Please remain standing now for the reading of
the word. We're looking at Romans
chapter 7 this morning verses 14 to 25.
Romans 7
verses 14
to 25. Please listen to the reading of
God's word.
For we know that the law is spiritual,
but I am of the flesh sold under
sin.
For I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I
want, but I do the very thing I
hate.
Now if I do what I do not
want,
I agree with the law that it is
good.
So now it is no longer I who
do it, but sin that dwells within me.
For I know that nothing good dwells in
me, that is in my flesh.
For I have the desire to do what
is right,
but not the ability to carry it out.
For I do not do the good I
want,
but the evil I do not want is
what I keep on doing.
Now if I do what I do not
want,
it is no longer I who do it,
but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law
that when I want to do right, evil
lies close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God
in my inner being,
but I see in my members another law
waging war against the law of my mind
and making me captive to the law of
sin
that dwells in my members.
Wretched man that I am, who will deliver
me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
So then,
I myself serve the law of God with
my mind,
but with my flesh,
I serve the law of sin.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Romans
7
verses
14 to 25,
which we are considering
this morning
is undoubtedly
one of the best known passages
in Paul's letter to the Romans.
The reason this passage is so widely known
is that it's been so widely disputed
and the crux of the disputation
can be summarized with this question.
In these verses,
is Paul describing the experience
of an unregenerate
person
or is Paul describing
the experience
of a Christian?
In other words, do these verses pertain
to the plight of unbelievers
or do they pertain
to the plight
of believers?
Having read this passage, it's not difficult to
understand
the root of the controversy.
After all, the Apostle Paul,
this
towering figure in church history, who wrote almost
a quarter
of the New Testament,
who was not only a self described Hebrew
of Hebrews, but who also
whose admirable life in Christ is that of
a saint among saints,
this man describes in this passage
the experience of a person who seems to
be impotent to do good.
A person who is captive, almost like a
slave
to do evil acts,
describing himself as a wretched man
in a body of death.
One understands the apprehension to take Paul's words
at face value.
It is more palatable
to imagine that Paul, that is to say,
Saint Paul,
is instead, for pedagogical reasons,
using the first person perspective to describe the
sinful disposition
of a person who is not yet saved,
almost like in a
hypothetical
sense.
However,
as we shall see this morning,
the most clear understanding,
the most
consistent
explanation,
the most straightforward
interpretation,
the best exposition
of this text
is that Paul is in fact describing
his experience
as a Christian.
Because the fact of the matter is
that when one becomes a Christian,
the struggle against sin
doesn't magically go away.
Actually,
in a very real way the struggle against
sin
only begins
when one becomes a Christian.
In fact, I suggest to you that this
text
is a call for Christians
to strive
against sin.
Even though we are saved by grace through
faith
and not by our own works, this does
not mean that we are exempt
from pursuing lives of holiness.
The main point I want you to remember
from this sermon is this,
Christians must wage war against wickedness.
Christians
must wage war
against wickedness.
So keep that point in mind as we
consider this text under 3 headings.
Our first heading,
the tenacious tyranny of of the flesh.
The tenacious tyranny of the flesh.
2nd heading,
the righteous rebellion
of the spirit.
The righteous rebellion of the spirit.
And the 3rd heading, our sure salvation
in Christ.
Our sure salvation in Christ. So let's look
at the first heading, the tenacious
tyranny
of the flesh. In verse 14, we read,
for we know that the law is spiritual,
but I am of the flesh, sold under
sin.
Notice that Paul writes that
we know
that the law is spiritual
using the first person plural, we.
We know
that the law is spiritual.
The letter is written first of all to
1st century Christians in Rome
and then
in God's providence
to Christians
all around the world and across time even
to us
gathered today in The Woodlands.
But the audience was and is
a Christian audience.
And Paul,
even as he says that he is of
the flesh, writes,
we know
that the law is spiritual.
In other words,
he identifies
as a as a Christian
even though he is of the flesh.
After all, it is Christians who know
that the law is spiritual. In other words,
that the law is of divine origin that
it comes from God himself.
Unbelievers don't recognize
the divine origin or authority of the scripture
because such things are
spiritually discerned.
This is what Paul himself tells us in
1st Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14 where he
writes,
the natural person does not accept the things
of the spirit of God
for their folly to him,
And he is not able to understand them
because they
are spiritually
discerned.
So whatever Paul means when he writes that
he is of the flesh,
he is looking at it from the perspective
of a believer.
One who recognizes
that the law comes from God, that the
law is spiritual.
