New Years Eve is a time for new beginnings, a time for taking new steps in our lives. At midnight tonight millions of Americans will make new year’s resolutions for the year 2001. Typical resolutions will be losing weight, quitting smoking, spending more time with family, and working less hours. Christians often make resolutions to read through the Bible in a year, spend more time in prayer, or start serving in ministry.
Yet within a few months most of those resolutions will be forgotten. For all our sincerity on New Year’s Eve, we have trouble following through with our resolutions. It’s as if there’s a force within us that resists any positive change. You see, the most fierce battles you and I will ever fight are the battles we fight within our own souls. This inner battle between what we know to be right and what we want rages every day. It rages in the soul of the married man who finds himself attracted to a new co-worker. He knows the right thing to do, to keep strong boundaries between himself and his new co-worker. But something inside him rages against that, enticing and luring into situations he knows are dangerous and compromising. This same battle rages in the heart of the person struggling with an addiction to alcohol. Every time she hits bottom she vows to never drink again, but when the pain fades and the haze clears, she’s back to the bars. Addictions are horrible vicious cycles that often feel impossible to break, whether it’s an addiction to alcohol or drugs, or an addiction to pornography or spending money. This same inner battle rages in the person who has a character flaw he just can’t seem to change. The person who’s always negative and critical who vows to change, yet keeps slipping into her critical, sarcastic ways. The person who gossips incessantly who tries to keep his nose out of other people’s business, but he repeatedly falls back into his gossiping ways. To be human is to know what it’s like to have this inner battle raging within us.
We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Romans called GOOD NEWS FOR OUR TIMES. Today we’re going to look at one of the most insightful descriptions of this inner battle you’ll ever read. Every person who’s struggled to keep a new year’s resolution, break a habit, find freedom from an addiction, or change a character flaw will identify with what we’re going to look at today in Romans. Today we’re going to look at Paul’s own description of his own struggle with the battle within.
1. Paul’s Struggle
Let’s begin by looking at vv. 14 to 25 in its entirety. Now it’s important to remind ourselves of the immediate context of this section. The entire point of the seventh chapter of Romans is to demonstrate that God’s law--the ten commandments--is good, but that it can’t break the power of sin in our lives. God’s law is good, but it’s insufficient in itself to break the power of sin in our lives.
Paul uses his own experience as an illustration of his point, and back in v. 9 he described a time in his own life when he was alive apart from the ten commandments. That was probably before his bar mitzphah as a Jewish boy. There was a time in Paul’s life when he wasn’t aware of the moral demands of the law of Moses. But when Paul became aware of the law, he somehow died. The example he used back in vv. 7 and 11 is the tenth commandment: "You shall not covet." When Paul became aware of the tenth commandment, this commandment exposed the coveting in Paul own heart. But rather than freeing Paul from coveting, the law’s exposure of coveting actually caused more coveting in his heart.
But Paul’s quick to point out that it’s not the law’s fault that this happened. The blame lays squarely at the feet of sin, because somehow sin has turned the ten commandments into a pawn of sin. So the law is simply doing what it was designed to do: exposing right and wrong, setting the standard of what’s good and bad. Paul’s point in vv. 14-25 is a continuation of his own personal experience with the ten commandments. It’s extremely important that we don’t forget that point, or we’ll end up tearing these verses out of their context and misapplying them.
Paul confesses that the ten commandments come from God--God’s law is spiritual--but he knows himself to be "unspiritual," or literally "carnal" because of his slavery to sin. This contrast between the law’s spirituality and Paul’s lack of spirituality is what leads to Paul’s inner conflict. Paul can’t understand why he does the things he does. Inwardly he loves God’s law, he delights in the ten commandments. Yet his inner desire to obey God’s law is frustrated because sin has found a home within his heart. As much as Paul wants to obey God’s law, he finds himself lacking the resources to actually do it.
In. v. 18 we find that it’s not merely difficult for Paul to obey God’s law, but in his current condition it’s impossible. Paul says, "I can’t obey." It’s not a matter of just trying harder or will power.
