ris3n's Apologetics Codex
Romans 7.24
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Passage

Romans 7.24

Book: Romans · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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ASV

22. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23. but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.

24. Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?

  1. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:22-25, ASV)
WEB

22. For I delight in God’s law after the inward man, 23. but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.

24. What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?

  1. I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So then with the mind, I myself serve God’s law, but with the flesh, the sin’s law. (Romans 7:22-25, WEB)
KJV

22. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

24. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? the body: or, this body of death

  1. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:22-25, KJV)
YLT

22. for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, 23. and I behold another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of the sin that [is] in my members.

24. A wretched man I [am]! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?

  1. I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord; so then, I myself indeed with the mind do serve the law of God, and with the flesh, the law of sin. (Romans 7:22-25, YLT)

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Setting

  • Speaker: Paul the apostle
  • Audience: The believers in Rome, a church Paul had long wanted to visit but had not yet seen (1:10-13)
  • Location: Most likely written from Corinth, home of Paul's host Gaius (16:23; compare 1 Corinthians 1:14), and commending Phoebe of nearby Cenchreae (16:1), who probably carried the letter
  • Time period: C. AD 56-57, near the end of Paul's third missionary journey, as he prepared to take the collection to Jerusalem (15:25-26)

Theological reading

"Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" The cry ends the section that begins "For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin" (7:14).

The struggle. Paul describes a person who knows the good and approves of it and still does not do it: "to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not" (7:18, ASV). He delights in God's law "after the inward man" but sees "a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind" (7:22-23). Verse 24 is where that analysis ends, not in a technique but in a cry.

The words. "Wretched" (Strong's G5005) means miserable, worn down by hardship; the risen Christ uses the same word of the self-satisfied church in Laodicea, which "knowest not that thou art the wretched one" (Revelation 3:17, ASV). "Deliver" (G4506) means to rescue, to drag someone out of danger. The question is "who," not "how." "The body of this death" can also be read, as the KJV margin has it, "this body of death": the person as he is under sin's power.

Who is the "I"? Interpreters have long disagreed. Augustine first read the passage as a description of a person not yet converted, and later as Paul speaking of himself as a believer. Luther and Calvin took it of the believer's continuing struggle. In 1929 Werner Georg Kümmel argued that the "I" is a figure of speech, describing life under the law as seen through Christian eyes, and many modern scholars follow some form of that reading. On any reading the verse states the problem that the law alone cannot solve.

Rescue, not only insight. The Buddhism vs the Christian God comparison sets this verse beside the Buddhist diagnosis of suffering. In Buddhism the root of suffering is craving and ignorance, and the path out is insight and discipline. Paul's figure already knows what is right and still cannot do it, so he needs a rescuer as well as knowledge. His answer in the next verse is a person: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." See Romans 7.25, Original Sin and Sanctification.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Lexicon:

Passages:

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

  • ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
  • WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
  • KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
  • YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.