Sin Lives in Me

Romans 7:13-25

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright. Um we are continuing our studies in the book of Romans this morning, specifically Romans chapter 7. We're coming to the end of the chapter. Or I say that, I guess, because we're going to finish it up. It's actually a fairly long section and start in the middle, but it's all related, so I thought it made more sense for us to take it as one unit. It's actually one of the more famous passages in Romans. This passage probably ranks in the top three or four, maybe the top two in the book, along with Romans 8, some passages there. It's a very encouraging passage. I think most people seeing this will say, okay, now there's something that I can understand completely. Given all this high theology we've been dealing with in the earlier part of chapter 7, and certainly in the previous chapters, we come to something here we read that resonates with people. We know Paul has been talking about living free from sin and living in holiness, and we know that we were supposed to do that, but now we come to a section where we read it and we say, Well, okay, I don't need to give up my hope and my struggle. Even Paul, the great apostle, has some intense struggle with sin. That said, I didn't realize how much controversy around this passage there is until I started studying it a little more in depth. So I do want to give some debate considerations about what the issues are, although I think in the end our initial impressions will be upheld. In any case, we'll venture to consider what encouragement and motivation we can take from Paul's seeming bluntness about his struggle with sin. So let's pray and then we'll read. Father in heaven, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the encouragement you give us in it. Thank you for the instruction you give us in it, the warning you give us in it. We thank you, Father, that you reveal yourself to us, and we pray that you'll help us as we study together, Father. Let us learn from this and be encouraged by it, and we thank you for it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, Romans 7, beginning in verse 13 through the end of the chapter. Therefore, did what is good become death to me? Absolutely not. But sin, in order to be recognized as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin, for I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me, for I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh, for the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do not do what I want, what I do not want, if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is sin that lives in me. So I discovered this law. When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God's law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and taking me prisoner to the law of sin and the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin. This appears to be the passage where we get the phrase, do as I say, not as I do. Seems it would come from there. Uh you will note that verse 13 is a bit of a different thought. Indeed, in my Bible, it's uh in a different section. However, verse 13 introduces Paul's thought even as it wraps up the previous section. So it's really kind of a transition verse. So I'm going to address it first. One of the outline points last time, I don't know if you will remember, but it one of those points was the law reveals sin. What Paul's doing here is amping that up a bit. He's saying the law actually magnifies sin. Not only reveals it, it magnifies it. His language, of course, as it sometimes is, can be a little bit difficult to follow, but we can think it through. He just finished saying the law is holy and the commandment is good, even though it reveals sin. So what he said is, the law reveals the sin that kills me. Nevertheless, the law is good, but you can see how that would raise questions. He's just said, the law is revealing sin, and sin is what's killing me. So what does that tell us about the law? And that's what he basically says. Did what is good then become death to me? And again, we could say I could get there. And his response is absolutely not. Now, recognized as sin, and not just something we do inherently. Sin is magnified again by the law. So that's what he's indicating is that the law really brings it out, shows it, and it reveals sin in us. And so death is produced in us. In effect, the law really shines the light on what sin is, so that we see through the law that sin, the way it's expressed here in the CSB, is sinful beyond measure. So, in effect, though the law, as he's made this effort to point out, though the law provokes our sin nature, that actually can be used for good because it really even more dramatically exposes our deep sinfulness. He's getting to the fact that we need to understand how bad sin is. After all, if sin can use something as good as the law to its advantage in promoting evil, how evil is sin? Some of your versions say, probably say through the commandment, sin might