One of the most misunderstood scriptures in the New Testament is Romans chapter 7. It does not matter what brand of Christian you are talking to, if the subject of holiness arises and with it the commands to walk in the image of Christ, free from sin, the automatic retort is to fire off a few choice verses of Romans chapter 7. Poor old Paul, it seems, just couldn't help himself, “The good that I wish, I do not do, but I commit the very evil that I do not wish” and the church delights in his imagined frailty - to their collective ruin. For in this, as in much of their understanding of scripture, they fulfill Peter's statement concerning Paul, “in his letters… are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort as they do all the scriptures, to their own destruction.”

From the church's understanding of scripture Paul is a tragic figure stumbling in all of his ways (just as they the church do), a hypocrite not living what he preached; but this is not what Paul is revealing in this chapter. As is so often the case, people take a text out of context to justify their own crooked walk. To get to the heart of what Paul is talking about we have to go back to the previous chapter. In Chapter 6 Paul says, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? May it never be! How shall we who died still live in it?” Then he explains how we have been baptized into Christ's death that “we too might walk in newness of life.” For “our old man was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be destroyed, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” Paul continues by saying, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,”… “for sin shall not be master over you for you are not under law but under grace.” From such a beginning it seems inconceivable that Paul is now saying, in the very next chapter, “but hey don't worry about it, none of us are perfect!” But this is exactly what the church believes that he is saying!