Delighting in the Law of God

In Romans chapter 7, the apostle Paul described himself in a way that is very similar to the God-blessed man of Psalm 1—even though he still struggled with indwelling sin. It was as a Christian that Paul confessed, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Romans 7:22). Paul’s profession here is not quite the same as the words in Psalm 1, the Greek or the Hebrew, but it is similar enough to show that he is referring to it. (The apostle also had in mind another Scripture, as we shall see later.)

Paul gave his readership this view of his own internal struggles as an example of what goes on in the Christian soul, to encourage and assure us. God had given him a new heart, and that new heart now delighted in the law of God. Before he was born again, Paul never loved God’s law like that.¹ However, while he still lived in this world, as a Christian, Paul was afflicted by his old sinful lusts emanating from what he now called the “body of this death”.

Before Paul became a born-again Christian, he was “alive without the law” (Romans 7:9). That is, he had a self-conceited and imagined freedom that was really a willing and settled enslavement to his sins. In this fallen state he never properly applied God’s law to his heart. Paul admits that this was true of his own case, even though he had been raised as a Jew and he had been a student of the law and a Pharisee. In those days he was only a Jew outwardly, without a transformed heart (see Romans 2:28-29; Ephesians 2:3). That was until the Holy Spirit impressed God’s law upon Paul’s heart, and enlivened his conscience, and showed him the terrible judgment of God that he deserved. Now he was made to see that he was “carnal, sold under sin”, his inner slave-master (Romans 7:7-14).

The law of God was “ordained to life”, affirms Paul, following Moses: “For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them” (Romans 10:5). And following the Psalms: “What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth” (Psalm 34:12-16). And as Christ himself said: “This do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:28); and “if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). But the effect is the opposite in fallen man: the law slays the sinner. The law of God enrages the fallen heart further against God. No part of an unregenerate heart will delight in the law of God, or cry to God for forgiveness and salvation, but it will cry out all the more against God; for it is spiritually “dead in trespasses and in sins” (Ephesians 2:1, 5).

The Prayer and Testimony of All True Christians

Now, with the saving grace of God giving Paul a new heart, he was enabled to see and admit that he had no hope in himself. And so he began to cry out to God, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). This is the prayer of the Christian from his or her conversion onwards: for total deliverance from sin by God, and for forgiveness from God, and to properly thank God for this salvation “through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v.25a). Fallen descendants of Adam, dead in their sins, have their inner troubles and struggles but not like this; they do not have a new man warring against their old man (that is all they are, and it is not “old” with them), since they have not been born again. Unless the Holy Spirit gives them a new heart, they will never cry out to God for such deliverance, nor will they have salvation’s gratitude.

The apostle’s testimony of his own life change is, though details differ, the testimony of all true Christians. And in his teaching on these things, Paul brings together two Scriptures when he says of himself, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man”. In speaking of the law of God after the inward man, he identifies himself as a partaker of the New Covenant. This is clearly a reference to the prophecy in Jeremiah, where it is written that in the New Covenant, “I [the LORD] will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31-34). (More on the New Covenant below.) And in speaking of his delight in the law of God after the inward man, Paul identifies himself with the blessed man of Psalm 1.

The law did its condemning work of showing Paul that in him (that is, in his “flesh”, as he now calls his “old man”) there dwells no good thing. But he has also now discovered that he has a new nature, given to him by the Holy Spirit at his new birth (see John 3:3-8; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:3, 23); a new man that delights to learn and follow the law’s instructing work in how he ought to live. Paul the Christian now properly “would do good”; that is, he now has the will to obey God, and to please and honour and worship God. However, he understands that of himself he cannot perform the good that he now wills to do (Romans 7:18).

We should have inferred that the blessed man in Psalm 1 was also in this state, because he was a man in the God-blessed state; and, while he was still living in this world, he was growing “like a tree” in grace, fruitfulness and spiritual prosperity. Though we are not given a view of the blessed man’s internal struggles (he is a picture of every one of the Lord’s people, and the internal struggles are not the same in every case), we are shown that he is drinking from the powerful rivers of living water that flow from God, and from the Lamb (John 7:38; Revelation 22:1-2), and therefore he is becoming victorious in them all.

