Struggle & Spirit

Intro

Before we look at this rather complex passage of Paul’s letter to the Romans, I want to set a little bit of context for us. Paul is talking about the law, and how it affects us. As Australians, we are tempted to think that we are larrikins who have good hearts but are not sticklers for the rule book. But watch this clip from comedian Damien Power and see what you think.

[Play Aussies are not laid back clip]

I tend to agree with Damien about this—us Aussies are not laid back at all, we’re actually real sticklers for the rules. Even this week, the reaction to the revelation of a terrible abuser in the Victorian childcare industry was dominated by calls for more laws.

But does law really do what we want it to? Does it really work to save us? Paul has already argued in his letter to the Romans that, if the law applies to us then we’re all going to die, because we have all broken the law. So now he look at how our relationship with the law is radically changed.

Let’s dive in.

Released from the Law

Romans 7:1–6 NLT

1 Now, dear brothers and sisters—you who are familiar with the law—don’t you know that the law applies only while a person is living? 2 For example, when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. 3 So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries. 4 So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. 5 When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

What is the law?

Before we go any further, it’s important to define what Paul means by “the law.” I think Paul is trying to say a lot with few words in this letter, and so he is overlaying a lot of meaning onto his words and sentences.

Nonetheless, it is pretty clear that his use of the term “law” in this section refers to the Mosaic law, since in verse 6 he talks about it as a written code, and, two verses later in v. 8 he quotes directly from the ten commandments. But the question is, is Paul only referring to the Mosaic law, or is he using the Mosaic law as a metonymy—a stand in—for law in general? In other words, is Paul using the Mosaic law as an example of how all law-oriented ethical systems affect us human beings?

I think he is. So whenever Paul mentions the law in chapter 7, it will sound like he’s talking about the Law of Moses—the law that the Jews were covenantally required to obey. But he will also be talking about all the other laws that apply to human beings. Not just written ones, like Australian legislation, but unwritten ones, like the Australian aversion to public, physical contact with strangers.

I really want you to understand this, and I realise it’s complicated, so let me give some more examples. When Paul is talking about the law, he’s not just talking about the tenth commandment (not to covet, which he quotes in verse 8), but about all attempts to please God by doing something, meeting some requirement, obeying some prescription. So Paul is also talking about our attempts to be good by being polite, by giving generously, by going to church every Sunday, by not swearing, and so on and on. Any time we attempt to win God’s favour by doing something for him, we are placing ourselves under the law. Does that make sense?

What does marriage have to do with this?

So now let’s get back to the passage.

First, Paul recognises that all of his audience, all Christians, understand the idea of the law. I think this is a safe assumption to make, not only because Christians inherit the rich history of Judaism and the Law of Moses, but because we are Christians precisely because we recognised how the law condemns us, and so we gave up our own lives in order to take up Jesus’ life. We’ll get to more about that in a moment, for now let’s follow Paul’s discussion.

Paul then makes the assertion that the law only applies to a person while they are living, and he uses marriage to illustrate that assertion.

This is a strange move on Paul’s part, because in almost all marriage legislation, whether it be the Mosaic Law or the Australian law, marriage is not binding until death. In written codes, marriage almost always allows for an escape via divorce! Why would Paul use an illustration that undermines the point he is trying to make? It’s bizzare!

Well, if you read Paul, and the rest of the New Testament, with care, what you’ll find is that Paul is talking about Jesus’ perspective on marriage, in other words how marriage was originally designed, and is ultimately intended to be. Paul’s letters consistently portray marriage as binding unto death, with divorce operating merely as a human practice that doesn’t alter God’s confirmation of the bond between a married couple. Paul portrays marriage this way because, he says, this is how Jesus portrays marriage. The natural result of this is that, until one of the married couple dies, any sexual relationship they have with someone else, no matter what cultural practiced it is wrapped up in, is recognised as adultery.

It is this understanding of marriage that Paul is using to illustrate our relationship to the law. No matter what we do while we are alive, we are married—we are bound—to the law.

Romans 7:4 NLT

4 So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.

Don’t get confused by this example of Paul’s: he’s not trying to say that the law is like a first husband and Jesus is like a second husband or something like that. Rather, he is pointing out that, just as a woman cannot marry a second husband before her first dies (as per God’s ultimate design of marriage), so we cannot “marry” Christ until we have died to the law, as Paul puts it in verse 4.

Why do we need to die to the law before we can be joined with Christ?

Romans 7:5 NLT

5 When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.

Paul explains, in verse 5, that when we are bound by the law—when we spend our effort striving to please God through some form of obedience—we are open to sin exploiting the very thing that we think makes us acceptable to God. Paul says, “sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.”

Paul explains this further, but for the moment, think of going on a diet. When you’re eating normally, you don’t obsess about chocolate, or cake. But when you go on a diet, with its rules about what you can eat and when, you suddenly find every bubble tea shop screaming your name, every gelato place begging for your attention. You can’t walk down the frozen aisle in the supermarket because ice-cream is waiting to pounce on you at the end. This is not a property of diets, this is a property of all law codes, no matter what area of our lives we trying to “be good” in.

