The law taught him about his sin and thus brought him an awareness of a need for the righteousness of Christ available by faith. The believer appreciates, therefore, the place of the law in the purpose of God. The law is good (7:12).

The influence of the law is such that man is made aware of important things about himself and his nature. In these verses Paul brings out that awareness.

The nature of the law of God, when rightly understood, is a spiritual nature. This is the thing about the law that drives home to Paul a certain contrasting awareness about himself and about all men.

The question is, whose conflict is this? Is this the conflict which a sinner experiences, or is this a Christian’s experience? And, if this is a Christian’s conflict, is it the experience of a defeated, so-called “carnal” Christian? Or is this conflict experienced by a typical, normal Christian, like Paul himself?

“Carnal” means, literally, “made of flesh.” When a man—even a saint of God—beholds the very spiritual character of God manifested in the divine standards of the law, he can only confess he lives in a vessel of flesh and that this “flesh” is depraved and sinful, still unredeemed.

Paul’s confession of “carnality,” then, is not unchristian when that carnality is measured by the contrast with true spirituality and when that carnality is understood to be true of the depraved “flesh.”

Paul’s acknowledgment of carnality takes on added dimension in terms of the conflict described in verse 15. Here is certainly expressed a sense of frustration that some find hard to reconcile with genuine Christianity.

Thus Paul experiences within himself a struggle, a warfare between his fleshly nature and his spiritual nature. I find, then, that there is an ever-present conflict: I want this, but do that; I want that, but do this.

The “if” clause in this verse simply restates the conflict already indicated in verse 15. If I have this conflict, Paul says, between good intentions and evil results, then I have to recognize (agree) that the law is good.

The very nature of the struggle described testifies to the good character and purpose of the law. In other words, even for the Christian Paul, the law continues to set a spiritual Standard which the fleshly nature of Paul resists and is, indeed, incapable of fulfilling.