To See Themselves Sin

A student, Leta Sundet, wrote a quite brilliant paper on Romans 7. The entire paper is posted below.

“I do not understand my own actions,” Paul says helplessly. “I do the things I hate. Oh wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Christians have struggled for a long time over how to interpret Romans 7:13-25. Who is Paul speaking for? Is he remembering his pre-conversion plight? Or is he describing himself in the present: a Christian being sanctified too slowly for his taste? Is he expressing his own frustration? Or is he speaking representatively?

In a lecture this term Dr. Leithart argued that Paul is here speaking for old covenant Israel, describing the tension and frustration Israel felt living under the Law. Before Christ came God’s people were in a sense “subjected to futility”: they wanted to obey God, but they couldn’t stop sinning.

This argument was compelling to me, but my one “beef” with it was this: then wouldn’t the OT saints have expressed a similar frustration to Paul’s? Wouldn’t people like Adam and Moses and David and Solomon have raged against their inability to obey God? I kept slamming up against the fact that there seems to be very little of this kind of fretting over sin in the Old Testament.

But I think that to demand this sort of confirmation is to be ignorant of what Paul is doing. Romans 7 is not simply a summary of the Old Testament mindset. It is the climax of a mindset that was developing slowly throughout Israel’s history, but could only reach full expression after the coming of Jesus Christ. Paul’s words in Romans 7:13-25 are the culmination of Israel’s understanding of sin.

I’d like to explore this first by examining this passage and then by looking at some examples of the OT understanding of sin, using some surrounding passages in Romans as a “commentary” on the OT passages. I know there’s no way I can do justice to everything that’s going on theologically in any of these passages, but I want to look at them in particular light, trace a particular strain through them.

Romans 7:13-25

First of all, what exactly does Paul say in this tumultuous little passage?

It very thoughtfully arranges itself into a chiasm:

A. (13) It was sin, producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

B. (14-15) For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions.

C. (15) For I do not do what I want, but I do that very thing I hate.

D. (16-18) Now if (when?) I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.

E. (18) For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

E. (19) For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

D. (20) Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

C. (21) So I find it be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

B. (22-24) For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am!

A. (24-25) Who will deliver me from this body of death ? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The section is bookended by verses 13 and 24-25, both of which talk about death, and propose different solutions to the problem of sin. In verse 13, Paul says that sin produces death in him through “what is good,” that is, through the Law. Surprisingly, he does not characterize this as a tragedy; there is a deeper purpose behind this commandeering of the law by sin: to disclose sin and make it overwhelming sinful. In 24-25 Paul concludes that his body is a body of death and asks who will rescue him from it. This time he moves beyond the law and the law’s ability or inability; Jesus Christ is his answer now. In verses 24-25 what v. 13 predicted is accomplished: sin has produced death in Paul, has made him see his body as dead. The failure Law is in a sense not a failure, because it has made him reach out for Christ.

Verses 14-15 sets up the contrast, the tension, between the spiritual law and the fleshly person sold under sin who does not understand his own actions. In verses 22-24 this contrast and tension have moved inside the person. He is no longer on one side of the war, but is at war with himself; he is his own enemy. In his inner being, Paul says, he delights in the law of God, but in the members of his body another law is work, fighting against his good desires, overpowering the law of his mind with an oppressive law of sin. In a sense, then, Paul does understand his own actions in 22-24: he recognizes that he is a captive to sin. Although he characterizes the tension inside him as a struggle, it is really a slaughter: the law of sin controlling his flesh is so much stronger than his inner being, that it drags his whole self down, makes his entire person fleshly. It is this realization that makes Paul cry out how wretched he is, and name his body a place of death.

In verse 15 he summarizes nicely: I don’t do what I want: I do what I hate. He echoes and develops this in verse 21: when he wants to do good, evil is instantly at his elbow, grinning, asking him what he’s trying to pull.

Verses 16-18 and 20 say almost exactly the same thing. If I do what I don’t want to do,” he says in vs. 16, I agree with the law that it’s good. So I’m not the one acting anymore; it’s sin, which lives in me. Nothing good dwells in my flesh, he concludes. In verse 20 he repeats himself: If I do what I don’t want, it’s no longer me doing it, but sin. He is, somewhat surprisingly, associating himself not with the far stronger tendency towards evil in himself, but with the timid desire for good struggling for breath. He characterizes sin as a parasite that has settled comfortably inside him, but Paul refuses to associate himself with this parasite; he maintains his identity as a lover of good.