It’s almost like there’s another person living inside Paul. Paul calls this other person "sin," as if it’s a person living inside of him, manipulating Paul for its own purposes. Paul’s not saying this to make excuses or to somehow claim that he’s not responsible for his own sin. He’s simply describing what it feels like to be in this battle, that it’s as if there are two people fighting inside of him.
Finally in v. 24 Paul cries out in despair, that he’s become wretched. The Greek word "wretched" here means "pathetic" and "miserable." He’s captive to sin, enslaved to sin’s passions, yet there’s a part of him that deeply wants to love and follow God’s law.
Yet as bleak as this all seems, Paul suddenly breaks out in praise that somehow Jesus Christ is the solution to his plight. Paul’s misery is met in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Somehow Jesus is the key to winning this inner battle.
2. Who Does This Describe?
Now our immediate question is who is this passage describing? Obviously Paul’s talking about himself, but is this struggle something he’s currently experiencing or something that he experienced in the past that he’s now victorious over? How we answer this question will determine how we apply this section to our lives.
When I first read this 19 years ago as a new Christian, I automatically assumed Paul was talking about his present experience as a mature Christian. This brought comfort to me, because no matter how much I grew in my devotion to Jesus Christ, I still struggled with lots of sinful habits in my life. Somehow I was encouraged knowing that the great apostle Paul also struggled to obey God. This section was a dose of reality when I was tempted to think that going to the right seminar or reading the right book would make my struggles with sin go away.
There are several indications in this section that point to Paul is describing his experience as a mature Christian. Most obvious indicator is the fact that Paul uses the present tense to describe this struggle throughout this section. In fact, he uses the present tense 26 times in these verses (Schreiner 380). This suggests that the struggle here is an ongoing battle, something that he still experiences even after walking with Jesus Christ for many years.
His attitude toward God’s law also points to him being a mature Christian (Schreiner 381). In v. 14 he confesses that God’s law is spiritual, in v. 16 he agrees that God’s law is good, and in v. 22 he says that he delights in God’s law in his inner person. It seems that only a genuine Christian could say those things.
Another indication that Paul’s describing his struggle as a mature Christian is the fact that even after he mentions Jesus in v. 25, that the battle still isn’t resolved. The rescuing work of Jesus hasn’t made the battle stop, but it still exists. In fact, the emphasis on the "body of death" in v. 24 suggests that this inner battle is connected to the fact that Paul still lives in his mortal body. Even though Paul’s sins are forgiven and he’s been accepted by God, he’s still awaiting his future resurrection, when the body of death will rise from the grave immortal. The implication is that as long as Christians are living in their mortal bodies, no matter how spiritually mature they become, they’ll still experience this struggle.
For the first several years of my Christian life that’s how I understood this section, as describing the mature Christian.
But then in the mid 1980s someone here at the church gave me a book called "Birthright" by David Needham that challenged my assumptions about this section. The book Birthright claims that Paul is here describing the experience of an immature Christian, a Christian who doesn’t understand how to live a victorious Christian life.
David Needham, the author of "Birthright," as well as other Bible teachers, find the misery described here incompatible with the victory promised in chapters 6 and 8 of Romans. David Needham says, "I believe it is completely illogical to hold that Romans 7:14-25 is describing the typical experience of a believer who is looking at life through the truth of Romans 6 and 8" (Needham 65). Romans 6 and 8 both seem to promise actual victory over the power of sin, yet Romans 7 seems to only promise that the Christian will have a desire to obey God, but not the ability to actual do it.
In fact, the word translated "unspiritual" in v. 14 is the same word used in 1 Cor 3:1 to describe the Corinthian Christians as "carnal." So perhaps just as the Corinthian Christians were living immature, carnal lives even though they were genuine Christians, Paul is talking about his own personal experience when he was an immature Christian. Like every Christian, Paul had his own bouts with carnality, so perhaps he’s talking about that here.
