Hodge on the Identification of the Law in Romans 7

Charles Hodge's Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans is certainly one of my favorite commentaries. Romans 7 is one of the most important chapters in the Bible on the relationship of the law to the Christian. I believe with the overhwelming majority of non-Pelagian, Protestant commentators that Paul is using "I" in Romans 7 to refer to himself as representative of the Christian experience generally. I posted a while back on some of James Dunn's excellent comments on this passage.

It is interesting to note that Hodge was contending with many who wanted to refer the law in Rom. 7 primarily to the ceremonial law and the Jewish economy. Hodge makes the important point (which is really quite obvious from the text [see Rom. 7:7-8]) that our liberation is from being under the moral law in particular and all law in general. In other words, we are freed from the condemning power of the law and we are given power to do what God says. If we are "under the law" in the sense of Rom. 6:14, then we are simply left with our own resources to satisfy the punishment of the law and obey the law, which we can never do.

Hodge makes the point that to make the law mean simply part of the law or some laws is to overthrow evangelical religion. Consider this powerful statement:

To make, however, as is often done, the whole meaning of the apostle to be, that we are freed from the Jewish law, is not only inconsistent in this place with the context, and irreconcilable with many express declarations of Scripture, but destructive of the whole evangelical character of the doctrine. How small a part of the redemption of Christ is deliverance from the Mosaic institutions! How slight the consolation to a soul, sensible of its exposure to the wrath of God, to be told that the law of Moses no longer condemns us! How void of truth and meaning the doctrine that deliverance from the law is necessary to holiness, if the law means the Jewish economy merely.

We must affirm on the contrary, that not one bit of our law-keeping can contribute to our justification and not one bit of our law-keeping can cleanse us from sins corruption in sanctification. "But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter" (Rom. 7:6). And what does this service look like? Exactly what the law commands (Rom. 7:12, 14, 16, 22).