Romans Series Week 25, February 19, 2023

Introduction

Good morning

OK let's do a little bit of review here. Romans chapter six, seven and eight are all about living a sanctified life. They are about how do we live like Jesus commands us to live?

Romans chapter 6 is a defense of grace Paul makes a powerful argument that grace doesn't excuse sin but it enables our capacity to actually live differently. He powerfully illustrates how we have effectively died to the power of sin in our lives. He finishes with the marvelous verse 23 describing the life that we get by the gift of God.

Romans Chapter 7 then is all about the law. If Romans chapter is about the grace of God then Romans Chapter 7 is about the law of God. If we live under the new master that is grace then what do we do with the law? If we are now under the mastery of grace then what about the fall first half of the Bible? Of what use is the law?

Romans chapter 8 will be about our victory in the Spirit of God.

two weeks ago we started Chapter 7 and Paul illustrated our new relationship with the law using a common understanding of how marriage works. Obviously the obligations we face to our spouse our ended upon death. In the same way our obligations to God's law or I obligations to law are suspended upon death. And so by joining with Christ and his death we have died to the law and its obligations. By accepting the work of Christ and joining with him in baptism we experience freedom from obligation to the law

Now that's not to say that the law is without use. It's understandable after seeing all of Romans chapter beginning of Romans Chapter 7 that you might think that the law isn't that valuable. You might think that we should just skip from Paul's statement about the beauty and the value of the law to the beginning of chapter 8 where we talk about life in the spirit. The freedom that we have. But Paul wants us to get the crucial reality that the law is given by a holy righteous and good God and therefore the law is holy righteous and good. we know what sin is because of the law. The law shows us how to avoid the devastation that is sin. The law points out the sharks in the water and says stay away. Extraordinarily valuable albeit insufficient for equipping us to live rightly before God.

The law is good but its purpose was never to perfect. The law’s purpose was always to call us to righteousness and relationship. The law's purpose was to point out sin and say that's wrong and show us what righteousness looks like and then when we realized we can't complete righteousness in our own power the law points us to the relationship we have with our heavenly father. The law was meant to drive us to our father.

OK so now what are we doing this week? This week we are going to cover the passage that everyone talks about when they think of Romans Chapter 7 :) in this passage we will see the conflict that Paul experiences with the law.

Is Paul talking about believers in Romans 7?

Now there are some schools of thought, there are some people who read the Bible and say what Paul is talking about in this passage cannot be the experience of the believer. They say it cannot be true that Paul talks about the freedom we have from sin in Romans chapters 6 and the beginning of seven and then go right on to talk about a terrible battle with sin. so some people try to excuse this passage and its contradictions by saying Paul is describing the life of someone who is not yet a believer.

I would say a couple things with regards to that argument. First of all Paul spends quite a bit of time in other passages of scripture commanding believers to abstain from sin. If you read any of the rest of the letters in the New Testament you will see Paul testing ink telling believers to stop sinning. If in fact Paul intended us to understand that salvation means complete freedom from sin wouldn't have spent so much time telling Christians to stop sinning.

What's more we need to remember that for Paul and his original readers they didn't face the artificial division of chapters and verses that we have today. Paul's commentary on the conflict that he has with sin in Chapter 7 it's followed directly by what he says in Romans chapter 8 about the victory that we enjoy.

And in fact I would argue that the picture that we need to have in our minds is not what we're tempted to hold all the time. Here's what I mean:

The overlap in the experience of the believer

Often we think about the Christian experience as just a straight line. We think about the time before we became a believer and then a moment when we accept Christ as our savior and joined with him in his death to sin and the power of sin on the cross through baptism. And then after that moment we feel like we should be living a life by the spirit in freedom from sin. Now of course for the vast majority of Christians this idea of faith as just a straight line journey is only a theoretical concept. It's something we feel like we should come to a conclusion we feel like we should have when we read Romans chapters 7 and eight. But maybe it's a conclusion we feel like we should have when we only read parts of Romans chapters 6-7 and eight.

The reality is the Christian experience described by the apostle Paul is a little different than a straight line. He talks about life before Christ where we are ruled by our flesh and sin. He talks about a moment where we joined with Christ in what he has done for us and he talks about living by the power of the spirit free from the mastery of sin. He talks about that but the way he describes it is not a straight line with a event that happens in the middle he talks about it as two lines which overlap for a period that. May be your whole life. Paul doesn't talk about an endpoint to this struggle he defines. He simply talks about these two realities and he describes them in this passage as coexisting. We have our flesh and we still have the power of the spirit we can choose to live by.

So when we think about this passage and when we read it today we should understand it I believe in the simplest possible terms. Paul is talking about his experience of his Christian walk and the intersection he lives in between his sin nature and his spiritual nature a slave to the power of sin that is his signature free from the power of sin that is his spiritual nature.

OK that's a quick 1200 word introduction to this passage:) let's dive in.

The conflict that believers have with the law.

Romans 7:14–17 (ESV)

14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.

