Thoughts on Rom 7

Rom 7 is a well-known crux. Commentators tussle over the identity of the speaker in Rom 7. Is it autobiographical? Is it about Paul’s pre-Christian experience? Post-Christian experience? Something else? Someone else?

In his recent commentary, Colin Kruse runs through the options (314-21). I think he makes some useful points, although I’m going to take a rather different tack:

i) If commentators have so much difficulty identifying the speaker in Rom 7, then perhaps that’s a difficulty of their own making. Maybe they are making it more difficult that it really is, because they are taking the wrong approach or seeking a more specific identification than Paul intended.

ii) Apropos (i), we shouldn’t make it harder than it would have been for Paul’s target audience. Any interpretation we propose ought to be fairly accessible to 1C Roman Christians. Paul was writing to be understood. So he presumably meant something that shouldn’t be too challenging for his audience to figure out. He’s a gifted, practice communicator.

For that reason, we need to avoid overly complicated explanations. The interpretation ought to be simple enough that his original readers could grasp it without too much effort.

iii) And we’d expect the correct interpretation to build on what he’s been saying in the previous chapters. His preceding argument should, to some degree, lead up to what he’s referring to in this chapter. It doesn’t come out of the blue.

iv) Christian readers often identify with the struggle that Paul describes in 7:14ff. And that can influence our interpretation. Likewise, it may well be that Paul himself could identify with the struggle he describes in those verses.

v) At the same time, we need to be careful about that. For instance, novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters frequently create characters whom the reader or audience can relate to. That’s part of the appeal of the film or novel. You can see yourself in one of the characters.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean you are the character. It just means you have something in common with the character. You can relate your experience to the character’s experience.

vi) Paul was both a Jew and a Christian. A pre-Christian Jew, then a Jewish-Christian. In theory, he could identify with the speaker in Rom 7 on more than one level.

vii) Likewise, members of the 1C Roman Church included Messianic Jews and Gentile Christians. So both groups can find themselves in Rom 7. There’s a little something for everyone.

viii) I think Paul’s basic point in Rom 7 is that God's law is good, but we are bad. The law is good, but we aren’t good enough to keep the law. Indeed, the goodness of the law exposes our iniquity.

And this, in turn, plays into Paul’s argument about justification by faith. Because we are sinners, we can’t be justified by works of the law. Our very effort to do good or be good reveals our inability to make good on our good intentions.

Therefore, we can’t be righteous in ourselves. Our standing must come from another source.

And this applies to Jews, Christians, and pagans alike. Paul doesn’t think Jews can keep the law, Christians can keep the law, or pagans can keep the law. All three groups fall short.

ix) In that respect, Rom 7 is less about the “who” and more about the “what.” Through personification, it illustrates the futility of law-keeping as a means or grounds of justification.