The Christian’s lifelong prayer is, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24-25a). God will always answer this prayer. He will have his victory, his glory, within each and every one of his people. God the Father has sent his only-begotten Son to conquer sin and death and to ensure this victory by the sacrifice of himself—“he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21; Hebrews 9:24-28). All of God’s deliverance of his people is through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin” says Paul, concluding this thought (v.25b). The Christian in this world is in a temporary, unfinished state. The internal spiritual war, that was Paul’s war while he was in this world, will not always be happening in the Christian’s soul. God’s victory and glory is coming to him.

The Law of the Spirit of Life

The apostle speaks of numerous “laws”² in this passage (in Romans chapter 7 and continuing into chapter 8), and that makes the apostle’s writing difficult to follow here.

1. First, there is the holy, just, good, and spiritual “law of God” (v.22), the objective moral law. This is the law that Paul and the Christian now delights in after the inward man.
2. Second, There was the “law of sin” / “law of sin and death” (7:23; 8:2) that opposed God’s law. This is the “old man” of the Christian, that is now a powerless dethroned slave-master, that was crucified and died in the death of Christ (see also Romans 6:2-4; 7:4, 6; Galatians 2:20).
3. Third, there is still “a law” / “another law of my members”³ (7:21, 23) that was still within Paul and is still within the Christian so long as he or she remains in this world. This is the habitual, trained-in lusts carried over from the old man and still clinging on, and more sins which we shamefully commit—as Paul says: the “sin that dwelleth in me”; the “evil” that is still “present with me”; the “flesh” in which “dwelleth no good thing”. Paul says that this other law in his members is always warring against the law of his mind (the fourth law, see below), bringing him into captivity to the law of sin (the second law) that is in his members (v.23).

4. Fourth, there is now also in the Christian what Paul calls “the law of my mind” (7:23) that was put there by God’s work of grace in his or her soul when he gave them their regenerate new nature. It is this new nature “delight[s] in the law of God after his inward man”, and it has a changed will that now “would do good”.

5. The apostle now focuses our attention on a fifth law in chapter 8—the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” that makes the Christian free from the law of sin and death (8:2). This is God’s work of grace in the soul that gives us the new birth, the new nature within, the delight in the law of God after the new inward man, the mind for the things of the Spirit, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness, the purposes of new obedience to God, the power to walk in the Spirit (8:1, 4-6), and every spiritual blessing. (“Work of grace” is our customary term that encompasses all these good things and ascribes them all to God.)

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law [God’s moral law] could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us”—while we remain in this world, yes, fulfilled in us—“who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:2-4). That is, God’s righteousness imputed to us by his Son’s condemning our sins in his flesh and transferring his righteousness to our account; then God’s righteousness imparted to us by his work of grace making us free and enabling us to walk not after the flesh and instead to walk after the Spirit.

We have seen how the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of the rivers of living water as coming from himself, and how the blessed man is therefore one who comes to Jesus and drinks, and receives these rivers of water into his soul, that then well up within him unto eternal life—“this he spake of the Holy Spirit”, confirms the apostle John (John 4:14; 7:37-39). These rivers of water are what the apostle Paul here calls the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. These waters are, or, this Holy Spirit is, what puts us into the state of being a Christian—the state of the blessed man in the blessed land.

Therefore the born again man, woman or child is the blessed man of Psalm 1, and that is the reason why they have their delight in the law of God—like no-one else can have, until they also have given the new heart. Christian! If this delight is a only small flicker in you, then you must fan it into flame, so that you can really know that it is a delight: meditate on the law of the LORD day an night.

A Bible with cross references can help you see how the practical applications in the New Testament Scriptures are drawn from God’s moral law in the Books of Moses, and in the Psalms, and Proverbs, and other parts of the Old Testament Scriptures. A good pastor will preach through the Ten Commandments repeatedly in his ministry (indeed it will be his delight to do so, having been delighted by them in his own heart through his personal studies and in his sermon preparation), and he will bring out both the condemning and instructing uses of the law. And when he preaches on moral and ethical matters elsewhere in the Scriptures, he will trace their root back to the law of God. Then there are studies in the Ten Commandments in numerous Reformed Catechisms (e.g. the Westminster Shorter Catechism question 41 and following), and other books that study and expand on these catechisms. And many other books besides.