The passage centers in verses 18 and 19, both of which repeat the same conclusion in different words: I want to do good, but I can’t. Here is the heart, the crux of the issue, stated starkly. As the passage opens on this hinge, we see a development throughout these verses of Paul’s understanding of sin, a deepening understanding of his wretchedness. He is not merely at odds with God; he is at odds with himself. The solution is nothing so simple as switching sides, because he is a war all by himself. All the law does is aggravate this war, simultaneously increasing his desire for righteousness and his tendency towards sin.

In this passage Paul creates the picture of a man watching himself, a man, helpless and horrified, watching himself sin. “That isn’t me,” he protests, but even as he protests, sin wrestles him down to the ground, begins to gnaw on his mind too.

This passage is tucked inside a lengthy discussion of sin and the law, and the law’s inability to save from sin. Paul’s is insisting to his readers the Law cannot create righteousness in us. The Law, he says, was meant to expose sin, to awaken, to tease and arouse what was lying dormant and festering in the human heart, to make it hot and playful, to get it to rear its head. That was the first step, the first step was making
it show itself, and this the Law did well. Apart from the Law, sin is dead and so wickedness goes undealt with.

It may be too simplistic to say: the purpose of the Law is just to make us realize we can’t keep the Law; it drives us to Jesus. But in a sense ultimately this is what it’s supposed to do. I just don’t think the process is simply that we look at the law, look at ourselves, and then throw up our hands in despair. There is a maturing that the law accomplishes, that it accomplished in Israel. The law accomplishes an intensification of sin.

The story of Israel’s relationship to the Law is the story of the arousal of sin. Israel grows up, and as she grows her sin and her longing for goodness mature simultaneously. Children typically do not have the self-consciousness to see themselves sin, to recognize themselves as sinners, although they can know that they are sinning, be convicted, feel guilt and remorse. As they grow up they begin to see patterns, to see what characterizes their lives. They learn objectivity: they can get outside themselves and watch themselves, analyze their own behavior and see the patterns that emerge. It is only with true maturity that we can see ourselves from the outside, that we can see sin as something foreign dwelling in us. The whole point of the Law was to bring Israel to the place where she could say what Paul says in Rom. 7, where she could watch herself sin and condemn herself.

Vague Sin

In the early days of Genesis, sin tends to be nameless and mysterious. Usually people have to be informed of their sin, convicted by someone outside themselves. When God confronts Cain, Cain smoothly feigns ignorance until God accuses and curses him: only then does he moan that his guilt is too much for him to bear. The world blithely descends into violence and corruption till it is so foul God regrets making it; there is a profound ignorance and ambivalence towards sin. The situation has hardly changed at Babel: God does not even confront them, but puts a stop to their project before they destroy themselves. Sodom’s sins are not named explicitly: God tells Abraham that a outcry has gone up against the city, because their sin is “very grave,” and although we see this sin expressed vividly when the angels visit, it is not “diagnosed” by God or anyone, at least here.

Throughout the stories of the patriarchs sin seems similarly vague and undiagnosed. Ham’s sin against his father, while clearly disgusting, is also quite cryptic. Sarah laughs at the angel’s promise of a son and has her maidservant sleep with Abraham; it is unclear whether or not her actions are faithless. Hagar and Ishmael apparently treat Sarah and Isaac badly, but we are given no specifics of how or why. Esau “despised his birthright,” but his reasons for despising it go unexplained. Laban takes advantage of Jacob and Jacob cheats Laban right back. Rachel steals her father’s idols, defiles them, and a few chapters later, after no apparent change of heart, calls upon the name of the Lord. Judah and Tamar both behave scandalously, but Judah declares Tamar righteous. Sin is a vague, heavy presence, tainting the stories, creating nasty situations. But oftentimes it is next to impossible to go into the stories and pick out the sins or sinners and name them and dig down to the roots of the evil. The characters and their motives are extremely shadowy, the heroes nearly as enigmatic as the villains, and there is an uncomfortable sense that anything goes, anything goes and yet everything has consequences. These stories feel the most foreign to us, I think: it’s as if these people are living by different standards, under a different law. Or, perhaps, as if there is no law? And therefore no sin?

“[S]in indeed was in the world before the law was given,” Paul says in Romans 5:12, “but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.”

“If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin,” Paul says later in 7:7-8, “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ . . . Apart from the law sin lies dead.”

