Romans 7:22-23

“ For I applaud the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. ”

The verb συνήδομαι strictly signifies: I rejoice with. Does it mean, as van Hengel thinks: with other persons, who like me take pleasure in the law? Or as Meyer understands it, with the law itself, which as well as myself takes pleasure in the good it prescribes? The first idea is not supported by the context, and the second is unnatural; for the law is not the subject, but the object of συνήδεσθαι, of the feeling of joy spoken of by the apostle. We must therefore apply the σύν, with, to the inwardness of the feeling experienced: I rejoice in and with myself, that is to say, in the inmost chamber of my being. This term is still stronger than the σύμφημι, to agree with, of Romans 7:16. The latter merely signified: “What the law declares good, I declare good along with it,” while here we have an eager and even delighted adherence.

The complement of God, added to the law, brings out the moral elevation of the rule, and so justifies the assent indicated by the verb συνήδομαι, I applaud.

The last words: after the inward man, expressly remind us that it is only to a part of his being that we must apply what Paul here says of himself. We must beware of confounding the inward man with the new man (καινὸς ἄνθρωπος). Paul means to speak only of that which he calls, Romans 7:23; Romans 7:25, the understanding, the νοῦς, the organ with which the human soul is endowed to perceive the true and good, and to distinguish them from the bad and false. Here especially is the action of the moral consciousness, that faculty which has little more than a theoretic character, and which in practice exercises no control over the will sufficient to constrain it to do what it approves. The outward man, the acting phenomenal personality, remains under the dominion of another power which draws it on the other side (Romans 7:23). Again, in 2 Corinthians 4:16 we come upon the contrast between the inward and the outward man, but modified by the context. The first in this passage denotes the whole man morally regarded, the will as well as the understanding, and the second, physical man only.

We have already shown, on occasion of the expressions used, Romans 7:16, that nothing affirmed by Paul here passes in the least beyond what Jesus Christ Himself ascribes to man unconverted, but desirous of goodness and placed under the influence of the divine law and of the prevenient grace which always accompanies it; comp. John 3:21. St. Paul in chap. 2 had already recognized not only the existence of moral conscience in the Gentiles, but the comparative rightness with which they often apply this divine rule in the practice of life.