As I was preparing to write my blog today, I noticed that this is my 200th post. I started this blog in June of 2007 and even though I have taken long seasons off from writing anything, my hope is that I have used it as a means to communicate what’s going on with my family, or the latest on our church plant or network, or anything else that I could think of to talk about. My hope is that it has been a blessing to you “few” readers (haha) and that I will continue to put things on here that encourage you, make you laugh, teach you, and ultimately bring glory to God.
Wednesdays are my sermon recap days. This past Sunday I spoke on the oft misinterpreted passage, Romans 7:14-25
“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. 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. 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. 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.”
My sermon title was “The Great Dilemma” because of the struggle of continuous sin that still exists within the lives of every believer. Why does sin still seemingly have a foothold on our lives, when we are no longer enslaved by it. If our identity is in Christ, and our old sinful self has been crucified with Christ, why is sin still present? This issue has led many to lose sight of the doctrine of eternal security. People tend to forget that Jesus said in John 10:28 that “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Is 51:5 says that “salvation is the Lord’s”. It’s safe to say that we can’t lose something that we never were responsible for obtaining in the first place. But why do our lives take on this sort of spiritual schizophrenia? Why do our lives look really holy some days and really creepy others?
Verses 14-25 explain why sin is still present. In verse 14, Paul basically says “The law is spiritual, but I am not, because I am human, and I sin sometimes.” The usage of prepositions helps us understand v14. We are not in the flesh as we will see in chapter 8 (we are in the Spirit), rather we are of the flesh. This means that our essence is controlled by God now that we are His (no longer are we chained to sin, the law, and death), but our flesh (i.e. our bodies) – the unregenerate part of us, still holds the capacity to screw up. I likened it to a wild animal who is brought out of the wild to be trained and domesticated. But sometimes we see these wild animals snapping on their trainers. They are no longer in the wild, but they still are of the wild, which makes them susceptible to do things like mauling their trainers and subsequently making their trainers (if the footage was caught on tape) candidates for television shows. Paul then spells out the frustration that exists within the life of a believer who finds himself continuing to sin in v15-16. And v17 is the explanation of the previous verses. Even though it might seem like Paul is blame shifting his sin (“So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin dwells within me”), we need not be confused because the first 7 chapters are full of indicators that man is responsible for his own sin. It’s just that we need to recognize that sin is an entity, it’s powerful. Paul personifies it all throughout Romans. It uses the law and here we see that it uses our flesh to fulfill its evil desires. Once we understand that, we can understand why Paul says in v23 that there is a war being waged in our flesh. Sin is on a full attack and won’t ever stop until these bodies are in the grave one day.
And even though we might even have the desire to not sin (as Paul makes known in v18), we do not have the ability in and of ourselves to carry out those desires. Even Jesus said “the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” We do not do the good we want like v19 states, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. A sober reminder that not only do we NOT have the power to save ourselves, but we don’t even have the power to make ourselves better. This very point is why chapter 8 is so important. Because at this point, I am pretty discouraged. For Paul though, it leads him to repentance. That’s what our sinful condition should constantly lead us to…a truly repentant heart. The climax of that in this passage is v25 where Paul cries out “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He answers this with the gospel in v25 “Thanks be to Jesus Christ our Lord (because it takes submission)!” The answer for our sin is God’s Son. We are in a war against sin but Jesus has delivered us from it and he has given us the power (as we’re going to look at in chap 8 beginning this Sunday) to daily gain victory over it.
If you want to watch the sermon where I clarify a lot of what I said above, you can do so right here. Thanks for watching and thanks for reading my blog!
Romans: The Great Dilemma from Aletheia Tampa on Vimeo.