Verse 15 strengthens this assertion as Paul writes,
for I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want,
but the very
but I do the very thing
I hate.
In other words, Paul is saying that he
does not recognize
or approve
of his sinful acts.
In fact, he states, I hate them.
I hate what I do.
Does this sound like the words of an
unbeliever to you?
I affirm that the Bible is God's word.
I repudiate
and detest
my sin.
Well, no. Those are the words of a
Christian.
So before commenting on Paul's self description as
being of the flesh and sold under sin,
let me ask you 2 questions. 1st,
do you
recognize
and submit
to the authority
of the scriptures
as god's word?
Do you recognize it and submit to the
authority of the scriptures
as God's word?
The question is that whether you are a
Bible expert or not or whether you are
or whether you perfectly obey and keep God's
law.
The question is,
do you know that the law is spiritual?
Do you know that the Bible
comes from God?
Because if you do,
and I have a pretty good feeling that
most of you do,
then you should be encouraged
that this is evidence
of God's grace in your life.
That he has given you the ability to
know
what this book is.
That he has given you the ability to
know that this book
is a source of life
for you and for your family.
That this book is a manual of wisdom
to guide your decisions.
That this book is a bulwark against Satan
and against the destructive effects of sin,
that this book
is a tested path
for joy
and toward peace, and that ultimately,
this book,
the Bible, is the very fountain of immortality.
This knowledge is a priceless gift of God
to you.
Were it not for this gift, the Bible
would be foolishness to you
as it is to the world.
A world that through its rejection
and ridicule of this book has become more
dysfunctional
and more more dystopian
with each passing day.
Furthermore,
if you know that the law is spiritual,
that it comes from God,
not only should you recognize I'm sorry. Not
only should you realize
that such knowledge is God's gift,
but you should respond to such gift
by studying the Bible,
by submitting
to its authority,
and by striving to grow
in godliness.
In other words, as James tells us in
his letter,
Christians should not only be hearers of the
word,
Christians must be doers
of the word.
So let God's grace drive your desire
to please your heavenly father.
The second question I want to ask you
is this, do you hate your sin as
Paul does?
He says, I hate what I do.
Do you hate
your sin?
We all hate the consequences of getting caught,
but that's not the same thing as hating
our sin, is it?
To hate our sin, we must know
what it does to us.
We must know what it does to the
people that we love.
We must know what it costs
our heavenly father
and our savior.
So we have to grieve our sin, but
we also have to hate it.
Your sin wants to destroy you.
Your sin wants to destroy your family.
Your sin wants to destroy everyone that you
love.
As John Owen, the great Puritan theologian from
Oxford said,
be killing sin
or it will be killing you.
And the first step toward killing sin in
your life is to see it for what
it is.
It is deceitful
and murderous.
It is a predator
that seeks to devour you from without.
It is a cancer
that seeks to decimate you from within.
It is no respecter of age.
It is no respecter of gender.
It is no respecter of race.
It hates equally,
and it shows no mercy.
So identify
sin in your life.
Confess it and do battle against it. Strive
against sin.
That's what Paul does here.
He writes, I know I sin,
but I don't understand it.
I don't approve
it. I hate it.
Now we'll return to this idea of doing
battle against sin later, but right now I
want us to consider what Paul means when
he writes, as a Christian,
that he is of the flesh
sold under sin.
Essentially, the word that Paul uses
here to
to say,
that he is of the flesh can literally
be translated as fleshy or fleshly.
He is fleshly.
In In other words, Paul is juxtaposing
the spiritual,
divine,
righteous nature of the law
with his own
fleshly,
fallen,
sinful nature.
The divine nature of the law,
the fleshly nature of Paul.
He's juxtaposing those 2. Whereas the law is
perfect,
blameless, or as he wrote in verse 12,
holy
sorry, holy, righteous, and good.
Paul
has been sold, traded, and trafficked in the
slavish economy of sin. That's where he has
lived. That's where he has breathed. That's where
he has done his life,
in the slavish economy
of the fallen world. He says these two
things
are totally different.
They don't seem to go together.
They're at war with each other.
We fallen human beings, including Paul, are conceived
and born in the corruption of this fleshly
existence.
So you see, unlike
unregenerate human beings
who are firmly in the bondage
of sin and loyal to the tyranny of
death,
The regenerated human being,
the person who has been redeemed by Christ
from sin's domain,
represents the meeting point or the juncture
of these two warring kingdoms.
