7:22 For I delight in the law of God after the {b} inward man:
(b) The inner man and the new man are the same, and are compared and contrasted with the old man; and neither do these words inward man signify man's mind and reason, and the old man the physical body that is subject to them, as the philosophers imagine: but by the outward man is meant whatever is either without or within a man from top to bottom, as long as that man is not born again by the grace of God.
7:22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. The inner man, the better nature, our spiritual being, approves of and delights in the law of God. This is the part of our being that wills to do good, spoken of in Ro 7:21, but is overcome by evil.
7:22 For I delight in the law of God - This is more than I consent to, Rom 7:16. The day of liberty draws near. The inward man - Called the mind, Rom 7:23,25.
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.
