Romans 7:19

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:18-22 The more pure and holy the heart is, it will have the more quick feeling as to the sin that remains in it. The believer sees more of the beauty of holiness and the excellence of the law. His earnest desires to obey, increase as he grows in grace. But the whole good on which his will is fully bent, he does not do; sin ever springing up in him, through remaining corruption, he often does evil, though against the fixed determination of his will. The motions of sin within grieved the apostle. If by the striving of the flesh against the Spirit, was meant that he could not do or perform as the Spirit suggested, so also, by the effectual opposition of the Spirit, he could not do what the flesh prompted him to do. How different this case from that of those who make themselves easy with regard to the inward motions of the flesh prompting them to evil; who, against the light and warning of conscience, go on, even in outward practice, to do evil, and thus, with forethought, go on in the road to perdition! For as the believer is under grace, and his will is for the way of holiness, he sincerely delights in the law of God, and in the holiness which it demands, according to his inward man; that new man in him, which after God is created in true holiness.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For the good ... - This is substantially a repetition of what is said in Romans 7:15. The repetition shows how full the mind of the apostle was of the subject; and how much inclined he was to dwell upon it, and to place it in every variety of form. It is not uncommon for Paul thus to express his intense interest in a subject, by placing it in a great variety of aspects, even at the hazard of much repetition.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

19, 21. For, &c.—The conflict here graphically described between a self that "desires" to do good and a self that in spite of this does evil, cannot be the struggles between conscience and passion in the unregenerate, because the description given of this "desire to do good" in Ro 7:22 is such as cannot be ascribed, with the least show of truth, to any but the renewed.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ver. 19,20. These two verses are a repetition of what he had said, Romans 7:15,17. Every new man is two men; there is in him an I and an I. The apostle in his unregenerate state, could make no such distinction as now he doth.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For the good that I would, I do not,.... The apostle here repeats what he had delivered in Romans 7:15 to strengthen and confirm this part of his experience; that though he had a will to that which was good, yet he wanted power, and had none of himself to perform; and therefore often did what he would not, and what he would he did not.

Geneva Study Bible

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Romans 7:19. Proof of τὸ δὲ κατεργ. τὸ καλὸν οὐχ εὑρίσκω in Romans 7:18. For the good that I desire I do not; but the evil that I desire not, that I pursue. Respecting the interlocking of the relative and main clauses, see Winer, p. 155 [E. T. 205].

Expositor's Greek Testament

Romans 7:19. In this verse there is a repetition of Romans 7:15, but what was there an abstract contrast between inclination and action is here sharpened into the moral contrast between good inclination and bad action.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

19, 20.] These verses almost repeat Romans 7:15; Romans 7:17; not however as a tautology, but as emphasizing by repetition the two main facts in view, the reality of the renewal of the will, and the reality of the struggle of the flesh.

Romans 7:19

Vincent's Word Studies

Do not - do. (ποιῶ - πράσσω)

See on Romans 7:15.