You are following Spurgeon's logic there, he thought it could not be an unsaved person because sin means little to the unsaved...but sin DOES mean much to the Jew under the law and to religious but unsaved people.
I am not mid-acts though I hold Paul to be our apostle.
Have never read Spurgeon.
I study Scripture from, and ever in search in it, for its general rules of thumb as to how to get at its passage's intended sense.
Over time, that has allowed me some awareness of the tendency of far to mean to read into another's words without first ferreting out principles as to how to do so soundly.
I'll have to conclude that is still your take on "his" and or my "logic."
I always ask "what might he be basing whatever it is he is actually saying on - what general rules of thumb does it/he appear to be following here? And where is its' principle the same? And where does it differ? How might I know soundly? What general rule thumb from what passage and or passages might help me towards that?"
Extracting a general rule of thumb from the following, for example...
2 Corinthians 4:
16. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet
the inward man is renewed day by day.
17. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
18. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
The inward man principle, I know that Paul is not talking about himself as a lost man in Romans 7 and 8.
For in 8, he continues the same issue - of how that sin revives and one dies when they fail to serve with their mind.
That is, the condemnation unto that the Believer experiences when they fail to walk "in newness of life" - in an understanding of the new life - from a mind renewed by the Spirit through His Word as to its details - Romans 8:
5. For they that are after the flesh do
mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
6. For
to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually
minded is life and peace.
7. Because the carnal
mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
8. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
The issue in verse 8 is in light of all that in Romans 6-8 is that when the believer minds the things of the flesh, he finds a law - that he is unable to walk in his new identity in Christ.
Romans 7:
21. I find
then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
22. For I delight in the law of God
after the inward man:
23.
But I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin
which is in my members.
24. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body
of this death?
25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Romans 8:
12. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.
13. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
How do you mortify through the Spirit the deeds of the body the flesh would have you walk in?
Not through the Law of Moses, is Paul's point - "for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." Gal. 3:21.
Rather, through mortify the deeds of the flesh through the Spirit with your mind.
Huh?
Galatians 5:
16. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
17. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
18.
But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
If you
mind the things of the Spirit, you will not mind, or focus on the things of the flesh that the Law had meant to focus one on towards proving that "all the world guilty," Rom. 3:19.
Galatians 3:
21. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.
The purpose of the Law had been what then?
22. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
23. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
24. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
26. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
27. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
There it is - the key to victory over this condemnation of death - Colossians 2:
6. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
7. Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
8. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
9. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
