Last weekend our elders held a retreat where we spent some extended time evaluating everything that we do as a church for the purpose of seeing how we can do a better job of helping people enter into a relationship with Jesus, grow in their faith and then help others to do the same. As a result of that time we’ve decided to make some changes in what we do on Sunday mornings and I’d like to take a few minutes to share those changes with you.
First of all, thanks to all of you for helping us to get our worship time off to a great start this morning by bringing your fellowship into the auditorium prior to our gathering. For those of you who weren’t at our annual meeting last week, our worship gathering now begins at 9:25 with a time of greeting and fellowship here in the auditorium and then at 9:30 we will begin the more formal part of our worship.
The main change that we’re making on Sunday mornings is to what happens after this worship gathering during what we previously called our “Connections” time. The children’s classes will continue to meet at 11:00 in the north classrooms and there won’t be any significant changes there. But for our adults, beginning today we’re going to implement what we call a “Bible Roundtable”. We will meet in the south classroom right behind the lounge area at 11:00 and will use that time to discuss how to apply some of the things that we’ve learned in the message that morning. We’ll have some tables set up there so feel free to bring your coffee and snacks with you.
There are a couple of things that you can do to help make that time more profitable. One, is that you will notice that there is a place on your sermon outline to jot down any questions or thoughts that you might have about the message so that we can discuss them during the roundtable. You will also notice that at the end of your sermon outline there are several discussion questions that we will be talking through during the roundtable time. If you take a look at those questions, you’ll see that they are not merely asking you to regurgitate information from the message, but rather think about how what we’ve learned in the message can be applied to everyday life.
I’m excited about these changes and I want to encourage you to stay and be part of that time because all of you have something valuable to contribute. Do you have any questions?
Please go ahead and open your Bibles to Romans chapter 7 so that you’ll be prepared to follow along in just a moment.
Like we find with most things in our lives as disciples of Jesus, balance is required. And that is certainly true when it comes to God’s law.
Last week we focused primarily on one extreme when it comes to the law – becoming Pharisaical Christians who live and who judge others by a set of rules rather than living in a relationship with Jesus in a way that also transforms our relationships with others.
But especially here in the United States, it has become quite common to go to the other extreme where the law is just thrown out completely and the word “sin” is never spoken because it might be offensive to unbelievers. This seems to be especially predominant in many of the large, so-called “megachurches”. When a prominent pastor of one of these churches was asked about using the word “sinners” in a television interview several years ago, he responded with these words:
I don’t use it. I never thought about it. But I probably don’t. But most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change. There can be a difference in your life. So I don’t want to go down the road of condemning.
In another interview, this same pastor said:
You know, it's not hellfire and brimstone. But I say most people are beaten down enough by life. They already feel guilty enough. They're not doing what they should, raising their kids—we can all find reasons. So I want them to come…and be lifted up, to say, “You know what? I may not be perfect, but I'm moving forward. I'm doing better.” And I think that motivates you to do better.
Now I think we can all agree with the idea that we want people to come to church, and even more importantly to come to Jesus, in order to have their lives changed. But there are at least a couple of problems with what this pastor said. First is the idea that people are basically good people who mess up once in a while and already feel bad enough about it that we don’t need to point out their sin. And second is the idea that people can bring change to our lives merely by our own willpower and without coming face to face with our sinfulness.
There is no doubt that coming face to face with the truth that all of us are sinners is not a pleasant thing. Ironically, it is the fact that we are self-centered sinners that makes bringing up the topic of sin so uncomfortable in the first place. But without first diagnosing our condition, it is just not possible for us to apply the cure.
Think with me for a moment on this. Let’s suppose that you went to the doctor and he or she ran some tests and discovered that you have cancer. Now in the short run, the most comfortable thing for the doctor and for you would be for the doctor to just not to talk about that cancer. But in the long run that approach would be fatal because you would not get the treatment that you needed to deal with it.
The same thing is true in the spiritual realm, but there the stakes are much higher because our eternal fate hangs in the balance. This morning we’ll see that God’s law is like a spiritual doctor in the sense that it reveals an accurate diagnosis of our condition. But, like any analogy we don’t want to carry it too far, since that analogy breaks down at some point because the law is insufficient to treat or give us relief from our condition. Only faith in Jesus can do that.
Once again this morning we’re in the midst of what is undoubtedly one of the most difficult sections of Scripture in the entire Bible. For the last couple of months, it seems like every week, I run across some commentator or pastor who claims that this is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible, only to see him or another commentator say the same thing again when commenting on the next passage.
So not surprisingly, there is not universal agreement about the meaning of the some of the details in these passages among Bible scholars, commentators and pastors. And I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers about some of those details.
But at the same time, there is little disagreement or doubt about the main message that Paul is communicating here. So go ahead and follow along as I begin reading in verse 7:
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promise d life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
(Romans 7:7-13 ESV)
In very simple terms, here is what Paul is saying in these verses:
The law is good because
it shows me that I am not
You’ll notice that there is a dramatic change in Paul’s perspective beginning in verse 7. Up to this point in his letter, Paul has primarily been writing in the third person – he, him, she, her and they, them – or in the first person plural – we and us. But now he shifts to the first person singular – I and me. He does that through the end of chapter 7 and then at the beginning of chapter 8 reverts back to the perspective he has used for the vast majority of his letter.
