Romans 7:22

7:18-22 The more pure and holy the heart is, it will have the more quick feeling as to the sin that remains in it. The believer sees more of the beauty of holiness and the excellence of the law. His earnest desires to obey, increase as he grows in grace. But the whole good on which his will is fully bent, he does not do; sin ever springing up in him, through remaining corruption, he often does evil, though against the fixed determination of his will. The motions of sin within grieved the apostle. If by the striving of the flesh against the Spirit, was meant that he could not do or perform as the Spirit suggested, so also, by the effectual opposition of the Spirit, he could not do what the flesh prompted him to do. How different this case from that of those who make themselves easy with regard to the inward motions of the flesh prompting them to evil; who, against the light and warning of conscience, go on, even in outward practice, to do evil, and thus, with forethought, go on in the road to perdition! For as the believer is under grace, and his will is for the way of holiness, he sincerely delights in the law of God, and in the holiness which it demands, according to his inward man; that new man in him, which after God is created in true holiness.

I delight in (συνήδομαι) Lit., I rejoice with. Stronger than I consent unto (Romans 7:16). It is the agreement of moral sympathy. The inward man (τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον) The rational and moral I, the essence of the man which is conscious of itself as an ethical personality. Not to be confounded with the new man (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). It is substantially the same with the mind (Romans 7:23).

For I delight in the law of God after the {b} inward man: (b) The inner man and the new man are the same, and are compared and contrasted with the old man; and neither do these words inward man signify man's mind and reason, and the old man the physical body that is subject to them, as the philosophers imagine: but by the outward man is meant whatever is either without or within a man from top to bottom, as long as that man is not born again by the grace of God.

This shows yet more expressly that the apostle speaketh in the person of a regenerate man, or of himself as regenerate. Certainly, to delight in the law of God is an inseparable property of such a one: see Psalm 1:2 , and Psalm 119:77,111 . The inward man; i.e. the new man, or regenerate part within me: this is called the hidden man of the heart, 1 Peter 3:4 : see Romans 2:29 2 Corinthians 4:16 .

Romans 7:22 . For I delight in the law of God — On this verse, chiefly, rests the opinion that the apostle, in the latter part of this chapter, is describing the character of a regenerate man. Its votaries think they find in this verse all the marks of a Christian. In general they assert, “to have our inward man, our mind and heart, delighted in the law of God, is to have our souls delighted in a conformity to him; it is to love God himself, to love to be like him in the inward man, having his law written on our hearts, which they say is the sum of all religion.” This is not reasoning, it is mere assertion; it is not to be inferred from this passage, and is plainly contradicted by the context. All judicious commentators will allow, that if any passage of the Scriptures appears obscure or susceptible of two senses, it must be explained in a consistency with what precedes and follows, and that interpretation must be chosen which agrees best therewith. Therefore, though it be true, in the fullest sense, that regenerated persons delight in the law of God after the inward man; yet, since the general scope of the paragraph, and the connection of this sentence with the context, show that Paul is here speaking of his unconverted state, our interpretation of it must be regulated by its connection with the whole passage.

Those who maintain that Paul is here speaking of his state after his conversion, assert, that by the inward man is meant, the new man, or man of grace, spoken of Ephesians 4:24 ; Colossians 3:10 . Did the context lead to that sense, it might be admitted. But the general sense of the whole passage leads us to understand the expression of the rational part of man, in opposition to the animal, which is its usual signification, as has been shown by several authors. The phrase occurs in two other passages of the New Testament, namely, 2 Corinthians 4:16 ; Ephesians 3:16 ; in the former, the apostle’s words are, We faint not, though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day; where the inward man must signify the mind or soul, which is renewed, or created anew in its faculties, in proportion as it grows in grace. In the other passage the apostle prays for the Ephesians that they might be strengthened with might, not in the outward man, the body, which was not a matter of much importance, but in the inward man, the soul; that it might become strong in faith, fervent in love, and conformed to the divine image; and that Christ, by his Spirit, might dwell in it. “The inward man, therefore, always signifies the mind, which either may or may not be the subject of grace. That which is asserted of either the inward or outward man, is often performed by one member or power, and not with the whole man.

(22) I delight .—“I delight in (and with) the Law of God.” I sympathise with and approve of it after the inward man, i.e., in the higher part of my being. “The inward man” corresponds nearly, though not quite, to the “law of my mind,” in the next verse. It stands rather midway between it and the spirit. The mind is the moral and rational faculties considered as moral and rational. “The inward man” is the higher part of man’s nature considered as capable of receiving the divine grace. The “spirit” is the same when actually brought into communion with God.

Romans 7:22 f. Further explanation: the incongruity between inclination and action has its roots in a division within man’s nature. The law of God legislates for him, and in the inner man ( Ephesians 3:16 ) he delights in it. The inner man is not equivalent to the new or regenerate man; it is that side of every man’s nature which is akin to God, and is the point of attachment, so to speak, for the regenerating spirit. It is called inward because it is not seen. What is seen is described in Romans 7:23 . Here also νόμος is not used in the modern physical sense, but imaginatively: “I see that a power to legislate, of a different kind (different from the law of God), asserts itself in my members, making war on the law of my mind”. The law of my mind is practically identical with the law of God in Romans 7:22 : and the νοῦς itself, if not identical with ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος , is its chief organ. Paul does not see in his nature two normal modes in which certain forces operate; he sees two authorities saying to him, Do this, and the higher succumbing to the lower. As the lower prevails, it leads him captive to the law of Sin which is in his members, or in other words to itself; “of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage”. The end therefore is that man, as a creature of flesh, living under law, does what Sin enjoins. It is the law of Sin to which he gives obedience.

Romans 7:22 . Συνήδομαι , I delight ) This too is already a further step in advance than σύμφημι , I consent , Romans 7:16 .— τὸν ἔσω , the inward ) He already upholds the name and character of the inward, but not yet however of the new man; so also in Romans 7:25 he says, “with my mind ,” not, with my spirit . Romans 7:22