A hotel in Galveston, Texas, that overlooks the Gulf of Mexico, faced a potential problem. The edge of the hotel hangs over the water. Before the hotel opened, someone thought, "What if someone decides to fish out of the windows?" This person then erected signs saying not to fish from the hotel windows. You can probably guess what happened… People fished out of the windows. Rather than preventing a problem, the signs had the opposite effect and simply exposed humankind's rebellious nature.
I struggle with my rebellious nature from time to time. I was in the Metamora Courthouse on my birthday, and there were signs everywhere that read do not touch. Even though I had no desire to touch a particular item with a sign saying do not touch, I suddenly had an urge to touch the item after I read the sign. There is just something in our sinful human nature that wants to do things we are not supposed to do. Don’t worry, I was able to fight off the temptation. I did not touch anything I was not supposed to. But, man I still want to go back up there and touch that piano!
Even Saint. Augustine confessed to doing something he knew was wrong just for the thrill of getting away with something. In his Confessions, Augustine (354-430), the well-known theologian, reflected on this attraction to the forbidden. He wrote, "There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it … We took off a huge load of pears -- not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of the forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply to become a thief … The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing."
Over the past few weeks as we have traveled down this Roman Road to a Savior, we have been exploring what I like to call the good stuff. The beginning of Romans is a bit tough to digest, because Paul basically says that we are all evil sinners who have broken God’s law and deserve to die. Finally, beginning in the last part of chapter three through chapter six Paul has discussed grace, righteousness, mercy, salvation, hope, and our new life through our faith and baptism in Jesus Christ. He has made it clear that those of us who are Christ followers are indeed God’s children who God showers with the gifts of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, hope, and new life through our baptism. And let’s not forget the gift of the Holy Spirit. For it is through the Holy Spirit that we are strengthen to live life as children of God who have been washed cleaned by blood of the lamb. Yes, the Christian life is good. Our sins have been forgiven, and we can be confident in the hope that we will one day stand before the throne of God as though we have never sinned. So, as we travel down the road a little further we almost expect Paul to tell us how to live a sin free life. But, as we make a stop in chapter 7, we don’t get instructions on how to live a sin free life. Instead, we are told about the war that rages within us once we decide to be a Christ follower. The war of good verses evil. The war may be good vs evil, but all too often the battles in this war are of grace verses guilt.
Paul begins chapter 7 by talking about the law. He uses the example of a husband and wife. He only talks about the wife being bound to the husband, because that is how it was back then. But, his example can be used for both the husband and the wife. A husband and wife are bound to each other until death do them part. After one spouse dies, however the other spouse if fee to marry if that is what he or she wishes to do. As Christ followers, we have died to the law and have been released from the law to serve Christ through the Holy Spirit. However, Paul points out that even though we are not under the law, the law is still beneficial to Christ followers because it is through the law that we are made aware of sin. Paul’s main point in verses 7 through 13 is that the Law is not the problem. The problem is that humans are sinful. We seem to be back to the indictment of the human race again. If Paul was preaching this letter, at this point I would want to stand up and say “Come on Paul, I thought we have been justified by our faith in Christ, why are you pounding us about our sinful nature again?” But that is not what Paul is doing here. Romans 7:14-25 can be quite hard to follow at times. It is one of those passages that I wish Paul would have just summarized the point he was trying to make. In these verses Paul makes the argument that yes we are indeed saved by our faith in Jesus Christ, but that does not mean we will never sin again. There are many benefits of being a Christ follower, but living a sinless life on this side of heaven does not appear to be one of them. Paul describes the battle within himself. He did not want to sin, but he found himself continuing to sin. And, he wanted to do good, but he was not always able to do the good he wanted to do. Paul then explains that as Christ followers we still have sin that lives in us. Even though we desire to live a life that pleases God, the sin that is in our DNA, the sin that has been passed down to us from our ancestors, still continues to sin. It is our flesh of our old life without Christ that is constantly doing battle with our new life in the Spirit. Sometimes or for some of us like me, a lot of the times our flesh wins and we sin. We can all identify with Paul when he concludes this section of his letter by saying “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have a war brewing within us. If you do not like the word war you can use the word struggle. We all struggle to do things that we think we should do, and we all struggle not to do things that we think we shouldn’t do. This is war between good and evil that rages within us. Usually I do not like to use the word all when talking about my fellow human beings. If you have noticed every time I do say that something is true for all people I am always quick to say that there may be some who do not have the struggle or problem that I am talking about. But, in this case I am 99.9 % sure that all humans struggle to do the good they want to do, and to not do the bad that they seem to always do. In