Romans 7:21-25

Romans 7:21-25 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

In this passage Paul reiterates that he is a prisoner of the law of sin at work within him even though he delights in God’s law.  In the first six verses of Romans 7 Paul said believers had died to the law and were released from the law in order to serve in the new way of the Spirit.  Before Christ came, Jews were under the Law of Moses and their sinful passions bore fruit for death.  Therefore, in the above passage Paul is describing himself as a Jew who is trying to keep the Law of Moses.  Since he is describing the very condition from which believers have been released, he must be describing himself before conversion. 

He exclaims that he is wretched man and asks to be rescued from his body that is subject to death.  He is asking for deliverance from the law of sin and death.

Then he gives the solution to being a prisoner of the law of sin and that is through Jesus Christ who delivers him from the slavery of sin.  In the very next verses beginning in Romans 8 Paul describes how Christ delivered him from the curse of the law of sin and death.