NOTES for Rom 7:14
In his letters Paul writes much and often about the Law, about the Torah. He mentions the Torah especially often in Romans. One could say that this whole letter 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 precisely this: breath, blowing. This is the very 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 is related to this breath, to this presence of God. Paul clearly has in mind here not only the Torah as legislation, but also the inner Torah, that spiritual core which supports and defines the whole spiritual life of a person. 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 merely as a legal or moral code, but as God's will directly addressed to the person, as God's intentions abiding in his heart. Of course, a person is free to ignore them and forget the path of righteousness, but if this path matters to him, the inner Torah becomes the goal and meaning of his life. For Paul the way of righteousness was the goal and meaning of life even when he was neither a Christian nor an apostle, and was not yet Paul but Shaul, Saul. Even then he tried to walk the way 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 whatever. To live by it in fullness, one must in fact become sinless. But for fallen humanity this is unreal, and most who sought the way of righteousness therefore limited themselves to half measures, made compromises, understanding that they were unable to become perfectly righteous.
In reality, however, 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 set for him by his master. So also a person could follow the Torah within the limits set for him by the sin dwelling in him. But this is not freedom. A person could not follow the Torah as he thought necessary, in all its fullness: he did not belong to himself, he did not dispose of himself.
His faithfulness to the Torah could at any moment be limited by the sin in whose power he found himself. It is in this sense that Paul calls the Torah spiritual and himself a slave of sin. To follow the Torah without looking back, Paul had to become free. The day would come when he would meet his Liberator, his Redeemer. Until then, all that remained was to wait and hope, without forgetting the inner Torah. Waiting for the greater thing: that fullness of the life of the Kingdom which would enter his life together with the freedom from sin he had gained.