Inner Confliction & The Gospel – Part II

Part 1 of the “Inner Confliction & The Gospel” sermon series. This week is an exegetical sermon on Romans 7:13-25 addressing the last 6 reasons out of 12 for believing this passage is talking about the experience of a Christian and what that means for us. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on April 21st, 2007 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

Listen 
.

The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved Church :: April 21th, 2007 :: Pastor Duane M. Smets

Inner Confliction and The Gospel – when sin gets the upper hand
Romans 7:13-25 (Part II)

      1. The structure of Romans
      2. The plain reading
      3. 1st century Judaism
      4. Paul’s pre-conversion
      5. Honest self-assessment
      6. The Christian struggle
      7. The new master
      8. A body of death
      9. The law principle
      10. The conclusion 7:25b
      11. The apostle Peter
      12. 1 John 1:8
II. The Gospel Response
      – Theme One: True Hedonism
      – Theme Two: True War

Romans 7:13-25
13 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. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Introduction

Alright, good morning everyone. Hopefully today we will be free and clear from crazy microphones, bats and any other weird occurances for the next half-hour. I know its been kind of wild lately. Which maybe kind of fits since we are in the latter half of Romans 7. So let’s read the text and pray.

Father God, this is not the funnest passage to talk about. And it is a text that so easily either becomes an excuse for our own sin or it becomes a pride-filled trophy of how much better we think we are now on the other side of deep spiritual struggle. Help us this morning to honor you in how we deal with your Bible. May we not treat it flippantly. Guard us from solely interpreting it in light of each of our own personal experiences. And most of all would we come to see and understand and know and love the gospel more because of what we learn today. Amen.

So we are in part two of our series in Romans 7:13-25, “Inner Conflict and the Gospel – When Sin Gets the Upper Hand.” Last week we began by looking at the context of this passage so that we could see how this passage is really set up as a personal illustration added on to some arguments that Paul made in order to say that the Law, the inner sense of moral right and wrong or all the demands in the Bible, are not bad in and of themselves but that we all break the law and the result is sin. So the question is how can the Law be good when it is so intimately caught up with us and sin which leads us to hell.

I. Who’s Experience is this?

Because of that question and the way that Paul answers it here with a personal illustration there becomes a lot of debate about what he is really saying here. If it is really a personal illustration or not and if so what time of his life is he talking about, before or after becoming a Christian? And so, rather than to sidestep the debate and just say that it doesn’t matter, we have decided to be honoest and dive deep into it and so last week I gave six reasons (they are in grey on the screen) for why I believe this passage is talking about Paul and/or any and every person at some point after becoming a Christian. Today we go after the next six.

7. the new master

To sort of start things off, we are going to talk about what is probably the strongest objection against the view that I am presenting. We are a church who cares about what is actually true and right and because of that we are not afraid of other viewpoints. That is why we have a doubts box and encourage doubting…the reason is so that you can come to a real and solid faith and we are convinced that Christianity stands the test.

So the seventh reason, the new master. Here is how the objection goes, “Paul says here in Romans 7:14, ‘I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.’ If this person were really a Christian they could not say that. The very essence of being a Christian is being freed from sin and receiving the savior.” And then they refer to several earlier passages in Romans 6, where it says things like, “our old self was crucified…so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin…we were once slaves of sin…(but) now have been set free from sin (Rom 6:6,17,18).”

That is a pretty strong argument. I mean, I quoted three different passages in Romans 6, word for word, verse 6, 17, and 18…no longer enslaved to sin, once slaves of sin, now set free from sin. What do you do with that? If that is true what do you do with Romans 7:14 if it talking about a Christian being “sold into bondage to sin.” Do you get the problem?

