O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? -- Romans 7:24 (KJV)
Who is speaking here has been argued over for centuries. Paul writes in the present tense, and many read that as the apostle describing a conflict he still knows. Others point back to verse 14, “I am carnal, sold under sin,” and say that cannot be the same man who writes one chapter later that those in Christ are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. Some take the “I” as Paul speaking for anyone who meets the law's demand without the Spirit's help.
The argument is old and this post will not settle it. What the passage does is not in question.
It refuses to pretend. In his flesh dwells no good thing. Willing is present with him; performing is not. He delights in the law of God after the inward man while another law wars in his members and takes him captive. Whoever the “I” is, the description is unsparing, and it was written down by an apostle who expected the church to read it.
It also holds two things together that we tend to separate. The sin is never excused; it is called sin from start to finish. And the conflict is never described as imaginary or already tidy. Most of us drop one half or the other. Some narrate a struggle in such detail that the narration becomes the settlement. Others perform a peace they do not have and grow tired holding the pose.
Then the cry: who shall deliver me. Notice that Paul asks who and not how. He is not after a technique, a system, or a firmer resolve. Something has to come from outside the man.
The answer arrives in the next breath. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” A name, not a method. Deliverance is a person acting on your behalf, which is why a chapter this bleak does not end in despair.
Tomorrow Galatians speaks of that same flesh in the past tense, and of what those who belong to Christ have done with it.
