Many people are confused about just exactly what Paul is speaking of in Romans chapter seven. Some believe that the “first husband” is our pre-conversion condition, and that Paul is speaking specifically of his own personal experience. Others claim that the “first husband” is the moral law which is “contrary to us” and needs to be gotten out of the way because it condemns us. The first theory leaves us in despair of ever overcoming sin; the second condemns the law of God as being the root of the problem. But there’s a third option which offers better “good news” than these two ideas. Does Paul here have a larger perspective in mind?
Professor A. B. Bruce says that he does: “We miss the didactic significance of this passage if we take it as merely biographical, instead of viewing it as typical and representative. That it is meant to be typical is manifest from the abstract manner in which the flesh is spoken of. It is not St. Paul’s flesh that is at fault, it is the flesh, the flesh which all men wear, the flesh in which dwells sin.” [1]
The discussion in Romans chapter 7 is not about whether or not Paul (or any individual) is converted or unconverted. The apostle is speaking about the broader concept of the sinning nature in contrast to the righteous law of God. He is addressing the universal problem of our fallen and condemned condition, and the remedy for it. The carnal mind (Rom. 8:7), old man (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22), and the character that is bent toward sin are synonymous concepts in Paul’s theological presentation of the concept of sin in his letter to the Romans.
The illustration in Romans 7:1-3 is intended to clarify what Paul has been talking about in chapter 6 about “the old man,” slavery to sin, and freedom from sin through the death of Christ as our sacrificial Lamb. In 6:6 Paul tells us that “our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (cf. Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15). This idea is paralleled by chapter seven’s marriage metaphor and the necessity of the first husband’s death. There are four elements in chapter seven’s illustration—the law, the woman, and the first and second husbands (see Waggoner on Romans, pp. 118-121).
Some have defined the first husband as the Ten Commandment law of God, basing their opinion on verses 1 through 3 in which Paul states “the law has dominion over a man" (vs. 1), and then shifts to “the woman” (vs. 2) and that the woman must be “loosed from the law of her husband,” that “if her husband be dead, she is free from the law” (vs. 3). Superficially, these verses seem to correlate the law and the husband as one element of the story. However, from Paul’s own declaration, we cannot charge the law with being the faulty husband, because Paul states that “the law is holy” (vs. 12). There is no fault to be found in any aspect of the law, which is a transcript of God’s holy character.