Here is what I think the answer is. When I preached from Romans 6 we did two different series with several sermon given to each of them, the two series were “Sin and Union with Christ” and the second was “Master Jesus.” In a huge oversimplification let me summarize those two series. The first series, “Sin and Union with Christ” says that through faith in Jesus we become united to him and thus receive all the benefits of the cross and eternity because we are with Jesus. The second series, “Master Jesus” says we have all been slaves to a master called sin and through united with Jesus our sin gets dealt with and we begin to live under a new master, Jesus, who is the far stronger, kinder, and wiser than our old master sin.

Here is the connection, uniting with Jesus and him becoming our new master is a real, true, spiritual reality that has begun to take place, but is still in process until we either die or the resurrected Jesus comes back on his cloud of glory. That is why we get something like Romans 6:12-13. Listen, “Therefore (because all that is true spiritual reality), let not sin reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.” Did you hear that? It sounds like there is still left over, indwelling sin, where out of it our members can still do unrighteous, sinful things. That sounds kind of like Romans 7, where instead of putting your stock in the spiritual reality, sin gets the upper hand and you do exactly what Romans 6 tells you not to do.

So going to Romans 6 does not help you. We cannot treat the Bible like we are at some sort of fast food restraunt and we only order things off its menu that fit our current desires or theology. You can’t just pick out a verse here and a verse there and then build a theology on that. No, there are verses in-between.

So, here is what I think Romans 7:14 is saying in comparison to Romans 6. I think it is saying that when you give in to the old slave master, what is that but being sold into bondage to sin. Under the old master we were in total bondage to sin and had no freedom or power to do anything else but sin. But now there is struggle. Not going back and forth from being a Christian and then I’m not a Christian and then I’m a Christian again and you get saved like 50 times before you get it right. No, there is struggle and there is moment when sin gets the upper hand and it is an expereince of slavery, and it is dark and sad and hard and horrible and more intensely so because of the fact that you know you are really under the new master Jesus, who loves you and died for all your sin already. So that is reason 7, let’s move on.

8. a body of death

Reason number 8, a body of death. In Romans 7:24b Paul cries out “Who will free me from the body of this death?” Those who say that Rom 7 is pre-Christian say “can a Christian really cry out ‘who will free me from this body of death?’” I mean, that sounds pretty dark. If you are Christian does that mean you really know God and his beauty and glory and how great his creation is, including our bodies, and didn’t Jesus die for us to save our bodies?

The answer is yes, those things are true. I believe that in becoming a Christian your eyes are in a sense opened up to a whole new world around you and you see things with a new wonder and amazement. And yes, we are not into some philosphy that says spirit is good and matter is evil. God is the Lord and redeemer of both.

But my question is, if you really are a follower of Jesus and believe all the things he promises, then how can you not cry out, “who will free me from this body of death?” This body is contaminated and diseased with sin, it is breaking down, as 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, “it is wasting away.” But the goodness of the gospel is that Jesus rose and secured for us a heritage to receive a new, glorified body like his, that will not waste away and that when we receive we will be completely free from the constraints and corruptions of sin.

The gospel is great and real hope for this life. If not what else do we have. That when we die, it is just the end. That we reincarnate? Even if there was a single shred of evidence for that, who wants that? Don’t we long for, as humans, for a new life that is still us living it. That is why the resurrection of Jesus Christ is such a central part to our faith. It is our secure hope with proofs. The cry, “who will free me” is the Christian cry for liberation from the diseased dying body in its dirty bouts with sin and a longing for our new, sin-free, body like Jesus’s.

9. the law principle

Ninth reason, the law principle. Verse 23 says, “but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin.” This is a very interesting verse. It is a crushing verse to those who would try and define the word “law” as only the Jewish law because here, in this one verse, you have three different definitions. But you can see why they would want to define law as Jewish law only. Because then, this struggle of Romans 7 only applies to a Jew who wrestles in trying to keep the strict standards of the law. And then, they would say that in Romans 8:2 when Paul says we are “now free in Jesus from the law” that the struggle of Romans 7 are left behind after conversion.

