KenH
Well-Known Member
Romans 7:24-25: O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
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.
“We must not conclude our view of the Apostle here, without first noticing the lamentable cry he put up, in the contemplation of his sinful nature. Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? He did not thus exclaim, as if at the time unconscious how, or by whom, he should be delivered from it. For he immediately adds, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And long before this, he had told the Churches of his safety in Christ. He knew whom he had believed. His hope in Christ was blessed. His crown of righteousness was always in prospect before him, Philippians 1:20-21; Titus 2:13; 2 Timothy 4:6-8. But, while he was perfectly assured of his everlasting safety in Christ, he could not but daily mourn under the remains of in-dwelling corruption, which followed him as the shadow doth the substance. There is a great beauty in the Apostle's expression, in calling sin the body of this death, if it be as hath been said, that Paul then writing as he did to the Romans, alluded to a well-known custom among that people, who in cases of murder, punished the murderer by fastening the body of the person he had killed to his own; so that he was compelled to drag it about with him wherever he went. It lay down with him, and he raised it with him when he arose: so that it haunted his guilty conscience, and poisoned the air he breathed, by day and night. And such is the case of sin. For, every sinner is a soul-murderer, for he hath by sin destroyed himself. Hosea 13:9. And, when God the Spirit hath convinced of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, every child of God, made thoroughly acquainted, as Paul was, with the plague of his own heart, is conscious of carrying about with him a body of death; and, from the breakings forth of sin in the unrenewed part, is haunted daily with the spectre of his own creating, and in breathing the effluvia of his own corruption. And although, like Paul, he knows his deliverance to be complete in Christ; yet while he remains in the present time-state of the Church, he groans under the burden of a body of sin, which will never cease under one form or other, manifesting forth its in-bred evil, until it drops into the dust. Reader! these are blessed discoveries, however humiliating. They do indeed damp the pride of the Pharisee, and contradict the doctrine of what some men teach, but no man ever found in his own heart inherent holiness. But they endear Christ. They preach daily the necessity of coming to him the last hour of the believer's life, as he came the first hour of his conversion. They prove, yea, practically prove, that salvation, from beginning to end, is all of grace. They give God all the glory, and cause the soul to lay low in the dust before God. So Paul was commissioned to teach the Church. And so Paul found. To win Christ and be found in him, Philippians 3:8-14.”
- excerpt from Robert Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary on Romans 7:14-25
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.
“We must not conclude our view of the Apostle here, without first noticing the lamentable cry he put up, in the contemplation of his sinful nature. Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? He did not thus exclaim, as if at the time unconscious how, or by whom, he should be delivered from it. For he immediately adds, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And long before this, he had told the Churches of his safety in Christ. He knew whom he had believed. His hope in Christ was blessed. His crown of righteousness was always in prospect before him, Philippians 1:20-21; Titus 2:13; 2 Timothy 4:6-8. But, while he was perfectly assured of his everlasting safety in Christ, he could not but daily mourn under the remains of in-dwelling corruption, which followed him as the shadow doth the substance. There is a great beauty in the Apostle's expression, in calling sin the body of this death, if it be as hath been said, that Paul then writing as he did to the Romans, alluded to a well-known custom among that people, who in cases of murder, punished the murderer by fastening the body of the person he had killed to his own; so that he was compelled to drag it about with him wherever he went. It lay down with him, and he raised it with him when he arose: so that it haunted his guilty conscience, and poisoned the air he breathed, by day and night. And such is the case of sin. For, every sinner is a soul-murderer, for he hath by sin destroyed himself. Hosea 13:9. And, when God the Spirit hath convinced of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, every child of God, made thoroughly acquainted, as Paul was, with the plague of his own heart, is conscious of carrying about with him a body of death; and, from the breakings forth of sin in the unrenewed part, is haunted daily with the spectre of his own creating, and in breathing the effluvia of his own corruption. And although, like Paul, he knows his deliverance to be complete in Christ; yet while he remains in the present time-state of the Church, he groans under the burden of a body of sin, which will never cease under one form or other, manifesting forth its in-bred evil, until it drops into the dust. Reader! these are blessed discoveries, however humiliating. They do indeed damp the pride of the Pharisee, and contradict the doctrine of what some men teach, but no man ever found in his own heart inherent holiness. But they endear Christ. They preach daily the necessity of coming to him the last hour of the believer's life, as he came the first hour of his conversion. They prove, yea, practically prove, that salvation, from beginning to end, is all of grace. They give God all the glory, and cause the soul to lay low in the dust before God. So Paul was commissioned to teach the Church. And so Paul found. To win Christ and be found in him, Philippians 3:8-14.”
- excerpt from Robert Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary on Romans 7:14-25