No longer a slave to sin

I want to explain what Paul means in Rom 7.21-23 by the believer finding sin to be a law within him. Many Christians struggle with the entire passage of Romans 7.7-25, and we can’t take time to deal with it as a whole. But if we can understand what Paul means by the law of sin, it’ll illuminate not only this passage but every letter Paul wrote. If this gets a little foggy at times, just keep reading. It will get clearer, and the payoff is gloriously liberating.  

The Apostle Paul teaches us that unbelievers are under the law of sin and it is a law to them, but believers have died to sin in the death of Christ and have therefore been delivered from its dominion (Rom 6.2, 6-11, 12-14). Yet, the nature of sin is such that it remains a law still, a law of great force and efficacy, ever pressing its sinful desires upon us and opposing the new Spirit-wrought, holy desires in us as believers (Gal 5.17; Rom 7.21-23). Therefore indwelling sin is a law which rages in and against believers (7.17, 21), but by the power and effects of regeneration, it no longer is and will never again be a law ruling over them (6.6-7; cf. Ezk 36.26). Rather, they are now ruled by the law of the Spirit of life, who has set them free from the law of sin and death (7.6; 8.2) in order that the righteous requirement of the law of God might be fulfilled in them (8.4; cf. Ezk 36.27). Therefore believers are always waging war against indwelling sin (6.12-14; 7.25).

Being free from sin as a law over them, believers have been placed under the law of the Spirit of life, because of which they delight in good (6.17-18) and desire to do good (7.18, 21). This is what it means that the law of sin is a law in them but not unto them. They are not under sin’s authority, as they once were, but are born again to God’s authority and to both an acknowledgement of righteousness as good, a love of righteousness as pleasing to God, and an abiding will to live and act righteously in the sight of God.

This explains why only believers discover the law of sin within themselves (7.21). The discovery of this warring law of sin is a result of their salvation. God dethroned the law of sin at regeneration and it now rages in the believer’s heart against the desire to do good. This also explains why unbelievers are blind to their slavery to sin: because they’re blind to the dominion and rule of sin within and over them (Jn 8.31-34). They think they are free to do as they will and are under no inner constraint to do evil. But as John Owen put once it, where sin is least felt, it is most powerful, and they that don’t find its raging and opposing power within them are still under its dominion.

So, the experience of the power of this indwelling principle of evil, as it rages against a new natural desire to please God, is fundamental to what it means to be born again. We cannot contend against an enemy whom we neither see nor believe to be against us. This is why Paul’s words in Romans 7 must be taken as a believer’s experience: because he writes as one who knows, sees, and feels the power and efficacy of the law of sin raging within himself. If he were still dead in sin (sleepily under its dominion) he would not know this. It is his being delivered from sin’s former dominion and his now belonging to “the Enemy” that has now set the sin within him on edge against him (7.21).

So Paul describes himself (and all true believers) as one who is simultaneously a believer and a sinner; one who has within himself two contrary principles always inclining him to two contrary actions (Gal 5.17). 1) He has the will to do good for the glory of God his Saviour; but 2) there is a law of sin still residing within him which wars against the will to do good with a contrary inclination to do evil. It is the misery of so many Christians that they do not know this about themselves: that their greatest and constant enemy is not outside of them, but within them, in their very own hearts! And it is therefore the wisdom of every Christian to give heed to the Apostle’s words in Romans 7, that they might be thoroughly acquainted with themselves and might labor to know how to cultivate the will to do good in order to get victory over the opposing will to do evil.

The blessings and comforts afforded to the Christian by understanding the nature of indwelling sin cannot be overstated:

1. That indwelling sin is a law in me and not to me assures me of sin’s effective dethronement in my heart by Christ. Sin may remain, but it no longer reigns. Sin is present but it is not President. Sin will rebel and may, at times, even dominate a particular area or season of my life. But it cannot regain its dominion over me and it will be ultimately overcome by the same almighty power which crucified it to me and me unto it (Rom 6.6). I am free from its dominion, though it has pleased the Lord that I not yet be free from its presence and influence. And whatever may be afterwards affirmed, both in Scripture and experience, about its great power in me at times, it is weakened and I am no longer its willing slave. I can affirm the testimony of God’s Word about my sin–that it is not over me and that its tyranny is defeated–and also trust Him that, by His grace, I will more and more experience the reality of it in my own life. This is good news indeed!
2. That the experiential discovery of this law and of its power against my will is a fruit of saving grace assures me not only of my salvation but of God’s enduring love and acceptance. I could not be alive to detest and war against my sin unless I were alive unto God to see myself as He sees me. And I could not hate sin as sin unless I were born again to love God as God, in and through Jesus Christ. Thus, my experiential knowledge of indwelling sin, my loathing of it, and my desire and will to swim upstream against it in the pursuit of holiness, all assure me of a saving work of God begun in me. Furthermore, when I am tempted to think that the sin I see in myself may cause God to cast me off, I can rest in the assurance that He already sees what I see (and far more perfectly!) and loves me still. Praise God!

Please check in tomorrow for three more of the blessings and comforts of understanding that sin is no longer a law to believers, but only a law in believers.