Reading Romans 7 with John Newton

If you’re familiar with Romans 7, you probably know the passage either for the abject misery and debilitating condition of “the wretched man” (v. 24) or for the debate over that individual’s identity.

Just who is this person who is “of the flesh” (v. 14), whose flesh doesn’t contain what’s good (v. 18), and whose body is both a war zone and a death zone (vv. 23–24)? Some say it’s Paul the apostle. Others say it’s Paul the Pharisee (or someone else in bondage to sin and the law).

Too often overlooked in the heat of the debate is the apostle Paul’s pastoral purpose that lies behind the lament. John Newton is of particular help in remedying that neglect. He shows us how it’s in our sorrow that God gives us his comfort and joy, and in our disability that he provides his all-sufficient strength.

Letter to a Troubled Friend

Newton is best known as the converted slave trader who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace” in 1772. But he was also a loving pastor who wrote many letters full of wise and sensitive pastoral counsel.

A letter addressed to Mrs. Wilberforce, from July 1764, gives a window into how John Newton understood and applied Romans 7:

Lastly, it is by the experience of these evils within ourselves, and by feeling our utter insufficiency, either to perform duty, or to withstand our enemies, that the Lord takes occasion to show us the suitableness, the sufficiency, the freeness, the unchangeableness of his power and grace. This is the inference St. Paul draws from his complaint, Rom. vii. 25, and he learnt it upon a trying occasion from the Lord’s own mouth, 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9.

Let us, then, dear madam, be thankful and cheerful, and, while we take shame to ourselves, let us glorify God, by giving Jesus the honour due to his name. Though we are poor, He is rich; though we are weak, He is strong; though we have nothing, He possesses all things.

Newton’s Incisive Interpretation

Newton understands Romans 7 to be the apostle Paul’s confession—applicable to all Christian believers—of his “utter insufficiency” to live dutifully or to withstand his enemies. He sees this insufficiency as total. We are “poor” and “weak,” and we “have nothing.”

It’s in our sorrow that God gives us his comfort and joy, and in our disability that he provides his all-sufficient strength.

That’s interesting, since observing the grim extent of the speaker’s condition leads many interpreters to conclude that the “I” of Romans 7 can’t possibly be Paul the apostle.

But Newton draws a parallel between what Paul confesses in Romans 7 and what he learned in 2 Corinthians 12. In the latter passage, Paul pleads three times for God to remove a painful thorn from his flesh, but God chooses to keep it there to prevent Paul from becoming conceited (vv. 7–8). Instead, the Lord assures Paul with these words: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (v. 9).

God doesn’t equip and empower Paul by removing Paul’s weakness but by perfecting his own divine strength in Paul’s weakness. Or as Paul summarizes, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (v. 10).

According to Newton, Paul presents the same dynamic in Romans 7. Paul’s total inability is the context within which the Lord makes the sufficiency of his power and grace known to Paul and other believers like Mrs. Wilberforce. Paul confesses an innate inability, an incapacity to please God. But though in himself he’s unable to do good, in Christ he experiences “the suitableness, the sufficiency, the freeness . . . of [God’s] power and grace” (for which he gives thanks in verse 25).

As Newton puts it to Mrs. Wilberforce, “Though we are poor, He is rich; though we are weak, He is strong; though we have nothing, He possesses all things.”

Newton’s Pastoral Application

It’s clear that Newton is writing because Mrs. Wilberforce is troubled by her sin.

But he says that though our grief for sin “cannot be too great,” it “may be under a wrong direction.” The wrong direction he warns against is turning in on ourselves. Instead, as Newton instructs, our spiritual poverty is the very occasion and context in which we experience the Lord’s grace and power. And that’s cause for being “thankful and cheerful” and giving honour and praise to Jesus.

In a different letter, writing to Lord Dartmouth, Newton speaks of the believer experiencing “a law in his members warring against the law in his mind,” a clear allusion to Romans 7. But by such painful self-knowledge, he is “weaned more from self, and taught more highly to prize and more absolutely to rely on him, who is appointed to us of God, Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption.”

That’s how Newton sees the weak-but-strong, unable-but-enabled dynamic working in practice. Incapable and helpless in ourselves, we learn more and more to distrust ourselves and to rely on Christ, who provides all we need. Knowing how helpless and incapable we are in ourselves takes us out of ourselves and into Christ, and thus leads to joy.

Knowing how helpless and incapable we are in ourselves takes us out of ourselves and into Christ, and thus leads to joy.

Therefore, the wise pastor Newton doesn’t tell the distressed believer that God has made her able and strong to resist sin’s power. He tells her that if she relies on Jesus, his strength and his grace will be sufficient. God doesn’t put us in possession of a new spiritual power. He puts us in the loving possession of Jesus (Rom. 7:4), on whose power and grace we continually rely by faith.

Do you see the difference? Can you see how feeling within ourselves our incapacity both feeds humility and fuels faith?

“We should be better pleased, perhaps”—as Newton puts it in a later letter to Lord Dartmouth—“to be set up with a stock or sufficiency at once, such an inherent portion of wisdom and power, as we might depend upon.” Instead, “His own glory is most displayed, and our safety best secured, by keeping us quite poor and empty in ourselves, and supplying us from one minute to another, according to our need.”

Just as the sun’s crepuscular rays pierce through dark clouds and delight us with their glory and grace, so God’s grace in Christ only becomes sweeter the darker our hearts appear.