"I Need A Savior"
Romans 7:15-8:11
In a certain church, a woman was leading the congregation in the prayer of confession.
She called the people to confess, reminding them of the sin within their hearts, and then everyone joined in reading the prayer of confession.
After this, she paused for the silent confession, and she kept pausing for a good while.
She paused for so long, in fact, that the people started to rustle as they waited for the next part of the service.
It was awkward, and more than a few people thought she had lost her place or misplaced the piece of paper with the right words written on it.
Finally, someone murmured: "Just hurry up and forgive us, so we can shake hands and sit down!"
In today's world, it's not the "in thing" to talk about sin.
We like to talk about bad self-esteem and we like to talk about, maybe, not the best upbringing.
We like to talk about poor choices.
We like to talk about all sorts of things, but to really talk about sin?
Well, that's really not in style.
But sin is still sin.
There is a battle raging and perhaps you thought you were the only one fighting because everyone else seems to have their lives together.
It's not true.
I used to think everyone else had their act together, and I was the only one who was messed up.
There's a lot of guilt that can come from that.
We get used to wearing masks sometimes, and don't share our true selves.
Wouldn't it be great if we could trust each other, and be confident enough in our relationship with God that we could be more transparent with one another?
After-all, we are all just human beings--in the same boat.
I really respect the Apostle Paul for using his own life as an illustration of the sinful and lost human situation.
Paul was so secure in his relationship with God that he was able to bear his soul.
And it couldn't have been easy.
When we admit our utter sinfulness, we make ourselves vulnerable.
But Paul was willing to do anything to bring others to Christ--he was jailed, stoned, striped of his Pharisaic power and even gave up the privilege which came from being a highly educated, big wig who was even a Roman citizen.
He became a willing slave for Christ and thus for humanity.
And a person like that, well, you know, you'd think that Paul would have had it all together.
He was such an authority.
He met Jesus on the Road to Damascus.
God used him to take the Gospel message to the far reaches of his world.
But Paul still had a battle raging within himself.
He talks about the flesh and the Spirit, and in saying that he's not saying that his body is bad.
He understands that our bodies are a gift from God, meant to be used to glorify God.
He's not saying the body God has given us and sexuality and feelings are bad.
He's talking about something else.
He's talking about sin.
"The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can't do it...
...when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me...
...it wages war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body."
And for Paul, sin isn't just some behavioral problem or something Paul does or does not do.
It actually lives in him.
The word used here comes from the word for "house."
Sin has made its home in him like a parasite living off its host.
Do you know what Paul's talking about here?
I think you do because there are a lot of people who make a lot of money based on what Paul's talking about.
We've got the whole industry of psychotherapy--of people who go in and say, "I've got issues."
Now, not all issues are sin-based, certainly.
But so many are...
Or how about the whole industry of self-help?
And again, sometimes we do need self-help, but self-help can't solve our sin issues.
No, when it comes to sin: try as we might, we cannot help ourselves.
Unlike small children, who can't be held responsible for their actions due to ignorance, we are fully capable of distinguishing between right and wrong.
We know what to do; we just cannot seem to do it.
You know what I'm talking about.
A long time ago I went to see a man in the hospital.
He smoked cigarettes his whole life.
The doctor told him he had to stop, so he changed doctors.
He kept smoking.
He got emphysema.
He got really sick.
He went to the hospital.
They told him he had to stop.
He kept smoking.
He got lung cancer.
He went back into the hospital.
They removed a lung.
The day he got out, he started smoking again.
They wheeled him into the hospital again.
This time he had burned out his trachea.
They had to remove his voice box.
They put a little tube in his throat.
I heard about it.
I went to see him.
He wasn't in his room.
I looked all over the place.
Finally one of the nurses said, "I'll show you where he is."
She took me downstairs, out the back door.
There he was, out in the parking lot, taking a long drag off the Marlboro that he put in the hole in his throat.
We may ask, "Why does he do that?"
"Doesn't he know better?"
Sure he does.
This as a metaphor of what Paul is talking about.
