“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. — The answer erupts: Χάρις τῷ θεῷ (Charis tō theō, "Thanks to God!") through Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν (Iēsoun Christon, "Jesus Christ")—deliverance is eschatological and christological, not legal. Yet Paul restates the divided condition: νοῦς (nous, "mind") enslaved to God's law, σάρξ (sarx, "flesh") enslaved to sin's law. The question is answered, but the divided self remains—until chapter 8.
Church Fathers on Romans 7:24
“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Do you notice what a great thraldom that of vice is, in that it overcomes even a mind that delighted in the Law? For no one can rejoin, he means, that I hate the Law and abhor it, and so sin overcomes me. For “I delight in it, and consent to it,” and flee for refuge to it, yet still it had not the power of saving one who had fled to it. But Christ saved even one that fled from Him. See what a vast…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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