The Unwelcome Guest

Series Context

The differences that exist between people seems to be a point of emphasis in our culture to the degree that our consideration of who we may consider to be our enemy is a more prominent one than we may even realize. There are enemies that seek our harm or even demise. There are political enemies. There are cultural enemies and sadly there are personal enemies, be it at work or sadly, even within our families. And how we think of our enemies, on what basis we think others to be enemies, how we are to treat enemies and contend with enemies are all important considerations. But what I want us to know this weekend, and what Steve and I intend to emphasize with all of us is that we have a common enemy who poses a much grater threat than any other enemy we may suppose we possess. This enemy is formidable, cannot be underestimated or ignored. All of us contend with this enemy everyday, and this enemy goes with us everywhere. For now, we can’t rid ourselves of this enemy completely, but we can understand it and fight against it with effectiveness.

As you may have figured out, the enemy to which I refer is sin. More specifically, the power of sin, that is to say, sin is our enemy, but we all have that part of us who wants to welcome sin into our experience. The Bible often refers to that part of as our flesh, which is in opposition to the Spirit of God. You see, if you have professed Jesus as Lord and Savior, that is, if your eyes have been opened to the fact that your sin is offensive to God and is the destructive force in you life that not only wreaks havoc in your life, but even more importantly, is the obstacle between you and God, and you also understand that the only hope you have that your sin will no longer preserve the separation that it creates between you and God is the redemptive work of Christ.

Men, we must see our sin, the power of sin as the enemy within. The Apostle Paul captures the reality we all face everyday:

Galatians 5:16–18 (ESV)

...the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do....

This is a battle in which you and I must engage everyday. But in order for us to fight this battle with effectiveness, we need to understand our enemy. Four, 45 minute messages will not exhaust the depth of this consideration, but our prayer is that by taking the time to consider our internal enemy and the way that exists with it, you will be better equipped to fight the battle.

Context

We will be in Romans 7 for the first message, and because we are dropping in the middle of a chapter in the middle of a book, we want to take several minutes to get clear on the context.

Many of us know that the word gospel means good news. It’s important we remember that this gospel of Jesus Christ is the best news in the world. It’s the best news that ever was and the best news that ever will be. I say, it’s important for us to remember this because people’s reaction to hearing this good news fails to reflect that what they are hearing is good. Hearing the gospel if often met with mockery or rejection or violence or, perhaps worst of all, indifference. We can’t let that kind of reaction to the gospel cloud our understanding of the good news.

One of the many benefits of studying the epistle to the Romans is seeing the glory of the gospel in it. Romans 1-5 makes clear that God justifies the ungodly by grace alone, through faith alone, apart from works, on the basis of Christ’s work alone, not ours, for the glory of God alone:

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This is wonderful, life-giving, hope-instilling news. And this news, no matter how many times we have heard and or how familiar we may presume to be with it, should affect us. This news should jar us, shake us to our cores.

Paul needed to deal with distortion and rejection of the gospel in Romans. Paul said in

Romans 5:20–21 ESV

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Apparently there were some who were accusing Paul of making grace into a license to sin and the law into something sinful. So Paul, in Romans 6, clarifies his position on the grace of God, and his position on the Law in Romans 7. So Paul asks the rhetorical question

Romans 7:7 (ESV)

What then shall we say? That the law is sin?

To which he answers:

By no means!

But there was still confusion because people didn’t understand what Paul was getting at when he said

Romans 7:9–10 ESV

I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

It appeared to some that Paul was saying that the commandment of God killed him. That he was suggesting that the Law was a murderer.

There was confusion about the Gospel. People were not responding appropriately to the gospel. That it is good news was getting lost in people’s confusion, but underneath all this confusion is the enemy. The battle we all have within.

Tonight, we will consider what the power of indwelling sin is. This is our first step to equipping ourselves for this battle. We need to understand our enemy. We need to understand our sin and the power it possess so that we can effectively and victoriously fight the battle.

So let’s continue in Rom. 7:

Romans 7:13 ESV

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Introduction

The report, now going viral, starts innocently enough: A 31-year-old woman named Alex Miller was desperate for a roommate to help her afford her house in a wealthy Philadelphia neighborhood. An older man named Jed Creek comes over to see the place, they hit it off, and Creek agrees to move in on the spot.

