롬 7:13-20 하나님의 사람에게 율법의 위치

13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, wsold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For xI do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with ythe law, that it is good. 17 So now zit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells ain me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 bFor I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, cit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version(Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016), 롬 7:13–20.

본문 13-25절에서는 만약 율법이 죄가 아니라면 선한 율법이 사망에 대해서 책임이 있다는 것인가?라는 질문에 대해 설명한다. 

바울은 그 잘못이 율법에게 있지 않고 죄에게 있다라고 주장한다. 율법을 통해서 죄의 모든 흉악함이 드러나고 율법의 선함이 입증된다. 본절은 크게 세 부분 14-17, 18-20, 21-25절로 세분화된다. 여기에서 바울이 불신자를 묘사하는지 신자를 묘사하는지에 대한 논쟁이 있다. 

- If the law is not sin, is it the case that the good law is responsible for death? Paul argues that the fault lies with sin, not with the law. Through the law, sin is revealed in all its hideousness, and the law is vindicated as good. The section can be subdivided into vv. 14–17, 18–20, and 21–25. A long-standing debate centers on whether Paul is describing believers or unbelievers. Although good arguments are given by both sides, the most widely held view—beginning especially with Augustine and reaffirmed in the Reformation—is that Paul’s primary reference is to believers. In support of this position: (1) the shift to the present tense; (2) unbelievers do not desire so intensely to keep God’s law (v. 21); (3) the distinction between the “I” and the “flesh” (v. 18); (4) the delight in God’s law (v. 22); (5) deliverance from the sinful body is future (v. 24; 8:10, 11, 23); (6) the tension between good and evil in the concluding statement in 7:25; and (7) the fact that Christians are already righteous in Christ but are not yet perfected until the day of redemption. A second position, not as widely held but supported by a number of evangelical scholars, is that Paul is referring to unbelievers. In support of this position: (1) the structure of the passage (vv. 7–25 matches the life of the unregenerate previewed in v. 5, whereas 8:1–17 fits with the life of believers identified in 7:6); (2) the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in vv. 13–25 but is referred to 19 times in ch. 8; (3) to say that Christians are “sold under sin” (7:14) and “captive to the law of sin” (v. 23) stands in tension with chs. 6 and 8, which trumpet the freedom of believers from slavery to sin; (4) the suggestion that the present tense does not denote present time but the spiritual state of Paul when unconverted; (5) the desire to keep God’s law reflects the mind-set of the pious Jew who wanted to live a moral life (as the verses emphasize, such people do not and cannot keep the law); and (6) the section’s opening verse (v. 13) explains how the law brought death to Paul as an unbeliever. Advocates of both positions agree that (1) Christians still struggle with sin through their whole lives (see Gal. 5:17; 1 John 1:8–9); and (2) Christians can and should grow in sanctification throughout their lives by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within them (Rom. 8:2, 4, 9, 13–14). Those who hold to the first position usually see this passage as describing both Paul’s own experience and the experience of Christians generally. Although Christians are free from the condemnation of the law, sin nonetheless continues to dwell within, and all genuine Christians (along with Paul) should be profoundly aware of how far they fall short of God’s absolute standard of righteousness. Thus Paul cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (7:24). The answer follows immediately: the one who hasdelivered Christians once for all (see 4:2–25; 5:2, 9) and the one who willdeliver them day by day is “Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:25). As in many other places in Paul’s letters, this reflects his emphasis on both the “already” aspect of salvation (that believers have beensaved) and the “not yet” aspect (that believers will besaved ultimately and for all eternity at the return of Christ), and that they live in the tension between the already and the not yet.

Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 2169.

13절) 바울은 지속적으로 자신이 이전에 가르친 내용에 대해서 질문하면서 자신의 논지를 전개한다. 여기서 그는 어떻게 선한 율법이 죽음을 일으킬 수 있는지를 묻고 있다. 앞서 12절에서 율법은 거룩하고 계명도 거룩하고 의롭고 선하다라고 단언하고 있다. 그런데 어떻게 이럴 수 있느냐라고 묻고 그것에 대해서 그럴수 없다라고 말한다. 

바울은 사망을 가져오는 것이 율법이 아니라 죄라는 것을 지적했다. 율법은 단순히 그 목적을 이루기 위해서 죄에 사용된 수단이었다. 그러나 그렇게 함으로써 죄는 그 자신의 진정한 죄의 성격을 드러냈다. 그것은 죽음을 가죠오는데 선한 것을 사용함으로써 그것이 얼마나 말할수 없을정도로 악한지를 보여주었다. 

- Paul rejected the implication by pointing out that it was sin, not law, that brought about death. Law was simply the instrument used by sin to accomplish its purpose. But in so doing, sin exposed its own true character as sin. It demonstrated how unspeakably sinful it really is by using that which is good to bring about death.90

Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 166.

14-25절의 내용이 바울의 회심 전의 경험인지 후의 경험인지에 대한 논란이 있다. 

14절) 우리는 율법이 신령하다는 것을 안다. 하지만 육신에 속한 나는 죄 아래 팔렸다. 율법이 우리를 죄에 넘긴 것이 아니다. 