Romans 7:15-17, Paul addresses the sins that we continue to commit even though we have been set free by the blood of Jesus Christ. Verse 15 begins with Paul admitting that “I do not understand what I do.” Here is the great Apostle Paul admitting that he struggles with sin. He was human after all. And, we are right there with him. We have all done things we wish we had not done, and we continue to do things we wish we could stop doing. We probably all have sins we commit on a daily basis that we wish we could just stop committing. It seems to us that we should be better, yet we continue to sin. When we do sin, we often, or at least I do, begin to think that we are not true Christ followers, because a true Christ follower would never do the thing that we just did. A true Christ follower would never yell at his or her spouse, or his or her children, or a complete stranger. My friends, these thoughts are from the enemy. Satan wants us to believe that we are too sinful to be a Christ follower, but don’t believe that lie. The truth is even as Christ followers, we are still living with and in our sinful flesh. It is our sinful flesh that leads us to sin. We must not only confess our sins to God and receive his forgiveness, but we also must forgive ourselves. We unfortunately are going to continue to sin until we get to heaven or when Christ comes back, but we have the grace of God to cover our sins. I talked about this a few weeks ago, but we can’t go around beating ourselves up for sin that has been confessed to and forgiven by God through the blood of Jesus Christ. We should do our best to cast all sin out of our lives, but when we do evil, when we sin and evil get the upper hand in war of good and evil inside of us, we MUST not lose the battle of grace and guilt. When we do sin we must embrace the grace of God by confessing our sin, and raising in the victory that the grace of the cross won for us.
Paul not only admits that he does what he does not want to do, but he also writes that the sin in him keeps him from doing the good he wants to do. We can identify with this too. We want to spend time with God in His Word and in prayer, but we are just so busy. We want to tithe a full 10% of our income, but we have bills to pay. We want to forgive those who hurt us, but we really don’t want them to get away with what they did to us. Just as we are hard on ourselves when we sin, we are just as hard on ourselves when we don’t do the things we feel we ought to be doing. Here is the truth about not doing the things that we think we ought to be doing: Chances are most of things we feel we should be doing are self-expectations and not God’s expectations. Self-expectations can and almost always produce false guilt. Don’t get me wrong we should be doing as much good as possible. As Christ followers we have been commanded by Christ to go and make disciples of all nations. Obedience to that command means something different to each of us, because we all have a very specific calling. For some it means to go on to the mission field. For others it may just mean to live her or his life in such a way that preaches the Gospel to the world around them. No matter what our calling is we have to be engaged with God on a daily basis to make sure we are properly equipped to carry our specific mission. This means we have to be engaged with the Church. We have to read the Bible daily, and we have to be engaged in prayer as often as possible. But, it does not mean that we have to be super human. Our bodies and our minds do have a limit on what they can do. So, even though we should be doing all the good we can, we must not feel guilty for saying no when we reached our limit. We also need not feel guilty when we have an exceptionally busy day or if we just do not feel well and we cannot to all the good we want to do. I have bad days when I feel I have done my best just to say a couple short one or two sentence prayers, because life threw a lot at me that day and I just was not able to make the phone call I needed to make, visit the person I needed to visit, or even sit and read my Bible. On those days the enemy tries to make me feel guilty, and sometimes succeeds in doing so, but God knows my heart and my physical limitations. Yes, God expects me to do all the good I can, but He will not condemn me because I have a day when my schedule, my body, or both will not allow me to do the good I want to do. But Satan will try his best to make me feel guilty Just as Satan will try to make us feel that we are not really forgiven of our sins, he will also try to make us feel guilty for not reading the Bible, not baking that pie for our new neighbor, or even not spending enough time with our children, spouses, or other loved ones in our lives. Like, I said earlier this is false guilt. False guilt is one of Satan’s favorite weapons to keep us from being an effective disciple of Christ.
Our enemy knows that when good and grace win the battle within us, we will be more in tune with God, and have a more intimate relationship with our Savior. Satan will use every weapon he has to win the battle within us, because when good and grace win we just might end up changing the world around us by advancing the Kingdom of God. Even though we all have this battle within us, and even though there are times when it feels as if evil wins there is the good news. In this battle of good verses evil, God always wins. When God wins, grace wins. We will we have days when we feel less that a servant of Christ. We will have days that we feel more like just a sinner rather than a sinner saved by the grace of God. We will have days when we feel like a wretch who has lost the battle within. On those days we may feel like we are down and out for the count, and we just want to stay down and accept our defeat. But, we can’t, because to do so would be accepting the lie that our enemy wants us to believe. Satan wants us ,to believe we are defeated. But it is a lie, and on those days when feel defeated, we must get up, dust ourselves off and boldly declare our victory in Jesus. Because when it comes to the war within us, our victory was sealed on a cross on