Perhaps this explains why we can see death reigning in widespread violence, in broken families, and yet we cannot move in and say: “Jacob was greedy. Esau was an idolater.” Without the Law these sins have no names, and humanity has a very childlike ignorance of them.

At the same time, I can’t deny that certain characters emerge with fierce consciences, insisting on righteousness, and claiming that they can distinguish it from sin. Certainly God , when he chooses to speak, is not unclear as to what is unacceptable to him, and certainly there are people who listen to him and model their lives after his goodness. Lot tries to dissuade the Sodomites from raping his guests, urging them not to “act so wickedly” by breaking the law of hospitality. (Of course, Lot offers them his daughters instead: morally questionable at best.) Joseph resists Potiphar’s wife, refusing to steal the one thing his master has not given to him. Both Noah and Jacob curse their sons for particular sins, and at least for Jacob, it is the sin of violence that is unforgivable. God has not left the world to lawlessness; even before the Mosaic Law he issues commands that both constrain and provoke man.

Sin Cycles

As soon as the law is given, Israel begins a lifestyle of sin and repentance. The moral and ceremonial laws, and particularly the sacrificial system, are crafted around the cycles of sin expected of Israel. There is no hope, implicit or explicit, that eventually the law will be successful and start to cancel itself out, make itself needless. Rather, the law is designed in expectation of its own failure.

After the Law, Israel’s sin is not so much controlled as regulated; it emerges in patterns so consistent they can almost be predicted. The book of Judges is sickening in its repetition: Israel sins, gets punished, whines for God, follows her judge into righteousness, and devolves as soon as the judge dies. Like a child, Israel says she’s sorry when it hurts, and God is endlessly patient.

Israel’s sins in the wilderness are named and immediately condemned and punished: idolatry, ingratitude, rebellion against God lead to plagues, defeat in battle, wandering and homelessness. Obviously Israel is getting no holier, but the very wealth of her sin is evidence that the Law is at work, provoking sin, damning it when it rears its head.

Ugly as Sin

Although the exilic era prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Hosea challenge Israel with the sins that have plagued her for generations, the language and particularly the imagery they use to describe this sin gets darker and uglier. Yes, they are doing the same things they’ve always done: but what are they really doing? Israel, the prophets say, is not only disobeying the God of her fathers, the God who took her out of Egypt. What she is really doing is fornicating, committing adultery against her husband.

Why does the imagery become so much more intense? Not because their sins are new and worse, but because now Israel is mature enough, and her sins are mature enough that she can see them for what they are. She is coming out of generations of knowing God. He’s not the stranger that he was to the patriarchs, or even to the Israelites of the exodus. She has had years of learning him in his law, watching him deliver her from her enemies, following men like David and Solomon into deeper communion with him, living with him at her center, at her heart. She’s
lost him from time to time and she knows how miserable that is and she remembers why he left. She can’t feign ignorance about what it is he wants from her, and she knows exactly what it is he can’t stand.

God calls her a whore, and she’s too old now to put on an innocent face and ask, “What’s that?”

This is what the Law was teaching Israel, was driving Israel towards. She had to mature to see her sin in its fullness, and as she matured her sin had to mature too, had to stand up tall and flaunt the numerous facets of its ugliness.

When Jesus came, Israel was at the height of her maturity and so her sin was full-grown.

In All its Glory

When she kills Jesus Israel displays her sin in all its glory. Her God comes to her and, swiftly, smoothly, like she has been practicing for it all her life, she rejects him. Like Cain, like Saul, she envies and kills the man God loves. When Pilate, Lot-like, tries to reason with her, she plays a new Sodom and breaks every law of hospitality, humiliating this guest to the world. Like the old Israel dancing on the edge of exile, the new Israel shamelessly makes love to Rome in her husband’s face.

Of course, she has been practicing for it all her life.

Every sin Israel has ever committed blossoms full in this last; every wrong she has ever done against her God is beautifully embodied here. The Law had done its work well; sin is wide awake and all grown up.

“Now the law came in to increase the trespass,” Paul says in Romans 5:18, “but where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 5:18-21)

“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh could not do,” he says later in chapter 8, “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.” (Romans 8:3)

N. T. Wright says that sin “burned [itself] out in killing the son of God.” (Wright, Evil and the Justice of God , 102)

Luke tells us that when Jesus died, “all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place returned home beating the breasts.” (Luke 23:48)

When Peter preaches to the Jews at Pentecost, telling them in no uncertain terms that “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified,” everyone is “cut to the heart” and asks what they must do (Acts 2). Peter cheerfully tells them all to repent and be baptized in Jesus’ name, and 3000 people who killed Jesus follow his advice.