In chapter 7, there is another important distinction. In verse 7-13, the section we’re looking at today, Paul uses the past tense. But beginning in verse 14 through the end of the chapter, he primarily writes in the present tense. Next week, I’m going to deal more with the significance of that change since it primarily affects how we look at the last part of the chapter.
Last week, in the first part of chapter 7, Paul showed his readers that they had been freed from the law through being united with Jesus in His death. And the good thing about that is that being free from the law enabled them to enter into a love relationship with Jesus in which they could serve in the new way of the Spirit and bear fruit for God. But as we touched on last week, that did not mean that the law has no place in the life of a disciple of Jesus. Here in this next section, Paul explains the place of the law for a disciple of Jesus.
THE PLACE OF THE LAW
1. The law is holy, righteous and good (v. 12)
I’m going to begin with Paul’s conclusion and then we’ll go back and let Paul explain why he comes to that conclusion.
Hopefully you’ll remember that Paul used chapter 6 to explain how we have been freed from the power of sin as a result of being united with Jesus through faith. So when he begins chapter 7 by teaching that we have also been freed from the law, the obvious question that arises is whether that means that the law is equivalent to sin. And once again Paul answers that with an emphatic “no!”
So after the explanation that we’ll look at in a moment, Paul concludes this section by stating that the law is holy and righteous and good. Next week, we’ll see that Paul also calls the law “spiritual” in verse 14. I don’t know about you, but for me the idea that the law is good on one hand, but that it is also something that I need to be freed from on the other hand almost seems contradictory. But that’s why I’m glad we have Paul’s explanation of why the law is good in verses 7-11, because it is that explanation that allows us to reconciles those two seemingly opposing ideas.
2. The law is good because…
• It reveals my sinfulness (vv. 7, 13)
Take a moment to scan through verses 7 through 14 again and note how many times Paul uses the word “sin”. [Pause] If I counted correctly, I think he uses the word “sin” nine times in these 7 verses. But what I want you to note is not the number of times that he uses the word, but rather the fact that every time he uses it, it is singular – “sin” not “sins”.
The reason that is an important distinction is because it reveals that while the law certainly does reveal the individual sins that we commit, it’s greater purpose is to reveal our sin nature. That is why I have said that the law reveals our sinfulness and not just that it reveals our sins.
I think that idea is supported by the one sin that Paul confesses here – that of covetousness. Paul had certainly violated many of the other Ten Commandments in his life. We know, for instance, that he committed murder. But here Paul chooses to focus on the one commandment that is primarily concerned with man’s heart rather than just his outward actions. The other commandments all have desires behind them – for instance
“You shall not steal” implies that you have a desire to possess something that doesn’t belong to you. But “You shall not covet” is most clearly related to the desires of our heart.
The word translated “covet” here simply means “desire”. The term itself is neither positive or negative. We must look at the context to make that determination. And obviously here Paul uses it in a negative sense. By focusing on that command in particular, Paul reinforces the idea that the law is not sin. It is actually good because it exposes the sinful nature that lies beneath our desires. The laws sines a light on our lives and uncovers the root cause of our sin – the desire to be our own Gods.
And although the law does reveal my individual sins, it actually does that for a much more significant reason – so that I can understand that I don’t just sin, I am a sinner.
In essence, Paul is saying something like this: “I really never knew the depth of sin and I never knew the full extent of sin, until I really understood the full extent of the law.” While, as we saw earlier in Romans, sin existed even before the law, the law helps us to understand the pervasiveness and seriousness of our sin. And the law reminds us that our own desires are not the measure of what is good and bad, true or false. God is the measure of what is right and wrong and He has revealed much of that to us in His law.
We’ve already touched on this a bit, but the second reason that the law is good is that…
• It reveals my self-centeredness (v. 8, 13)
Let’s look at verse 8:
But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
We’ll begin with the last part of the verse. What does Paul mean when he writes that “apart from the law, sin lies dead”? I think the idea here is that before God brought the law to bear on Paul’s heart, he didn’t really see himself as a sinner. So without the law, sin seems to be dead as far as the sinner is concerned.
But as Paul tells us in the first part of the verse, once the light of the law is shined into our lives and it reveals our sinful nature, our natural reaction is to rebel against that revelation by engaging in even more sin. Our human nature is such that there are some sins that we would never even consider until someone or something, like the law, tells us we can’t do that. We talked about that last week. And I gave you a couple of examples of how that works. So I won’t belabor that point.
But what I do want to expand on is what that kind of reaction reveals about our hearts. There is a sense in which the law tends to stir up the rebel in us and leads us to assert our right to do as we please. But as Paul makes clear here, that doesn’t make the law bad or sinful. In fact, it is actually a good thing because the law not only reveals our sinful nature, it goes even deeper than that and get to the real issue, which is our own self-centeredness.