Of course, things quickly go south. Because as it turns out, Creek is not actually Jed Creek, but Jamison Bachman, a serial squatter who, according to the New York Mag report, duped a dozen tenants into letting him live with them, only to force them out of their homes on arcane legal technicalities.

The accounts from Bachman's previous victims are harrowing. According to New York, Bachman would steal belongings from his victims, fill their toilets with cat litter, and knock down doors, all the while keeping himself in the clear legally. It wasn't about the free rent, New York Mag reported — it seemed Bachman took pleasure in watching his victims suffer through his misbehavior and lose the will to fight for their homes. "Nothing they did could satisfy or appease him, because the objective was not material gain but, seemingly, the sadistic pleasure of watching them squirm as he displaced them," the report says.

Gentlemen, we have a serial squatter in us. It seeks to tear us down, and its aim is to ultimately destroy us. We need to be careful how far we go with this analogy, because unlike Mr. Bachman, our sin is not distinct from us. We bear responsibility for the consequences of our sin, but we are unable to evict it from us now. We can however treat it as an unwelcome guest, but to do that we need to see our sin as that. An unwelcome guest for which we show no hospitality.

FCF: You see our problem is that we often treat our sin as a welcomed guest.

But that’s not what our sin is. It is not a welcomed guest. To treat our sin this way to to treat a thief who broke into our home in the middle of the night as if he was the guest of honor at a surprise birthday party.

Main Idea: Our sin must be understood as an unwelcome guest.

If someone showed up to our homes in the middle of the night to break in, we would respond by doing whatever we could to keep him out. We would call the cops, barricade the doors, get our guns out if we have them. This must be our posture towards our sin.

My sense is though, we often do not have this posture towards our sin. It seems to me that our posture is much more casual. So what I want to do in the time we have left is attempt to get a clear picture of what the power of our sin is, so that we can better relate to.... that is to say, so we can clearly see the threat that it is to our lives.

AQ: What makes the power of our sin such a threat? OR What makes the power of our sin an unwelcome guest?

The power of our sin is a murderer

Paul makes this point clear enough within the first sentence and a quarter: Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? In other words, did the law kill me? Paul quickly answers that question. By no means! No way!. Then what does the killing? It was sin.

The question here in verse 13 is similar to the one in v. 7:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means!

The difference between the questions however is that in v. 7, Paul addresses the notion that the law could be an evil thing (sinful), and the way he repudiated that idea might have left some to conclude he was suggesting that the commandment (the law) brought death to him. So he comes to v. 13, and makes it clear that sin is the villain. It is our sin. The power of our sin wields the ability to kill us.

But I want to take a few moments to consider spiritual death. To say that sin can commit spiritual murder, or bring about spiritual death, may be a familiar enough concept to us, but what is that? What does that mean?

To get at this, I want us to go back up to the beginning of this chapter. Look at

Romans 7:1 ESV

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?

So here, Paul addresses people familiar with the law. It’s not entirely clear which law Paul is referring, but regardless his point is that the law is only binding on those who are alive.

Then in verses 2-3, Paul uses marriage to illustrate his point. A married woman, Paul says, is bound to be married to her husband only as long as he lives. If he dies, she is not bound to him anymore. If she however, lives with another man while her husband is alive, she becomes guilty of breaking the marriage law and commits adultery. The point here is that the law is only binding on those who are alive.

But look at what verses 4-6 say:

Romans 7:4–6 ESV

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

So much can be said here, but let me suggest these observations:

Before we are saved through placing their faith in Christ and His redemptive work, we are bound to what the law of God reveals which is our sin. And the product of this slavery is the death. An inability to do anything or be anything other than purveyors of works that display a rejection of God.

So, just like the law is no longer binding on a person who dies, the one who is resurrected from spiritual death through the redemptive work of Christ is no longer bound to the law.

And now if we have been redeemed by Christ, we are no longer purveyors of works that display a rejection of God, we are able and, in fact, delight to live obediently to God.

