The Body of this Death

In the seventh chapter of Romans, the apostle Paul laments:

"For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. ... For I delight in the law of God... . But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity..." (Romans 7:19-22).

And then a heart-rending cry from the depths of despair:

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom 7:24).

Paul here is referring to a contemporary form of execution described in Virgil's Aeneid, he tells of a "curs’d" king who, in a fatal hour:

Aſſum'd the crown with arbitrary pow'r 

What words can paint thoſe execrable times... 

The living and the dead, at his command, 

Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand; 

Till choak'd with ſtench, in loath’d embraces ty'd, 

The ling’ring wretches pin’d away and dy’d.

Such is the "loath’d embrace" of the "flesh" that "literally" consumes us — unless we walk not after the flesh, but after the "Spirit of Life":

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ... 

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ... 

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his (Romans 8:1-9).

¹By Ardfern (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
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