Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 07:3 (Summer 1998)
Article: The Conversion Of The Man In Romans 7
Author: Thomas J. Nettles

RAR 7:3 (Summer 1998) p. 177

The Conversion Of The Man In Romans 7

Tom J. Nettles

A division exists in evangelicalism over the identity of the person Paul describes in Romans 7:14ff. Formerly, the lines of division were drawn between Calvinists and Arminians; currently, the case is not quite so clear.1 Calvinists, in harmony with Calvin and other Reformed interpreters, generally identified the struggle as one of a regenerate person who is growing in awareness of the intensity of the fight induced by the death throes of the flesh. Calvin comments,

For the purpose, therefore, of understanding the whole of this argument with more certainty and fidelity, it should be noted that this conflict mentioned by the apostle does not exist in man until he has been sanctified [i.e., set apart to saving faith] by the Spirit of God (Commentary on Romans; see on 7:14).

Arminius, however, contends that the entire section describes the inner workings of the mind of an unregenerate person. For 234 pages of learned argumentation and close reasoning Arminius defends the thesis that the person described there is unregenerate; to consider him otherwise is “injurious to the grace of regeneration, and hurtful to good morals” (The Writings of James Arminius, trans. Bagnall, 2:432). The person is under the impressions of the law in his conscience but still spiritually the

RAR 7:3 (Summer 1998) p. 178

slave of sin. The person in Romans 7 is one whose “resistance that immediately preceded the perpetration of sin, was not from the Holy Spirit who regenerated and inhabited, but from the mind which was convinced of the righteousness and equity of the law” (p. 434).

Arminius’s discussion has at least two important positive points: One, it emphasizes that regeneration grants a life in the Spirit which produces high moral character and significant mortification of the flesh. Two, it urges the one who does not possess these qualities toward a “serious and sure examination respecting himself, to attain a correct knowledge of the state of regeneration, and sedulously to distinguish between it and the state before the law, and chiefly between it and that under the law” (Ibid., 435).

One of the differences between Arminians
and Calvinists is their understanding of
the degree to which grace must operate in
both the new birth part of regeneration and
the sanctification part of regeneration.

We must remark, however, that while these two points are imp...