The Solution to the Sin Dilemma

“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).

Christians have been delivered from sin’s power and will one day be delivered from its presence.

The godly Puritan writer Thomas Watson once said that a sure sign of sanctification is a hatred and loathing of sin. It was his hatred of sin that caused Paul to cry out as he wrapped up his spiritual autobiography, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” That cry expresses the distress and frustration the apostle experienced in his spiritual battle. David expressed that same frustration in Psalm 13:1-2: “How long, O Lord? Wilt Thou forget me forever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day?”

When he exclaimed, “Who will set me free from the body of this death?” Paul referred to his physical body that was subject to sin and death. It is there that the battle with sin is joined. The verb translated “set me free” was used to speak of a soldier rescuing a wounded comrade in the midst of battle. Paul longed to be rescued from his sinful, unredeemed flesh.

But the story doesn’t end there, with Paul frustrated and in despair. Certain of his eventual triumph over sin, the apostle says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” As he goes on to explain in Romans 8:18-19, 22-23 (and in 1 Cor. 15:53, 57), believers will one day receive their glorified bodies and enter Christ’s presence, never to struggle again with sin. Paul elaborates on that glorious truth in Philippians 3:20-21: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”

I remember learning about a Roman punishment that chained a dead body to the condemned man which then decomposed and rotted and eventually infected and killed the living one. This may be what Paul was even likening his/our struggle with the old sin nature.

The issue in chapter seven is not pardon but deliverance. The question concerns indwelling sin as a power, not sins committed at some point. Romans eight answers that deliverance from the body of this death (sin capacity) is found in the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. The law does not provide the power to overcome sin. We are “not under the law but under grace” (Ro 6:14).

God through Christ delivers us from sin in three phases: (1) from the penalty of sin when we become Christians, (2) from the power of sin daily, (3) and from the presence of sin in heaven. Our verse deals with deliverance from the daily influence of the sin capacity.

The “body of death” of the sin capacity pictures us dragging around a corpse on our human body all day. There was a Roman system of punishment whereby the authorities chained the body of the murdered person to the murderer. The murdered body stayed chained to the murderer as long as he lived. This corpse constantly interferes with our highest desire to please God. The sin capacity is a deadly weight.

“Death” here is the miserable condition of being out of fellowship with the Lord in time. It is a state of allowing the sin capacity to control or dominate us. Paul did not cry out for deliverance from his body in physical death here, but from defeat in the Christian life.

PRINCIPLE:

The spiritual battle in the believer never ceases until he meets the Lord in glory.

APPLICATION:

Every genuine child of God will struggle with the battle of his two capacities. Non-Christians do not go through this internal conflict.

Sanctification is incomplete for the believer in terms of the believer’s experience, but it is complete in terms of Christ’s work for him positionally. The believer died to sin when Christ died on the cross (Ga 2:20, 21). His justification was complete when he put his trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross. We will see this soon: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (8:2). Complete deliverance from the presence of sin will not happen until the believer enters the eternal state. Christians who seek perfection in their lives will end frustrated and discouraged. We need to accept the daily struggle with sin as a point of reality in Christian living. (https://versebyversecommentary.com/2012/05/02/romans-724/)

Was James writing his epistles to the Body of Christ? Or Peter, who was he writing his letters to? Also Jude or the first, second and third epistle of John, Hebrews, or Revelation. To whom were they writing their letters and epistles to? Is the Church the Body of Christ mentioned in any epistle or letter after Paul?

This is an important dispensational fact that after Paul finished Philemon, Hebrews picks up next with the Jews. And from Hebrews through Revelation, it is the Jews, the tribulation, enduring to the end in order to be saved, the 144,000, the Antichrist Armegeddon, and the Second Coming of Christ to this earth to set up His Millennial Reign in Jerusalem.
Silence on the Gentiles. They will be dealt with later when Christ makes Israel His nation of priests and the go and fulfill the great commission of Matthew.

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