Having a real delight in the law of God is a mark of God’s grace in your soul, as is the growing leaves (keeping the law, that is summarised by the two great commandments; and spiritual maturity and character) and fruit (good works). We find these things taught by Christ and his apostles throughout the new Testament Scriptures, both in quoting Psalm 1, and in other similar and various allegorical forms, and in the explicit exposition of the things symbolised.

Free from the Law of Sin and Death

The apostle Paul assures us: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”—because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made them free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1). So there is now no condemnation from God for them! This is an astounding truth, that is all the more amazing to us when we see its juxtaposition against what Paul had said immediately before concerning his internal spiritual war and his still continuing in sin sometimes, that is often missed when we split our readings by the chapters.

Paul the Christian is in Christ Jesus, and walks after the Spirit, and with his mind serves the law of God that he delights in, has no condemnation from God for his sins; however, he still sometimes sins when he gives in to his flesh, the “law of [his] members” that are still within him. These sins always grieve him, and he cries out to God for forgiveness and deliverance. Though he has no power of his own to resist the the law of sin in his members, the lusts of his flesh, yet he does not always lose his battles in this war. But while he lived out his days on earth, Paul was increasingly winning them, because he had been freed from the law of sin and death. How is he winning? God delivers him, not only at the end but all through his life from the “body of this death” through his Saviour Jesus Christ.

No, Paul knows he should not “continue in sin”: “God forbid” he says, may it never be (Romans 6:1). What he himself strives to do, he commands all Christians to do likewise: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (6:11-14).

Powerless Paul and powerless Christians now have the power of God to overcome the sin in their flesh—because God answers this prayer. This power comes from the Holy Spirit. It is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, who plants into the Christian’s soul both the new life and the law of God, as was promised by God through the prophet Jeremiah in the New Covenant, and this makes Christians free from the law of sin and death. The law of God that stirred them up to rage against God before, Christians now (or, should now, and certainly shall) cherish and delight in it, in their hearts. They come to appreciate that the moral law of God is more precious than gold, and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb (Psalm 19:10). As Paul has also put it: they are no longer covenanted to, married to the law of sin and death, and so they are no longer under its dominion; but they have been made free from it and they are “married to another”, even Christ himself in the New Covenant (Romans 7:1-6). (More on the New Covenant below.)

Each deliverance from sin, that happens every time the Christian prays and turns from evil and do good, is an “earnest” or down-payment⁴ of that final deliverance already by the work of Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit now within (see 2 Corinthians 1:22, 5:1-5; Ephesians 1:13-14). The work of the Holy Spirit in the true Christian, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has already quickened (1 Corinthians 15:45; John 6:63; Ephesians 2:1) or regenerated them, and has implanted in them the “law of [their new] mind” that delights in the law of God, and has the will to do good, and causes us to cry out for deliverance from sin, and thanks God for that deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now this law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus remains with the Christian, and it is never withdrawn, but the Spirit follows through by giving the power to do good that they don’t have of themselves, so that they can obey God’s moral law. And so they will, increasingly so.

We call this progress in godliness: sanctification by the Spirit; bearing fruit of the Spirit; the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus making us free from the law of sin and death; growing in grace; being strengthened with all might according to God’s glorious power; labouring and striving according to his working, which works in us mightily (2 Thessalonians 2:13; Galatians 5:22-23; Romans 8:2; 2 Peter 3:18; Colossians 1:9, 29). And so on.

The blessed man’s (the tree’s) watering, unwithering green leaves, and prospering in everything are all spiritual. The rivers of living water flow into him and flow within him to give him spiritual life and a new heart, so that he delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on it day and night. And then they flow out of his innermost part to all his members, Jesus says. It is these waters of blessing, this work of the Holy Spirit, that brings the victory in the internal spiritual war. He is the source of the people of God’s obedience to God’s moral law; the source of their godliness, righteousness, holiness, and the restoration of the image of God in them.