Now if that’s what Paul is talking about, then we can’t use Romans 7 as an excuse to stay in our sin. We can’t just throw up our hands in defeat, and say, "Oh well...at least I’m in good company." Instead, we need to stop living in Romans 7 and get into Romans 6 and Romans 8. In addition to the book Birthright, this is the approach to this section we find in Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones commentary on Romans, as well as Bible teachers Warren Wiersbe and Charles Ryrie.
So when I read "Birthright" I was challenged to press on toward maturity in my spiritual life, to not settle for a defeated, miserable Christian life described here, but to embrace a victorious, growing spiritual life described in the next chapter.
But then in Bible college and seminary I found out that a good case can be made for understanding this section to describe Paul’s experience back when he was a non-Christian Jew living under the Old Testament law.
Earlier in chapter 7 Paul described how he died when he came to understand God’s law, the ten commandments. This approach simply claims that Paul is talking about his inner spiritual life as it related to the ten commandments before he became a Christian. As a devout Jewish rabbi, Paul believed that God’s law was good and he inwardly delighted in God’s law before he became a Christian. In fact, every Jew who took his or her faith seriously would be able to agree with the claim that God’s law is spiritual, good, and that they delight in it. Remember that the main point of this whole chapter is to demonstrate that God’s law alone can’t overcome the power of sin in our lives.
The fact that Paul uses the present tense doesn’t necessarily rule out the idea that he’s describing something from his past. In Greek, the present tense is often used to vividly describe things that happened in the past. This is a very common use for the present tense in New Testament Greek.
Another indication that Paul might be talking about his life before he became a Christian is how he describes himself. Back in chapter 6, Paul claimed that becoming a Christian means being set free from slavery to sin.
"Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin…You have been set free from sin and have become slaves of righteousness" (Romans 6:18 NIV).
The rest of Romans 6 describes the fact that because our slavery to sin has been broken we actually have a choice in whether we obey sin or whether we obey God. This doesn’t mean we stop sinning, but it does mean that sin’s slavery has been broken so we actually have a choice to obey God now.
But here in Romans 7 we seem to find a different story. In v. 14 Paul describes himself as sold into slavery to sin, which would seem to describe his life before becoming a Christian when that slavery is broken. In v. 18 Paul confesses that in this condition he’s unable to obey God, which again seems to contradict chapter 6, where he says that once we trust in Jesus Christ we are able to obey God.
Another indication that Paul might be describing his experience as a non-Christian is the fact that the Holy Spirit is never mentioned in this section. Yet in Romans 8, where Paul talks about the Christian life, the Holy Spirit is mentioned 19 times as the key to living a life of victory over sin. Perhaps Paul is talking about his life when he had the law but didn’t have the Holy Spirit. Once he trusted in Jesus and the Holy Spirit came to live inside him, that gave him the capacity to obey God.
This way of understanding this section explains the mention of Jesus in v. 25 as a foreshadowing of what he’ll describe in chapter 8.
Now even if Paul is talking about his experience as a non-Christian here, there are plenty of other passages in the Bible that indicate that every Christian still struggles with sin. Throughout the Bible the Christian life is presented as a continuous uphill struggle against sin in our lives, as we gradually make progress in becoming more like Jesus. In fact, the section of the Bible closest to Romans 7 is Galatians 5, where Paul talks about the need to keep in step with the Holy Spirit because the Spirit and our sinful nature are continually at war with each other. But Galatians 5 is different because the emphasis there is on the work of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is entirely absent from Romans 7. So even if this is talking about Paul’s experience as a non-Christian, we should remind ourselves that the rest of the Bible teaches that we won’t reach perfection this side of heaven.
Now I was very surprised to find that this way of understanding Romans 7 was the way most of the church fathers in the second and third centuries understood this section (Bray 189-90). This is also the way this section was understood by John Wesley and Bible teacher G. Campbell Morgan.
So which of these three approaches is right? To be perfectly honest, I’m not exactly sure. All of them have merit. When I first became a Christian I accepted the idea that Paul was talking about a mature Christian, then I accepted the idea that he was talking about an immature Christian, and now I lean toward the idea that Paul’s talking about his life as a non-Christian under the law. But I’m still not exactly sure.
