Good morning Gotime.
Your claim of peace is not proof of the interp of Rom 7. If you have peace from that, it is the peace of delusion.
The statement was not that it was "normal" for the Christian. I would call I was alive apart from the law normal.
"I was sailing along,
On moonlight bay . . ."
But then comes the monkey-wrench in the Christian life:
when the commandment came, sin revived [it had been dormant, which could only be so in a Christian], and I died. . . . I am carnal.
Paul prophesies and says: It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. Only the Christian has a better self, a New Man.
I don't say the carnal state is "normal," but I also recognize that carnality is very common, and that in many things we all stumble.
We might say that the Lord Jesus is the only normal man since Adam's fall, a normal man on earth in this life. The rest of us are abnormal. But the abnormies are much more common than the normal.
Rom 7 surely starts with believers; where does it stop dealing with believers? Answer = nowhere. Surely believers are referred to when it says "discharged from the law" then "alive apart from the law."
Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth? For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the husband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is discharged from the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband liveth, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Let it not be so. Howbeit, I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the law sin is dead. And
I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died;"
If you suffer from the delusion that somehow you cannot sin, that is a delusion. And it is a strange delusion for one who denies eternal security. On the one hand, some may believe in more salvation than a man can get in this life (like eradication of sin nature & perfection), yet not enough salvation in the long haul.
Thou shalt all His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.
