As It Is Written
The Wretched Man
by Patrick Henry Reardon
It is not uncommon for the Apostle Paul to employ the first-person pronoun when he intends to designate either human beings in general or Christians in particular. We recognize this usage, for example, when he writes, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have agape, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal." When Paul declares that, without agape, "I am nothing," we discern that he is speaking for all of us (1 Cor. 13:1–2).
It seems likely, too, that Paul is appealing to this rhetorical reference when he writes, "If a particular kind of food (broma) causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again" (8:13). In the exhortatory context of this assertion, it is clear that the apostle intends to establish a moral norm for all Christians, not just a personal preference. He uses the same idiomatic style repeatedly in his treatment of prophecy and glossolalia in 1 Corinthians 14:6–19.
Is this what Paul has in mind, also, when he exclaims, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Once again, the context (Rom. 7:13–25) indicates this to be Paul's meaning here, too. Each of us is that wretched man, devoid of righteousness, subject to death, "sold under sin." The "I" in these verses is the whole human race, every human being, in the grip of sin and death. And the Torah, Paul contends, does not improve the situation; indeed, the Torah makes it worse.
His argument here is easily summarized. Man is made a moral agent only when he is faced with a moral responsibility. If there are no commandments to be disobeyed, sin is lifeless (Rom. 7:8). A commandment, then, has the effect of reviving sin, as it were (v. 9), thus putting man into the realm of death (v. 10; cf. 5:13). That is to say, by means of this very good commandment (v. 12), sin brings man to death (v. 11).
Although the "I" in these verses represents the human experience generally considered (that is to say, Paul is speaking for all mankind without Christ), it would be wrong, I think, to assume that Paul is not also speaking from his personal experience.
In fact, Paul knew, from his own past, what it was to offend God. He had experienced the dilemma described in these verses. He was well aware what it meant to be a great sinner, even while meticulously observing the smallest parts of the Mosaic Law. Moreover, the apostle discerned, it was the Torah itself which became the occasion (aphore—v. 11) of his greater sin.
Those whom Paul brought to the faith already knew him to be "a Hebrew of the Hebrews; with respect to the Law, a Pharisee; with regard to zeal, persecuting the Church" (Phil. 3:5–6). They were well aware "how I persecuted God's Church and destroyed her" (Gal. 1:13).
No Speculation
This is Paul's very point. When he speaks of the Law as an instrument of death, he is not engaging in speculation. He has already seen it in his own life. It was his own strict adherence to the precepts of the Torah that had led him to the most serious experience of sin—the only personal sin on which he ever comments—the persecution of God's Church. In his conversion Paul was made aware, in a way that he would never forget, that his endeavor to achieve righteousness by the observance of the Law had led him into his worst sin, the sin that eviscerated the moral efforts of his whole life and made that life a waste.
It was in the circumstances and experience of his conversion that Paul discerned "another law in my members, working against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members" (v. 23). It was his very zeal for the Law of God that had occasioned his worst offense against God. He had not been doing what he had intended to do (v. 15). Because of the Law, sin had taken over. He had been acting as a slave of sin.
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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