Let me say one more thing. I know no of one who is considered a reputable bible teacher who holds my view. At least am not aware of any. They all hold yours a least in some manner. So I am aware that I am on thin ice at least when considering the scholars, but in this case I must stay with what I hold or I condemn my own conscience while praying that if I am wrong that the Lord will show me and if I am right He show others.
I appreciate your honesty.
Study carefully and you will find that each chapter is written with a different purpose in mind. Chapters five and six are closely connected as chapter six begins by answering the charge of antinomianism given at the end of chapter five. He then gives the picture of baptism and what it symbolizes. Concentrating on the aspect of death, he carries that over to how we should be dead to sin and expounds on that. He ends with verse 23, the wages of sin is death.
Roman 7 is a clear break as he starts out with an example of the law, how a woman is bound in marriage by the law, until her husband dies. Not until her husband dies is she free from the law. That picture in and of itself should set the stage that Paul is speaking to believers. Both are under the Mosaic law. Both are God's chosen people. It is a picture.
The purpose of the law is to lead us to Christ. We cannot keep the law. The law shows us our sin, our exceeding sinfulness. This is what Paul found. Compared to the law--"It is no more I, but sin that dwells in me." the more that he tried to keep the law (even as a Christian), the more he failed. There were the two natures struggling in him, one against the other. The one urged him to do the things that he didn't want to do. He spends a lot of time on that, because he knows we struggle with it. He cries out near the end of the chapter:
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24)
--And that is what many of us feel like--a wretch before a holy God. Which one of us deserve to stand before a God as holy as God is holy? None of us. We are guilty sinners. He is just and holy. We have nothing to offer. What is the answer?
He gives it in the very next verse:
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:25)
--And this is how I must conquer my flesh, my old nature, throughout my Christian life.
From this point he goes into chapter 8 and gives a wonderful exposition of how our life is in Christ, and it is a victorious Christian life, a life that can never be separated from the love of God.