It's in the regenerate person that these two
things are war.
The domain of sin
and the domain of righteousness.
The kingdom of Satan
and the kingdom of Christ.
The realm of the flesh
and the realm of the spirit. It is
only within the believer
that this conflict takes place,
and then and this is precisely
the conflict that Paul describes in the passage
before us.
Look at verses 16 17.
Now if I do what I do not
want,
I agree with the law that it is
good.
So now it is no longer I who
do it, but sin
that dwells
within
me.
Do you see the conflict?
Paul
agrees with the law.
He agrees that the law is good.
He approves of it.
Again, this is not a statement that an
unbeliever can sign his name to.
The unbeliever is in rebellion against God.
He despises God's law.
He mocks it.
He denies its authority.
He does nothing to please God and Romans
8, Paul is gonna tell us that he
cannot do anything to please God in fact.
So he does nothing to please God but
instead does everything
as he himself pleases.
That's the nature of being in rebellion with
God. We all know it because we've all
done it.
We know what that's like.
So Paul, writing as a believer,
agrees that the law is good.
However, since he does what he does not
want to do,
namely
sin,
he admits his subjection
to a certain kind of tyranny.
It's no longer I who do it, but
sin that dwells within me, says Paul.
Please know that Paul is not making excuses
for himself.
He's not denying his own responsibility in this
matter.
In fact, he takes his own responsibility before
God so seriously
and he is so burdened and so disturbed
by his own sin
that in verse 24, he calls he calls
himself a wretched man.
Nevertheless,
Paul confesses that sin still exerts
power over him.
Notice that Paul's ability
to reason
is not the problem.
He knows what he is doing.
He knows it.
His heart's not the problem either. He approves
of God's law, and he disapproves
of his sinful sinful behavior. He hates it.
His affections are not the problem either.
He desires to do good,
but the very thing he doesn't wanna do,
that's what he does.
And because he knows what is right
and what is holy
and what is good, yet ends up doing
what's corrupt and sinful and wrong,
it's as if he is helpless
against sin's control.
Dear Christian, perhaps you have felt this kind
of frustration
in your own struggle against sin.
And you wish you could just press a
button
that would enable you to never again give
in to the temptation to sin.
And like Paul,
you don't understand your own actions
because you agree that the law is good,
because you end up doing the very thing
that you don't want to do.
So you become frustrated with yourself,
perhaps even to the point of questioning your
salvation.
Is that you this morning?
Well, Romans 7 ought to be an encouragement
to you
because it demonstrates that your frustration is not
evidence of your lack of faith, but rather
it is the direct result of your saving
faith.
Not that it is an excuse for your
ongoing sin,
but it ought to motivate you
to keep fighting against it.
The reason you are frustrated,
the reason you are conflicted
is because there is a war being waged
within you.
If you're still in slavery to sin
under death's dominion
and its objection to Satan,
you would feel
zero conflict over your sinful actions.
They would not bother you at all. Maybe,
again, you'd be bothered
by the idea of getting caught, but not
by the action itself.
If that is you,
then you should worry.
If your sin doesn't bother you, if you
only worry about being caught,
then you should be exceedingly concerned
for that would be a strong indicative
or strong indication
of an unregenerate
heart.
If that is you,
then you need to understand
why the Lord has brought you here this
morning.
Hasn't brought you here to make you feel
good.
Hasn't brought you here to entertain you.
He hasn't brought you here even to enjoy
fellowship.
He's brought you here to call you right
now
through his word, by his spirit to repent
of your sin and to turn to Christ
for salvation.
It is his precious gift to you.
His word says, seek the Lord while he
may be found. Now is the time of
God's favor. Today
is the day of salvation.
But I'm not good enough, you say. But
you don't have to be.
You don't have to be because Christ is
and he's done it all.
All you have to do is, in your
heart,
believe.
Believe that he is sufficient. Confess
your sins to him. Repent of them. Believe
in Christ's atoning death and resurrection.
Confess him as lord.
Entrust your life to him and you will
be saved.
Not on your own merit, but on the
merit of Jesus Christ.
Know that if you truly give yourself to
Christ, your sins will be instantly forgiven.
And the power of sin's guilt and shame
over you will immediately end,
but not your frustrations.
Because the more you learn about God's character,
the more you learn about his holiness,
the more you learn about your sinfulness,
the more frustrated
you will be
even as you experience enduring joy.
Your love for God will grow
and you will long to serve him all
the more
with your whole heart and mind
and soul and strength,
and you will be frustrated when you falter.
