The Law is Good

“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” -Romans 7:15–17

The point of Paul’s argument is the most important take-away: the law is good! When Paul violates his best intentions and transgresses the law, the sense of guilt that he experiences is proof that the Law is good. Therefore, by acknowledging that his best intentions were to follow the law, but that he found himself acting against his own intentions to do good, it shows the law itself is good, but sin that dwells in him has betrayed him and prompted him to sin.

Again, this is not a blame shift. He is not abdicating responsibility for his actions. Paul is speaking in terms that would today be called psychological terms (the psyche = soul). The players in this scenario is the law, his self, and the unwelcome resident, sin. And he speaks this way, not to discount human responsibility but to show that while law is used to bring death to sinners, the law itself is good. 

It is another agent, sin, using the good law to bring death to the self.