Romans 7:7–25 is a passage that reveals faith not as “a technique for speaking correctly,” but as “a struggle to live truthfully.” Paul presents doctrinal argumentation, yet he does not conceal the grain of real life. Instead, he exposes—without varnish—the fierce battle within: fractures and resistance, desire and conscience, longing and habit, pulling and pushing against one another. As Pastor David Jang (Olivet University) expounds this section, the central point he returns to again and again is not a simplistic scheme that brands the Law as evil. Rather, it is the tragedy of human existence unveiled where the holiness of the Law collides with the cunning of sin—and the path of grace that breaks through that tragedy. Paul’s blunt denial—“Is the Law sin? By no means!”—is not an excuse to discard the Law; it is a declaration that restores the Law’s original goodness in sharp relief. If the Law were sin, then God’s word would be sin, and the command of the Holy One would be defiled. But Paul refuses that road. The Law is holy. The issue is not the Law itself, but how sin moves in the presence of the Law, and how a human being sold under sin responds.
In explaining the holiness of the Law, Pastor David Jang brings forward a sense of “order”—a lawfulness woven into life. Nature is not a heap of chaos but a symphony of order, and life flourishes not in unrestrained license, but on an appointed path. Fish live within the boundary of water, and birds fly within the realm of the sky. Boundaries do not exist to crush life; they sustain life so that life can function as life. In the same way, the prohibition of Genesis 2:17—“you shall not eat”—is to be read. That command was not a shackle thrown down to torment humanity, but a fence meant to preserve human beings in their proper humanity. Yet sin always interprets the fence as a “prison.” It makes protection feel like oppression, makes love’s order look like control, and ultimately undermines trust in God. That is why the first crack in faith usually begins not with outward misbehavior, but with an inward distortion of perception. The moment God’s life-giving word is felt as violence that steals freedom, sin has already shaken the center of the heart.
The commandment Paul selects as his example is, “You shall not covet.” This refuses to let us reduce sin to outward incidents alone. Sin is not merely a visible act of harm, or a surface-level violation of a rule; the commandment exposes the inner desire that conceives those acts as a breeding ground of sin. Pastor David Jang highlights the piercing depth of the last of the Ten Commandments. If we once understood sin as something tied to “execution,” “You shall not covet” forces us to understand sin as tied to “craving.” At that point, there is no escaping the self. All the devices by which we have excused ourselves—“no one found out,” “there was no legal penalty,” “I maintained religious appearances”—collapse into helplessness. Sin is no longer an external event; it becomes the direction of an “I want” quietly growing inside me. And here the first function of the Law appears. The Law does not “create” sin; it enables us to “know” sin. It hurts, but the pain is diagnostic. If we eliminate pain to hide the illness, the whole body eventually fails. The Law exposes the disease within so that we finally begin to hunger for healing.
Yet Paul goes further, describing a paradox that arises inside the human heart as it confronts the Law: “Sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” Sin is portrayed not as the sum of “bad choices,” but as a crafty power that uses what is good to intensify what is evil. The strangely universal human experience—hearing “don’t” and feeling “I want” grow stronger—shows how twisted the inner mechanism can be. The forbidden fruit looks sweeter, the locked door more intriguing, the outside of the boundary more like “real freedom.” Pastor David Jang calls this a “dangerously precarious spiritual situation.” The word of God should drive sin away; instead, sin uses the word as a foothold to ignite even more stubborn desire. Those who suffer under the word stand at a crossroads. One path is to accept that the suffering is the pain of sin being exposed and to hunger for salvation. The other is to evade the pain by turning the word itself into an enemy—or slipping into the cynicism that says, “I can’t keep it anyway, so I might as well do what I want.” Paul exposes that second path as sin’s strategy. Sin does not win primarily by abolishing the Law. Sin wins by exploiting the Law—either pushing people into despair or inflating them with pride—so that they drift away from the life God gives.
Paul’s line, “I was once alive apart from the Law,” unmasks the peace of ignorance. When we do not recognize sin as sin, we feel “as if” we are alive. When the alarm of conscience is switched off, life becomes easier. But that ease is not health; it is numbness. “When the commandment came, sin came alive and I died” is Paul’s confession that the myth of his self-righteousness died. The interpretation “I’m a decent person” collapses, and the truth—“I cannot save myself”—becomes unmistakable. Pastor David Jang speaks here of the Law’s limit: the Law exposes sin, but it cannot remove sin. More precisely, the Law is not a cure; it is a diagnosis. A diagnosis cannot heal, but without it we will not even admit we need healing. This is why the paradox arises: the commandment that was intended for life feels as though it leads to death. The paradox is not the Law’s failure, but the violence of sin that tears up the diagnosis and prevents us from moving toward the cure.
