II. In answer then to our first question, I am brought to the conclusion that when he spoke of ‘I myself,’ he meant himself, and not another: and we may pass to our second question. To what period of his spiritual history did he refer: did he speak of the past, or of the present? Was he describing some period of past anxiety out of which he had been delivered, so as to enter on the joys of the eighth chapter? Or was he speaking of his state of mind at the very time, that he was writing the eighth chapter, and declaring, ‘Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father?’ In answer to this I have not the smallest hesitation in saying that, according to every principle of sound exposition, the seventh chapter refers to exactly the same period as the eighth; that it is a description of his own experience at the time he wrote the words; and that we should have just as much authority for saying that the eighth chapter referred only to the future, as that the seventh referred only to the past. For this I give three reasons:—
(1.) If we wish to understand the Word of God we must receive plain words as we find them in sacred Scripture. We have no right to assume that the present tense stands for the past; that ‘I am,’ means ‘I was;’ that ‘I do,’ means ‘I used to do;’ that ‘I hate,’ means ‘I used to hate;’ and ‘I delight,’ means ‘I used to delight.’ If we once begin thus to handle Scripture there is an end to exposition; and if people who thus twist Scripture would be consistent, they ought to go on, and say that the beginning of this verse, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ means, ‘I used to thank Him, but I do not now.’
(2.) Again, the transition from the past to the present is clearly marked in the passage. In the parenthesis which extends from the seventh verse to the end of the chapter, we find the three tenses,—past, present, and future. From verse seven to verse thirteen it is all in the past, and is a description of a certain portion of his past life. ‘I was alive;’ ‘the commandment came;’ ‘sin revived;’ ‘I died;’ ‘I found it to be unto death;’ and ‘sin deceived me, and by it slew me.’ It is a description of the great work of God in breaking down his pharisaism, and bringing him to Christ. I believe it all took place during those solemn three days at Damascus. But from the fourteenth verse to the end, all is changed, and the present tense is employed. ‘I am;’ ‘I do;’ ‘I allow;’ ‘I delight;’ ‘I hate;’ ‘I thank God;’ ‘I serve.’ The only exception is in the twenty-fourth verse, where we find the future: ‘who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ This distinction of the tenses is alone enough to prove the point, for it would be just as reasonable to maintain that the past means the present, as that the present means the past.
(3.) Once more. The noble thanksgiving of verse twenty-five is supposed to be the point of transition from the sadness of the seventh chapter to the joys of the eighth; the conclusion of his conflict in the discovery of the Lord Jesus. There can be no doubt that this passage does describe the act of faith rejoicing in the Divine Deliverer. It describes the believer grasping the victory, and rising through grace above the conflict within his soul. We quite admit it, and fully accept that explanation of the words. But now, here is the remarkable point: this account of a struggle within the soul is found—where? Not only before the thanksgiving of victory, but also after it; proving thereby that it is deeply felt, even by those who can give thanks for an overcoming Saviour. And more than that. People draw a distinction between what they call the unhappy seventh and the happy eighth; but this verse comes between the thanksgiving of the seventh chapter and the assurance of no condemnation in the eighth. It follows the thanksgiving, and leads on immediately to the grand, and most blessed declaration, with which the eighth chapter opens: ‘There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.’
On the whole, therefore, I conclude that the Apostle was speaking of himself, and not of another: and that he spoke of himself at the very time that he was assured of no condemnation in the present, and no separation for all eternity: of a perfect safety in his union with the Lord Jesus Christ. We may pass then to our last subject.
III. What does the passage teach us respecting the experience of the Apostle at the time when he wrote the Epistle? Perhaps I ought to limit the question by rather saying, What was his experience with reference to the law? For the whole object of the passage is to bring out the holiness of the law, and to prove from his own case that the ‘commandment was holy, and just, and good.’
