NOTES for Rom 7:14
In his letters Paul writes often and at length about the Law, about the Torah. He mentions the Torah especially often in Romans. One can say that this letter as a whole is devoted to the theme of the Torah. And one of the definitions of the Torah in the letter characterizes it as "spiritual." In what sense, then, does Paul call the Torah "spiritual"? The issue is undoubtedly God's breath, and the corresponding Greek word, like its Hebrew equivalent, means exactly this: breath, blowing. This is the same breath of God that the prophets sensed, but in his letters the apostle uses the same word also for the breath of life that God gives to every person entering the world. The Torah has to do with this breath, with this presence of God. Obviously, in this case Paul has in mind the Torah not only as legislation, but also as the inner Torah, as the spiritual core that supports and defines a person's whole spiritual life. It is precisely the inner Torah that makes a person able to resist sin.
It becomes for a person a kind of inner imperative, spiritual and moral, experienced not simply as a legal or moral code, but as God's will directly addressed to the person, as God's intentions dwelling in his heart. Of course, a person is free to ignore them and forget the path of righteousness, but if that path matters to him, the inner Torah becomes the goal and meaning of his life. For Paul the path of righteousness was the goal and meaning of life even when he was not yet a Christian or an apostle, and was not yet Paul but Shaul, Saul. Even then he tried to walk the path of righteousness, to follow the inner Torah.
And he discovered that this was completely impossible. Or, more precisely, possible, but not to the end. Because to the end means without a single sin: the inner Torah is incompatible with any sin. To live by it in fullness, one would in fact have to become sinless. But for fallen humanity this is not realistic, and most who sought the path of righteousness therefore limited themselves to half measures and compromised, understanding that they were not capable of becoming perfect righteous people.
Yet in reality such a situation could mean only one thing: the person is not free, he is a slave of sin. A slave could sometimes do what he wanted, within the limits his master set for him. In the same way, a person could follow the Torah within the limits set by the sin that lived in him. But that is not freedom. A person could not follow the Torah as he considered necessary, in all its fullness: he did not belong to himself and did not dispose of himself.
His faithfulness to the Torah could at any moment be limited by sin, under whose power the person lived. It is in this sense that Paul calls the Torah spiritual and himself a slave of sin. In order to follow the Torah without looking back, he, Paul, had to become free. The day will come when he will meet his Liberator, his Redeemer. For now, he could only wait and hope, not forgetting the inner Torah. Waiting for something greater: the fullness of the life of the Kingdom that would enter his life together with the freedom from sin he had received.