That is what Paul is describing for us
in Romans 7.
This is the frustrated cry of a person
who deeply loves God
and who hates sinning against him.
Look at verses 18 to 21, where Paul
essentially
repeats himself
evidencing the frustration
in his soul.
For I know that nothing good dwells in
me that is in my flesh.
For I have the desire to do what
is right,
but not the ability to carry it out.
For I do not do
the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is
what I keep on doing.
Now if I do what I do not
want,
it is no longer I who do it,
but sin that dwells
within me.
You see that Paul repeats himself
and he adds that there is no good
in him.
You may ask, how can someone
who has been redeemed by Christ,
someone who has been regenerated by the Holy
Spirit,
Someone like Paul. How can someone like that
say that he does evil and that there
is nothing good in him?
When Paul writes that nothing good dwells in
him, that is in his flesh,
What he means is that in his fleshly
constitution
or in what remains of his fallen nature
that is in his old self apart
from the spirit's intervention,
there is nothing good or virtuous.
The only vestige
of our old
sinful nature
that still remains in us
is characterized
by a voracious
appetite
towards sin.
Some Christians believe that fallen human beings
before
they accept the forgiveness that is freely offered
in Christ,
before they are regenerated,
that they have the ability, however weak,
and the desire, however faint,
to do what is good,
to choose to repent of sin and to
believe in Christ on their own.
So that through their free will, without God's
irresistible
regeneration of their hearts,
they contribute to their salvation
by offering their own ascent
freely.
Paul will explicitly correct
this well intent well intended misunderstanding in Romans
8. But here already, Paul implicitly
offers a correction to for us.
For if nothing good dwells
in the dying,
fleshly nature of the regenerate man,
which continues to grasp desperately
at at any sin, for any sin that
might feed its appetite,
how much less
should we attribute any good to the vigorously
wicked,
proudly rebellious,
fleshly nature of the unregenerate
man?
No. It must be said
that our salvation from first to last is
the work of God's grace
and that we are the recipients of the
Lord's unmerited
favor to the uttermost.
Praise be to God.
In verse 20,
Paul repeats his hapless conclusion
of verse 17. He writes, when I sin,
it is no longer I who do it,
but
sin that dwells
within me.
What we have here is an x-ray
of the human soul.
Paul's fallen,
unregenerate soul was a slave of sin.
Paul was under sin's domain
and control.
Sin was Paul's master.
But then,
on the famous road to Damascus,
Paul met the risen Christ
and Christ redeemed
Paul. He purchased him with his blood and
made Paul his.
In Christ, Paul died to sin
and became a new creation.
However,
though Paul was
instantly justified before God through the atoning work
of Jesus,
Paul's sanctification, that is his growth in holiness,
like that of all believers,
entails the gradual
but sure work of God's spirit throughout his
life
as the old nature is put to death
and the new nature
reigns in its place.
The x-ray of Romans 7 shows us that
the old
sinful nature
is a defeated despot
that remains defiant and deliberate in its death.
Though all though our all nature is mortally
wounded and agonizing,
its sinful disposition
remains a tenacious
and terrible
tyrant
to the very end.
So again,
I say to you that Romans 7 ought
to encourage you this morning
because its x-ray correctly diagnosis
the source of your inner conflict.
There is a tenacious tyrant
trying to keep its old throne in your
soul.
And because old habits die hard,
your thoughts and actions still operate under the
old regime
and its orders
from time
to time.
But be encouraged.
Your soul struggle is a sure sign that
the tyrant's rule is coming to an end.
This brings us to our much shorter second
heading
this morning, the righteous rebellion
of the spirit. Look at verses 21 to
23.
So I find it to be a law
that when I want to do right, evil
lies close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God
in my inner being, but I see my
members in my members another law, waging war
against the law of my mind and making
me captive to the law of sin
that dwells in my members.
Paul writes that evil lies
close at hand
and that his members obey a sinful law
or rule
or regime,
waging war against Paul even taking him captive
sometimes.
Unfortunately, this is standard operating procedure in a
fallen world
and we are far too familiar with this
miserable pattern. Aren't we?
But what is truly significant, what is truly
remarkable
is that Paul writes that he wants to
do what is right
and that he delights in the law of
God in his inner being.
This is evidence of the righteous rebellion of
the spirit.
The reason any person
wants to do what is right,
and the reason any person
delights
in the law of God in his inner
being is that such person has been redeemed
and belongs now to another master.
