The Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Romans teaches deliverance: deliverance from man's guilt, from the power of sin, and from the claims of the law. We have to recognize the first two deliverances before we can understand the third. We have to see that there is no deliverance in the old man Adam. Then, we see a new man, and for those who are associated with that new man, Christ, there is deliverance.
What would the law have to say to me if I were not dead to it? Rom. 7 begins by reminding the believers of the claims of the law. By law the woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. If he be dead, she is "free from that law." The chapter teaches deliverance from what the law would have to say to me about sin in the flesh. We learn that we are "dead to the law by the body of Christ," so "now we are delivered from the law."
In this chapter it is not a question of guilt. The Lord Jesus Christ and His precious blood take care of that question. It is a question of sin in the flesh, that is, what I am, not what I have done. My whole being is corrupt. There is not one thing in the flesh that can please God. Do you and I realize that there is not one movement of the flesh that can please God, no matter how good it is? There is a way to please God, but it is not in the flesh. On that point the law remains adamant; it cannot be changed; it has proven that the flesh cannot please God.
Trying to please God in the flesh brings one to the helpless condition of verse 24 (JND), "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?" I am in this world in a body of death in its various aspects. It includes the whole subject of the body of death-not only the defilement, but also the weakness. It's the body of death because deliverance has to do with the complete thing. The Apostle Paul speaks of it as the body of humiliation. How do I get delivered from this thing? That is the subject in our chapter-deliverance.