Sanctification

by Edward Hoare

Note A.—Romans, vii.

I believe that a great deal of the difficulty felt respecting the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, arises from a mistaken idea that the different chapters are descriptive of consecutive periods of the Christian life. Persons are supposed to be justified in the fifth, brought to a new life in the sixth, and to be living in perfect peace in the eighth, and thus the conflict of the seventh is thought to be out of place. But surely there is no such consecutiveness to be found in the passage.

Both the sixth and seventh chapters are an answer to the question in the first verse of the sixth, ‘Shall we continue in sin?’ And this answer is founded on the principle that we must not do so, because such conduct would be inconsistent with the great change that has taken place in us. This change is then described under three figures.

(1.) A death unto sin through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ch. vi. 3–15.)

(2.) A change of service. (Ch. vi. 16–23.)

(3.) A release from the law, as a woman is loosed from the law of her husband when he dies (Ch. vii. 1–6); the result of which is that, therefore, we are now free from condemnation, etc. (Ch. viii. 1). The ‘therefore’ of this verse depends on the deliverance described in ch. vii. 6, and the intermediate passage (ver. 7–25) is a parenthesis. It is in the parenthesis that the difficulty is supposed to lie; and by the place which that parenthesis occupies in the argument that it must be explained.

In his argument the Apostle had connected sin with the law, which of course suggested the idea that the law was sinful; an idea which would have been shocking to Jewish minds, and was entirely contrary to his own. In accordance, therefore, with his usual style, he broke off from the direct line of his argument, in order to protect the truth against any such objection; and thus introduced the parenthesis.

This consists of two questions, with their respective answers.

The first is in the seventh verse: ‘What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid.’ This he answers by a reference to his own history, and by showing that the law, so far from being sin, had served to discover and develope it; and by doing so had slain him. (Ver. 7–12.) Thus far the passage is clearly historical, and the ‘I’ is his own historical self, as I believe it to be throughout.

But this answer suggested a further difficulty: viz., that a good thing had been the means of slaying him; and this led to the second question (ver. 13): ‘Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid.’ To this the answer was that the fault was not in the law, but in himself; for even in his new condition, when he heartily loved the law, the old nature of the flesh was still so powerful that he could not fulfil it as he would. (Ver. 14–24.)

This explains the strong language of the fourteenth verse,—‘I am carnal, sold under sin,’—which people find it difficult to reconcile with the account of complete deliverance in the sixth verse.

For my own part I have no difficulty, for

(1.) The explanation is suggested by the account he gives of the ‘me’ in the eighteenth verse. ‘In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.’ It is clear that he is speaking there of his fallen human nature; and it is not unreasonable to believe that the explanation there given covers the fourteenth verse as well.

(2.) This is the only meaning that the words can bear in the context. He is showing that his death under the law was not the fault of the law, but of his own nature. And, therefore, he says, ‘The law is spiritual, but I am’ (by nature, that is) ‘carnal, sold under sin.’ He does not contradict his own words in ch. vi. 11, where he directs his readers to ‘reckon themselves alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ for he is not speaking of his position in Christ Jesus, but asserting that by nature he was carnal; so that the law was not to blame for having been made death unto him. There is no difficulty in the use of the present tense if we bear in mind that the old nature is not eradicated by the new birth. He, so far as his nature was concerned, was as bad as ever to the last day of his life.

The remainder of the parenthesis is a proof of this corruption of his nature derived from his present experience. And the exclamation of the twenty-fourth verse is the cry of a holy man who, being regenerate, loved the law, and longed to be set free from that power of a fallen nature which kept him back from its complete fulfilment. He had been delivered from the law as a condemning power; but he delighted in it as a rule of life, and longed to be free from his evil nature, that so he might obey it without impediment.