become exceedingly sinful. In other words, again, sin is just as bad as it gets. And Paul is saying the law really does point to how horrific sin is and all its ugliness before an all-holy God. We just need to understand how sinful sin is. Sin wants to deceive us. Again, that it's not that deep or it's not that strong. It's kind of superficial, it's not really that wrong. Spurgeon puts it like this This is one of the most deplorable results of sin. It injures us most by taking from us the capacity to know how much we are injured. That's the deceptive part of it, right? And he goes on. It undermines the man's constitution, leads him to boast an unfailing help that beggars him, tells him he is rich, but strips him, makes him glory in his fancied robes. And basically what he's saying there makes him prideful, makes him glory in his self-fancy robes, we might say. That's why it's good for you to hear and know the law. When you sense you're living opposed to it, we can be alarmed and awakened. Again, it's why we don't dodge the Old Testament. That remains God's word. It's not covenantal anymore, not for us, not for the Jews, not anymore. But it is instructive. The problem in that, of course, is what he's already discussed. The law doesn't give us any power to overcome it. It just draws out more sin as we realize, well, I shouldn't be doing this, I shouldn't be doing that, I shouldn't be doing the other thing. Now, before we move on to the rest of the passage, and that's basically what verse 13 is saying, I realize that's he's saying a lot there in one sense, but he's just trying to make the point the law is good. It is amplifying sin, but it's good. We need to know what sin is. That's kind of a summary of what he's saying. Before we move on to the rest of the passage, which we probably think of as Paul's personal application, let me first give you the objections to taking the reading at face value. And then I'm going to tell you why I think we should take the reading at face value, despite what some otherwise knowledgeable people indicate. It's just that since I'm not a Bible scholar, I wanted to give you other options, especially when they're plentiful enough. But I'll remind you, and I think you all understand this, you don't have to be a Bible scholar to understand what God is telling us through his word. Scholarly insights can help, of course, but they are not the end-all be-all. So without any guidance otherwise, verses 14 through 25, it appears Paul is discussing his own personal and present experience in dealing with sin, and yes, quite vividly. But that does appear to be the most straightforward reading, I think you would agree. One of the reasons people object to this straightforward reading does confront us immediately in verse 14. In most versions, Paul writes, I am carnal. And in the CSB that I have, it renders the I am of the flesh. That's actually the more literal translation, but it's the same ideal. Paul is saying he's unspiritual. So the question is asked understandably, hey, that way, this is Paul, the apostle who wrote most of the New Testament. Is he really saying he is a carnal Christian rather than a spiritual Christian? And some people say, well, obviously not. That can't be the case. You know, Paul tells us to follow his example elsewhere. So what could he mean? And so they come up with these ideas. Well, maybe he is describing a carnal person's struggle, but not really his own. After all, in uh over in chapter 8 and verse 6, he says, to be carnal-minded is death. And then he goes on to issue some negative traits about being carnal-minded. And they culminate there in him saying the carnal person can't obey God and cannot please God. And of course, he already said back in chapter 6 that we should absolutely not sin because we're just because we are under grace. Earlier in this chapter, he said we put we are to put to death, we were put to death in relation to the law. We belong to Christ in order to bear fruit. But then here in verse 14, he not only says he is carnal, he also says he is sold under sin. That in contrast to what he wrote in 1 Corinthians, where he says we were bought with a price and now belong to Christ. Being sold under sin sounds worse than a carnal Christian. That almost sounds like he's an unbeliever. So verse 14 alone indicates for scholars especially, he is not talking about his actual experience as a mature Christian man who had met Jesus on the Damascus road. He is either talking about his pre-Christian life or his early, more carnal Christian struggles before he became the apostle as he is. Or, as I indicated earlier, he's just presenting a hypothetical person's struggle with sin, albeit likely a hypothetical carnal Christian. Pentecostals say this was before he was baptized in the Spirit. Some of you may know Pentecostals believe we can be saved, but not yet empowered with the Spirit. There's another baptism with the Spirit. So that's what they say. He'd been saved, but he hadn't been baptized with the Spirit yet. And