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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
Do you notice what a great thraldom that of vice is, in that it overcomes even a mind that delighted in the Law? For no one can rejoin, he means, that I hate the Law and abhor it, and so sin overcomes me. For "I delight in it, and consent to it," and flee for refuge to it, yet still it had not the power of saving one who had fled to it. But Christ saved even one that fled from Him. See what a vast advantage grace has! …
Theophylact of Ohrid
The natural law became insufficient, the written law proved powerless, and the tyranny of sin conquered both. From where, then, shall we hope for salvation? "Who will deliver me from this body of death?", that is, subject to death. For the body, having become liable to suffering as a result of the transgression, thereby also became convenient for sin. Someone will say: if the body was convenient for sin, then why were sinners punished before the coming of Christ? …
Irenaeus
On this account, therefore, the Lord Himself, who is Emmanuel from the Virgin, is the sign of our salvation, since it was the Lord Himself who saved them, because they could not be saved by their own instrumentality; and, therefore, when Paul sets forth human infirmity, he says: "For I know that there dwelleth in my flesh no good thing," showing that the "good thing" of our salvation is not from us, but from God. …
Western Saints
Ambrose of Milan
We have a physician—let us follow his remedy! Our remedy is the grace of Christ, and the body of death is our body. Let us therefore be exiled from the body lest we be exiled from Christ. Even if we are in the body let us not follow what is of the body. Let us not neglect the rights of nature, but let us prefer the gifts of grace.
Jerome
Paul uses the term "the body of death" because the body is subject to vices and sickness, disorders and death until it rises in glory with Christ, and what was once fragile clay is purified in the fire of the Holy Spirit into a very solid rock, changing its glory, not its nature.
Thomas Aquinas
Then, when he says, unhappy man that I am, he deals with liberation from the law of sin and does three things: first, he poses a question; second, he answers, at the grace of God; third, he draws a conclusion, at therefore, I myself. In regard to the first he does two things. First, he declares his misery when he says: unhappy man that I am. …
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