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For much of my life I have heard Christians defend their "weakness" with the last ten or so verses of Romans Chapter 7. Paul's narrative here seems to leave no hope for any of us, saved or not. The topic is one of the Law versus the Gospel, the spiritual versus the flesh, and a closer look shows Paul is speaking generally and over the life span of man, not his current state as an apostle and Christ follower.

He explains that the Law identifies sin which causes our sinful nature to want to do what is wrong. Like when you tell someone, especially a child, not to do something and that makes them want to do it even more. Without the Law, sin is dead (v8). By telling us what not to do, it reveals what is wrong - what is sin. You can take this all the way back to the beginning in the Garden. Verse 9 refers to the Adamic state of man up to the time the Law was given to Moses. Verse 13 shows us Satan's role in that he uses the Law to tempt us to do something that has been forbidden, once again like in the Garden.

Verses 14-25 are often used as an excuse for sin, but then those same people will use verse 1 of Chapter 8 as their security blanket of salvation. Continuing to read Chapter 8, we see this discussion of Law/Gospel, spiritual/flesh fall in line with two different states of man. One is man without the Holy Spirit and one is man with the Holy Spirit (v3). While Chapter 7 speaks more general, Chapter 8 addresses the Christian more specifically. Verse 9 says "we are not living the life of the flesh; we are living the life of the Spirit."

We simply can't cling to the fleshly weakness of Chapter 7 and claim to be of the Spirit as described in Chapter 8. We can't have it both ways.