there's a few other ideas. I'm just going to leave those aside. The problem with all of them, and my humble opinion, is that Paul is not speaking in the past tense. He's speaking in the present tense. And he switched to the present tense. He says, I am carnival, present tense. I don't understand what I'm doing. Present tense. And he starts using the pronoun I. I counted 25 eyes in verses 14 through 25. If Paul was speaking in the past tense in the previous section, it's very difficult to answer why he switches to the present tense and him not be referring to what's going on in the present. If he is speaking hypothetically, it's staggering he refers to himself so many times in this particular passage. And here's something else. And I was thinking, this seems like the Christian experience as far as I'm concerned. I I came across a statement by Steve Greg that expressed this well. He said, quote, have you ever met a Christian, however spiritual, who didn't relate to this? I mean, we might think Paul is the super Christian. He's the one man who couldn't relate with this. But all the people I know, any range of spirituality, when they read this, they say, Oh yeah, I don't live up to my desires either. And I think that's how we think, at least that's how I think. Now, this of course doesn't mean that Paul was the worst person ever, like he's some depraved killer or wretched thief. He's just saying, I know I have this standard of how I want to live, but I fall short of it. And hey, this is the apostle Paul, who has probably seen the third heaven at this point, assuming that Romans was written after 2 Corinthians, as most scholars think. In any case, we know we've seen the risen Christ. Here's probably the issue: Paul probably has a very high standard of how he's supposed to live. Frankly, probably higher than any of us. And he's not saying I'm just wallowing in sin constantly. He doesn't even say how often he sins. He's just saying he has a real recognition of how far short he is of God's standard of perfection. The more you focus on God, the more spiritual you'll be, and the more you appreciate God's holiness, his goodness, his righteousness, and the more we want to please him and realize how difficult it is in Christian living. And from that standpoint, a person who barely knows God isn't too spiritual and probably does lower the bar in relation to someone like Paul. But we all know, and it's clear, including Paul here, we don't live up to perfection. And so that in and of itself is a good reason to say, why wouldn't he be talking about himself? Certainly anyone else could be. I'd say most any Christian you talk to would land on this sort of self-assessment at times. Paul also wrote Galatians, and there is a similar passage over there, although he doesn't personalize it, but I wanted to look at it just so you see the language. You may remember it. But it's Galatians 5, verses 16 through 17. Paul writes, I say then, walk by the spirit, and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. And here we see that, you know, that uh comparison again. For the flesh desires what is against the spirit, the spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want. Okay. There's that similar wording. The flesh is so opposed to the spirit, you do not do what you want. Paul also makes another statement where he's where we see he is mindful of his own sinfulness. Over in 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy 1. And beginning in verse 15. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. It's interesting he uses that phraseology there. He's basically saying, I'm not blowing smoke here. I'm telling you the truth. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason. So that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who believe in him for eternal life. Now, there, I think, no doubt to some extent, he is referring to his pre-conversion persecution of Christians. But note again, he does say, I am the worst of them. That's present tense. He doesn't say I used to be the worst of them. He still has a sense of his own sinful proclivities. Martin Lloyd Jones, if y'all heard of him, he is a preacher in the 1900s. I think he was born like 1899, 1990s, died in 1981. He said something one time that just it always kind of hung in my mind. And he said, In myself, I have the seeds of every sin known to man. That's the idea. We are all corrupted by the fall. And we're all aware of this. I spent some time on it last message with the consideration of original sin. While I disagree with the Calvinist assertion that we were imputed with Adam's guilt, I would find it hard to disagree with the assertion that there's no part of our humanity that wasn't impacted by sin in some way. It's just that we're greatly impacted by sin and how it affects our inclination and it draws us to selfishness. This is the common experience that I believe that Paul is referring to. And the gist of it is this Christianity is a struggle. And Paul is saying, look, yes, we are to live