Who Will Rescue Me from this Body of Death?
By Stephen H. Becker, M.Div., Ph.D(c)
Romans 8:14-25
Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran—Yuba City
July 6, 2008
Have you ever thought to yourself – "something is wrong with me...what should I do?" Maybe you’ve fallen on a wet slippery floor, like I did in my kitchen about a month ago, and after a few days, your ankle is still swollen and really hurts. Something is wrong. You really don’t want to go to the doctor, but you might have to. Maybe you get a headache—maybe even a migraine—and after a day or two it still hasn’t gone away and it seems like it won’t go away. Or maybe a series of headaches that plague you. After awhile, you will probably have to go the doctor. He may even take x-rays of your head to see if there is an underlying cause to your headache. In both of these scenarios, you think to yourself, there’s something wrong with my ankle, or there’s something wrong with me that I keep getting these really bad headaches. The pains are signs of a physical ailment. Well, have you ever thought to yourself – “there’s something wrong with my soul?” For example – I know that God wants me to be really involved in the Word, studying my Scripture on a regular basis. That means God wants me to be in church on a regular basis. He wants me to do embrace the Great Commission he has given me, to do missionary work for Him, spreading the Good News of Jesus to all. I know what God wants me to do, and I want to do it. But I don’t. It just seems like I can’t. So, what is my problem? There must be something wrong with my soul. I know that God wants me to pray. And not just pray for fifteen seconds a day. God wants me to be a man of prayer, like Jesus was…to actually spend time away from work, away from family, away from everything, and really pray, working toward the goal of being in constant prayer. That’s what God wants me to do. But I don’t. So, what is my problem? There must be something wrong with my soul.
I know that God wants me to love other people. I’m supposed to forgive other people, and be patient with other people, and be generous toward other people and make sacrifices for other people. As a minister, I’m supposed to be the nicest guy on the street, all the time. But I’m not that way. Sometimes I force myself, but really, it seems easier to be selfish, to hold grudges, to not make sacrifices. I don’t do what God wants me to do. What is my problem? What is wrong with my soul?
Today, we’re going to visit a spiritual doctor, the Apostle Paul. Through his writings in our Epistle reading today in Romans, he is going to help us better understand what is wrong with our souls - what the symptoms are, and—more importantly—what the cure is. Let’s open pray…
Spiritually, there are two basic symptoms that all of us struggle with. Symptom number one, is that we don’t do what we want. Verse 15, says “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do.” Same thing in verse 18: “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” Deep down inside, there are certain things we want to do. We want to hear God’s Word and pray and show kindness toward others. We have that desire, but we cannot carry it out.
Imagine if you were driving your car, and suddenly your foot fell asleep. No matter how hard you try, you can’t use your foot to push on the gas or the brake. You want to stop, but you can’t. You’re heading toward that red light, and you try to push on the brake, but your foot is asleep - it’s not working. You see the danger to your life dead ahead and you desperately want to stop the car, but you can’t do it. Friends, that’s how it is for us spiritually – instead of there being something wrong with our ankle or our bodies, there’s something wrong with our souls – we want to do good, but we can’t. We are spiritually handicapped – our spiritual arms and legs aren’t working the way we would like them to work. That’s symptom number one.
And then there’s symptom number two – we do the bad things that we don’t want to do. Look at the rest of verse 15: the apostle says, “What I hate, I do.” Paul hated to sin, but that’s what he did. Verse 19: “For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.” I keep doing evil, even though I don’t want to. Sounds kinda like a drug addict, doesn’t it? The drug addict knows that drugs are bad. He knows that drugs are evil, that they are insanely expensive and complete waste. He knows that the drugs are the reason he can’t keep a job. Drugs are the reason he’s broke, the reason his family has left him. He knows that drugs are evil, but he keeps doing them – he’s addicted; he can’t stop. Friends, this is symptom number two – you and I are addicted to sinning, and we can’t stop. We know that certain things are wrong. We know that it’s evil to neglect the Word of God in our personal lives. We know it’s evil to worry about money all the time. We know that it’s evil to do even the slightest thing wrong. And yet, we do those things, don’t we? The evil we don’t want to do, this we keep on doing.
Like pain is the symptom that tells us that there is something physically wrong with our bodies, sin and guilt are the symptoms that tells us that something is wrong with our souls. First, we don’t do the good things we want. And second, we do the bad things that we don’t want to do. Something is wrong with our souls. Why do we act this way? So let’s today, through the help of the Apostle Paul, by taking a spiritual x-ray. And the great physician Himself—God—will look at the x-ray for a diagnosis; And to your shock, God will find something on your x-ray – there is something alive inside of you, causing you trouble:
The diagnosis from the x-ray can be found in verses 17 and 18: “It is sin living in me.” “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.” Verse 21: “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” When God takes an x-ray of our souls, He sees that there’s something living inside of us that’s causing us problems. Sin is living inside us, otherwise known as the sinful nature. Every time you want to do something good, the sinful nature that lives inside of you gets in the way.
