carry my flesh with it. Thus my actual practice is in
flat contradiction to the ideal of my choice. But henceforth my will
is on the side of the law, and myself is in my will[1]. What runs so
uncontrollably to evil is, it appears, not myself at all, but the alien
tyranny of sin which has taken possession of me and made my flesh its
haunt and instrument--the haunt and instrument of evil only and not of
good. So I can only wish good and practise evil, and become more and
more conscious that I am not my own master. The law of God, accepted
by my will, becomes the law of my mind or inner being; but when I seek
to impose it on my limbs and act accordingly, I find another law--the
law of the tyrant Sin--holding sway in my lower nature; my authority is
defied and {249} I myself am dragged in humiliating captivity to sin in
my lower nature (vers. 16-23). My body has become the death of my
spirit. It is my prison-house. I cry out in my misery for
deliverance. And it is this deliverance which I praise God for having
given me through Jesus Christ our Lord. (By union with Him my higher
self is reinforced, and I can control my lower nature and become my own
master.) But in my isolated, unassisted self, the best that I can get
to is a flat contradiction between the service of the law of God in my
mind and the service of sin in my flesh (vers. 24, 25).

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had
not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting,
except the law had said, Thou shall not covet: but sin, finding
occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting:
for apart from the law sin is dead. And I was alive apart from the law
once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the
commandment, which was unto life, this I found _to be_ unto death: for
sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through
it slew me. So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and
righteous, and good. Did then that which is good become death unto me?
God forbid. But sin, that it might be shewn to be sin, by working
death to me through that which is good;--that through the commandment
sin might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is
spiritual: but I am carnal, {250} sold under sin. For that which I do
I know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate,
that I do. But if what I would not, that I do,