holy, but I'm under no illusion that it's easy. Sometimes you lose. Now understand, I don't think Paul sin very often at all. I don't think spiritual Christians sin very often, at least in the sense of habitual, I know I shouldn't do this, I'm just gonna do it anyway, kind of sins. But the fact is we do that sometimes, and we all stumble and fall at times. We have some days better than others, and we all have some days, like Paul is talking about here in Romans 7, 14 through 25. So he in essence says three things. First, and there's not really outline, I'm just gonna go through this. First, he says the law, while good and even spiritual, cannot restrain carnal man. He's been saying that. He is saying he is aware of his fleshly pulls. And in context, I think he's clearly indicating the law, while it's good in and of itself, provides him no power whatsoever to overcome. Okay. Secondly, he's making clear in verses 15 through 19 that we are pretty much helpless in our own strength. And we all understand this. No, it's not an issue of desire. He wants to do what is right, it's not an issue of knowledge. He knows what he's supposed to do. What's the problem? The problem is an issue of power. He lacks the power to do so to do right. So the first two points are basically this neither the law nor his own power helps him in his struggle with sin. What he says in verses 17 and 20 then has also troubled people. Again, especially scholars. They get bothered by some of this stuff, this bluntness. But he says, verse 17, it is no longer I who do it, it is sin who dwells in me. And in verse 20, if I don't do what I want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. And people Are like, well, wait a minute. What's he what does he mean by that? What's he saying there? And you may get that sounds problematic, right? It sounds like the the devil made me do it. Excuse. Or in this in this case, more precisely, sin made me do it. Like I'm sinning, but it's not really me. It's just sin in me. So I'm not guilty. Don't blame me. Blame the sin in me. Well, we know from what he says in the broader context, and basically from everywhere, everywhere else he writes, that's not what he means, at least not precisely anyway. A fellow named uh Woost puts it like this. He says, to be saved from sin, a man must at the same time own it and disown it. It is this practical paradox that is reflected in this verse. This it's not saying that we are not responsible for our sin. It is, however, acknowledging that we don't choose sin without a pull in that direction, or that we are being pulled in that direction, I guess I should say. The pull is inherent in us. And again, the Bible makes clear that pull does not excuse us, but here we are told God certainly understands there is a pull, and perhaps that's why we get mercy and why we were offered grace, right? As far as we can tell, the angels didn't get that kind of deal, the demons. They sinned with no inherent inclination. They chose evil with their eyes wide open. Then verses 21 through 23 really get to the heart of why this is happening. This is the third point he's making. We are in a battle. We're in an internal civil war, a battle between our two selves. Paul says, I delight in the law and my inner self, but there is another law in the parts of my body, literally, my members, as some translations say, he's indicating he has two natures warring against one another within himself. As we have said, we we are all to some extent. And this uh quote I think I got from Beg or from the punk rock philosophers Green Day. We're all walking contradictions. Heard that song. Partly truth and partly fiction. Any true Christian will have various levels of delight in God's law. That's part of why we believe in Christ, it's part of why we're encouraged by Him. The way Christ lives, we want to live that way. We see that and we hear His teaching, we understand that's the way we're supposed to relate to one another. We love each other and we live in that way. An unregenerate person may appreciate some of those things, but they're not going to say, oh, I delight in it. Paul says, with my mind, I am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, I am serving the law of sin. And we get what he's saying. We just do. We want to always move more towards serving God with our mind and our flesh, but we understand the struggle. Luther actually believed Paul was talking about himself here, and he said, This is the proof of the spiritual and wise man. He knows that he is carnal and he is displeased with himself. Indeed, he hates himself and praises the law of God, which he recognizes because he is spiritual. The proof of a foolish carnal man is this: he regards himself as spiritual and is pleased with himself. The nature I want and choose is really the one in my mind. That's where the law of God resides, and I delight in it. But the the law that came with the flesh, the law that powers the equipment I have, if you will, I didn't ask for that. I got stuck with it. Steve