At this point, Pastor David Jang offers a specific warning: “Do not use the commandment either to self-torment or to condemn others.” Sin does not operate only by locking one person in despair; it also corrupts the Law into a weapon of judgment over others. When “holiness” becomes an assault on the neighbor, “righteousness” becomes a blade that tears relationships apart, and “goodness” collapses into suffocating legalism that strangles the community, the Law no longer functions as a path of life. As Paul insists, the commandment is not evil. But sin uses even what is good to kill. That is why the place of the gospel becomes necessary. This is also why Pastor David Jang draws in the promise of 1 John 1:9—“If we confess our sins… He will cleanse us.” Confession is the abandonment of self-justification; it is laying oneself down at the door of grace. One of sin’s most lethal methods is not merely sin itself, but the shackle of guilt. Guilt can drive us to God, but when it mutates into the Accuser’s condemnation, it drives us away from God. The gospel is not cheap indifference that covers sin and pretends it is not sin. The gospel exposes sin as sin, yet opens a way back for the sinner through the love of God. Grace, then, is not “tolerance that ignores sin,” but “power that saves the sinner.”
Paul deepens his analysis of sin’s deception in a way that echoes Genesis 3. His words—“Sin, seizing an opportunity… deceived me”—sound like the serpent’s strategy with Eve. “Did God really say…?” is not open rebellion at first; it is subtle twisting. Sin does not begin by directly denying God. Sin begins by making God misunderstood. It makes the commandment feel like oppression, makes God appear not as love but as a rival, and ultimately provokes the pride of “becoming like God.” The “faith” Pastor David Jang emphasizes is not mere optimism; it is the decision to trust the goodness of God’s word. Faith operates at the moment of choice: when the commandment comes, will I receive it as “the way that gives me life,” or misread it as “the wall that blocks me”? This is why faith is not completed simply by accumulating information. Sometimes knowledge itself can undermine faith—turning God into an object of analysis, choosing calculation over trust, seeking negotiation instead of obedience. Sin wants one thing: to break the unity of trust between God and the human person—splitting one heart into two.
Does Paul, then, tell us to throw away the Law? Exactly the opposite. “The Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” Pastor David Jang uses this sentence to guard against an antinomian misunderstanding. The more we stress grace, the more the Law can seem worthless. But grace without the Law easily loses direction, and the Law without grace suffocates people. To be “under grace” does not mean “live however you want.” It is a declaration of liberation: sin can no longer be master. “Sin will not have dominion over you” does not mean sin has vanished; it means sin has lost the right to rule. Therefore, believers do not discard the commandment; we move to a place where the commandment is truly fulfilled. If our effort to keep the commandment becomes a condition for salvation, that effort quickly produces despair. If we ignore the commandment, the language of sin dominates our life. Grace is the third way that cuts between these extremes—a way that restores the true meaning of the commandment within love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNQZbzWENHs
Paul’s next confession strips off every false blanket that decorates spirituality: “I am of the flesh, sold under sin.” Pastor David Jang draws out the weight of the phrase “sold.” It does not merely mean “caught”; it carries the imagery of debt, bondage, and transaction. Human beings are described like slaves thrown into sin’s marketplace, unable to rescue themselves. That is why “redemption” stands at the center of the gospel. Redemption is the event in which someone pays a price and the slave is set free. Christ paid that price on the cross, and the price was not a moral inspiration but a substitution of life. But if we have been saved, why does the confession “sold” still seem to echo? Because this is where the time of sanctification unfolds. If justification is a change of status and standing, sanctification is the long, delicate journey by which our condition and habits are transformed. We are already sons and daughters, yet the habits of slavery remain in the body. We have already received citizenship, yet for a while we still think and react in the language of a slave. In this gap, Paul groans: “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” Pastor David Jang insists that this dissonance is the real terrain of Christian existence. The distance between what we want and what we actually do—wanting to love yet speaking words that wound first; wanting to forgive yet feeling anger rise faster—is not proof that faith is fake. It is often a sign that faith has become serious enough to make the war visible.
Here Paul is astonishingly honest: “I do not understand my own actions… For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” This is evidence that faith does not turn a person into a robot. Grace does not erase personality; grace makes us more fully human—and at the same time makes us more sensitive to the distortions that remain. Pastor David Jang recalls scenes like Peter’s denial, Paul’s own trembling, and the tears of Gethsemane to show that fear and shaking are real even for people of faith. A spirituality that pretends to be strong is often a mask designed to hide the weakest point. But the honesty of the gospel reveals “strength in weakness.” I fall, but falling is not the final verdict on my identity. I fail, but failure is not the termination of God’s love. Rather, at the place of failure, discernment emerges: “It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” This is not evading responsibility; it is spiritual identification of the enemy. It is a warning not to equate sin with the essence of my person. Sin occupies the human being like an illegal squatter, but occupation does not mean rightful ownership. The gospel neither ignores sin nor allows sin to define the human person. Therefore, wisdom in faith is the wisdom of discernment—separating the “me made in God’s image” from the “me overlaid by sin,” repenting without despair, fighting without self-hatred, holding the balance that grace makes possible.