(1.) The first thing that is conspicuously clear is that he had discovered its true character. When he was a legalist he had no idea of its exalted standard; but, when God called him, his eyes were opened to behold its perfection. It is a curious fact that those who hope to save themselves by their doings are almost certain to entertain but low and limited notions of the law: they think of it as some low standard within their own reach; so they are always endeavouring to fulfil it, and though always failing, are never really troubled at their failure; but, when God opens their heart, they discover its exalted holiness, and find themselves to be nothing better than dead men before it. This is just what had happened to St. Paul. He lived in early life as an earnest, religious, and well-conducted young man, and he was satisfied with himself. ‘Touching the righteousness which is in the law,’ as he says himself (Phil. iii. 6), he was ‘blameless.’ He went through all the Jewish worship as correctly as possible, and omitted nothing: but he knew nothing of the claims of the law on his whole heart and all his powers; he simply regarded it as a collection of rules,—and he thought he did well. So he says, in verse nine, ‘I was alive without the law once.’ His ignorance of the law made him think himself alive; but God had after a time opened his eyes, and he discovered its exalted holiness. He saw it expounded in the teaching of our Lord, and exhibited in His life; he found it was nothing less than the perfect will of a perfect God; and all his own poor, feeble, miserable doings shrank away as dead things before the holiness of God; and thus he adds, ‘The commandment came, and I died.’
Now this change had taken place when he wrote the Epistle, so that the law was no longer to him a mere skeleton of form, but had appeared before him as the great expression of the mind of God. And now how did he regard it? This leads to a second point.
(2.) He approved it, and delighted in it. He approved it, for he said, ‘I consent unto the law, that it is good.’ Nor did he regard it as a yoke of bondage about his soul. It was not a rigid code by which he was forced against his will. How any person can suppose that this passage is the language of an unregenerate, or unconverted man, I cannot imagine. Did you ever know an unconverted man to delight in the perfect holiness of God? Such holiness condemns, restrains, and frightens him. But St. Paul said, ‘I delight in the law of God after the inner man.’ The fact was he had experienced the great promise of the New Covenant: ‘I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it on their hearts.’ God, the Holy Ghost, had written the law on his heart, and now he loved it. To please God was his greatest joy, and to do His will was the chief desire of his soul. He could say, as David did, ‘Oh, how I love Thy love: it is my meditation all the day!’ He was not content with the measure of his own consciousness, or the standard of his fellow-men, or a vain idea of doing his best, or doing no harm to any one. He did not split hairs about the distinction between being blameless and being faultless. He had seen the Lord in His beauty, and adored Him in His holiness, so now it was the whole mind and will of God that filled his soul, and the great desire of his heart was expressed in such words as those of the Psalmist, ‘Teach me to do Thy will; for Thou art my God: Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.’ And does not this teach us a lesson of inexpressible importance respecting ourselves? In Christ Jesus we are not driven by a slave master, and compelled by the lash into obedience. We ‘love the law,’ because we ‘love the Lord.’ We find His will, and His word, to be dearer unto us than thousands of gold and silver; and we experience the blessedness described by our blessed Saviour when He said, ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’
(3.) But all this while he was painfully conscious that he was infinitely below its standard. The very fact of hungering and thirsting after righteousness implies in itself that your hunger is not yet supplied: so in this passage St. Paul teaches us that he was still very far from what he most earnestly desired to be. He felt what I may term the bitter provocation of shortcoming: ‘The good that I would I do not, but the evil that I would not that I do.’ There was the unceasing consciousness of falling utterly short of the high standard set before him in the law. He does not say this to justify sin, for he tells us how he hated it; but he teaches us, as plainly as words can teach anything, that at the very time when God had by His great grace so changed his heart that he had discovered the law and was delighting in it, there was still in him what the ninth Article describes, when it says, ‘The infection of nature doth remain yet in them that are regenerate.’ The old, fallen, sinful human nature was not extinct in him, and this ruin of his fallen nature was acting as a clog and drawback on his holy longings after the perfect holiness of God. Thus in his one self there was a contest between grace and nature, between the new man and the old. Of the one he says, ‘I delight in the law of God after the inward man;’ and of the other, ‘I know that in me (i.e., in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.’ By the power of the Holy Ghost he could say, ‘To will is present with me;’ but through the power of the old nature he was obliged to add, ‘How to perform that which is good I find not.’ It was this bitter pain of thus failing to reach the standard of his heart’s desire, that drew from him the cry, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ Some people think that such language could not have come from an enlightened believer, led by the Spirit, and walking in the sunlight of the eighth chapter. They seem to forget the twenty-third verse of that very chapter, in which he says, ‘Ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.’ (viii. 23.) For my own part, I believe it was the leading of the Spirit that called it forth, inasmuch as that leading led him to aim at the true standard of the holiness of God. I agree with the wise commentary of old Scott:—