Another Law
Chris Cunningham

I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 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 (Romans 7:21).

Men have complicated this and argued over it for many years, but all believers have experienced this very thing and the word here clearly describes that experience. The inward man, the new man (Col 3:10), loves God’s law, delights in it and desires to keep it. This is not the old nature, which despises God’s law, is enmity against God and cannot be subject to His law: Romans 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

This new man is, well, let’s let God describe him: Ephesians 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. This is why he loves and would keep God’s law. But, we are all familiar (all believers that is) with this “other law.” It is the old man, the law or principle of sin, the old nature that cannot be subject to the law of God. It is rebellious and wicked; it is the “me” in which dwelleth no good thing (Rom 7:18).

There is warfare raging within each child of God. We love God, but that love is all but quenched at times by the lackadaisical, lukewarmness of the old heart (Rev 2:4). We would worship, and yet we cannot watch with Christ for even one hour, because “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matt 26:41 ).” We believe, and yet our prayer must ever be “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief (Mark 9:24).”

We would do good, but evil is present and continually is bringing us (the tense here is present and active), perpetually drawing us away from Christ, His worship, our first love of Him and our most holy faith (Jude 1:20).

No one who has not experienced this can understand it or believe it. This seems a tragic circumstance, a sad and terrible place to be and it is in a sense. It is what caused Paul to cry out the way he did in the last two verses of this chapter. Yet thank God that we are not complacently dead. Warfare is brutal and disturbing, yet it is preferable to unrestrained and comfortable rebellion and evil. Paul thanks God for deliverance in Christ from this body of death, but he also, calls this warfare “a good fight (1Tim 6:12).” And though we are in this body of death now, yet, in Christ Jesus, we are bound always to give thanks. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (1Thessalonians 5:18).