“I Will Put My Law in Their Inward Parts”

The LORD gave his prophet Jeremiah this prophecy, that is now fulfilled: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah … But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

This is true of all believers in the Messiah, in the New Covenant (also known as the New Testament;⁵ see Matthew 26:26-28; Hebrews 8:6-13; 9:13-15; 13:20), whether they are of Israel according to the flesh or whether they are gentiles “made nigh by the blood of Christ”, so that they become “fellowcitizens with the saints” of Israel and “graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree” (Romans 11; Ephesians 2). “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek”; and beyond the Greek world too, when the church of Christ extended there: “for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:12-13).

That God puts his law in the inward parts of those who come to be included in the New Covenant does not mean that they have no need of God’s law that is written in the Old Testament (Old Covenant) Scriptures. But as with all of God’s word, God puts his law into the inward parts of his people through their eyes and their ears by the Holy Spirit. God’s work of grace, the law of the Spirit of life, gives us a new heart and writes God’s law upon it; for our old spiritually dead heart would not take it. And this new, law-loving heart gives us a new “law of my mind” as Paul says, so that now we “would do good” by keeping God’s law, and also the power that frees us from the law of sin and death, that was in our old man. According to the apostle Paul, this is how Jeremiah’s prophecy of the New Covenant is fulfilled in the Christian.

You should appreciate what the Puritan William Gurnall had to say about this, in his The Christian in Complete Armour:

“Here is the work produced—a supernatural principle of a new life. (1.) By a principle of life, I mean, an inward disposition and quality, sweetly, powerfully, and constantly inclining it to that which is holy; so that the Christian, though passive in the production, is afterward active, and co-working with the Spirit in all actions of holiness; not as a lifeless instrument is in the hand of a musician, but as a living child in the hand of a father. Therefore they are said to be ‘led by the Holy Spirit,’ Romans 8:14. (2.) It is a principle of new life; the Spirit’s work was not [to] chase and recover what was swooning, but to work a life de novo—anew, in a soul quite dead: ‘You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses,’ Ephesians 2:1. The devil comes as orator, to persuade by argument, when he tempts; the Spirit as a creator, when he converts. The devil draws forth and enkindles what he finds raked up in the heart before; but the Holy Spirit puts into the soul what he finds not there—called in Scripture the ‘seed’ of God, 1 John 3:9, ‘Christ formed in you,’ Galatians 4:19, the ‘new creature,’ Galatians 6:15, the ‘law’ put by God into the inner man, Jeremiah 31:33, which Paul calls ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,’ Romans 8:2. (3.) It is a supernatural principle. By this we distinguish it from Adam’s righteousness and holiness, which was co-natural to him, as now sin is to us; and, had he stood, would have been propagated to us as naturally as now his sin is. Holiness was as natural to Adam’s soul as health was to his body, they both resulting ex principiis recte constitutis—from principles pure and rightly disposed.”⁶

That the apostle Paul delighted in the law of God in the inward man is because God put his law into his inward parts when he brought him into the new covenant, and brought the effect of the new covenant into him. This defeats the argument of those who say that in Romans 7, Paul is telling the story of how his soul was before be was born again; as though he was not converted until Romans 8. And this defeat clears the way to see how both the moral law and the Psalms are for the New Testament believer, the Christian, too.

The Way of the Righteous

In the spiritual war within us, God always wins and is never a loser. He shall deliver us from the body of this death. That is why Christians increasingly do not serve sin but serve God, while we drink the rivers of water that give us our new life. Our partaking of God, and his power in us, is evidenced outwardly in our increasing obedience to the moral law of God, even as summarised in the two great commandments. It is therefore also seen in our not walking in the counsel of the ungodly, not standing in the way of sinners, not sitting in the seat of the scornful. And in bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and having unwithering green leaves, as the Psalmist says. The apostle Paul puts it like this: “though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).

The blessed people have a new life-walk. They are, each of them, a “new creature”, born again, and the old is gone and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). Christians have a new purpose and aspiration, and a new delight and desire—toward God and toward his moral law. They hunger and thirst for righteousness to be imparted to them and to fill their life. They have a new direction, a new determination, and a new destination. They are set on a way that is new to them: the way of righteousness.

