Life Before or After Conversion
Excerpt
The question that has plagued commentators for centuries is whether in this latter section of chap. 7 Paul was describing his experience before or after conversion. Both positions may be argued rather persuasively.91 In support of the first approach are a number of phrases throughout the account that seem to reflect a pre-conversion setting. Paul confessed that he was “sold as a slave to sin” (v. 14). He knew that “nothing good lives in [him]” (v. 18). He was a “prisoner of the law of sin” (v. 23), a “wretched man” who called out for someone to “rescue [him] from this body of death” (v. 24). Are confessions like these what we would expect from the very apostle who said, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1)? More
Mounce, Robert H. Romans. Vol. 27. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995. Print. The New American Commentary.
Comments