The nature of the flesh in Romans 7

The divine apostle, a tireless model for those following him, for whose sake he cried out: 'become imitators of me, even as I of Christ' (Rom 7:15-17). Truly, what he said is not his own according to the literal word; but I know that the good does not dwell in my flesh, nor is the wretched man I am able to rescue myself from this body of death (Rom 7:18-24).

But he says these things and such things while acting in a parenthetical persona for the purpose of rebuking those who love sin. Just as the divine Scripture knows how to call men by various names—carnal, spiritual, pneumatic, and myriads of others—based on their fleshly deeds, so also it knows how to call the devil not only Satan, adversary, accuser, serpent, and lion, but also Beelzebub, but also flesh, law, sin, and death; for through disobedience we served these, and not Christ.

For this reason he says: 'when we were in the flesh' (Rom 7:7), indicating that they are no longer in the flesh, even though they are in the flesh, so that he is not slandering the flesh in which we are surrounded, but the flesh so named in common, from which we have been set free because we died in Christ through being buried with him through baptism.

Truly we have been freed from this flesh; for he says: 'but now we have been released from the law of sin, having died in that in which we were held, so that we might serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter' (Rom 7:6).

If he began again by assuming a persona, starting from the point of 'What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means!' (Rom 7:7) until 'how shall I be rescued from this body of death?' setting an unshakeable foundation in a prologue for his own defense, saying thus: 'What then? Is the law sin? By no means, but the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and just, and good.' Here he speaks of law, not the one opposing the law of our mind, but the exhortatory one, the one punishing sinners, for which reason he also judged him to be holy, and just, and good.

If he then began again to resolve following what he said above, having prepared a gracious introduction thus: 'I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' Then, for the condemnation of such things being formed and reviled which we surround with flesh, he says interrogatively: 'Am I then I myself serving God by law with my mind, but serving sin by law with my flesh?' (Rom 7:22) 'Am I also Paul, divided, in one way serving the law of God, in another way serving the law of sin?' 'Do I have Christ and Beelzebub together in myself at the same time?' 'Am I he who says: But I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20), having lied that I have the living sin in myself?'

Addressing others: 'Do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit in you (1 Cor 6:19), and glorify God in your members?' 'Am I myself having nothing good in the body?' But he is not such a person, he is not; by no means; for he was before a child of wrath and a vessel of wrath, having changed his manner and not his nature, and became a vessel of election, precious.

Since therefore the personified words suit neither the divinely-inspired Paul, nor even certainly everyone united to Christ through baptism, because they were freed from the so-called flesh; for such as these shall no longer be condemned because of the disobedience of Adam (Rom 5:12), sin no longer reigns over them, nor death through sin; for they joined the life of Christ through obedience to the disobedience.