Paul finally recognizes “a law” at work: when he wants to do good, evil lies close at hand. His inner self delights in the law of God, yet another law in his members wars against the law of his mind and takes him captive. This is not merely psychological conflict; it is a statement about spiritual reality. Human beings do not move by a single desire alone. We are drawn both toward love and toward self-centeredness at the same time. Which desire gains the initiative shapes the trajectory of life. That is why Paul’s cry—“Wretched man that I am!”—is not a declaration of final defeat, but a distress signal calling for real rescue. Pastor David Jang says this cry can be profoundly useful in the path of sanctification. Without this cry, believers often resort to cosmetics: appearing perfect outwardly while collapsing inwardly, falling into deeper hypocrisy and deeper loneliness. But the groan is grace that removes the mask. It confesses, “I am still on the way,” breathing faith between the “already” and the “not yet,” clinging to God in the tension.
At the end of all this strain, Paul suddenly leaps into light: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The groan is not the final sentence. The description of sin is not the conclusion. The inner war is not everything. Pastor David Jang seals this passage not with human pessimism, but with a hymn of thanksgiving, because Romans 7 ultimately moves into the breath of Romans 8. The torn soul, split between the law of sin and the law of God, finally clings not to self-discipline but to the grace of Christ. That grace is not only a legal verdict that forgives sin. Grace is presence that stands with us in the middle of the battlefield, a hand that lifts us whenever we fall, the power of life that breaks the chain of accusation and teaches us to breathe again.
If we illuminate this moment with a single painting, Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son comes to mind. Though the work depicts the parable of Luke 15, it resonates deeply with the emotional world Romans 7 contains. In the painting, the prodigal son collapses before the father, exhausted; the father wraps the son’s back with both hands. The elder brother stands to the side with a cold gaze of evaluation and distance, and the surrounding figures remain silent in shadow. That this is known as one of Rembrandt’s late works and is held by the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg hints that the scene is not a simple illustration of a story, but a “mystery of homecoming” drawn from the deepest layers of life. Paul’s pain in Romans 7 burns with the question, “Why can’t I accomplish the good I want?” Yet the question finally arrives at the plea, “Who will deliver me?”—and the answer is “Jesus Christ.” The prodigal does not return after washing himself, restoring his dignity, and then coming home properly dressed. He returns in a state too ruined to decorate. And in that place, the father’s hands touch him first. Grace does not wait for human self-organization. Grace begins in the middle of human collapse. Rembrandt’s composition—seemingly concentrating light on the father’s hands and the son’s shoulder—visually testifies that beyond the horror of sin exposed by the Law, grace holds the living center that brings us home.
Pastor David Jang’s sermon on Romans 7 becomes practical for Christians today because the passage is neither a simple moralism that says, “Try harder and you’ll make it,” nor a nihilism that shrugs, “It can’t be helped, so it’s fine.” The Law is holy, and the commandment is good; therefore, we do not push the commandment away. At the same time, we do not attempt to save ourselves by the commandment. We must discern the structure by which sin uses the commandment to kill us. When hearing the word deepens despair, we must let that despair become a door to repentance—not a prison of accusation. When hearing the word makes us want to condemn others, we must recognize that as a sign that sin has turned the commandment into a weapon. To be under grace does not mean treating sin lightly; it means sin no longer possesses final judicial authority. Sin still tempts, still deceives, still looks for opportunities, but the believer—within union with Christ—can choose again. We can refuse the serpent’s language that misrepresents God and cling to the gospel’s language that teaches us to trust God. When covetousness rises, instead of despairing that it is “my essence,” we discern it as the law of sin infiltrating us, bring it immediately into the light through confession, and break the chain. That process does not end with a single resolution. Sanctification is long, repetitive, and sometimes exhausting. Yet Paul’s final thanksgiving is the assurance that the road is not in vain.
Ultimately, Romans 7:7–25 pulls us out of ourselves and relocates us into Christ. The concluding line—“So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin”—does not romanticize human division. It acknowledges the fact of division, yet reveals even more vividly the reality of grace that works through it. The message Pastor David Jang repeatedly draws from this passage is clear: Do not discard the Law. Do not deify the Law, either. If we grasp the commandment without understanding sin’s cunning, we can end up stabbing ourselves and others. But if we receive the commandment within grace, it becomes a fence of life, a light that exposes sin’s identity, and a guide that brings us back into Christ’s embrace. That is why the final language of faith is not boasting, but thanksgiving—because there is One who leads us, again and again, from the place of “Wretched man that I am” to the place of “Thanks be to God.” Along that road, believers learn afresh: I do not rescue myself by my own strength. Only when I entrust my whole self to the One who rescues me do I finally breathe. And that breath—this gospel made real—is what Pastor David Jang’s sermon seeks to revive for us in Romans 7.