17절) 그것을 행하는 자가 내가 아니요 내 속에 거하는 죄이다. 본문은 바울 자신이 개인적인 책임을 회피하는 것이 아니라 바로 죄의 힘을 강조하기 위한 것이다. 

15-20절) 바울은 인간의 처절한 상태를 생생하게 묘사한다. 선한 인간은 하나님께 순종하려고 노력

하지만 그들은 그들 자신이 그겋게 지속적으로 할 수 잆다는 사실을 발견한다. 바로 인간은 어떤 종류의 죄악의 힘의 지배하에 있기 때문이다. 그렇다고 바울이 인간이 그들의 행동에 책임이 없다라고 주장하는 것은 아니다. 도리어 그는 인간이 아담의 죄에 개입한 덕분에 치명적으로 하나님으로부터 떠나 죄를 향해 굽어져 있음을 상기시킨다. 

- Paul vividly portrays the frustration of the human condition. The very best people seek to obey God, but they find themselves unable to do so consistently. What this reveals, Paul concludes, is that people are subject to some kind of sinful power: “sin living in me” (vv. 17, 20), “my sinful nature” (v. 18). Paul is not suggesting that people are not responsible for their actions. Rather, he is reminding us that human beings are fatally bent away from God and toward sin by virtue of their involvement in Adam’s sin (5:12–21).

Douglas J. Moo, “The Letters and Revelation,”in NIV Zondervan Study Bible: Built on the Truth of Scripture and Centered on the Gospel Message, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015), 2305.

바울은 지금 자신의 상태를 통해서 죄가 얼마나 강력하게 우리의 삶을 장악하고 악을 행하게 하는지를 설명하고 있다. 나의 마음이 선을 원하지만 그 선을 행하지 않고 도리어 악을 행하고 있다는 것이다. 그러면서 이를 행하는 것이 내가 아니라 내 속에 거하는 죄라고 말하며 나 자신과 죄를 분리하여서 설명하고 있다. 과연 죄와 그 죄를 짓는 나 자신을 분리할 수 있는가라는 질문이 있지만 여기서 바울은 죄를 짓는 자신을 회피하려는 것이 아니라 그 죄가 얼마나 강력한지를 강조하고 있는 것이다.

14-25절의 내용

7:14–25The question that has plagued commentators for centuries is whether in this latter section of chap. 7 Paul was describing his experience before or after conversion. Both positions may be argued rather persuasively.91In support of the first approach are a number of phrases throughout the account that seem to reflect a preconversion setting. Paul confessed that he was “sold as a slave to sin” (v. 14). He knew that “nothing good lives in [him]” (v. 18). He was a “prisoner of the law of sin” (v. 23), a “wretched man” who called out for someone to “rescue [him] from this body of death” (v. 24). Are confessions like these what we would expect from the very apostle who said, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1)?

A strong argument against the opposing position (that Paul was describing his spiritual experience as a Christian) is the question that must be raised regarding the real value of a conversion that leads into a spiritual quagmire of such impotence and misery. How could this be the abundant life that Jesus came to bring (John 10:10)? Further, the dramatic contrast between chap. 7, with its continual failure, and chap. 8, which describes victory through the Spirit, argues a preconversion setting. In the former Paul was a wretched man crying out for deliverance (7:24); in the latter he had been “set free from the law of sin and death” (8:2) and was controlled by the indwelling Spirit of God (8:9).

The arguments for the alternate interpretation are equally convincing. Throughout the entire section (7:13–25) Paul used the present tense. He told his readers what was happening in his life. Repeatedly (over twenty times) he made such statements as, “I do not understand what I do” (v. 15). Had he been referring to an earlier period, would he not have said, “I did not understand what I was doing”? As the section includes   p 167  statements that seemingly are incompatible with the experience of a Christian, other statements could never come from a nonbeliever; for example, “In my inner being I delight in God’s law” (v. 22). Earlier in his letter Paul said about those outside of Christ, “There is no one righteous … no one who seeks God” (3:10–12). Surely such rebels do not delight in God’s law in their inner being.

J. C. O’Neill solves the problem by denying that Paul wrote 7:14–25. He argues this from the general use of the word “law” and the dualism between flesh and spirit. His “best explanation” is that it was incorporated into Paul’s original letter by a Hellenistic Jew to “help persuade his non-Jewish neighbours of their need of deliverance if they were to live up to the high ideals they knew they should follow.”92All such highly speculative reconstructions fall beneath their own weight. The long and detailed history of interpretation of this crucial passage shows no tendency to give serious considerations to explanations that rely more on imagination than evidence.