That seems to be the idea that Paul brings up again in verse 13 when he writes that the commandment – another word for the law – makes our sin become sinful beyond measure. The law not only reveals that I have a sin nature, it shows the utter depravity of my heart that naturally rebels against God and seeks only to fulfill my own selfish desires.
• It reveals my need for a Savior (vv. 9-11)
Admittedly, there are a number of different ways to take verses 9-11, especially the part about “being alive apart from the law” and “sin becoming alive” so that Paul “died”. But given the context and the main point that Paul is trying to get across here it seems to me that Paul is writing of his own personal perception of himself before his encounter with Jesus.
For much of his life Paul thought he was alive and doing quite well in God’s sight. He writes about the reasons he had to feel like that in Philippians 3:
though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
(Philippians 3:4-6 ESV)
But at some point, God brought to mind the command that he had memorized since he was a child – “You shall not covet” – and it suddenly hit him. He had not really been alive after all. He was actually, as he writes in Ephesians 2 – “dead” in his “trespasses and sins.” Up until that point, he had been deceived by his sin nature, which led him to view the law as the means to his salvation. So the commandment, the law, that had promised life actually ended up leading him to the place where he recognized that he was really dead spiritually.
When God finally used the law to help Paul see how miserably he had violated God’s standards over and over in his life, it allowed Paul to finally see, for the first time in his life, his need for a Savior.
And we are just like Paul. Our innate self-centeredness and self-righteousness is so entrenched that until the law comes along and reveals what we’re really like, we won’t be ready to cast ourselves totally upon the grace and mercy of God expressed to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not until the law brings us to the end of ourselves that we are ready to flee to Jesus for salvation.
We’ve seen this morning that…
The law is good because
it shows me that I am not
I don’t think any of us would argue with that idea. But what does that mean for my life? There are obviously many implications for our lives, but let me close by sharing just two of them.
IMPLICATIONS FOR MY LIFE
I must…
1. Constantly expose my life to God’s Word
Whether you have already committed your life to Jesus by trusting in Him alone as the way to deal with your sin or you have not yet made that commitment in your life, it is absolutely critical that you consistently measure your life not against what the world says is right and wrong, but rather against God’s standards which are revealed in the Bible.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the message, we won’t get the right cure for our spiritual sickness until we first get a proper diagnosis in which we are brought face to face with our sinfulness and our self-centeredness. But as I also pointed out then, it’s not just enough to just get the diagnosis. We actually have to apply the cure.
2. Respond appropriately to what it reveals
I am reminded of the words of James here:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
(James 1:22-25 ESV)
The Bible is like a mirror. When we hold our lives up to it, it reveals our flaws and shows us what we’re really like. But if we just turn away without doing anything about what we learn, then looking in that mirror hasn’t done us any good at all.
Perhaps there are some of you here this morning who have never seen yourself for what you really are – a self-centered sinner. But this morning God’s Word has shined a life on your life and let you see that for the first time. And that is actually a very good thing because now that you know that, you can do something about that. The Bible is clear that the only way to effectively deal with your sin is to put your faith in Jesus, trusting that His life, death and resurrection is the only way for you to be freed from the penalty and the power of sin in your life. So if that describes you, please don’t leave here today until you do that. In a moment, I’ll tell you how you can take the next step in that process.
For the rest of us who have already made that commitment, exposing our lives to the truth of God’s Word should cause us to do two things:
• First, as it reminds us about what we were like before we placed our faith in Jesus, it ought to make us infinitely grateful for the way God has eternally rescued us from that way of life through being united with His Son, Jesus.
• Second, as we hold our lives up to the light of Scripture and it reveals our sin, we need to keep short accounts with God by immediately confessing and repenting of that sin. That includes taking appropriate steps to make sure that we don’t continue in that sin to a point where it becomes a lifestyle.
While the truth that we are sinful, self-centered people that we find in the Word of God is not particularly pleasant or comfortable, knowing and understanding that fact is the diagnosis that drives us to find the cure through faith in Jesus.
So as we close this morning, let’s take a few moments to pray and thank God for the law, which is holy, righteous and good because it shows us what we’re really like.
[Prayer]
This morning, perhaps God has been leading you to make a decision in response to what you’ve learned this morning. Whether that is committing your life to Jesus for the first time or it is committing to go deeper in your relationship with Jesus in some way, we are here to help you with that. There are several ways that you can let us know how we can do that:
• You can talk to me or to one of our Elders after our gathering this morning. [Ask Elders to stand]
• You can fill out the information on the Connection Card on your bulletin and give it to one of us or to one of our greeters and someone will be in touch with you this week.
• You can contact us on our website or message us on Facebook.
Discussion Questions:
1. A popular author says that Christians should not view themselves as sinners, not even as sinners saved by grace, but as saints who occasionally sin. How would you respond?
2. In sharing our faith with others, which is most important – to tell people that God loves them, or to help them understand they are a sinner?
3. Since we live under grace, not under the law, what place does the Old Testament law have in the life of a disciple of Jesus?