17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

OK Paul starts off by pointing out the value that the law has and the reality of his fleshly current experience. But the most significant thing he does is to help us to see the same truth in three different ways. You know how a prism works? You shine a light through a prism and a rainbow comes out on the other side. It's not that the prism changes or colors the light but instead it splits the light into its component parts. In the same way in this passage Paul's going to split the truth about our relationship with sin into three component parts.

Romans 7:17 ESV

17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Romans 7:20 ESV

20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Romans 7:23 ESV

23 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.

It is not Paul who is doing these actions it is sin living in him. It is not the new and free man that Paul is and we are it is sin living in him and in us.

Remember what Paul said here:

Galatians 5:17 ESV

17 For 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.

I like how one commentator put it the believer may not always be practically experiencing the positional freedom they have but that doesn't mean we have no freedom. You may have the new role of being a parent but we don't always experience the blessings or obligations of parenthood.

In essence in order to understand and grasp what Paul is saying here we have to be able to hold In tension apparently conflicting passages of scripture. Like I had mentioned earlier we must be comfortable with an idea of an overlap in our experiences.

Think about when Paul wrote his letter to the church in galatia. He never accused them of not being Christians all the while challenging them to stop sinning.

That's the reason he could say later in verse 22 that he delights in God's law... no unbeliever delights in God's law.

As a believer we look forward to a new age to come and we are not yet in it.

I love how one commentator puts it.

Romans C. The Believer’s Conflict with Law (7:14–23)

Sanctification is a gradual process that repeatedly takes the believer through this recurring sequence of failure through dependency upon self to triumph through the indwelling Spirit

last night we had dinner at my brother in law's house in Carmel. And sitting there with the grandparents and his in laws we were discussing the difficulties of raising children. Ashes brother Keith readily agrees to his parents statement that he was the most difficult child to raise. But then he spoke up at dinner and he said you know with the greatest successes come the greatest struggles I would argue that I'm your greatest success as a child aren't I. Keith doesn't lock for confidence :) and to be honest he is a great guy.

But I used Keith to remind us that the process of growing in sanctification or growing to be like God is a gradual process of us reminding ourselves that we cannot do it in our own power and we need to depend on the spirit of God. It's a process of struggle.

Paul continues now to talk about the struggle with his sin nature.

Romans 7:18–20 ESV

18 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. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Paul is saying here simply that his capacity to sin still lives in him. A sin nature still has power. Now it's not to say that Paul did nothing good, he suffered greatly for his faith. He went through great lengths to do good in service for God. He gave his life in service of the gospel. And yet he recognized inside him was still a dangerous sin nature.

Romans 7:21–23 ESV

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 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.

It's so easy to empathize with Paul here! You want to do good and yet your sin nature is right there ready to trip you up. You want to be a present and loving spouse and yet selfishly it's sort of tempting to just look out for yourself. You want to show up and be a witness for your faith at work and yet you want to protect your own interests and you're tempted to do something that wouldn't represent your faith well. You have every desire to honor God with what you read and watch and yet it's just a little more exciting to watch something that might not honor God.

We live with a war inside of us. Where is the hope then?

Deliverance

Romans 7:24–25 ESV

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 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.

Think about it: The law did it’s work …at least in Paul...of

Reviving the soul

Psalm 19:7 ESV

7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;

Being a guardian teaching Paul

Galatians 3:24 ESV

24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

and leading Paul to the end goal of righteousness

Romans 7:6 ESV

6 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.

But at this moment Paul recognizes the wretchedness of his state and the the pain of his conflict with sin and he realizes the only solution and the only deliverance in this is Jesus. He recognizes that although he lives with a conflict the ultimate victory is there because of Jesus.

As Paul says in the very next chapter

Romans 8:2 ESV

2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Conclusion

For reasons we do not get answers to God has allowed us to live in this time of overlap. For every person who has trusted Christ Jesus as their savior they have died to sin and live for righteousness by the power of God's spirit. Each and everyone of you who have trusted Jesus as your savior to the extent you depend on the spirit of God and they're for righteousness you are free and capable to be the man or woman God has called you to be. We have died to sin!

And yet simultaneously we also experienced the reality of our sin nature inside of us. We have a dreadful conflict because sin in us in our plush still pulls and calls us to act on his desires. So while we have died to sin and it has no say in demanding what we do that still has tremendous pull to call us to do what it wants us to do.

Have freedom because of our relationship with Jesus Christ. And so as you go out from here run to your relationship with Jesus. Take time every day to build that relationship. In the same way you would invest in other relationships that are important to you invest in this most important relationship. God's laws God's commands gods dos and do nots are all given to point out our sin and point us to him. But to be more clear they are to point us to relationship with him.

As Christians we should expect to engage in this battle with sin that Paul talks about in Romans chapter seven. And if we experience this war within us we should not question our salvation but thank God that he's given us the tools to fight back. We should not condemn ourselves because of our failures but know that we've got a loving father who always wants us to come back to him.

So go out from here engage in the good fight, use the tools for victory that God has given you and know that he's already won the battle.