By God’s work of grace in the soul, by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, by the powerfully quickening river of water of life that proceeds from the throne of God and from the Lamb, Christians find that they do not desire walk in the counsel of the ungodly any more. There will come a point where we can no longer stand in the way (path) of sinners. As the apostle Peter later says of the Christian, “For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries” (1 Peter 4:3). And we will not condone and sit in the seat of those who are scornful toward God and godliness. Those Christians who are masters and leaders, they may be cast out of office, or they may be forced to resign. Whether or not that is necessary in their particular case, they know they must seek to champion good instead of evil, even though this service to the king of Kings will be at great cost to themselves in this life. They will stand with the apostles in declaring, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Yes, it will be very hard to live, stand, walk, and sit for Christ in a fallen world full of pain, disease, and wickedness. Some of us may have it relatively easy, though “easy” is not be the word we would use. It is a lot harder in some situations and parts of the world where evil more greatly abounds. We are to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, so that we stand in the evil day (Ephesians 6:10 ff.).

The ungodly may persecute and abuse you, they may treat you as dead to them, and they may bring against you all manner of warfare and lawfare, as they did the apostles and prophets before you, and has you can learn about in the history of the Christian church (Matthew 5:11-12, 44; Romans 12:14; Hebrews 11:32-40; Revelation 6:9-11). But if your faith is real, it will not be plucked away by the birds, it will not wither without growing a root, and it will not be choked to unfruitfulness (Matthew 13:3-8; 18-23).

The real internal transformation and spiritual war that the Holy Spirit is winning within you shall bring about an increasingly obvious outward change. Our Lord and Saviour commands us not to hide this change, but we must let shine before men as light in the darkness of this world, and as corruption-halting salt of the earth (Matthew 9:13-16). So, no more excuses. You cannot have a private faith that does not show. And you can’t do more good by not being openly Christian.

It is true that those whom the first Psalm calls “the righteous” ones are not perfect in this world. But they have been given a new nature. Meanwhile the lusts of their flesh, other people, and the society and culture around them still has a powerful influence, so that they stumble and are not always strongly walking, standing, and sitting where they should be. But they have certainly begun in their new life, and they are showing increasing evidence of prospering and bearing fruit by it—by the power of God working in their souls. They shall manifest all the blessings that come from their uptake of the rivers of living water. And they shall prosper in everything, for God’s glory.

William Gurnall again:

Here is the imperfect nature of this principle—as it shows its reality by endeavouring, so its imperfection, that it enables but to an endeavour, not to a full performance. Evangelical holiness makes the creature rather willing than able to give full obedience. The saint’s heart leaps when his legs do but creep in the way of God’s commandments. Mary asked “where they had laid Christ?” meaning, it seems, to carry him away on her shoulders; which she was not able for to do. Her affections were stronger than her back. That principle of holiness which is in the saint, makes him lift at that duty which he can little more than stir. Paul, a saint of the first magnitude, he gives us his own character, with other eminent servants of Christ, rather from the sincerity of their will and endeavour, than perfection of their work. “Pray for us; for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly,” Hebrews 13:18. He doth not say “In all things we do live honestly,” as if no step were taken awry [wrongfuly, sinfuly] by them; no, he durst [dares] not say so for a world. But thus much he dares assert for himself and brethren, “that they are willing in all things to do what was holy and righteous.” Where “willing” is not a weak listless velleity [lowest level of willingness], but a will exerted in a vigorous endeavour, it weighs as much in an impartial ear, as that of the same Paul, Acts 24:16, “herein do I exercise myself.” He was so willing, as to use his best care and labour in the ways of holiness, and having this testimony in his own breast, he is not afraid to lay claim to “a good conscience,” though he doth not fully attain to that he desires: “We trust we have a good conscience, willing,” etc.—he means in the favourable interpretation of the gospel, for the law allows no such good conscience.⁷

It is now possible for the Christian not to sin. However, we are not without sin, and we have an ongoing need for repentance (see 1 John 1:5-10; 1 Kings 8:46; Ecclesiastes 7:20). But we will never undo or lose what God has begun in us, because God will never leave us (as we learn later, e.g. in Psalm 23). We have that blessedness of the man whose sin has been forgiven and covered over by God (as we learn later, e.g. in Psalm 32). And when we sin, we always repent and cry out to God to “turn us again” (as we learn later, e.g. in Psalms 51 and 80). We will continue making progress in our new life-walk throughout the remainder of our life on earth. Indeed, repentance from sin and obedience and worship to God will come to characterise us: our inward and outward life will increasingly look like that of the blessed man and the prosperous tree in Psalm 1.

