Romans 7:21Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"I find then a law, that when I want to do good, evil is present with me." What is said is unclear. What does it mean?

Paul is saying, "I praise the law according to conscience, and when I want to do good, I find in it a defender for myself, one who strengthens my will. As I delight in the law, so it approves my disposition."

Do you see how the Apostle proves that an understanding of good and evil was implanted in us from the beginning? He also proves that the Law of Moses praises this understanding and is itself praised by it.

Earlier he did not say, "I learn from the law," but, "I praise the law" (Rom 7:16). So now he does not say, "I am educated by the law," but, "I delight in the law."

The expression is unclear; something is missing in it. He ought to have said, "Therefore, when I want to do good, I find in the law a defender for myself. Yet I do not do the good, because evil is present with me."

The meaning of this passage is as follows. Knowledge of the good was implanted in me from the beginning. I also find that the law defends it and praises it, and I desire to do the good.

Yet I am drawn in by some other power, and evil is present with me. That is, the action of evil is not abolished in me.

However, Chrysostom, having interpreted this passage as incomplete, suggests that it may also be understood otherwise. Namely, "I find that the law was given not to someone else, but to me, who desire to do good."

For the law is law only for those who desire to do good, since it desires the same thing that they desire. This will become clear from what follows.

If evil is present with me as something dwelling in the flesh, the Apostle says, then the law gives help and is understood as a counselor, but not as a deliverer.

Those who are wounded by sin must necessarily not only know that they should act better, but also be able to do what is good and what the law commands.

Notice again with what wisdom and skill he accepts the law. It is not because the law can dull the sting of sin, nor, certainly, because it can put to death the sin within us.

Rather, it is only because the law teaches the mind the knowledge of what is profitable. For if the law tells me that evil is present because it dwells in the flesh, then it plainly declares this evil to be depraved.

Thus I see a certain law that wishes to accomplish some good in me, something difficult for my will, since it is inclined toward doing evil.

Paul says that the law of Moses agrees with his desire not to commit the sin that dwells in his flesh and urges him to do something contrary both to his own desire and to the command of the law.

"I find, then, the law, when I wish to do good"—a punctuation mark should be placed here—"that evil is present with me." Again, because of brevity, the Apostle expressed this obscurely. He means that the law also seems good to me, because I praise what it prescribes as something good. I myself, like the law, love the good and hate what is contrary to it. Yet evil is present with me, that is, sin, because I have a mortal and passionate body, and negligence and weakness of soul. Then the Apostle shows more clearly the struggle of the mind and the passions.

The Apostle depicts the condition of the unregenerate man, in whom an inward struggle takes place between mind and will, between spirit and flesh.

With man's fall, the will ceased to heed the suggestions of reason. Reason still preserved the knowledge of the good and desires it, striving toward it. Yet it lacks the power to move the will to accomplish what it wants.

The voice of conscience, the inward judge of man's actions, is likewise too weak to guide and restrain human activity. It too becomes confused and irresolute, so that it is difficult even to follow its indications.

To awaken in us the greatest possible revulsion and hatred toward sin, the Apostle depicts the grievous violence which sin works upon us. He also depicts the unnatural division that arises in our nature because of sin: "I do not understand what I do. For I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, I agree with the law that it is good. Now then, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me... According to the inward man I delight in the law of God. But in my members I see another law, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin."

If "law" is taken here in the sense of the written law, the syntactical structure becomes difficult, and the thought of the text unclear. To determine it, one would have to supply and insert whole sentences.

It is therefore better to understand by "law" the law of life acting in me, or the constant order of phenomena taking place within me, as the Russian translation does.

Oecumenius cited various paraphrases used by interpreters to clarify this passage when law is understood as the written law. He finally adds, "One may also take it thus, more closely to the words: I find that, when I want to do the good according to the law, evil lies before me."