Romans 7:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

One may say, "If impious barbarians devastate a city or country, then carry off some of the captured inhabitants and impose on them the yoke of slavery, what then? If those who suffer this submit, by unavoidable captivity, to the laws of those who rule them, will they deserve reproach and condemnation? Are they to be blamed because they do not prove stronger than compulsion? Are they to be blamed because they do not strive to do what pleases themselves, ignoring the power of their oppressors?"

I think no one would justly reproach them. Those in slavery have no power to free themselves. As I said, they yield to an involuntary conjunction of circumstances.

Although they are tormented by being deprived of freedom, they have yielded under compulsion to those stronger than themselves. They are in slavery, even though they do not want it.

If this is indeed not far from a just judgment, let the human mind be freed from accusation for the weaknesses of the flesh.

But they will say that it depended on the mind not even to accept what it does. It has the reins of desires itself. Therefore let it be above violence and not subject to sins.

Yet if the nature of the flesh is unbearable and hostile, setting untamed desire against the mind, and if the law is powerless to help, since it cannot put sins to death, then no one can justly accuse the mind.

It is not to be blamed for failing to act in the better way, having admitted what is shameful, even though it has the reins of our desires.

The flesh, from being the instrument of the spirit, became its master. It even drew the spiritual faculties into devising various means to satisfy its needs. It became weak in serving spiritual demands, and even hostile to them.

The Mosaic Law, given to define the action of the will, could only reveal more clearly the inward division and impotence of fallen man. It could also awaken in him a thirst for gracious help.

This Law assisted the natural law of man's conscience. By positive external punishments it restrained man's sinful inclinations, and by rewards it encouraged the fulfillment of good.

But the weaknesses of the flesh, inborn inclinations, and acquired habits of sin became so usual and constant that the Apostle directly calls them, taken together, the law of sin.

From the chief place of their activity, he calls them the law of the flesh, the law of the members, which opposes the law of the mind, or conscience.

The opposition of this law to the law of the mind is so strong that man does what he does not want. For what he does want, he does not find sufficient strength within himself.

Therefore the Apostle cries out on behalf of all suffering humanity: "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

The Western Church, following the opinion of Augustine, Ambrose, and others, confirmed by the decrees of the Council of Trent, applies the condition described above to regeneration.

Yet even among Western interpreters, some, such as Calmet, Allioli, and Bisping, rely on Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, and other Eastern Fathers. They find it more consistent to see here man's condition before regeneration.

Who indulges self-pleasing? The very one who sins. Who is carried away by the sweetness of sin? He himself is, and willingly. Why? Because from the beginning he loved it and received it as the principle of his life.

At that moment he sold himself to this master, and that master drives him about.

Chrysostom says, "Everything depends solely on an evil choice. Soul, body, and choice are not essentially the same. The first two are creations of God, while the last is a movement born in ourselves, which we direct wherever we will. The will in itself is a natural faculty given by God. But the will directed toward a particular end is something of our own, an act of our disposition."

Blessed Theophylact, following Chrysostom, adds, "The sin dwelling in us is the depraved and sinful will. In it is rooted the tyranny of sin, which draws the mind through pleasure."

Ambrosiaster writes the same: "Not I, but sin dwelling in me. Being pressed and dragged by sin, I do not do my own will, but its will. But is a man free from guilt when the Apostle seems to call him an unwilling sinner? By no means. Sin captures him through his own depravity and carelessness. Since he gives himself into slavery to sin by consenting to sin, sin rightly takes possession of him. First it bends the man's choice, and then it rules over him as over a captive. The Apostle sets this forth in order to magnify the grace of God. He shows from what evil grace delivers man, what miserable condition he inherits from Adam, and what good he receives in Christ."