In the final analysis the approach to be preferred must be the one that is more reasonable in terms of the larger context. At this point in his discussion of sanctification, would Paul have been more apt to tell his readers about his struggle with sin before he became a Christian or describe his ongoing difficulty in actually living out his deepest spiritual desires? Since elsewhere he said that in his earlier days he was “immaculate by the standard of legal righteousness” (Phil 3:6, Moffatt), it seems quite improbable that he was at that time deeply involved in a personal struggle against sin.93I believe that in this section Paul was revealing with considerable candor his difficulty in meeting the radical demands of the Christian faith. At the same time, he was using his own experience to describe the inevitability of spiritual defeat whenever a believer fails to appropriate the Spirit of God for victory.94

Romans 7 does not describe the totality of Paul’s spiritual experience. In fact, it is preparatory to what follows. It sets the stage for the triumph of chap. 8. It probably is true that in the lives of most earnest Christians   p 168  the two conditions Paul described exist in a sort of cyclical advance. Recognition of our inability to live up to our deepest spiritual longings (chap. 7) leads us to cast ourselves upon God’s Spirit for power and victory (chap. 8). Failure to continue in reliance upon the power of the Spirit places us once again in a position inviting defeat.95Sanctification is a gradual process that repeatedly takes the believer through this recurring sequence of failure through dependency upon self to triumph through the indwelling Spirit.

In v. 14 Paul reminded his readers of the obvious fact that the law is spiritual. Since it has its origin in God, it must of necessity give expression to the holiness of God’s character. In contrast, Paul acknowledged that he was unspiritual.96It takes very little self-examination for the Christian to agree that our life and conduct fall miserably short of the divine expectation. Even though the believer has a new nature acquired by a spiritual rebirth, the old nature continues to exert its maleficent influence. To the church at Corinth, Paul wrote that he could not address them as spiritual but as worldly, that is, unspiritual (1 Cor 3:1). Using a metaphor from slavery he confessed that he had been sold into the captivity of sin as a slave.97His times of defeat by the power of the lower nature made him feel like a slave to sin. He did not understand his own actions.98On a regular basis he failed to carry out what he meant to   p 169  do;99instead he found himself doing the very things he despised.100Acting in this contrary fashion is what it means to be sold under sin.

In the very act of violating his best intentions, Paul was agreeing that the law is a noble thing (v. 16). If it were not good, he would not have had any sense of guilt when he failed to live up to its standards. His best intentions were one with the law. He concluded that when he acted against his own wishes, it must have been the work of sin that had taken up residence in him (v. 17).101It was not the real Paul.102He was not trying to escape the responsibility for his own actions but to explain how deeply lodged within him was the old corrupt nature. In his failure to live up to his own expectations, sin had taken over and dominated his life. So he confessed that nothing good dwelt in his natural self (v. 18).103The old man was totally corrupt. The desire to do the right thing was there,104but not the power to perform it. Instead of doing the good he desired, he kept on doing the evil he did not want to do (v. 19). He concluded, in v. 20, that if he did that which was contrary to his own deepest desires, the real culprit must have been sin that lived within him. In failing to live out his best intentions, he had fallen into slavery to sin.

The experiences of life led Paul to conclude that whenever he desired   p 170  to do that which was good, sin reared its ugly head. His desire to do what was right was inevitably confronted by sin’s insistence that he do the opposite. So regular was this opposition that Paul could designate it as a “law.”105It was a controlling principle of life. It is true that in his inner self he joyfully concurred with the law of God (v. 22).106As the psalmist put it, he was the man blessed by God whose “delight is in the law of the Lord” (Ps 1:2; cf. 40:8). This confession removes the possibility that Paul was speaking about his life before coming to Christ.

Yet at the same time that other principle (v. 23) was at work throughout his body. It was at war against his desire to obey the law of God.107This basic conflict is nowhere better expressed than in Gal 5:17–18: “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want” (cf. Jas 4:1; 1 Pet 2:11). Paul went on to say that this alien power took him captive to the law of sin at work in his members. Romans 7:23 speaks of three laws.108By the “law of [his] mind” Paul referred to the principle of rational thought. Goodspeed calls it the “law of [his] reason.” It corresponds to that which Paul knew to be the right thing to do. The relationship between “another109law” and “the law of sin” is quite clear; they are undoubtedly to be taken as one and the same. This “law” (read “principle”) is the propensity toward sin that arises from a person’s lower nature. So what I am by nature is in constant conflict with what I aspire to be as a child of God in whom the Spirit of God dwells.110That conflict will never be settled until, seeing   p 171  God, we shall be like him (1 John 3:2).

Caught up in this spiritual warfare,111Paul cried out: What a wretched man am I! Who is able to free me from the “clutches of my own sinful nature?” (Phillips).112The “body of death” was like a corpse that hung on him and from which he was unable to free himself.113It constantly interfered with his desire to obey the higher impulses of his new nature. Who is able to rescue the believer crying out for deliverance? The answer is, Thanks be to God, there is deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord (v. 25).114Through the death and resurrection of Christ, God has provided the power to live in the freedom of the Spirit (cf. 8:2).115

Verse 25b (a separate paragraph in the NIV) summarizes the entire discussion of vv. 13–24.116Paul said that he himself (who he really was in Christ) had committed himself to serving the law of God (it was the rational thing to do) but that his lower nature was still a slave to the principle of sin. No modern translation captures the meaning better than the NEB: “In a word then, I myself, subject to God’s law as a rational being, am yet, in my sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin.” Although the chapter ends on this realistic observation, the positive declaration in the   p 172  first part of v. 25 has prepared us for the exciting truths about to be set forth in the chapter that follows.

Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 166–172.