Romans 7:6 NLT

6 … Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

However, there is another way to live, as Paul says, “now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.”

The law and sin

But before we get onto what “living in the Spirit” means, we need to deal with this troubling idea that it is these good things the law says that are causing us our problems. Are laws bad? Is the law, especially the law God gave through Moses, the source of our rebellion?

Romans 7:7–13 NLT

7 Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” 8 But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. 9 At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life, 10 and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. 11 Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me. 12 But still, the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good. 13 But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.

As Paul says, for all of us there is some time at which we become aware of God’s requirements for us—of what it means to live a good life. It might be when we have been hurt by another, and we realise the ugliness of selfishness, or it might be when we have hurt someone ourselves. It might even be when we read a story, or hear a Bible reading and are convicted. However it happens, all of us have faced that terrible realisation that God’s standards are different from our behaviour. The most powerful expression of this doesn’t just come from practical experience though, it comes from encountering God’s own expectations, such as in the ten commandments.

Now, the crazy thing is, just as in dieting, being confronted by the sure knowledge that something is wrong will just make us want to do that more. This is something that every parent is intimately familiar with. The experience of watching your child make a beeline for the forbidden territory, or steal someone else’s toy that is less impressive than their own, or scream endlessly right when quiet patience is most valuable—these moments are devestating, and all the more so because we recognise ourselves in them.

Romans 7:11 NLT

11 Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me.

As Paul says, “sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me.” It’s not the recognition of good—the law—that is the problem, it is our innate desire to rebel against the creator of good that is the problem. Here, Paul talks about sin almost as if it is a seperate entity, as if it has agency, and it’s at war with us. But, of course, sin is our own rebellion, our own desire to be in control, to be God. Because that desire is at odds with other, healthy desires, it does at times feel like it’s something independent, but tragically, it is not. It is a part of our natural selves—the nature we are born with. This is a common human problem that transcends nationality, sex, age, and culture.

The struggle with sin

Paul goes on to speak vividly of this struggle with sin. In one of his most famous passages, Paul shares how the struggle with sin is so deep it divides our mind and our bodies.

Before we look at this passage, you should know that people have interpretated it very differently over the years, depending on their systematic theology—how they understand the big picture of the Bible. This is my best attempt at understanding what God has to say to Burleigh from this part of his word. However, you should wrestle with this passage yourself—read it in various translations; read commentaries; think about it deeply.

So that you know, I used Douglas Moo’s excellent commentary, The Letter to the Romans (Second Edition) from the New International Commentary on the New Testament series. I found myself disagreeing with quite a number of his positions on things, but his discussion was very helpful and opened me up to a lot of new, deeper understanding of the passage.

Alright! I understand Paul’s account of his struggle with sin as one of a pair with the following passage on life in the spirit. Paul is giving us two extremes here, like a before and after of advertising, or renovations. This passage recalls what life was like, trapped by sin, just before we gave ourselves to Christ. It also serves as a reminder not to fall back into that law-oriented attitude of trying to please God by doing (or not doing) stuff. It’s like the decaying half a house in the left of the picture here. It needs more than a paint job, it needs a whole new heart. The next passage shows us what the Christian life should look like, and explains how we can manage to achieve that. It’s like the beautifully restored half of the house on the right, which maintains all the complexity and beauty of the original, but made new and true.

What does Paul say?

Romans 7:14–25 NLT

14 So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. 15 I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. 16 But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. 17 So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. 18 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. 19 I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. 20 But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. 21 I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. 24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.

Paul starts with a summary of the previous section: the law is not the problem, my sinful nature is. But Paul pushes further into this idea that we are at war with ourselves. Part of us agrees with God’s ideal: we want to live in obedience to God. But part of us insists on rebelling, and the more it is told what is good and right, the more it will do what is evil and wrong.

Paul presents this picture almost as if we were a good mind trapped in an evil body. But, of course, the division between flesh and spirit does not run between our brain and the rest of our bodies. Paul talks about “mind” and “heart” here, which are at war with the rest of the human self, not to claim that they are independent things from our bodies, but only to indicate that some part of our selves can want to live in communion with God, even while we continue to rebel against him.

This situation, where we can do no more than desire to obey God, and are unable to actually obey God’s law, is the situation that sin holds us trapped in until we are set free by Jesus, and Paul makes it feel so immediate by recounting it from his personal perspective. After all, he, too, felt this struggle before his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. We all experience this struggle in some way or another.

But we don’t have to stay trapped here. Jesus has made a way for us to escape this slavery.

Life in the Spirit

Romans 8:1–11 NLT

1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. 3 The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. 4 He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. 5 Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. 6 So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. 8 That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God. 9 But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.) 10 And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. 11 The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.

“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus!” What a joyous truth! We have been rescued from this vicious circle of trying to obey, but instead rebelling more. The diet trap has been opened, and we are free to live our lives in health and joy.

How?

Because God sent Jesus to die in our place, and so the law is satisfied. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Aslan dies in Edmund’s place. The witch thinks that this means that Aslan is simply out of the way, and she can move on to killing Edmund and his siblings, but there is a deeper law at work, and the witch finds herself confronted by an Aslan who is even more alive than he was before he was killed. And Edmund finds himself forgiven, and set free to willingly serve Aslan alongside his family.