Remember that that old cartoon that everyone is familiar with, where the good angel is sitting on your one shoulder, and the evil angel is sitting on your other shoulder, and they compete with each other to get you to do certain things? The cartoon is humorous, but the reality of sin of giving into sin isn’t funny; in fact, it’s deadly serious. There actually is a live creature living inside of you, like a parasite, and it shows up on your spiritual x-ray; it’s called your sinful nature, and it has damaged your soul. It causes you symptoms – you fail to do the good things you want, and you keep doing the bad things you hate. And to further frustrate you, you can see that you are not doing the things you want to and you are doing the things you don’t want to…and you can’t stop it.
In sports we talk about a team having either a good year or a bad year…well, your soul is having a bad year too. The good side of you loses way more than it wins. Your spiritual record is not good. The evil side of you is winning way too much. Your sinful nature is getting the best of you. So what is the prognosis? Not our fault, so we’re off the hook, right? No! Wrong. That would be wishful thinking. No friends, verse 23 tells us that “another law is at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.” See, spiritually, you are a prisoner of war. There’s a war going on inside of us – our sinful nature is winning, and has taken us prisoner – making us like a POW in your own body. And the outlook isn’t good either, because people who are prisoners of sin always die and go to hell. Paul laments when thinks about being in this same situation as we are; he says, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” See friends, you and I are living in a body of death. The Bible doesn’t have anything good to say to people who always give in to their sinful natures. In fact, Scripture says that sinners are condemned. Imagine what it would be like to live in a condemned building. Nothing in the building works correctly – the lights don’t work, the plumbing doesn’t work. And the wrecking ball is coming – it’s just a matter of time, when you’re living in a condemned building. That’s what it’s like to live in a body of death, the body that you’re living in right now. It’s like a condemned building. It doesn’t work right. And the wrecking ball is coming – it’s just a matter of time before you and I die and are condemned to hell for our past failures. Together, with the Apostle Paul, we must ask the question: “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Friends, there is Good News! There is a cure. The prescription for the cure is found in verse 25: “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Jesus Christ rescues you from that condemned body that you’re living in. He takes that invisible “condemned” sign that you are wearing, and he puts it on himself. He takes the punishment for your sin. Jesus changes your outlook, your future, by what He did. Imagine that there is only one dose of the cure available and Jesus has that cure. And as you kneel at Jesus’ Throne of Grace, He hands you that cure…so that you can take it.
It doesn’t seem fair, really, since Jesus is the opposite of us. Jesus always did the good things He wanted to do. Jesus never did the evil things He hated. He was perfect. And yet, He let himself be treated as the sinner, so that God could call you the saint. He let Himself be taken as a prisoner, so that you could live in freedom. He allowed Himself to become wretched in the eyes of God, and allowed Himself to be forsaken, so that you could become pleasing and accepted in the eyes of God. Jesus let His body become a body of death, so that you would have a body of eternal life. Instead of the wrecking ball crashing into you, the wrecking ball crashed into Christ. This was Jesus’ way of rescuing you – He became your sin, and you became His righteousness.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, because of Jesus, you have hope. This is the cure to the problem you have in your soul. And that cure is called: THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. And the price for that amazing cure? Free!
Now, that doesn’t mean that the war is over inside of you. There still is something wrong with your soul, and there will always be something wrong with your soul until the day you die. You will always have that sinful nature – it won’t go away. That’s why we need the Gospel, that’s why we need Scripture, and why we need our baptism and why we come again and again to the Lord’s Table. Every day, the war inside of us causes us to run to the cross of Jesus Christ. That war inside of us causes us to look to the Gospel, and to rejoice that we have been forgiven for all of our failures. The more time we spend with God, in His Word and communing with Him at His table, the more foreign and repugnant that sin living within us becomes.
My friends, we have been forgiven for the sins we have committed, and that makes our future bright, and hopeful. And I have great and hopeful news: there is a day coming, you know, when the war inside of you will end. That’s when you die a physical death and realize eternal life. And when you get to heaven, you will notice something missing in your life, something you won’t miss, and that something is your sinful nature. It won’t follow you to heaven, leaving you completely free to glorify God in a way you weren’t able to do while you were here on this earth.
So until that day comes, stay close to the Word of God, reflect and rejoice in your baptism, and come to the Lord’s Table to receive His real body and blood of forgiveness because that’s your only source of comfort and strength as you fight the daily battles that go on inside of you. Live every day as a Christian man, a Christian woman. Remember, YOU ARE A FRIEND OF CHRIST! Rejoice that your sins have been forgiven in Him. And use every day that God gives you to love and serve in a way that glorifies you Maker and Redeemer. Amen. Let’s pray…
