Romans 7:21-23

Romans 7:21-23 summarise the argument. εὑρίσκω ἄρα τὸν νόμον … ὅτι : most commentators hold that the clause introduced by ὅτι is the explanation of τὸν νόμον. The law, in short, which Paul has discovered by experience, is the constant fact that when his inclination is to do good, evil is present with him. This sense of law approximates very closely to the modern sense which the word bears in physical science so closely that its very modernness may be made an objection to it. Possibly Paul meant, in using the word, to convey at the same time the idea of an outward compulsion put on him by sin, which expressed itself in this constant incapacity to do the good he inclined to authority or constraint as well as normality being included in his idea of the word. But ὁ νόμος in Paul always seems to have much more definitely the suggestion of something with legislative authority: it is questionable whether the first meaning given above would have occurred, or would have seemed natural, except to a reader familiar with the phraseology of modern science. Besides, the subject of the whole paragraph is the relation of “the law” to sin, and the form of the sentence is quite analogous to that of Romans 7:10, in which a preliminary conclusion has been come to on the question. Hence I agree with those who make τὸν νόμον the Mosaic law. The construction is not intolerable, if we observe that εὑρίσκω ἄρα τὸν νόμον τῷ θέλοντι ἐμοὶ κ. τ. λ. is equivalent to εὑρίσκεται ἄρα ὁ νόμος τῷ θέλοντι ἐμοὶ κ. τ. λ. “This is what I find the law or life under the law to come to in experience: when I wish to do good, evil is present with me.” This is the answer he has already given in Romans 7:7 to the question, Is the law sin? No, it is not sin, but nevertheless sin is most closely connected with it. The repeated ἐμοί has something tragic in it: me, who am so anxious to do otherwise.