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NASB | Romans 7:19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 7:19 For the good that I want to do, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. |
Subject: Paul's evil practices Pre or PostJesus |
Bible Note: Don't ask how...but I placed this note on the wrong thread. Dear Tim, it may be best to have some back-up from menof great scholarship. On my own I might be representing my position so poorly that you may think me antinomian. First up is my old puritan friend Matthew Henry.He writes: (Verses 18-22) The more pure and holy the heart is, it will have the more quick feeling as to the sin that remains in it. The believer sees more of the beauty of holiness and the excellence of the law. His earnest desires to obey, increase as he grows in grace. But the whole good on which his will is fully bent, he does not do; sin ever springing up in him, through remaining corruption, he often does evil, though against the fixed determination of his will. The motions of sin within grieved the apostle. If by the striving of the flesh against the Spirit, was meant that he could not do or perform as the Spirit suggested, so also, by the effectual opposition of the Spirit, he could not do what the flesh prompted him to do. How different this case from that of those who make themselves easy with regard to the inward motions of the flesh prompting them to evil; who, against the light and warning of conscience, go on, even in outward practice, to do evil, and thus, with forethought, go on in the road to perdition! For as the believer is under grace, and his will is for the way of holiness, he sincerely delights in the law of God, and in the holiness which it demands, according to his inward man; that new man in him, which after God is created in true holiness.(Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary) My Study Bible tells me: There is a sudden change to the present tense in vv 15-25 by contrast with the statemments describing the past in vv 7-13. I confess that I am biased toward thier view, for it coincides with the impression I took for granted the first time I read this chapter, that is it was mainly written in the present tense. Your friend, jOHN |