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Romans 7:15-20

Part of the problem with Romans 7, however, is that people from all streams of Christianity are all over the map about whether Romans 7 describes Paul’s experience as a Christian or as a non-Christian. While everybody agrees that Paul is writing about a struggle with sin, there is little agreement about whether Paul is describing how a Christian struggles with sin or a non-Christian.

There are many who believe that Paul is describing his own experience as a Christian. It is pointed out that Paul uses the personal pronoun “I” and numerous present tense verbs throughout this passage. Furthermore, Paul references the “inward man” (7:22) and his “mind” which is at war with his “flesh” (7:23, 25). Some argue that only a regenerate person has an inner man or a renewed mind which is able to war against the flesh. Finally, nearly all Christians struggle with sin on a daily basis, and many note that the experience Paul describes seems to fit our own experience perfectly. It is comforting to know that even Paul struggled in this battle against sin.

Others argue, however, that there are good exegetical reasons to think that Paul may be referring to his past struggle against sin as an unregenerate religious Jew. For example, although Paul does use first-person pronouns and the present tense, he did not use this sort of grammar in Romans 6, the first part of Romans 7, or on into Romans 8 where it is perfectly clear that Paul is talking about regenerate people. It is suggested that Paul switches pronouns and verb tense in Romans 7:14-20 because he does not want to describe the experience of regenerate people, but describe rather his own personal experience as a religious Pharisaical Jew. He had the law of God, and tried his hardest to obey it, but completely failed. Finally, many believe that a Christian who is truly indwelled with the Spirit of God should have more victory over sin than what Paul describes in Romans 7:15-20.

Like all other brands of Christianity, Calvinists do not speak with a unified voice in this debate. For example, J. I. Packer says that, “Grammatically, … the natural way to read it would be as a transcript of Paul’s self-knowledge at the time of writing ...”⁰ However, a leading Calvinist professor like Anthony Hoekema declares the opposite:

The mood of frustration and defeat that permeates this section does not comport with the mood of victory in terms of which Paul usually describes the Christian life. The person pictured is still a captive of the law of sin (7:23), whereas the believer described in 6:17-18 is no longer a slave to sin.⁰

Yet no matter which view a Calvinist takes, this passage creates problems for their system of theology. If the Calvinist agrees with J. I. Packer that Romans 7 is a description of the ongoing struggle with sin that every Christian faces (including the Apostle Paul), then this passage creates problems for the Calvinistic doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints. We will see how in the chapter on that topic. But if a Calvinist takes the alternate opinion, along with Hoekema, and says that Romans 7 describes the condition and experience of the unbeliever, then this text creates problems for their teachings on total inability.

As seen earlier in this chapter through numerous quotes from Calvinists, total inability teaches that mankind does not have a will to do anything other than sin. They do not have the will to comprehend, understand, or choose to do the will of God. Yet Paul writes that he does will to do the good (7:15, 19, 21). He even delights in the law of God (7:22) and does not will to do what is evil (7:19). None of this sounds at all like the total inability described by Calvinists.

To understand Paul’s point in Romans 7, it is important to delve briefly into the realm of biblical anthropology. The Bible seems to present humans as consisting of three parts: body, soul, and spirit (1 Thess 5:23; Heb 4:12). This is called the “tripartite” nature of man. Much like the divine Trinity, the three aspects of a human make one being. Though distinct, the three parts work together to live, exist, and interact with God and creation.

The body is the physical side of a person. It touches the material world through the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch. The spirit is the spiritual side of man. It interacts with God and the spiritual realm through its own set of “senses,” things like faith, hope, and prayer. The soul is the life of a person. It is the animating principle of a person, and is responsible for imagination, memory, reason, and emotions. As such, the soul serves as the command center for the person. Neither the body nor the spirit can function on its own; both look to the soul for direction and action.

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they died spiritually and sin corrupted their body, so that it too began to die. Nevertheless, they remained “alive” because their soul remained. Yet the soul, the animating principle of a person, can only function through the spirit or through the body. The spirit, which was dead, was separated from God and could not interact with Him as it was meant to. The body, however, was only dying, and so the soul could function through the body. Yet because of the corruption of sin, the body produced only sin and death. This is what Paul refers to as “the flesh.”

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God promised to give a new Spirit to His people (Ezek 36:26), which we now know was the “Holy Spirit” that came at Pentecost (Acts 2). The Bible also says that in the future resurrection, we will be given glorified and incorruptible bodies (1 Cor 15:52). When that happens, each person will once again be as God intended and planned, perfect in body, soul, and spirit so that we can live and function as a whole, united person. But that time is not yet.

In the present age, unbelievers have a soul which often seeks and wills to do good, but since they do not have the Holy Spirit, they cannot interact properly with God. And since their body is corrupted with sin, the soul cannot obey God through the flesh either. Once a person believes in Jesus for eternal life (this is a function of the soul), God sends the Holy Spirit to regenerate, indwell, baptize, and seal the new believer. Through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the spirit of man is now enabled to interact with God as it was meant to. As a result, the soul of believer can choose to walk in the Spirit or walk in the flesh (Gal 5:16-26). However, due to the force of habit, addiction, bad choices, or just plain ignorance, we often choose instead to life through the flesh, which results in sin. Though we may desire to do something else, and now have the ability through the Spirit to actually live differently, the body of sin drags us down into death and destruction with it (Rom 7:24).

All of this then helps us understand what Paul is talking about in Romans 7. The traditional question regarding whether Paul is talking about his experience as a Christian or a non-Christian can now be answered: He is talking about both! People who became Christians as adults know from experience that prior to believing in Jesus, they often struggled with sin and fought against the desires of their flesh, usually to no avail. Success in one area often came at the expense of greater failure in another. Yet although Christians gain the illuminating and empowering influence of the Holy Spirit when we first believe in Jesus for eternal life, we all know that the struggle with sin did not cease. It continues daily. Yes, victory is now possible, for greater is He that is in us than He that is in the world, but this does not mean that the struggle against the flesh is gone. We too, along with Paul, often cry “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

This understanding of Romans 7 once again undermines the Calvinistic doctrine of total inability. Though it is true that the soul of an unregenerate man cannot do anything good through his dead spirit or dying and corrupted body, the ability to believe in Jesus for eternal life does not depend upon the spirit or the body, but is a function of the soul alone. Faith, remember, is being convinced or persuaded that something is true. Though the soul often receives bad data from the body and the spirit, and poorly reasons as a result, the soul is still able to believe in Jesus when the offer of eternal life is presented to it. Romans 7, then, does not teach Total Depravity or total inability, but is rather a description of the constant struggle with sin that all people face, whether regenerate or unregenerate.