3. Application
This leaves us with the dilemma of how to apply this section in our lives. How we apply this passage to our lives will be different if we think it’s talking about the mature Christian or the non-Christian, or even the immature Christian. Therefore, my tentative conclusion is whether this section is talking a Christian or a non-Christian, I think it applies to anyone who tries to live by God’s standards from his or her own self resources. Here it helps to remember that the entire point of the seventh chapter of Romans is the insufficiency of the law of Moses to conquer the power of sin. If we rely on the ten commandments to conquer sin--whether as a Christian or a non-Christian--we can expect to experience what we read about here.
Now based on that, I find in this section three consequences of trying to live by God’s standard from our own resources. The first consequence is that when we attempt to live by God’s standards on our own, we find ourselves inwardly torn.
We feel like we have two people living inside of ourselves, one who wants to please God and one who wants to rebel against God. People who struggle with an addiction really understand this. The "big book of AA" describes it this way:
"Most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week ago or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink" (24).
According to AA alcoholics are absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge alone" (39).
It’s as if there’s a Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde living inside of us, fighting with one another. Just knowing the right thing to do can’t give us the ability to do the right thing
That brings us to our second consequence. When we attempt to live by God’s standards on our own, we find ourselves lacking the power to change.
That’s really been Paul’s point throughout this chapter, that although the ten commandments are good, they can’t provide us with the capacity to obey. Pleasing God is not a matter of trying harder, but it’s a matter of having a new resource infused within us. We’ll find in chapter 8 that this new resource is God’s Holy Spirit living inside of us. God’s Spirit provides the power to do what we’re incapable of doing ourselves. God’s law can’t give us God’s Spirit, so it can’t give us the resources to obey God’s law.
This is why our mission as a church is not to tell people to live better, moral lives. Many people think that this is the mission of the church: to help people live by Judeo-Christian values. Yet in our own resources it’s impossible to do that because Judeo-Christian values only show us the standard; they can’t conquer the power of sin that prevents us from meeting that standard. Preaching Judeo-Christian values is like telling a prisoner how to be a good citizen; it’s all well and fine, but until the prisoner is set free he’s incapable of being a good citizen. This is why our mission as a church is to share the good news of Jesus Christ, because only that message can liberate people from the power of sin. Only the good news of Christ can break the lock that keeps the human race imprisoned in slavery to sin.
When we try to live by God’s standards without the good news of Christ, we find ourselves wanting to change but lacking the power to change.
Finally, when we attempt to live by God’s standards on our own, we find ourselves living in misery. What Paul describes in this section is a miserable, pathetic, wretched existence. God’s law without God’s gospel simply makes people more miserable. That’s what happened in Israel. They knew what was right. Yet they couldn’t obey what was right without God’s good news about his son Jesus Christ.
When a person tries to live by God’s standards without God’s provision to meet those standards, they find themselves miserable.
Conclusion
So here we find, not a description of the normal, mature Christian life, but a warning against anyone who would try to obey God from their own resources. This section should serve as a warning for anyone who would try to commend him or herself to God on the basis of their own efforts, their own goodness, their own will power. When we try to please God from our own resources--whether as a Christian or a non-Christian--we find ourselves inwardly torn, lacking the power to change, and living a life of misery. Thank God Romans 8 provides an alternative way to live, a way we’ll start exploring next week. During his life the 18th century Christian theologian Jonathan Edwards made 71 different resolutions to live his life by. Edwards went on to become one of the most brilliant Christian thinkers America has ever produced. After pastoring for many years Edwards became the president of a small college in New Jersey that would become known as Princeton. Edwards children and grandchildren included pastors, missionaries, university presidents, and doctors. Edwards was only able to live by his resolutions because he knew what it meant to be delivered from the power of sin. Edwards didn’t spend his life in Romans 7, but instead he learned to live in Romans 8, and that left a legacy for Christ that we continue to appreciate to this day.
Sources
Bray, Gerald (editor). 1998. Romans. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture Vol. 6. InterVarsity Press.
Cranfield, C. E. B. 1975. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. 2 Volumes. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Schreiner, Thomas R. 1998. Romans. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.
