The Death of the I Man
February 5, 2007
Dear Friends,
When the last half of Romans 7 is brought into a conversation, it is usually in the context of a believer’s struggle with sin. The passage is taken to mean that Paul wanted to do right as a believer in the Lord Jesus, but could not because of sin. Although certainly believers can relate to a struggle against sin, let me suggest that this passage has nothing to do with that at all. This passage is about the destruction of the “I Man” or the flesh and has nothing to do with the current life of a believer. Let’s look at the evidence.
As we know, context is everything when we are interpreting a passage of Scripture. Paul starts off his thought in this passage with the comment “We are well aware that the Law is spiritual: but I am a creature of flesh and blood sold as a slave to sin.” (v. 14 NJB) There are two things that jump out to us immediately. Paul had just spent the previous chapters making an analogy to sinners being slaves to sin and believers being slaves to righteousness. You are either one or the other—not both. While this may not be typical of our life’s experience, it is undeniably the point that Paul is making. This passage cannot, therefore, be referring to a believer. The second point that jumps out at us confirms the previous point. Paul begins by talking about the Law of Moses. If there is a central theme to the book of Romans, it is the question of what makes a man righteous before God. In Romans, Paul contends that it is faith and grace, not the Law.
Please read the rest of the chapter (verses 15–25). While reading, please count the number of times you read the word “I.”
I do not understand my own behaviour; I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate. While I am acting as I do not want to, I still acknowledge the Law as good, so it is not myself acting, but the sin which lives in me. And really, I know of nothing good living in me, in my natural self, that is, for though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want, that is what I do. But every time I do what I do not want to, then it is not myself acting, but the sin that lives in me. So I find this rule: that for me, where I want to do nothing but good, evil is close at my side. In my inmost self I dearly love God’s law, but I see that acting on my body there is a different law which battles against the law in my mind. So I am brought to be a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death? God, thanks be to him, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So it is that I myself with my mind obey the law of God, but in my disordered nature I obey the law of sin.
I jokingly refer to this passage as “I Strain.” If you counted right, there are 23 occurrences of the word “I” in this passage. What this passage is trying to tell us is that Law-keeping, Hebrew of the Hebrews, Saul of Tarsus could not out-muscle sin. He was dependent upon “I” or himself to do it. In this passage he calls the I Man “my natural self.” This is the man of flesh. No matter how hard Saul tried to be righteous, he found himself acting contrary to God’s will. It was not in his power to defeat by his own right hand. He concludes with an exclamation of defeat—“What a wretched man I am!” The “I Man” or the man that depended on himself for personal righteousness was soundly defeated by sin as every man has been since Adam. He cries for help by saying “Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?” Yet, despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, Saul of Tarsus has a life-transforming encounter when he meets the Lord Jesus Christ—the lamb of God. God to the rescue!
As there is no chapter breaks in the original letter from Paul to the Romans, Paul continues down this same path. Paul says:
Thus, condemnation will never come to those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit which gives life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. What the Law could not do because of the weakness of human nature, God did, sending his own Son in the same human nature as any sinner to be a sacrifice for sin, and condemning sin in that human nature.
The picture is now before us. What the I-Man can’t do alone by the strength of his own right hand, the humbled man of faith can do with the aid of the Son of God. This key fact is what the Pharisees and the Judaizers were missing. The rest of Romans 8 then goes on to tell us how much God and Christ are working for us.
To conclude, Romans 7 is not about the current struggle of believers with sin. It is the struggle of unbelievers who think they can outmuscle sin. Romans 8 is about believers who will defeat sin; not by their own strength, but by humble and faithful submission to God and the covering of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Have a great week,
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