So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. Romans 7:21-23
Here Paul speaks of “another law at work in me, the law of sin.” Paul is referring to our sinful human nature, which he calls a “law,” as though it is a natural law, like gravity. And, indeed, the outworking of our fallen human nature does seem to be as constant and predictable as gravity.
But Paul’s message in Romans 7:1-6, is that the Christian believer is, because of Christ’s death on our behalf, free from the “law of sin.” We do not need to be married to it anymore:
“So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law [that is, the law of sin, which is your sinful human nature controlling you] through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.” Rom. 7:4.
Clearly, the “law” of which Paul speaks is the “law of sin,” at work in us, our sinful, fallen nature, not the Ten Commandment law. But this is made even clearer in the next verse:
For when we were in the realm of the flesh,
the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us,
so that we bore fruit for death.
Rom. 7:5.
The sinful passions aroused by the law? What law? Again, obviously “the law of sin” which is the outworking of our sinful, fallen human nature. The NIV drops a note after the word “flesh” (Gr.: sarx), stating that here, and in many other passages, it is not used literally but rather in reference “to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit.” Exactly. And this is what Paul calls “the law of sin” and what he says we can be free from.
“But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law [again, the “law of sin” at work in our nature] so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” Rom. 7:6
We can now see that Romans 7:1-6 builds on what Paul wrote in the previous chapter. The “dead husband” metaphor is part of an extended argument against cheap grace, against continuing to sin after you have repented and claimed forgiveness through faith." F.D.Nichol/F7