We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code (v. 6)

So when we get to verse 13, and Paul makes it clear that it is our sin and not the law that bring death, I suggest that for the unbelievers, like say the pagans of the Roman Empire during the day Paul wrote this letter, they are bound to the law and only able to produce works that display their inability to do anything that pleases God. For the Christian, we have been set free from the bondage of our sin, but when we sin we live as if we are still bound. As if the law if binding. As if we are alive to the law and therefore bound to it instead alive to Christ and therefore free from the law’s oversight. But what our sin does is it seeks to murder our fellowship with God and our freedom in God through Christ. It cannot ultimately accomplish this, but it can and does wreak havock in our lives, and we end up living as those who are bound when in fact, our shackles have been removed.

So the first reason we must regard our sin as an unwelcome guest is because our sin is a murderer.

Our sin is a deceiver

There was a reason the people were confused about what Paul was saying. Again, some thought Paul was saying that the law brought death. That the law was the problem. I suppose we can understand why some confusion existed when we consider statements like v. 10:

Romans 7:10 ESV

The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

But, as Paul makes clear in our text (v. 13), it was sin producing death not the commandment.

But notice what Paul says: it was sin producing death in me through what is good. What is good is a reference to the law. In other words, our sin does its work of murder by using the law as its weapon. Sin makes use of what is good to bring about what is evil.

But the deception only goes so far. The fact that sin attempts to use the law for its evil purposes exposes God’s divine purpose. I want us to see the 2 purpose statements in v. 13:

in order that sin might be shown to be sin. In order that sin might be recognized as sin. This purpose really sums up the relationship the law has with sin. Yes, sin’s aim is to perpetrate spiritual death through what is good. But what Paul is pointing out is that when understand the deceptive ways of our sin, we are able to recognize sin for what it is. Without the law we would not recognize sin in its deepest evil; we would not see it as rebellion against God.

The 2nd purpose statement at the end of v. 13: and through the commandment (sin) might become sinful beyond measure or utterly sinful. Not only does sin’s use of the law to work death in the sinner show sin to be evil, but it shows sin to be sinful beyond measure. Sin, in other words does not just appear to be evil, but it is shown to be evil.

The deception only goes so far. Let’s not kid ourselves, the deception is effective. Using what is good, the law, to perpetrate death is calculated, it is shrewd, it is stealth-like.... it’s deceptive. The fact is, Paul made the purpose of the law clear earlier in this epistle:

Romans 3:20 ESV

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Our knowledge of sin, that is our ability to recognize sin as sin, and to be able to perceive the depths of sins sinfulness (its evil) is made possible by the law.

So brothers this is the work against which we must wage war. An effort to deceive is at work in us. Don’t think that our sin is somehow a distinct force from us for which we bear no responsibility. The law uncovers the evil within us. There is a battle in play. Don’t be deceived. Sin is sin and it is evil beyond measure. When we consider the deceptive tactics of our sin, it’s evil becomes clear.

So we must understand our sin, we must treat our sin as an unwelcome guest. In other words, we cannot approach our sin casually. It’s aim is to commit murder and to deceive, but we also need to understand that our sin is a

Our sin is a corrupter

I won’t spend too much time on this point, since much of this idea has already been referenced. As we observed, sin uses what is good, that is it uses the law to do its work.

We are not suggesting that in doing so, that it somehow corrupts the law. We agree with Paul that the law is good despite sin’s tactics. But the corruption is seen in our understanding of the law (that it is what brings death and not sin).

Remember, Paul is responding to certain objections to his teaching. Some were under the impression that Paul was suggesting that the la is responsible for both sin and death and it should therefore be repudiated.

Before that objection, another was shall we sin that grace may increase? The first is questions whether the grace of God encourages sin, the second is whether the law is the origin of sin and death. So Paul clarifies both the grace of God and the law of God. But this is what sin does. It corrupts our understanding of even what is good.

This, at least in part, explains Paul’s strong reaction:

Are you saying Paul that the grace of God should be understood as an encouragement to sin? certainly not!

Are you saying Paul that the law of God is the source of sin and death? By no means!

Conclusion

So brothers, in suggesting to you that our sin the reasons why we must not be hospitable to our indwelling sin because it seeks to perpetrate the murder of our fellowship with God, it seeks to deceive us into thinking that our sin is not really sin, or that our sinful is anything less than offensive to God and destructive to our souls and it seeks to corrupt our understanding of that which is good and what is evil, I ask you to consider how hospitable you are to your sin.

We have a Jamison Bachman as part of us until Jesus returns. Be see him.... see your sin for what it is: a murder, a deceiver, a corrupter.