Again his purpose is not excuse, but deliverance. No deadly antinomianism is here, such as has withered innumerable lives, where the thought has been admitted that sin may be in the man, and yet the man may not sin. His thought is, as all along, that it is his own shame that thus it is; yet that the evil is, ultimately, a thing alien to his true character, and that therefore he is right to call the lawful King and Victor in upon it.
And now comes up again the solemn problem of the Law. That stern, sacred, monitor is looking on all the while, and saying all the while the things which first woke sin from its living grave in the old complacent experience, and then, in the regenerate state, provoked sin to its utmost treachery, and most fierce invasions. And the man hears the voice, and in his new-created character he loves it. But he has "reverted," ever so little, to his old attitude, to the self-life, and so there is _also_ rebellion in him when that voice says "Thou shalt." [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =So I find the Law=--he would have said, "I find it my monitor, honoured, aye and loved, but not my helper"; but he breaks the sentence up in the stress of this intense confession; =so I find the Law--for me,= me =with a will to do the right,--that for me the evil lies at hand.= [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =For I have glad sympathy with (συνήδομαι) the Law of God;= what He prescribes I endorse with delight as good, =as regards the inner man,= that is, my world of conscious insight and affection[115] in the new life; [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =but I see= (as if I were a watcher from without) =a rival (ἕτερον) law,= another and contradictory precept, "serve _thyself_," =in my limbs,= in my world of sense and active faculty, =at war with the law of my mind,= the Law of God, adopted by my now enlightened thinking-power as its sacred code, =and seeking to make me captive in that war[116] to the law of sin,= the law =which is in my limbs.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =Unhappy man am I. Who will rescue me out of the body of this death,[117]= out of a life conditioned by this mortal body, which in the Fall became sin's especial vehicle, directly or indirectly, and which is not yet (vii. 23) actually "redeemed"? [Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =Thanks be to God,[118]= who giveth that deliverance, in covenant and in measure now, fully and in eternal actuality hereafter, =through Jesus Christ our Lord.=
=So then,= to sum the whole phenomenon of the conflict up, leaving aside for the moment this glorious hope of the issue, =I, myself, with the mind indeed do bondservice to the law of God, but with the flesh,= with the life of self, wherever and whenever I "revert" that way, I do bondservice =to the law of sin.=
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Do we close the passage with a sigh, and almost with a groan? Do we sigh over the intricacy of the thought, the depth and subtlety of the reasoning, the almost fatigue of fixing and of grasping the facts below the terms "_will_," and "_mind_," and "_inner man_," and "_flesh_," and "_I_"? Do we groan over the consciousness that no analysis of our spiritual failures can console us for the fact of them, and that the Apostle seems in his last sentences to relegate our consolations to the future, while it is in the present that we fail, and in the present that we long with all our souls to do, as well as to approve, the will of God?
Let us be patient, and also let us think again. Let us find a solemn and sanctifying peace in the patience which meekly accepts the mystery that we must needs "wait yet for the redemption of our body"; that the conditions of "this corruptible" must yet for a season give ambushes and vantages to temptation, which will be all annihilated hereafter. But let us also think again. If we went at all aright in our remarks previous to this passage, there are glorious possibilities for the present hour "readable between the lines" of St Paul's unutterably deep confession. We have seen in conflict the Christian man, regenerate, yet taken, in a practical sense, apart from his Regenerator. We have seen him really fight, though he really fails. We have seen him unwittingly, but guiltily, betray his position to the foe, by occupying it as it were alone. We have seen also, nevertheless, that he is not his foe's ally but his antagonist. Listen; he is calling for his KING.