Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 7:5

"For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death." — Romans 7:5 (ASV)

The new covenant should not be unproductive, for the old covenant was not unproductive. Before that mortification of the flesh which proceeds from our relation to the death of Christ, we bore a fruit generated through our carnal appetites by the Law, and the only being to whose honor and glory they contributed was Death.

The sins committed under the old dispensation are regarded as due to a twofold agency—on the one hand to the Law (the operation of which is described more particularly in Romans 7:7-8), and on the other hand to the flesh, which was only too susceptible to any influence that would provoke its sinful impulses. Those impulses have now been mortified, as if by a course of asceticism, through union with the death of Christ.

The “body” is regarded by St. Paul as a neutral principle, which is not in itself either good or bad. It is simply the material frame of men, which though itself of the earth earthy is capable of becoming a dwelling-place for the Spirit, and being put to holy uses. The “flesh” is the same material frame regarded as the seat of sinful appetites, and with a tendency to obey the lower rather than the higher self. The proper way to overcome this lower self is by that spiritual asceticism which the believer goes through by his appropriation of the death of Christ.

Motions of sins.—The same word which is translated in Galatians 5:24 as affections—those emotions or passions which lead to sin.

Which were by the law.—Which the Law served to stimulate and arouse in the manner described below.

Did work.—Were active or astir, opposed to that state of torpor or mortification to which they were reduced in the Christian.

Unto death.—Death is here personified as the king of that region which sin serves to enrich.