NT Wright has a lengthy, ten-point summary of Romans 7:1–8:11. Here are this theses:
1. The Torah turned Israel into Adamites instead of the the righteous.
2. The Torah is good (against any Marcionite tendencies).
3. The Toral alone is weak and pertains to the era of Moses.
4. Zeal for the Torah and ancestral traditions can be dangerous.
5. Romans 7 is about Israel, but it has implications for all humans: humans don’t live up to the standards they establish. Christians should be different (good words here about the moral decay in the Western world and the purity of third world churches).
6. The villain in Paul’s drama is Sin, “a personified force at work in the world.”
7. Does this mean guilty and gloom? Nonsense he says. The remedy of sin is the Cross and the Spirit. Those who don’t like the problem don’t like the remedy.
8. Assurance: not self-assurance. Assurance follows the struggle before God to see the entire solution in Christ and the Spirit.
9. There is no such thing as a Christian who is not indwellt by the Spirit: peace with God, submission to God’s will, they please God.
10. As with Romans, so here: the passage is about God.