The Body of Sin

This, then, is that body of death from which we cannot escape. Shut up inside it, even the perfect, who have tasted “how gracious the Lord is,” feel every day with the prophet “how bad for himself and bitter it is for a man to depart from the Lord his God.” This is the body of death that holds us back from the heavenly vision and drags us back to earthly things. It is what makes men, while they are singing psalms and kneeling in prayer, find their thoughts filled with human figures, or conversations, or business, or unnecessary actions. This is the body of death because of which those who would rival the holiness of the angels, and who long to cling to God without ceasing, still cannot reach the perfection of this good. The body of death stands in their way, and they do the evil that they do not want; that is, they are dragged down in their minds even to things that have nothing to do with their progress and perfection in virtue. [a]

Finally, to show clearly that he said this of holy and perfect men, and of those like himself, the blessed apostle points, as it were, with his finger at himself, and goes straight on: “And so I myself.” That is: I who say this am laying bare the secrets of my own conscience, not another’s. This is a way of speaking the apostle commonly uses whenever he wants to point particularly to himself, as here: “I, Paul, myself appeal to you by the mildness and modesty of Christ”; and again: “except that I myself was not a burden to you”; and once more: “But be it so: I myself did not burden you”; and elsewhere: “I, Paul, myself say to you: if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing”; and to the Romans: “For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers.” But it may also, and not unreasonably, be taken this way: that “And so I myself” is said expressly and with emphasis. That is: I, whom you know to be an apostle of Christ, whom you revere with the greatest respect, whom you believe to be of the highest character and perfect, one in whom Christ speaks, though with the mind I serve the law of God, yet with the flesh I confess that I serve the law of sin. That is, by the occupations of my human condition I am sometimes dragged down from heavenly things to earthly ones, and the height of my mind is brought down to the level of caring for lowly matters. And by this law of sin I find myself taken captive at every moment. Though I hold fast to the law of God with unshaken longing, I can in no way escape the power of this captivity unless I always fly to the grace of the Savior.