Romans 7:25

I thank God Here first lightis let in; the light of hope. The "redemption of the body" shall come. "He who raised up Christ" shall make the "mortal body" immortally sinless, and so complete the rescue and the bliss of the whole man. See Romans 8:11.

through Jesus Christ our Lord "In whom shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). He is the meritorious Cause, and the sacred Pledge.

So then, &c. The Gr. order is So then I myself with the mind indeed do bondservice to the law of God, but with the flesh to the law of sin. On "the mind" here, see note just above, last but one on Romans 7:23. On "the law of sin" see second note ibidem. "To do bondservice to the law of God," and that with "the mind," can only describe the state of things when "the mind" is "renewed" (Romans 12:2). What is the reference of "I myself"?(for so we must render, and not, as with some translators, "The same I"). In strict grammar it belongs to bothclauses; to the service with the mind and to that with the flesh. But remembering how St. Paul has recently dwelt on the Ego as "willing" to obey the will of God, it seems best to throw the emphasis, (as we certainly may do in practice,) on the firstclause. Q. d., "In a certain sense, I am in bondage both to God and to sin; but my trueself, my now regenerate -mind," is God'sbondservant; it is my - oldman," my flesh, that serves sin." The statement is thus nearly the same as that in Romans 7:17; Romans 7:20.

The Apostle thus sums up and closes this profound description of the state of self, even when regenerate, in view of the full demand of the sacred Law. He speaks, let us note again, as one whose very light and progress in Divine life has given him an intense perception of sin as sin, and who therefore sees in the faintest deviation an extent of pain, failure, and bondage, which the soul before grace could not see in sin at all. He looks (Romans 7:25, init.) for complete future deliverance from this pain; but it is a real pain now. And he has described it mainly with the view of emphasizing both the holiness of the Law, and the fact that its function is, not to subdue sin, but to detect and condemn it. In the golden passages now to follow, he soon comes to the Agency which is to subdue it indeed. See further, Postscript, p. 268.