“The LORD knoweth the way of the righteous.” The way of the righteous leads away from the way of ungodly, sinners and scoffers against God. It is the way of delighting in the law of God in the inward man, and of serving the law of God. Psalm 1 concludes by saying that God knows their way. He knows each of his people who are going in it, and he is intensely interested in the their progress in righteousness. The present and continuous tense of the word translated “knoweth” indicates to us that God is constantly with his people in this way, in their new life-walk; not that he is merely remotely conscious of them.

The Lord’s people walk this way in the Spirit and by the Spirit. In other words, the “way of the righteous” is the distinctively Christian way; and it is the way that can only be walked by those who love Christ and who love his Church. “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour … For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord” (Ephesians 5:1-10).

If God has not transformed us and translated us from the state of ungodliness to the blessed state, then we would have continued in our ungodly walking, standing, and sitting against him. What awaits people who do die in that state? They are “like the chaff which the wind driveth away” (Psalm 1:4). But unlike the dispersed, out-of-mind, reduction to nothingness that happens to chaff, there is “the judgment” of God to come for sinful men.⁸

The ungodly (that is, fallen sinners) are “driven away” by God out of this world, to await the judgment every day. Every day, people die in their sins. All who die in their sins will not stand in God’s Day of Judgment; for they are not part of the congregation of the righteous that stands in the presence of God in heaven. No, but “the way of the ungodly shall perish”, and themselves along with it, forever. The way of the ungodly leads to the never-ending perishing of Hell.

“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).

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1. “In his [Paul’s] innermost being, in what is central to the will and affection, he delights in the law of God. This cannot be said of the unregenerate man still under the law and in the flesh.”—John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans. Wm. B. Eerdmans (one volume edition, 1968), commentary at Romans 7:22, p. 237. ↩︎

2. See John Calvin, Commentaries, on Romans 7:21. ↩︎

3. “The corrupt and sinful inclination is here compared to a law, because it controlled and checked him [Paul] in his good motions. It is said to be seated in his members, because, Christ having set up his throne in his heart, it was only the rebellious members of the body that were the instruments of sin—in the sensitive appetite; or we may take it more generally for all that corrupt nature which is the seat not only of sensual but of more refined lusts. This wars against the law of the mind, the new nature; it draws the contrary way, drives on a contrary interest, which corrupt disposition and inclination are as great a burden and grief to the soul as the worst drudgery and captivity could be.”—Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, at Romans 7:23. ↩︎

4. The New Testament Greek word ἀῤῥαβών, arrabon, carried over from the Hebrew ‭ןוֹברָעֵ ‘arabown, means downpayment, pledge, or security (Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary number 725; Hebrew Dictionary number 6162). ↩︎

5. The English words “covenant” and “testament” are both used to translate the Greek word διαθήκη, diatheke (Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary, number 1242). See the previous article, Fellowcitizens with the Saints in Israel, footnote 7. ↩︎

6. William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1864). Part 2, Direction 6: The Several Pieces of the Whole Armour of God. Second Piece—The Christian’s Breastplate, p.408. ↩︎

7. William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1864). Part 2, Direction 6: The Several Pieces of the Whole Armour of God. Second Piece—The Christian’s Breastplate, p.409. ↩︎

8. Some preachers neglect to mention Hell, preferring instead to speak only of a “lost eternity”. Others preach annihilation for those who die outside of Christ. Both are avoiding what the Bible teaches. See Isaiah 66:22-24; Daniel 12:2-3; Matthew 18:6-9; 25:31-46; Mark 9:42-48; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10; Jude 7, 13; Revelation 14:9–11; 20:10, 14-15. ↩︎