Romans 7 and the natural reading

Is Romans 7.7ff simply Paul’s personal experience battling with sin either as an unregenerate person or a believer?

Or is it really about something different?

The idea that Romans 7 represents the struggle of corporate Israel after Sinai and before Pentecost seems ridiculous unless one makes some kind of existential leap of faith.  Otherwise, it is simply laughable.

Why am I not laughing any more?

Because Paul started talking that way, not in Romans 7.7ff, but in Romans 2:

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

But it is simply not true that ever Jew has done those very same things.  Nor does Paul ever bother to offer an argument that any sins whatsoever counts as the same.  He accuses Jewish judges of hypocrisy because they know their nation is no better off.  One finds in Acts that Jews are publicly associated with magic and the occult.  Paul was able to write confidently that everyone knew the Jewish nation both in Israel and in the rest of the empire was overrun with sin.

But not every individual was doing this.  It didn’t matter.  Like Daniel (ch 9) was ashamed of his nation’s sin and confessed it, so no believing Jew was in a position to claim that God’s covenant with Israel was provoking any less wrath from God than the Gentile behavior.

The “Man” in Romans 2.1 is corporate Israel.  So is the “I” in Romans 7.7.

Or so I think at this point.

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