7:18 no good thing. Paul, before his conversion, could boast that he was, as “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). But then he came to see that all his “righteousnesses [were] as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), and accepted “eternal life through Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:23). If such a man as Paul would have to confess that in his flesh there was nothing good at all, then surely every Christian must say the same.

7:22 inward man. The “inward man” is evidently here the same as the “new man,” for the “old man” (Romans 6:6) could never “delight in the law of God.”

7:23 law of sin. The “law of sin,” which is in our members, is the sin-nature inherited from Adam. It is the spiritual aspect of the universal law of entropy which governs the physical creation ever since God’s curse on the ground because of Adam’s sin.

7:24 who shall deliver me. The question, as rightly phrased by Paul, is not what or how, but who. Only the perfect Son of man can deliver a son of Adam from “the body of this death.” The only solution and victor in the struggle between the old and new natures in the believer is “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25).