# Rom 7:14 -- carnal, sold under sin



## nwink (Jun 20, 2011)

What does Paul mean when he says he is "carnal", "sold under sin"? I'm confused since he says that the Christian is freed from sin in Rom 6:7 and that sin shall not have dominion over the Christian in Rom 6:14. (I used to believe Rom 7 was pre-conversion Paul, so I need some help understanding these concepts)


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## Contra_Mundum (Jun 20, 2011)

Our spirits have been set free; but our bodies remain captives to the powers of death until they too are resurrected. Here, Paul is saying that he is "fleshy," not essentially but literally.

It is one of the difficulties, or one of the paradoxes of the Christian life, that I am both saint and sinner. And it is because of this (momentarily) "incomplete" transformation that sin still has its meat-(flesh-)hooks in me. This is a "body of death," 7:24. And I am looking forward to getting the regenerated version.

In the meantime (as ch8 demonstrates) it is nevertheless possible to live a Spirit-directed life, even in this body. Because my spirit is set free, through *the* Spirit, I am able to see a new, righteous dominion coming to life in my body, and setting me free from the law of sin and death. No longer a slave of my debased passions, and subjected to the puppetry of the world and the devil, I am able to live according to the Spirit, and not the flesh, 8:4ff.


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## moral necessity (Jun 20, 2011)

Romans 6:7 says that a man is "justified" from sin. We are freed in the sense that it can no longer condemn us. Romans 6:14 refers to "dominion", which implies a universal rule over something. Being freed from its ability to condemn us removes it from properly being said to still have a "dominion" over us. It may very well still hold us in slavery to itself in many ways, as Paul says in Romans 7, but it can no longer bring about any condemnation to us, as vs 14b implies ("you are not under law but under grace). The Spirit also exerts its influence within us now too, and so a certain degree of its influence is always intertwined with the influence of sin within our members. We are now like a faucet that runs both hot and cold water, whereas before, we only ran cold water. And so, the cold no longer holds dominion. Both pour out of the fountain, and so the dominion is broken.

That's how I tend to see it...

Blessings!


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