Paul tells us that in the real world, God’s law, the law that condemns our rebellion, is satisfied not by our death, but by Jesus death. And not only that, but that the life-giving Spirit of Christ that was not conquered by Jesus’ death on the cross gives us the power to overcome the sin nature that dwells in our bones.

You see, says Paul, when we are controlled by our sin nature—that nature we are all born into—we can only think in a sinful way. So when we try to please God, it becomes all about getting what we deserve. When we try not to covet, we end up desiring the peace that our neighbour has. We can’t escape our own selves—we can’t care for anyone else, except as a way to make our situation better.

But when we are controlled by the Spirit, we have God in us, and we can’t do anything other than think about others. Why? Because that’s the nature of the Spirit: to serve others. Even within the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is defined by his service to the Father and the Son. We just need to look at what Paul says about the Spirit in this small section of Romans to understand how other-oriented the Spirit is. Paul says the Spirit freed us from the power of sin; he gives us life; he raised Jesus from the dead; he puts to death the deeds of our sinful nature; he joins with us that we might become children of God; he helps us in our weakness; he prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words; and he pleads for us in harmony with God’s will. When we are controlled by the Spirit, by this, Holy Spirit, we can be sure that we no longer live for ourselves, but for Christ, for God.

As Paul says, letting your sinful nature control your mind leads only to death, but letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. Life and peace are the fruit of alignment with God, the source of life, and the one who orders the entire universe. If we allow our sin nature to control us, it leads us into rebellion against God, and we reap the opposite of life, the opposite of harmony—we reap conflict and death.

Fortunately, as Christians, we are not controlled by our sinful nature. We have died to that. Instead, the Holy Spirit rules over us.

Now, this raises a very serious question: is this your experience as a Christian? Do you feel like you are completely ruled by the Spirit, or do you still struggle with sin?

I don’t know about you, but I must confess that I still struggle with sin and rebellion, and I am not always thinking of others as the Spirit does, so I am clearly not completely controlled by the Spirit.

Does this mean that I do not have the Spirit dwelling in me?

No, it does not! Remember that Paul presents two extremes, like an idealised before and after. The reality is that we tend to live somewhere in between these two extremes. When we are closer to God, because of suffering or joy, we are more like this Spirit-controlled person, but when we are comfortable or proud, we are more like the sinful nature controlled person.

How can we move from the sinful nature towards the Spirit? Do we have any input into that, or must we rely on God to send external or internal stimuli?

That is what Paul addresses in the next, and my final section for today.

Heirs with Christ

Romans 8:12–13 NLT

12 Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. 13 For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live.

The first point that Paul makes, is that we don’t owe our old nature anything. This may sound like a strange thing to say, but think about it. How often do we think that we should do something because we want to do something? Our desires, especially sinful ones, are very powerful, and we often feel we have no choice but to obey them. We say things like, “I just couldn’t resist it,” or “It just felt like the right thing to do.” But the Holy Spirit gives us the power to resist temptation, if only we let him exercise that power within us. We are no longer slaves of sin, but we are occasionally willing employees of sin, to our own shame and regret.

Is there are way to train ourselves into this perspective, this way of living? Yes, Paul says, there is. Paul explains it as “through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature.” The puritans called this the “mortification of the flesh.”

In Burleigh we call this the “Transformation Trek.” The transformation trek is the living out of certain spiritual practices, or disciplines, that help us align ourselves with the Holy Spirit and therefore with God’s will and way. We grow as we learn how to encounter God in silence and solitude, in prayer and study, in generosity and hospitality. Of course, we can take these practices and turn them into law, we can try to please God by giving to others, and that will move us back into the struggle with sin. Rather, we don’t “obey” these practices as if that will get us something, rather with “live” them because we want to be in relationship with God and walking with him.

The difference is like a child who is doing what their dad says because they’ll get a reward or avoid a punishment, versus one who is working alongside their dad because they love him and want to join him in what he’s doing.

Something I want you to notice, is that Paul says that the power of the Spirit helps us to put to death the deeds of the sinful nature, not the sinful nature itself. In the Greek, the word translated here as “sinful nature” is actually the word for “body.” Paul is not asking us to kill ourselves. We will all die, eventually, and our new bodies at the resurrection will be free of our sinful nature. But until then, we have to live with the sinful nature built into our bodies, we can’t get rid of it. But what we can get rid of are the deeds, the actions, the results of this sinful nature. That’s what the Holy Spirit gives us the power to do. That’s why action is so important in Christianity since it demonstrates the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us, overcoming the sinful nature and bringing about the fruit of Jesus’ new life in us.

And this, of course, leads directly to a wonderful result. I’ll simply read Paul’s words and let you ponder them as we finish.

Romans 8:14–17 NLT

14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

Let’s pray,

Father, we thank you for your Son, who died that we might be set free from the slavery of sin. We thank you for your Spirit who dwells in us and gives us the power to live in your way. Help us to lean into you, to love you and serve you. And so to bring your love to this dark, broken world.

In Jesus name,

Amen.