In his sermon in Solomon’s portico Peter boldly informs his listeners that they “killed the Author of Life, whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3). But instead of issuing a general condemnation and proclaiming the dawn of God’s righteous vengeance, Peter urges the Jews to repent, so that their sins “may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” At least 2000 more men believe him and join the church.

You would think that crucifying God would be the last straw, the test it is not okay to fail. But neither the apostles nor the first converts seem to think of it this way. No one agonizes over how God can possibly forgive them for killing his Son. The knowledge that they have killed God’s Son makes them confidently seek forgiveness. Their murder of Jesus does not condemn them; it acts as a catalyst: it breaks their hearts and makes them new men.

“Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing,” Jesus cries from the cross, and it seems that God hears him. Is Paul echoing Christ when he says, “I don’t understand my own actions”?

Paul the Microcosm

Of course, persecution of Christ’s followers immediately begins too, headed up by Paul himself. Some of the Jews refuse to be convicted of their sin and instead try to shut up everyone who is talking about it. Saul and the people he represents are as blind as Paul becomes on the road to Damascus.

It is, I think, Paul’s blindness that breaks him. God strikes him blind to manifest outwardly the state of his soul. Later he describes himself as a “Hebrew of Hebrews,” so perfectly Jewish he has reason to boast in it, blameless when it comes to the righteousness of the law (Philip. 3). Paul is in microcosm the pinnacle of Judaism, Judaism all grown up, a mature Jew.

But in 1 Tim. 1:13-16 Paul names himself differently: he is the worst of sinners, he is sin mature and grown up, saved simply so that Jesus Christ could display his abundant graciousness. Paul goes on to say in Philippians that he considers his righteousness according to the law rubbish; he counts it all as loss. For Jesus’ sake, Paul says, he has “suffered the loss of all things.”

Paul does not dismiss his preconversion days as insincere, as hypocritical. He does not say that he thought he was obeying the law but was actually a filthy sinner, disobeying the law and lying to himself. His zeal and his sin grew up side by side; he is simultaneously the best of Jews and worst of sinners.

When he meets Jesus, when Jesus tells him that he has been persecuting his God, Paul goes blind. Here is Israel’s plight embodied: all her zeal for the law has left her blind with sin, so blind she can’t recognize her God when he comes. Paul’s salvation is his blindness; his salvation is learning that he is blind. What effects Paul’s transformation is learning the true nature of what he is doing, seeing his blindness laid out before him like a view: “You’re persecuting me, ” Jesus tells him.

It is only, I think, when we can see ourselves sin, when we can get out of ourselves and watch ourselves rebel against God, watch our lives play out in these sick patterns, watch in horror as once again we devolve into idolatry, that we have seen our sin for what it is. I think, paradoxically, that it is only when we can gasp, “But this isn’t me! This isn’t what I want!” that we have actually owned our sin, and owned it in such a way that we are ready to drive it out. Thus Paul’s wretched cry in chapter 7 is the triumph of the Law, what the Law was always meant to drive her to say. It is Israel’s saving cry.

In 7:25 when Paul calls his body a body of death, he is echoing 4:19: Abraham’s body was as good as dead. Paul is equating himself with Abraham: he is a dead body too. Like Abraham, his only hope is a God who raises the dead, a God for whom death is not a failure, but in fact the substance of all hope, the place where things finally start to get exciting.

I can anticipate an objection to this, because it was my objection: it always comforted me to think that Paul was describing the typical post-conversion life. Romans 7 describes how I feel now ; it captures me and my daily struggles like nothing else. But now it sounds like we’re supposed to have moved past this, that we should be footloose and fancy-free in the Spirit of life.

By no means! Paul is shouting the death cry of Israel in the face of her sin, but also the death cry that each individual Christian needs to shout for each individual sin. We repeat Israel’s history in microcosm with every besetting sin we deal with. The sin lies dormant and potential in us; it has to be awakened, aroused, incited, let out to play. It has to be displayed in all its glory, it has to escalate until it gets its teeth into the Son of God. Only then do we see it, see ourselves doing it, gaze at it in horror, slack-jawed beneath the c
ross and whisper, “O wretched man that I am.” It is only then, only when we have killed Jesus with that specific sin, when we have died with Jesus to that specific sin, that God can begin to untie the knots that bind us to it. It is then that the Spirit can get to work.