Spirit from the law of sin and death (8:1-2). This sounds as if Paul was describing himself as an unregenerate man.

However, Paul goes on to further specify what he means. When he says “me”, he means something more particular. When he says that he is “of the flesh”, and a “slave of sin”, he exempts his own mind from this terrible condition (7:22). He says specifically that it is his body that is fleshly and enslaved (7:23). His body is where inward sin still resides (7:23). In contrast, his mind is not of the flesh, and not enslaved to sin. Quite the contrary: his mind joyfully concurs with God’s law (7:22).

Jesus said that evil flows out of a lost person’s mind (Matt. 15:17-19). In Jesus’ teaching, the heart/mind is the locus of evil in the natural man. The unregenerate mind is incapable of obeying God’s law (Romans 8:7), which includes “joyfully concurring” with it. The unregenerate mind will not joyfully commend that which damns it to hell. But when someone puts their faith in Christ, God spiritually re-enlivens the person’s mind, and the Holy Spirit writes God’s living law upon their heart (Hebrews 8:10). At that point, the war between body and mind begins. The Holy Spirit drives sin off the throne of the mind, even though the mind still needs to be re-educated in the ways of God (Romans 12:2).
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Paul’s self-description in Romans 7:14-25 is consistent with a regenerate person, and inconsistent with an unregenerate person. Unregenerate people, because of their own sinful inborn condition, cannot joyfully concurring with His moral law. Their rebellion and unbelief against God flows from the heart. Unregenerate people do not have a war going on between their hearts and their bodies. Their consciences might make them feel guilty over wrong things they have done, but that is not what Paul is describing in Romans 7:14ff.

Paul describes a fundamental collision between his mind (which joyfully loves God and God's law) versus the sin still residing in his fallen, sin-cursed physical body. His use of present tenses is consistent with the interpretation that he is describing himself as a Christian, but the deeper proof is found in the Bible’s testimony about how the Holy Spirit changes the heart and mind of anyone who comes to Christ.