Roma 7:1-2

The Believer’s Relationship to the Law

7:1 Or do you not know, brothers and sisters ¹  (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law is lord over a person ²  as long as he lives? 7:2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives, but if her ³  husband dies, she is released from the law of the marriage. ⁴ 

Roma 7:7-9

7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! Certainly, I ⁵  would not have known sin except through the law. For indeed I would not have known what it means to desire something belonging to someone else ⁶  if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” ⁷  7:8 But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. ⁸  For apart from the law, sin is dead. 7:9 And I was once alive apart from the law, but with the coming of the commandment sin became alive

[7:1]  ¹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.

[7:1]  ² sn Here person refers to a human being.

[7:2]  ³ tn Grk “the,” with the article used as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[7:2]  ⁴ tn Grk “husband.”

[7:2]  sn Paul’s example of the married woman and the law of the marriage illustrates that death frees a person from obligation to the law. Thus, in spiritual terms, a person who has died to what controlled us (v. 6) has been released from the law to serve God in the new life produced by the Spirit.

[7:7]  ⁵ sn Romans 7:7-25. There has been an enormous debate over the significance of the first person singular pronouns (“I”) in this passage and how to understand their referent. Did Paul intend (1) a reference to himself and other Christians too; (2) a reference to his own pre-Christian experience as a Jew, struggling with the law and sin (and thus addressing his fellow countrymen as Jews); or (3) a reference to himself as a child of Adam, reflecting the experience of Adam that is shared by both Jews and Gentiles alike (i.e., all people everywhere)? Good arguments can be assembled for each of these views, and each has problems dealing with specific statements in the passage. The classic argument against an autobiographical interpretation was made by W. G. Kümmel, Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus. A good case for seeing at least an autobiographical element in the chapter has been made by G. Theissen, Psychologische Aspekte paulinischer Theologie [FRLANT], 181-268. One major point that seems to favor some sort of an autobiographical reading of these verses is the lack of any mention of the Holy Spirit for empowerment in the struggle described in Rom 7:7-25. The Spirit is mentioned beginning in 8:1 as the solution to the problem of the struggle with sin (8:4-6, 9).

[7:7]  ⁶ tn Grk “I would not have known covetousness.”

[7:7]  ⁷ sn A quotation from Exod 20:17 and Deut 5:21.

[7:8]  ⁸ tn Or “covetousness.”