Matthew Henry Commentary Romans 7

As long as anyone continues under the law as a covenant and seeks justification by their own obedience, they continue as a slave to sin in some form. Nothing but the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus can make any sinner free from the law of sin and death. Believers are delivered from that power of the law which condemns them for the sins they have committed.

And they are delivered from that power of the law which stirs up and provokes the sin that dwells in them. Understand this to refer not to the law as a rule, but as a covenant of works. In profession and privilege, we are under a covenant of grace and not under a covenant of works; we are under the gospel of Christ, not under the law of Moses.

The difference is spoken of using the analogy or figure of being married to a new husband. The second marriage is to Christ. By death, we are freed from obligation to the law as a covenant, just as a wife is freed from her vows to her husband. When we believe powerfully and effectually, we are dead to the law and have no more to do with it than the dead servant, who is freed from his master, has to do with his master's yoke.

The day we believe is the day we are united to the Lord Jesus. We enter into a life of dependence on him and duty to him. Good works are from union with Christ, just as the fruitfulness of the vine is the product of its being united to its roots; there is no fruit for God until we are united to Christ.

The law, and the greatest efforts of someone under the law, still in the flesh and under the power of corrupt principles, cannot set the heart right regarding the love of God, overcome worldly lusts, or give truth and sincerity in the inward parts, or anything that comes by the special sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing more than a formal obedience to the outward letter of any precept can be performed by us without the renewing, new-creating grace of the new covenant.

There is no way of coming to that knowledge of sin, which is necessary for repentance and therefore for peace and pardon, except by testing our hearts and lives by the law. In his own case, the apostle would not have known the sinfulness of his thoughts, motives, and actions, except through the law. That perfect standard showed how wrong his heart and life were. It proved his sins to be more numerous than he had previously thought, yet it did not contain any provision of mercy or grace for his relief.

He who does not perceive in himself a readiness to imagine there is something desirable in what is out of reach is ignorant of human nature and the perversity of his own heart. We may perceive this in our children, though self-love makes us blind to it in ourselves. The more humble and spiritual any Christian is, the more clearly he will perceive that the apostle describes the true believer, from his first convictions of sin to his greatest progress in grace, during this present imperfect state.

St. Paul was once a Pharisee, ignorant of the spirituality of the law, having some correctness of character without knowing his inward depravity. When the commandment came to his conscience through the convictions of the Holy Spirit, and he saw what it demanded, he found his sinful mind rise against it. He felt at the same time the evil of sin and his own sinful state; he recognized that he was unable to fulfill the law and was like a criminal when condemned.

But though the evil principle in the human heart produces sinful impulses, and does so all the more by using the commandment as an opportunity, yet the law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good. It is not favorable to sin, which it pursues into the heart, and uncovers and rebukes in its inward stirrings. There is nothing so good that a corrupt and vicious nature will not pervert it.

The same heat that softens wax, hardens clay. Food or medicine, when misused, may cause death, though its nature is to nourish or to heal. The law may cause death through human depravity, but sin is the poison that brings death. It was not the law, but sin uncovered by the law, that became death for the apostle.

The ruinous nature of sin, and the sinfulness of the human heart, are clearly shown here.

Compared with the holy rule of conduct in the law of God, the apostle found himself so very far short of perfection that he seemed to be carnal, like a man who is sold against his will to a hated master, from whom he cannot free himself. A real Christian unwillingly serves this hated master, yet cannot shake off the galling chain until his powerful and gracious Friend above rescues him. The remaining evil of his heart is a real and humbling hindrance to his serving God as angels do and the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

This strong language was the result of St. Paul's great advance in holiness and the depth of his self-abasement and hatred of sin. If we do not understand this language, it is because we are so far beneath him in holiness, knowledge of the spirituality of God's law, and the evil of our own hearts, and hatred of moral evil. And many believers have adopted the apostle's language, showing that it is suitable to their deep feelings of abhorrence of sin and self-abasement.

The apostle enlarges on the conflict he daily maintained with the remainder of his original depravity. He was frequently led into tempers, words, or actions that he did not approve or allow in his renewed judgment and affections. By distinguishing his real self, his spiritual part, from the self, or flesh, in which sin dwelt, and by observing that the evil actions were done, not by him, but by sin dwelling in him, the apostle did not mean that people are not accountable for their sins, but he teaches the evil of their sins by showing that they are all done against reason and conscience. Sin dwelling in a person does not prove its rule or dominion over that person.

If a person dwells in a city or a country, that person still may not rule there.

The purer and holier the heart is, the more keenly it will perceive the sin that remains in it. The believer sees more of the beauty of holiness and the excellence of the law. Their earnest desires to obey increase as they grow in grace. However, the complete good toward which their will is fully set, they do not do; with sin continually springing up in them through remaining corruption, they often do evil, though this is against the firm determination of their will.

The stirrings of sin within grieved the apostle. If the striving of the flesh against the Spirit meant that he could not do or perform what the Spirit suggested, then likewise, through the effective opposition of the Spirit, he could not do what the flesh prompted him to do. How different this situation is from that of those who are complacent about the inward stirrings of the flesh prompting them to evil—who, against the light and warning of conscience, continue, even in outward practice, to do evil and thus, deliberately, continue on the road to perdition!

For since the believer is under grace, and their will is set on the way of holiness, they sincerely delight in the law of God, and in the holiness which it demands, according to their inward man; that new man in them, which after God is created in true holiness.

This passage does not represent the apostle as one who walked according to the flesh, but as one who was deeply committed not to walk in that way. And if there are those who abuse this passage, as they also do with the other Scriptures, to their own destruction, yet serious Christians find reason to bless God for having in this way provided for their support and comfort. We are not, because of the abuse by those who are blinded by their own lusts, to find fault with Scripture, or any just and well-warranted interpretation of it.

And no one who is not engaged in this conflict can clearly understand the meaning of these words or rightly judge this painful conflict, which led the apostle to bemoan himself as a wretched man, constrained to do what he abhorred. He could not deliver himself, and this made him thank God all the more fervently for the way of salvation revealed through Jesus Christ, which promised him, in the end, deliverance from this enemy. So then, he says, I myself, with my mind—my prevailing judgment, affections, and purposes, as a regenerate man, by divine grace—serve and obey the law of God; but with the flesh—the carnal nature, the remains of depravity—I serve the law of sin, which wars against the law of my mind.

He is not serving it in such a way as to live in it or to allow it, but as one unable to free himself from it, even in his very best state, and needing to look for help and deliverance outside of himself. It is evident that he thanks God for Christ as our deliverer, as our atonement and righteousness in Himself, and not because of any holiness worked in us. He knew of no such salvation and disowned any such title to it.

He was willing to act in all points agreeably to the law, in his mind and conscience, but was hindered by indwelling sin and never attained the perfection the law requires. What can be deliverance for a person who is always sinful, except the free grace of God, as offered in Christ Jesus? The power of divine grace and of the Holy Spirit could root out sin from our hearts even in this life, if divine wisdom had not thought otherwise.

But it is permitted, so that Christians might constantly feel and thoroughly understand the wretched state from which divine grace saves them, might be kept from trusting in themselves, and might always hold all their consolation and hope from the rich and free grace of God in Christ.