I'm not trying to bash smokers.
But the nicotine he had become a slave to is very similar to the sin which lives in us...
...it's that which has taken us captive so that we don't do what we want to do.
And there is no freedom nor happiness in that.
"It's for freedom that Christ has set us free!!!"
Anyone who has tried to quit smoking can relate to this man's plight.
Anyone who has lived can relate to what Paul is saying.
Sin is deceptive and can creep up on us, seemingly, out of nowhere.
Earlier this week, I was having a conversation with my wife and the conversation turned into an argument.
I misunderstood where she was coming from, and I reacted in the wrong way.
I hurt my wonderful wife's feelings.
The one I love, and the one who loves me.
And I went to bed angry, hurt and confused.
I was acting like a baby.
When I woke up the next morning, I felt fine.
I was completely rested.
I was in a great mood...
...until I remembered the misunderstanding Clair and I had had the night before.
And this got me thinking.
And suddenly, I no longer felt great and fine.
Suddenly, I felt lost, guilty and sorry for my actions.
And then I started thinking about so many of the other tragic moments in my life--times when I had sinned, hurt other people, messed up.
And I thought to myself, "I am so horrible.
I am such a sinner.
I can't do the good I want to do."
And I cried out in my head: "That's why I need a Savior!!!!"
I think we have to be reminded of that sometimes.
It's too easy to forget.
I think that is one of the reasons Paul says that it's not the Law that is wrong, "it's the sin that lives in me"
What the Law does is that it exposes sin as sin.
Again, Paul writes: "So I find as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me.
I gladly agree with the Law on the inside, but I see a different law at work in my body.
It wages a war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body."
You know what Paul is talking about.
Paul is describing the human condition.
Paul is accurately diagnosing the state of every soul.
This is a powerful passage of Scripture.
There are forces at work within us that we can't defeat on our own.
The will may be strong, but sin rules the day.
And we are not alone in this struggle; everyone is engaged in the same hopeless battle.
I think that one of the reasons people can be very reluctant to confess their failures and face their sins is that every person believes he or she is the worst sinner.
But we are all a mess; we are all in the same boat!!!
In college, I was part of a Bible study that met on campus.
One day I ran across an older woman, who went to school with me and who also came to that Bible study, and we got into a discussion.
I remember at one point in the conversation, the woman saying to me: "I believe in Jesus. I also believe in heaven, but I don't believe I will be there."
She went on to explain to me that she had lived just too sinful of a life.
So she really, really believed that she was not good enough!!!
God couldn't possibly love her.
She was unforgivable.
She was just too bad to be saved.
We talked all day long.
She accepted Christ's love that evening.
It was miraculous.
(pause)
Paul talks about sin, and how we all fall short of God's Law.
And it's true that he doesn't want us to be self-righteous, ignoring our sin.
He doesn't want us to be self-satisfied and smug about our relationship with God and other people.
But he doesn't want us to wallow in guilt either.
We must be able to accept the forgiveness that Christ offers, without price.
If we can't accept it, do we really believe that "God proves God's love for us in this, while we were still sinners--enemies of God Christ died for us?"
That, "God loves us at our darkest"?
When we get stuck in guilt trips, it is just about impossible to do anything positive for God or anyone.
It's impossible to love ourselves.
One time I was speaking with a man who ran a mental institution.
I'll never forget something he said: "If I could just get these broken people to beleive that God loves them, accepts them, and has forgiven them--half of the people here could walk out of this place completely healed."
"I'm a miserable human being," Paul writes, "Who will deliver me from this dead corpse?"
How many of us can relate to this statement?
How many of us feel dead because of our sins?
How many of us feel like we keep missing the mark, falling down on the job, letting God down?
How many of us, not unlike Paul, feel like a "dead corpse"?
I know I often do...
...and I probably always will have times when I feel this way.
But it has become less and less often, and it doesn't last as long.
Paul writes:
"Thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
"So now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Do we really believe this?
If so, it is the key to everything!!!
And absolutely nothing is impossible from that point on!!!
