Romans 7 is about the law, and the effects that the law has on someone (Paul) who is living in the flesh. When the law comes, it divided Paul into two, like a sacrifice, killing him and leaving him desperate for new life, which he found in Christ and His Spirit (8:1-4).
If Paul is talking about the effect of Torah on people living in the flesh, how is it that so many Christians find that Romans 7 describes their experience? How do we explain Luther’s anguish?
Is it perhaps that the church has, more often than we realize or care to admit, has been Galatian? Is it perhaps because we – Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant all – have regularly brought ourselves back under the elementary principles of the cosmos?
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