Brown, some of you probably heard of him. I think I've quoted him on this before. He says he doesn't think it's fair that we got stuck with it, but we didn't get a vote. We basically have two sets of desires. That's what Paul's on about. And I don't have to ask if you understand this. I know you understand it because you're human. And this explains why Paul, you know, has been saying the law reveals sin. It's like he's been thinking about it and how it magnifies it, and then it magnified it to him. He just saw it in his own life even more, and then he goes out with this discourse. My my spirit has been renewed and reborn. I'm born again. But I still got his old body. I don't get a new one of those until the resurrection. Or maybe when I die, we don't know exactly how that clock works, but the final one ain't coming until the resurrection. This body I currently have is the one I had before I became a Christian. I'd have been happy to swap it out at conversion too, but I didn't get that option. This is the only model I've got. So I got a new engine and an old Jalopi or an old pinto. I prefer to have a Ferrari or a souped-up truck or something, but all I got's this thing breaking down. When we were lost, the mind and the flesh were on the same side. And when I obeyed the will of my flesh, my mom was happy to go along. Because they're on the same page. When you repent, you have a change. Change of what? Change of body? No, you can't change your body. It don't matter what anybody says about that today. That don't happen. Not really. You can mutilate your body, but you can't change it. When you repent, you have a change of mind. Repent means to change your mind. When you became a Christian, you changed your mind about God in your life. And when you do that, your mind's no longer in agreement with your flesh, and there's going to be conflict. Your flesh still wants to do what it did before, but now your mind says, no, I want to obey God. And this, of course, is a major difference from unbelievers. We both sin. We don't want to. They don't care, generally speaking. So what Paul is telling us is that we believers are not agreeable with sin. We struggle because our flesh still wants to do what it wants to do. But in our minds, we've chosen God. We're loyal to Him. We love Him. So, in one sense, it's no longer me sinning, although, of course, it is me sinning. But there is something in me that still wants to sin or pulls me that way. I want to live a holy life. I want to follow God. I know who I am in my mind. God knows who I am. And so we'll read when we get to Romans 8. The whole world is groaning in anticipation of Christ's return and our new bodies. That includes us. Until that time, we're going to live in tension until he returns, or until we go to him. We are body and soul. One of our wills have changed, the other has not. So we might just say, what is the practical application from all this? Well, if you I'm glad Paul has this same problem I'll do, so I'll not worry about sinning so much. And of course, you know that's not what he's saying. This is important for us to grasp. Paul is saying here he hates sin. We need to hate sin. If I hate it, that really tells who I am. If I don't hate it, that says something. If you don't hate your sin, or at least don't hate that you don't hate it, do you follow that? You should hate your sin, but at the very least, you should hate that you don't hate it. If we hated sin like we hated escargot, does anybody here like to eat snails? I was just trying to come up with something I don't think anybody would. If we hated it like that, we'd avoid it, right? And if we slipped up and ate one every now and then, we'd be, oh, I really wish that that was terrible. And this is the situation we we all slip up and do things we really don't want to do and really wish we hadn't. Like we might fly off the handle, and we're typically, you know, try to, we're not an angry person when we got that angry, but you know, our spouse just made me get angry. I couldn't help it. And or whatever it is, you know, the guy on the road, some guy got so mad at me. Michael sent somebody that got mad at him on the road. People get mad at you on the road, you know. And I've got mad at people on the road, and I thought, like, why'd I do that? I don't need I didn't I didn't do any gestures or anything. I don't mean that, but I just got mad. Um I've received gestures before. Uh but anyway, we do those things and we fly off, and we're, you know, we immediately we we hate it. You know, there's no condemnation. We we wish we hadn't have done it. We're sorry, we're truly sorry, and we should never happen. How about those sins that bring us pleasure or some satisfaction in some way? That's what I was talking about. We may struggle to hate whatever it is about that sin that tempts us, but we we've got, if we have that situation, we've got to come to a place where we say, you know, I love my God. Jesus gave his life for me. He says, He or she who loves me keeps my commandments. He