Romans 7:14

For we know that the law is spiritual but I am carnal, sold under sin.

Paul here began consideration of a third element in the law of Moses that made it an absurdity to accept the law as binding upon Christians, that being the fact that justification was absolutely impossible under that system. See paragraph heading this chapter. If proof had been wanting that it is the law of Moses under consideration, here it is again. Of what other law could it have been said that "it is spiritual"? Paul's experience as a Christian is the last thing that could be considered as the topic here. "I am carnal, sold under sin ..." Are such words as these any fit comment of any child of God who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ? To use Paul's words, God forbid! To refer these words to Paul's status as a Christian, or to the status of any other Christian, is to torture the word of God. Such a construction upon these words approaches blasphemy Paul had just finished saying that Christians are "dead to sin" and "alive unto God" in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11); and to apply these words to Christians is to contradict what had just been stated.

What was Paul's meaning? The grammatical impossibility of using this verse to cancel Romans 6:11, coupled with the fact that the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in this chapter, the latter fact especially, provide the most eloquent proof possible that the conflict noted in the following verses resulted, not from any Christian experience whatever, but from the tragic efforts of truly noble souls (of whom Paul himself was numbered) who had diligently sought to please God under the old institution.

All of the commentators who have applied the latter words of this verse to the redeemed in Christ have misunderstood the apostle. For example, Hodge has this: "Every Christian can adopt the language of this verse."[12] But, pray tell how can it ever be accepted as fact that a true Christian, one forgiven of all past sins, endowed with the Holy Spirit (conspicuously not mentioned here), dead to sin, alive unto God, risen with Christ, walking in newness of life, possessing all spiritual blessing "in Christ" - how can THAT person be spoken of as "sold under sin"? Never!

I am carnal, sold under sin ... Of course, it is Paul's use of the first person present tense in these words that is regarded as the principal support of the interpretation of this passage (here to the end of the chapter) as a Christian experience; but Paul's thought here was retrospective, despite the present tense. The author of Hebrews (probably the same apostle) used the present tense and first person in Romans 6:1 of that epistle accommodatively, as is undoubtedly done here. A history teacher's instruction of a class studying the American Revolution might say of Washington's winter at Jockey Hollow:

We are now with Washington's army west of the great swamp in New Jersey. Cold and hunger are our enemies. Disease stalks us; desertion is increasing; and there is even mutiny.

In such a presentation, the first person present tense cannot indicate the present time at all; and we are certain that Paul's present condition when he wrote Romans was absolutely not indicated by his use of first person present tense in Romans 7:14ff.

But there is an even stronger reason for rejecting the application of this latter part of Romans 7 to the Christian and the construing of these words as a description of the Christian's inner struggle over sin. That reason is grounded in the magnificent scope and sweeping comprehension of the word "NOW" in Romans 8:1, immediately after this passage. Paul's reverberating "now" in that place imposes its antithesis "then" upon this whole passage. What Paul was speaking of here was a past condition. He was speaking of the fruitless struggle of noble souls under the law of Moses who, despite their efforts, found no justification thereunder. "THEN" is the word that flies like a banner over this part of Romans. True, it is not spoken here. but it is more than implied; it is demanded by the antithetical "now" that opens the eighth chapter.

A great deal turns upon the proper understanding of this passage. It is not an inconsequential or indifferent matter, whether or not the miserable struggle outlined here applies to Christians or to Jews under the law. The advocates of false teaching, if permitted to preempt this passage through distortion of its meaning, use it to shore up the crumbling structure of their theory. For example, note this:

It is plain, therefore, that Paul here means by THE LAW, the will of God as a rule of duty, no matter how revealed. From this law, as prescribing the terms of our acceptance with God, Christ has delivered us. It is the legal system, which says, "Do this and live," that Christ has abolished, and introduced another, which says, "He that believes shall be saved."[13]

In these astounding words of Hodge, the scandal of the "faith only" heresy is concisely stated, including its invariable corollary that even the benevolent terms of the gospel of the Lord Jesus, constituting the ground of our acceptance with God, and delivered by the Christ himself - that even all this is abolished (!) by Jesus Christ. In such views as illustrated by the quotation above, Christ is represented not merely as abolishing his own terms of entry into the eternal kingdom, but as introducing "another" system. And what could that be? "He that believes shall be saved"! Of course, that is nothing but a misquotation of Christ's words, as follows:

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved (Mark 16:16).

Certainly, Christ never said, "He that believes shall be saved"; Hodge said that! Furthermore, it is precisely in such a deduction as that of Hodge that there is discovered the error of the widely prevalent interpretation of Paul's words here as a picture of "Christian experience." No interpretation, however plausible (and theirs is not even plausible), could be correct if it can be made to support such a corrupt deduction as Hodge's "He that believes shall be saved." Such a deduction is the noisome bubble that rises to the surface of the pond, betraying the rotten carcass on the bottom.

During the first three centuries of the Christian era, the "Christian experience" interpretation of Paul's words in this place was practically unknown. Godet summarized the views of ancient commentators thus:

A large number of commentators, consulting the context more strictly, think that the apostle, in virtue of his past history, is here introducing himself as the personification of the legal Jew, the man who, being neither hardened in self-righteousness, nor given over to a profane and carnal spirit, seeks sincerely to fulfill the law without ever being successful in satisfying his conscience.[14]

The "large number of commentators" mentioned by Godet includes most of the Ante-Nicene Fathers and a dozen other names of the most able commentators of a thousand years. Any thought that the view advocated in this commentary is novel or unusual is erroneous. It is the view of making this passage a description of Christian experience that is novel and opposed to thought which prevailed for centuries before Martin Luther and the doctrine of justification by "faith only." How did the change in style of interpreting this passage come about?

Godet affirmed that Augustine changed from the historical interpretation to the new position "after his dispute with Pelagius," and then showed how Augustine's view was adopted by Jerome, by the Reformers, and later by such men as Philippi, Delitzsch, and Hodge. Hodge denied that Augustine's change came after the dispute with Pelagius, insisting that it came "long before the controversy commenced."[15] Neither Hodge nor Godet named any authority to support their opinion of the time of Augustine's change; but all are agreed that the interpretation of Paul's words in this passage as a Christian experience received its first great impetus in the teachings of Augustine; and thus the interpretation came at a date far too late (Augustine lived 354-430 A.D.) to be persuasive. Unless a person is prepared to throw the rest of the New Testament away, along with most of Romans, he simply cannot base a doctrine of salvation "by faith alone" on this epistle.

Upon the basis of considerations set forth above, the premise accepted here is that Paul, using the first person present tense, made himself the personification of the legal Jew, of upright intent, who sought sincerely to please God under the law, Paul himself being perhaps the most perfect example of such a person ever to live on earth. Who but Paul could have said that he had lived "in all good conscience before God"?

[12] Charles Hodge, op. cit., p. 231.

[13] Ibid., p. 217.

[14] F. Godet, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970), p. 271.

[15] Charles Hodge, op. cit., p. 239.