Romans 7:18,19 - I cannot do what I want to do

7:18

Many think we are fundamentally good, but that is not so. If we were fundamentally good we would both desire the good and be able to do it, but we find that we cannot. Now everyone of us is made in the image of God, but sin has corrupted that image so that we can no longer do the good we desire to do. Now we need to realise Paul here is using hyperbole. We do sometimes do good, but not all the time, and we will fail at the most crucial times. We judge ourselves so often by our desires and judge others by their actions, because we know that we are affected by others actions.

7:19

This is more or less a repeat of what Paul has already said in verses 15 and 16. He wants to do good, but ends up doing evil instead. This is something we all experience. We can have the best of intentions, but end up making a complete mess of things, sometimes even doing wrong things. Now the debate about whether Paul is speaking about pre or post Christian experience is really rather sterile and fruitless. Some argue that a Christian is no longer a slave to sin so the stuff Paul is talking about cannot be post-Christian. There are two things that can be said about this. First pre-Christian it could be questioned whether a person would have such an acute sense of right and wrong that Paul is assuming here, and, if you lean towards the Calvinist side, would tend to be against our total depravity. Secondly, and more importantly, I would venture that every Christian knows exactly what Paul is talking about here. There are times when it most definitely is our experience! Now this should not be the case all the time, but it is some of the time. For we are in the process of being sanctified, we are in the process of learning how to live a new life in the power of the Spirit. Paul is demonstrating how the way of Law cannot enable us to live a life pleasing to God. There were no chapter divisions when Paul wrote Romans, and Romans 7 and 8 are all part of the same argument. In Chapter 8 he will contrast living by the flesh and living by the Spirit.