Within that person, the Holy Spirit has initiated
a rebellion of the heart,
turning that person's affections,
that person's desires,
that person's dreams, and that person's hopes on
their head.
The righteous rebellion of the spirit has taken
root and new orders from a new king
with a new mission have been issued.
It may take some time for all the
soldiers to receive the new orders
and it may take longer still for all
the soldiers to be retrained,
but the plans are already in motion.
The tide of the war has turned
and victory is inevitable.
Love for God's law is it and a
sincere hatred of sin are sure
signs
that the righteous rebellion of the spirit
is already flying its banner in a person's
heart.
This brings us to our last heading this
morning, our sure salvation in Christ.
Look at verses 24 and 25.
Wretched man that I am,
who will deliver me from this body of
death?
Thanks be to God
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then I myself serve the law of
God with my mind,
but with my flesh
I serve
the law of sin.
Paul concludes chapter 7
of this letter
by recognizing that 2 different laws are waging
war within his being,
the law of God
and the law of sin.
Paul's mind which has been renewed by the
spirit represents his new
redeemed nature.
Paul's flesh
on the other hand represents his old nature
which slowly
but surely
is dying.
For the believer, therefore, the struggle is real.
The war within is between the old sinful
nature
and the new redeemed nature.
And every time you sin,
you will feel the frustration.
You will feel like a wretched human being,
but don't give up.
Don't desist in your pursuit of godliness.
The struggle itself
is a sign of the victory that Christ
has already secured
and of the change that is already taking
root in your heart.
So when you feel for the frustration of
sin overcome
overcome you.
Overcome it
by imitating Paul.
First he cries, Wretched man that I am.
Who will deliver me from this body of
death?
But then he cries, Thanks be to God
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If you're going to successfully wage war against
sin,
you must own
it and disown it.
In other words, like Paul, you must first
own your sin.
Don't make excuses for it. Confess it.
The Apostle
John writes in 1st John 19, if we
confess our sins,
He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.
Paul cries out, Wretched man that I am.
Who will deliver
me? Repenting and grieving over sin is a
necessary step in the road to victory over
it.
You don't defeat the tyrant in your soul
because you are mightier than it. You defeat
it because you have a champion who is.
That's why you not only have to own
your sin, you also have to disown it.
Identify it but don't be identified by it.
You belong to Christ now.
Take your sin to Him
and let Him deal with it.
Pray that He will strengthen you when you
are tempted.
Pray that He will sustain you when you
are weak.
Pray that He will lift you up when
you fall down.
Pray that He will become more lovely to
you, that His word will become more precious
to you,
that His will will become will become more
important to you than anything else.
And then, set out to do it,
to live according to your new orders.
Develop the spiritual discipline
of weekly corporate worship and of daily household
worship.
Develop the spiritual discipline
of bible study with God's people
and of daily
personal devotions.
Develop the spiritual discipline of weekly corporate prayer
and of daily prayer when you wake up
and when you go to bed
before meals,
before school,
with your family,
and on your own.
Develop
the spiritual discipline
of communing with God through the sacrament
and a fellowship with believers on the Lord's
Day
and throughout the week.
The point is that you don't want to
give quarter.
Give no quarter.
Give no quarter to that tyrant who once
ruled in your heart.
He's fighting,
but he's on the run.
He still wins some battles,
but he's lost the war.
That's why Paul's second cry is, Thanks be
to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Because Christ is the sure deliverer of everyone
who calls upon his name.
On September 2, 1945, Japan signed its official
surrender
bringing the 2nd World War to an end.
However, one of Japan's soldiers named Hiro Onoda
kept fighting for another 29 years.
Onoda had been hiding in the jungle of
1 of the Philippines Islands
when the war ended
and he never received orders to stop fighting.
So he kept fighting.
He continued to fight launching guerrilla style warfare
on the population of that island
for almost 3 decades.
When a Japanese adventurer traveling on that island
encountered Onoda
in 1974,
he informed him that the war had long
been over.
Onoda told him that he would not give
up the fight
until he received orders from his commanding officer.
He finally gave up his arms in March
of 1974,
when his wartime commander traveled to the island
and ordered him to lay down his weapons.
Dear Christian, there's a war being waged within
you.
But it has actually been over for a
very long time.
Your old nature is still following orders from
an old commanding officer
that has already been defeated.
The righteous rebellion of the spirit is already
flying its flag.
And the king is marching with his army
to take sole possession of his throne in
your heart.
So wage war against wickedness
and keep fighting the good fight. Let's pray.