Bible Dictionary
BODY OF DEATH
Paul's figure for the moral bondage of the unredeemed person under sin and the law. Deliverance from this “body of death” comes through Jesus Christ rather than through human strength.
Definition
The body of death is Paul’s figure for the ethical bondage of the unredeemed person under sin and the law. It represents the bitter conflict between the command “I must” and human inability, not merely a physical condition.
Biblical Usage
In Romans 7 Paul cries for deliverance from this body of death and points to deliverance through Jesus Christ. The figure describes the dominion of sin and the law from which a person is delivered through regeneration and faith in Christ.
Historical Background
The image may have a distant background in the ancient punishment of chaining a living person to a corpse, so that the corruption of death would destroy the victim.
Related Figures
Historical Bible Dictionaries
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>deth (soma tou thanatou): These words are found in Paul's impassioned argument on the reign of the law, which dooms man to continuous disappointment and convinces him of the terrible power of indwelling sin. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Ro 7:24 the King James Version). It is the "picture of the still unredeemed man in his relation to the law" (Meyer). The translation, "this body of death," though grammatically possible, is logically impermissible. The picture here before the mind of the apostle is not physical but ethical. Death points to the dominion of sin, to the reign of the law, as revealed in his physical life, from which he is delivered only through regeneration, by faith in Christ. It points to the "I must" and to the "I cannot." It is therefore the bondage under the law of sin, the body as the seat of this conscious and bitter struggle, that the figure points at. And yet the ethical may have a physical background. There may be a distant reference here to the dreadful punishment of the ancients of chaining the living body to a corpse, that the constant corruption of death might extinguish the life of the victim of this exquisite torture.</p><p>Henry E. Dosker</p>