The cry comes out of the struggle Paul has just described. He delights "in the law of God after the inward man" (Romans 7:22), yet finds sin bringing him "into captivity" (Romans 7:23). Barnes says the feeling behind this lament "is the result of this painful conflict." Notice that Paul asks "who," not "how": he is looking for a rescuer outside himself.

Gill and Barnes both read this as the cry of a believer. Gill says it shows Paul "to speak of himself as a regenerate man; since an unregenerate man feels no uneasiness upon that score." Barnes, who says he reached his view by studying the chapter itself, regards it as describing Paul's mind "subsequent to his conversion." Matthew Henry writes, "The remainders of indwelling sin are a very grievous burden to a gracious soul."

Paul answers his own question with thanksgiving: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:25). He is honest that the tension remains: "So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin" (Romans 7:25). Then he declares, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus," for "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:1-2).

"Wretched" translates talaiporos, which Thayer defines as "enduring toils and troubles; afflicted, wretched." It appears only one other time in the New Testament, of the church at Laodicea (Revelation 3:17). "Shall deliver" (rhysetai) is a future-tense verb, "will deliver."

In the Greek word order, "this" goes with "death," which the KJV keeps: "the body of this death." The ESV reads "this body of death." Barnes calls the expression "a Hebraism," that is, a Hebrew way of speaking carried into Greek, "denoting a body deadly in its tendency." Gill mentions the view that it means the mortal body, but thinks it "better" to understand it as what Paul calls "the body of sin" (Romans 6:6), "that mass of corruption that lodged in him."

The answer to Paul's "who" is a Person. Deliverance does not come from trying harder at the law. Paul has called the law good (Romans 7:12), yet he says, "how to perform that which is good I find not" (Romans 7:18), and soon adds that the law "could not do" this, "in that it was weak through the flesh" (Romans 8:3). It comes from God "through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:25).

God's answer keeps unfolding in Romans 8: no condemnation now (Romans 8:1), the Spirit's power for daily life (Romans 8:2, 13), and a future "redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23). The cry of Romans 7:24 is honest about the present, but it is not the last word.