But how do we make sense of the Christian Paul saying, “I am fleshly, sold under sin”? That brings us to the second key, which is realizing that “sold under sin” doesn’t qualify Paul, but qualifies his condition of fleshliness. Paul literally says, “I am fleshly, having been sold under sin.” He does not say, “I am fleshly and sold under sin.” Interpreters typically read into the verse an “and” that’s not there. Having been sold under sin (by the transgression of Adam), we’ve become fleshly people.
There’s a vital distinction here. Being a slave is fundamentally an issue of personal identity—“Who am I?” (or better, “Whose am I?”). Being fleshly is fundamentally an issue of personal capacity—“What am I?” (or “What am I like?”). Paul isn’t saying he’s a slave of sin and contradicting what he just said about the believer’s freedom in chapter 6. We now have freedom through union with Christ in his death and resurrection (6:1–10), but our bodies don’t yet share Christ’s risen life (6:11). So there’s still a slavery in our bodily members (7:23) as we await the redemption of our bodies (8:23). That’s what it means to be fleshly.
This is the painful reality—our bodily condition hasn’t yet caught up with who we now are in Christ. We’re no longer “in the flesh,” where we reported to slavemaster sin (7:5). However, now that we report to King Jesus we do so as those who are still “fleshly” people (7:14). We have new identities but not new innate capacities! We remain irreparably (but not irredeemably) impaired people.
The Christian’s Radical Inability
Like a computer virus, sin has entered inside the system (“living in me,” vv. 17, 20), where it has impaired all operations (my bodily “members,” v. 23) from functioning according to their original design (carrying out God’s good law, vv. 16, 18, 19, 21). This radical, systemic impairment results in an inability to accomplish the good (vv. 15, 18, 19). It means we have a radical moral disability. We’re incapacitated (vv. 18, 23). The pure, holy goodness of the law is beyond our reach. Because he is fleshly, the good Paul wants to do he does not do.
Three quick points to note. First, this is a Christian’s confession of a human condition. The Christian perceives it (note the verbs of perception in vv. 14, 18, 21, 23), but we all have it.
Second, there’s a connection between 6:12 (“the desires of the body”), 6:19 (“the weakness of the flesh”), 7:7 (“you shall not desire/covet”), and the fleshly/bodily sin of 7:14–25. In other words, Paul isn’t giving us headline news of disgraceful misconduct, but sharing his personal awareness of the power of indwelling sin, experienced as sinful desire. This sinful desire is with us till the day we die.
Christ is a fountain of abundant life. Knowing ourselves from Romans 7 feeds the life of faith.
Third, Paul dramatizes the dynamic of sin within to underline his intrinsic powerlessness in the face of it. Paul doesn’t yet have in view the Spirit’s enabling, because he wants us to first grasp our own profound inability. This makes us both appreciate, and also depend on, God’s power in Christ (8:1–4). And it means that I never possess spiritual life as a quality or property that I can claim as mine. Rather, by the Spirit, I participate in the risen life of Christ, whose Spirit produces the fruit of Christ in me. That love that God enabled me to show yesterday to my unlovely neighbor? That was Christ’s love at work in and through me.
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