Rom.7 21Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."

The apostle is teaching that we are implanted with the law of God when we are saved. The Psalmist teaches that we are given a new understanding of our sinful state. We are indwelt with the fullness of God. We now have new desires for God. He teaches that we have a new man living in us who is opposed to sin and corruption. God has given us desires that free us from all corruption. We can illustrate the teaching in this comparing it to our soul leaving our body when we die and as it rises to depart we are looking back at the dead body. In order for us to experience salvation we must be completely pure by a washing. We cannot touch that unclean thing. If we touch the unclean thing then we are unclean.

God gave us a new redeemed self in order for us to unite our desires with Himself. We love the things that God loves and we hate the things that God hates. The OT saint was required to remove all of the leaven from his dwelling. When he had done a meticulously cleansing his house was declared clean. The Psalmist teaches that  The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me. Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with evil. Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him will I put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him will I not endure. No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely
will stand in my presence. Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land; I will cut off every evildoer from the city of the LORD" In order for us to be clean we cannot be comfortable with the culture and communication of wicked men. We must be aware that sinners spread the disease of sin. Because we have a new redeemed self our desires repel sin and sinners. Holy people avoid the danger of catching the disease.


But if we avoid the company of evil men in order to be holy because of our redeemed desires then are we completely safe from the disease? The apostle shows that we cannot be completely free of the danger of sin and corruption by avoiding the wicked. This is why he is crying out when he shows that the corruption and sin dwells within us. We not only have a redeemed self that repels sin but we carry around the body of sin. The apostle realizes that the enemy dwells in us. This is why he cries out "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" The leaven that must be removed dwells within us. He is free when he is separated from the body of death. In other words he is comparing the freedom of being completely holy as the soul rising out of the body and looking back on that sinful and corrupted thing.  The question is how are we spiritually separated from our sinful nature? How can we quarantine that body of death that dwells with us so that we are completely clean? 

Taking an antibiotic to fight the virus of sin would not destroy that old man. The only way to be free of the body of sin is through death. So we must carry that body of death around as long as we are in this flesh. But we can rule of that body of death because God has given us life and death pronouncements by implanting His desires in the redeemed self. He has give us the redeemed self to set up His kingdom within us. We must count ourselves dead to this body of sin and alive in Christ.  We cry out because we have new desires to destroy the opposition through the pronouncement of death in the curse of the law. He is teaching that we can rule the body of sin through the curses. We are not able to control the body of sin. We must pronounce the curse in order to kill that body of death. We can rise out of corruption and look back at the body of death in the curse. Christ rescues us from the body of death.