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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Romans 7:24 - 7:24
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Wretched (ταλαίπωρος)
Originally, wretched through the exhaustion of hard labor.
Who (τίς)
Referring to a personal deliverer.
Body of this death (τοῦ σώματος τοῦ θανάτου τούτου)
The body serving as the seat of the death into which the soul is sunk through the power of sin. The body is the literal body, regarded as the principal instrument which sin uses to enslave and destroy the soul. In explaining this much-disputed phrase, it must be noted: 1. That Paul associates the dominion and energy of sin prominently with the body, though not as if sin were inherent in and inseparable from the body. 2. That he represents the service of sin through the body as associated with, identified with, tending to, resulting in, death. And therefore, 3. That he may properly speak of the literal body as a body of death - this death, which is the certain issue of the abject captivity to sin. 4. That Paul is not expressing a desire to escape from the body, and therefore for death. Meyer paraphrases correctly: “Who shall deliver me out of bondage under the law of sin into moral freedom, in which my body shall no longer serve as the seat of this shameful death?” Ignatius, in his letter to the Smyrnaeans, speaks of one who denies Christ's humanity, as νεκροφόρος one who carries a corpse.
I myself
The man out of Christ. Looking back and summing up the unregenerate condition, preparatory to setting forth its opposite in ch. 8. Paul says therefore, that, so far as concerns his moral intelligence or reason, he approves and pays homage to God's law; but, being in bondage to sin, made of flesh, sold under sin, the flesh carries him its own way and commands his allegiance to the economy of sin.