"O wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24). These are not the words of someone far from God. They are the words of the Apostle Paul — and they describe normal Christian experience.
If you have ever felt torn between wanting to obey God and finding yourself doing the very thing you hate, you are not alone. Romans 7:14–25 pulls back the curtain on a struggle that every genuine believer knows all too well — the war that rages within.
A Changed Nature That Delights in God's Law
The first thing this passage reveals is that a Christian is someone with a changed nature. Paul is emphatic: "In my inner being I delight in God's law" (v. 22). He tells us he wants to do good (v. 18), he talks about "the good I want to do" (v. 19), and he is genuinely grieved when he falls short. This is no half-hearted religion — this is a heart that has been fundamentally reoriented toward God.
Romans 8:7 makes the contrast unmistakable: "The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." But here in Romans 7 is a mind that delights in God's law, that loves it, that is — as Paul says in verse 25 — "a slave to God's law." This can only be the mind of someone who has been born again.
And so here is a searching question worth sitting with: what is your attitude to God's law? When you read the Ten Commandments, do you respond with resentment — "Who does God think He is, telling me how to live?" That is the sinful mind that does not submit to God's law. Or do you love it? Do you agree with all your heart that it is good and right? When you break one of God's commandments, are you grieved and heartbroken? Do you love God's law because you love Him — because this law is an expression of His character and what He delights in?
The question is not whether you obey God's law perfectly. The question is whether you delight in it — whether you long to obey more and more consistently. If that is you, it is a very good sign that you have been born again by the Holy Spirit, because someone who is not a Christian does not think that way about God's law.
A Sinful Nature That Refuses to Leave
But alongside the new nature, there is a devastating second reality: a Christian is someone who still has a sinful nature. Paul does not soften this. His language is stark:
- "I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin" (v. 14)
- "Sin living in me" (v. 17)
- "Nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature" (v. 18)
- "The evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing" (v. 19)
- "In the sinful nature, I am a slave to the law of sin" (v. 25)
Becoming a Christian does not mean becoming perfect overnight. The Holy Spirit gives a new nature, but that new nature is not sinless. We are no longer enslaved to sin — it is no longer our master — but sin is still present. It still lurks inside us, in the world around us, and in the devil's temptations. We are freed from the dominion of sin, but not yet from the presence of sin.
Think of it this way: inside every Christian, there is an ally of the devil looking for an opportunity to betray you. The ancient story of the Trojan Horse is a fitting picture. After ten years of failed siege, the Greeks could not breach Troy's walls — until they hid soldiers inside a wooden horse and left it as an apparent gift. Once the Trojans brought it inside the city gates, it was too late. The soldiers emerged in the dead of night and the city fell.
Our sinful nature works the same way. It is inside the gates, looking every day for an opportunity to hand over the city of your heart to the enemy.
Or picture a bad tenant who has been legally evicted from your property. Their rights have been revoked. They can be thrown out by the police. But they keep coming back, squatting in the house, making a nuisance of themselves. That is the sinful nature — no legal right to be there, but still very much a problem.
A Life of Continual Conflict
Put these two realities together — a new nature and a sinful nature — and the result is inevitable: conflict. This is what happens when the good law of God crashes up against indwelling sin in a Christian's heart.
Paul describes this collision in Galatians 5:17: "The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want." There is no possibility of peaceful coexistence between these two opposing forces. Put darkness and light in the same room and there are fireworks.
Paul describes the struggle twice for emphasis — first in verses 14–17, and again in verses 18–20 — so that no one can miss the point: "I do the evil that I hate, and I don't do the good that I want."
In verses 21–25, Paul highlights this tension through three contrasts. First, two "I"s: one that wants to do good and one that wants to do evil, both true of the same person at the same time. Crucially, these two are not equal — Paul's true self is the one that loves God's law ("in my inner being"). When he sins, he says, "it is no longer I myself who do it, but sin living in me" (vv. 17, 20). The sinful nature is not the deepest truth about who he is.
Second, two laws: the law of God and the law of sin, fighting against one another. The real Paul delights in God's law — the "law of my mind" — but the law of sin kidnaps him, dragging him back temporarily to the kingdom of darkness.
Third, two slaveries: Paul is a slave to God's law in his mind, because he genuinely loves it — and yet simultaneously like a slave to the law of sin, because he so often disobeys.
Why the Struggle Is Actually Good News
Here is something that might surprise you: the struggle itself is a sign of spiritual life.
If you have been listening to all of this and it sounds like gibberish — if there is no conflict, no tension, no war within — that may be because there is no new nature to fight against the old. Where there is no conflict, one of the two natures is missing. And the only one that can be missing is the new nature.
Think of salmon fighting their way upstream to their spawning grounds. The living salmon are the ones struggling. The ones floating peacefully, with no fight at all? They are dead — being washed out to sea.
In fact, the more mature you become as a Christian, the more acutely you will feel this tension. A deeply godly ninety-year-old woman once exemplified this beautifully. She loved to talk about the Lord and about Scripture. She took notes during every sermon and spent six days meditating on different points from it. And yet she spoke more about her own sin and failure than almost anyone else. She was not pretending to be humble. The brighter her understanding of God’s Word shone into her heart, the more it exposed the sinfulness of sin. The older she grew, the more she realised she was more sinful than she had ever understood — and yet more loved and forgiven than she ever dreamt possible, because of the grace of God in the gospel.
So do not let the devil tell you, “If you were really a Christian, you wouldn’t have this struggle.” That is a lie. This is exactly what the Christian life is like. If it was true of Paul, it is certainly true of you and me.
Hope in Jesus Christ
The passage ends not with a cry of despair, but with a shout of hope: “O wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vv. 24–25).
Paul’s confidence is not in himself and his own performance. It is in Jesus Christ and His performance. We are not meant to read God’s law and think, “I’ve got this.” We are meant to read it and be convicted: “I can’t do this. I need Jesus Christ.” That is how every Christian should face each new day of struggle.
It is like starting a university degree and feeling overwhelmed by the volume of material, the technical terms, the vast syllabus. “I can’t do this. I don’t know where to start.” But your tutors reassure you: “You’re not doing it on your own. We’re here to help.” Human tutors may sometimes fail — but Jesus never fails. When we depend on Him rather than ourselves, He gives us the strength we need to walk in His ways.
And here is the breathtaking promise that Romans 8 unfolds: this struggle is not forever. There is rescue every day, and then one day — rescue completely and forever. A day is coming when the sinful nature will be gone for good, replaced by a perfect nature. A trillion years into eternity, we will barely remember what it was like to struggle with sin and temptation. “Do you remember what it was like to make yourself pray?” — “No, I can’t really remember. It’s hard to imagine now, isn’t it?”
That is what we have to look forward to. Until then, do not feed the black dog. Feed the white dog — with the things of God — and fix your eyes on Jesus Christ, the one who rescues.
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