wants us to follow him. I want to follow him. He died for me. So, yes, I struggle, but I really do hate that I struggle. I hate that I don't hate this sin more. And you can ask God, please let me see this as you see this. Please let me see the sin as you see this. He'll help you do that. I I can attest to that. And that revelation will help power you forward. When you struggle, that is giving evidence that you've chosen God. If you if you didn't care, that would be concerning. You should be struggling against sin. If you're struggling, you're on God's side. It's when you stop struggling that you're distancing yourself from God. When you decide, I'll just take a path of least resistance. I'll I'll just get drunk. I'll just go get all the money I can. I'll just watch what I want when I want. The person Paul is talking about doesn't want to sin. He hates that he sins. He sends out a weakness or carelessness or whatever it is, but he wants to stop and he's looking for a way to stop. You remember Jesus said the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. James said we all stumbling. What is stumbling? It's it's really an accidental fall. It's it's embarrassing to the one who stumbles. We don't want to do it. We're careless or we're weak or we trip over something we didn't anticipate, whatever it is. The point in all of it is we don't want to make a case for normalizing stumbling. If you slip and fall, say going down a hill or something, you don't want to get up and say, oh, let's do that again. I just want to roll down this hill and fall as much as I can. No, we know better than that. We don't want to look at what Paul says here and say, oh, that's an excuse to sin. Paul sinned, so can I. If we love God, we say what Paul says, in my inner self, I delight in God's law. I read this analogy somewhere. I don't I don't know who came up with it, but I thought it was a pretty good one. When Paul talks about the law of sin, he talks about a principle like a law of nature. So we could compare it to the law of gravity. Gravity pulls us down, so does sin. Um, sin is like spiritual gravity. So if you want to get to spiritual heights, you'll have to overcome this law of sin pulling you down. Now, Paul will speak to this more about how we can get the incur the law of aerodynamics spiritually, if you want to say that, where we overcome the gravity or overcome the sin gravity. When we get into chapter eight, perhaps the main thing he alludes to here is what will come for full circle next time as we look at chapter eight next week, is that although I have not overcome sin 100% in my life, I'm not condemned because God knows my mind and God knows my heart. He knows I delight in him, he knows I struggle. And so as he moves into the next chapter, he says, Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And again, he moves on how we can overcome in that chapter. But another reason scholars don't like the idea of that Paul is speaking about himself here is they say, well, Paul pretty much admits here that he's defeated by the end of the passage. And I thought, to use a modern advanced technological term, duh. I mean, what does he say? What he says here is what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? It's clear he longs to be free from this wretched body of death clinging to him, but then he points to the answer, who is Jesus, of course. Paul looks outside of himself and looks to Jesus. Knowing what Jesus has done prompts him to thank God. Paul sees Jesus standing between himself and God, bridging the gap, providing the way to God. And notice he says, our Lord. Our Lord means Paul has put Jesus in the right place. He is our Savior, he is our Lord and Master of life. He acknowledges the state of struggle, but says, thanks be to God, for the victory in Jesus. Now he's not pretending that looking to Jesus takes away the struggle. Certainly not. Jesus works through us, but not instead of us. He's not just going to do it for us in the battle against sin, but he does provide the power. The glorious truth remains there is victory in Jesus. And Jesus didn't come to die and just give us more and better rules. He came to give us eternal life and to live out his victory as we believe in him. The message of the gospel is that there is victory over sin, there's victory over hate, victory over all evil, and of course victory over death. And as we surrender more to Christ and go to him and pray to him and hear from him, we will live out that victory more and more through him. And we'll again pick that back up as we move into chapter 8. But chapter 7 has shown that even though the law is glorious and good, it can't save us. We need a savior. Paul, who himself was a devout Jew and lawkeeper, realized there's no peace until you look outside of yourself and belong beyond the law to the Savior, Jesus Christ. The law has diagnosed our sin condition. Only Jesus Christ can perform the necessary steps to save our lives. So just trust in your Savior and delight in Him. Let's pray.