Romans 7

New Life is found at the intersection of everything we can’t complete ourselves with everything that Christ has already made complete.

Chapter 7 seems to end a cycle of arguments that are made in the beginning chapters of Romans. That we cannot sustain our own salvation and need something outside of ourselves to help us.

We have seen Paul look at different characteristics of humanity and at each one shown us that they aren’t stable enough to do what we would have hoped they would do.

The passage this morning does the same thing. Paul is comparing and contrasting the inner self in order to show that even in our hemming and hawing through our inner lives, we haven’t been able to settle that internal debate.

This morning we want to settle that great internal debate.

The internal life is fraught with trying to understand, settle and win to find balance.

The theme of the first part of the book of Romans is that what we have been able to produce ourselves is always less than we hope so we are left with more desire than we have actual.

This is what it feels like to aim at a target and miss it entirely

Paul uses strong language to define that miss. He tells us we are waging war against ourselves.

Have you ever felt that before?

Like you have wanted something to go one way

But it went another?

and that difference caused an internal war?

This morning we see an inability to get all the pieces together. To be able to make sense of all the moving parts in our lives.

When we can’t make sense, we can sometimes find temporary reprieve

but we need more than temporary reprieve.

We are more valued than something short term.

We are loved way past short term relief.

We are called to something much more than internal war.

Have you ever been in a situation that escalated quickly?

Like everything was normal until it immediately was not?

We had rented a beach house about a block from the pacific ocean on the West coast. Our family was quite a bit younger and one day we wanted to take a stroll on the beach.

The beach in the Northwest is usually not that warm. In fact you would often go to the beach to cool off on hot summer days. But it was a beautiful day and we walked down the road to the beach and got onto the sand.

It was clear and sunny and warm but a bit windy. The waves were a few feet high and that was normal. OTher than a few people we had the beach to ourselves.

We walked for awhile and came upon a few jeeps on the beach with trailers on them. No one was around. We looked out into the water, way into the water and saw about 6 or 7 rafts in the water. They were soldiers doing some kind of drill. They were a good half mile out, seeming to work to row into shore.

Everything was quiet as we watched this group of soldiers working their way into shore

Now I wish I would have taken video of this because it still plays like a movie in my mind. Out of the blue, a helicopter comes out of the horizon and zooms over our head, close enough that we can see the pilot.

We hear sirens and a firetruck and some police cars come driving through the sand right to where we were. The helicopter was hovering overhead and all these rescue trucks started parking near us.

We went from quiet to a war zone in 30 seconds. Everything in that calm morning changed within a moment.

That is the back and forth of the inner self. What is peace in one moment becomes war in another.

New Life is found at the intersection of everything we can’t complete ourselves with everything that Christ has already made complete.

How do we get there? First we have to realize

Sin and evil produces less than we hoped

This sounds like an obvious statement

But the reality is we use sin and evil all the time as tools to get us to where we would hope to get us. So we have to look at the way Paul uses sin and evil to get us to the need for Christ.

how do we begin to understand that these things don’t get us to where we want us to be

First why all this talk about evil and sin?

IT is a reality that we live in. We all talk about it we just use different words

And we may not like some of this discussion about sin but I promise it’s everywhere. The goal here is not judgement of sin but rather forgiveness of it. But we need to point it out first so we know what the need is.

I imagine you already sense or know the need. Like Paul there is an ongoing battle for what is good and right in your own mind.

There is evil inside us

There is desire for good inside us.

The difference between what the church does and the world is that we want to address sin as a way toward a solution

But the world either wants to ignore it or embrace it entirely.

Those aren’t valid solutions to big problems.

Christianity provide the most wholesale solution to the problem of sin.

Because we feel it, we know it, we experience it.

We go back and forth and back and forth in our minds between what we want and what we do.

We sit in constant tension.

This cross stitch from a nine year old in 1886 seems to communicate that tension well.

We do the work, it looks pretty and nice. but the intrusive thoughts come in and we declare our hatred of it.

We use sin and evil to try and accomplish what we hope for but it acts more like an interruption or an intrusion.

We can look at sin as a long interruption for what we have hoped for. It doesn’t move us along, it keeps us placated and stationary.

Desire produces less than we hoped

Romans 7:14–17 ESV

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.

As we look at this passage I want to show you the video equivalent to Romans 7.

Think about this video as what is happening in your brain at all times.

Play video, dad in interview.

This is Romans 7 but it’s also our brains at all times. This back and forth comes from an attempt to find grounding, to find wholeness, to find a sense of peace and completeness.

Both of these are attempts to move forward, but what if instead of carving our own path, we followed One that led us into the future

Paul is trying to find us a way forward, a way through. The end of this chapter moves us into new territory, where the focus will be on the complete love of God in our lives.

But we are still paddling back and forth between what we want to do and what we don’t do.

I do find this passage refreshingly honest.

I want to eat well today

But there are cookies in the pantry.

And it devolves from there.

Paul is pointing to sin and pointing to desire to remind us that

a)they don’t take us as far as we need

and b) that they always produce less than we would have hoped.

The last 6 chapters Paul has been hammering this reality in that Christ Himself and what He brings is more complete than anything we can do on our own.

We have the desire to do good but not the ability to carry it out

Romans 7:18–19 ESV

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.

The desire is there.

And we do good things.

In fact new life is like starting over every time. It takes our participation, not to get us to new life but our participation to walk in new life.

We have to do the work to walk in the new life we are given

But we don’t make the new life.

Our desires don’t create new life.

Our lives are too complex, our sin condition is too strong, to put everything back to where it needs to be. We need some outside help.

New life is not found in putting the pieces together, it is found in the given life of Christ

Romans 7:24–25 ESV

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 makes another strong contrast.

There is a body of death

And there is life through Christ

It is in the understanding that while we may not be beholden to sin in the freedom that Christ brings we still need someone to bring new life. God showed up, not when things were great, but when things were at their worst, in order to bring life.

That is great news.

If you are here and not dead, then you have incredible opportunity to see Christ bring new life.

No matter where you have been, what you have done, Christ can bring new life.

Who can save us from the body of death?

Maybe that body of death has been in your past

Or your actions

or your relationships

maybe your relationship with God is like a body of death.

We keep going back to these impossible situations because this is exactly where God begins His work.

He dealt with the impossible situation of resurrection.

And we see that Paul is showing us that the character of Christ can accomplish what we can’t on our own

Let’s close with this invitation from Jesus. Next week we will look at the love of God in Christ and what that means, but here is the invitation. As we leave whatever body of death we need to leave, whatever connections we haven’t been able to make, we, in that very moment find the invitation of Jesus

Matthew 11:28–30 ESV

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

This is the unending invitation from Jesus.

To meet Him in new life.