That is why whenever I have referred to the word “law” in my sermons I have tried to be careful to say something like, law, the internal moral ought within us all or the written demands of the Bible or the Hebrew Torah. It is because of this issue. Many want to say that the law is bad and it’s not. Yes, simply because the law is there we break it (and for a lot of other reasons). But through that, the breaking of law, in those moments afterward of conviction and humility God enables us to see how truly broken we are and need Jesus. So the law’s overall goal and purpose is to lead us to Jesus and on top of it it comes from God (that’s what Paul argued earlier in the chapter).

So notice something with me. Notice how Paul says, “I see in my members another law.” So he already acknowledges in that statement that there is a standard view of law but here he says he “sees” another law. I think he is using “see” here to say that he realizes another principle, another moral code, another law at work and that is this, that sin is a princple or power or rule that works through and the body making it a law of death and it still can be an operative principle or power in the life of a believer.

Here is the point. Simply because Romans 8 highlights that Jesus frees us from the law of sin doesn’t mean that Romans 7 is not a Christian. The point of Romans 8 is to say that the Christian now has the Spirit and thus the power to defeat sin, but the law of sin is still there too, or else Romans 8:13 would say to “put to death the deeds of the body.” The point of Romans 7 is to say that there is still a power, sin that can be at work even in one’s life after becoming a believer.

10. the conclusion 7:25b

Reason number 10, 7:25b. I say b because there are two parts to verse 25, a first part and a second part and that second part 7:25b is a genuine embarassment to an interepretation of this chapter as the experience of someone before they become a Christian.

Let me show you. So Paul is wrestling…I do the things I don’t want to do, I want to do what’s right but then I keep scewing it up and it is evil and sinful…what a wretched man that I am, who will free me. Verse 25, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! You feel this building and building tension in the passage and when you get to verse 25, and you get to Jesus, you are like, yes I knew that couldn’t be right! In fact, if that was all there was in verse 25, I would be strongly persuaded toward the pre-Christian view.

But there is a b, a second part to verse 25, which says “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Just after Paul shouts out thanks to God for the future freeing from the body of death he soberly summarizes the lot of the Christian and sets up the discussion for Romans 8. If he were to end at 7:25b it would be a depressing life but in Romans 8 Paul talks about the possibility and goodness of walking according to the Spirit in spite of this struggle which every Christian will have.

So the 10th and final exegetical reason from our verses here is 7:25b. For Romans 7 to be a pre-Christian experience one really has to just cut verse 25b out of their Bible.

11. the apostle Peter

Now we move on to two final reasons that I get from looking at the Bible as a whole and the characters and stories that are told. Time and time again we read stories in the Bibles about people who are screw-ups that God has mercy on and calls them and enables them to do some incredible things, but even after all those things take place we see them fail and fall in bouts with sin.

Consider the story of the great apostle St. Peter who wrote two books of the Bible, who preached on the first day of the church and 3,000 people became Christians, who when Jesus said he was going to Jersusalem to die, Peter said he was ready to go die with him too. In John 13:37 Peter syas, “Lord, I will lay down my life for you.” And then the night of the next day Jesus is arrested and taken in. Peter is standing by a fire outside the building where they are holding Jesus and a little girl comes up it him and says, “You are one of Jesus disciples huh?” And Peter answers, “What? No, I don’t know him.” Two more people ask him and all three times he denies Jesus.

In the book of Acts, God teaches Peter about how culture itself is not bad but is a filter for the gospel and so things from the Jewish law like not eating meat isn’t a big deal. So Peter is stoked he starts eating steaks and hamburgers and he’s drinking good wine with it and loves it. It is good times, he is wondering why he ever got all caught up in the vegan straight edge thing. J But then in Galatians we hear about how he gets back to Jerusalem and his buddies are asking him, “dude we heard you are eating meat, what is up with that?” And Peter is all, “What! No way man. I didn’t eat no meat are you kidding me.” Again Peter was fearing men and seeking their approval and then lying and deceiving in his behavior.

Peter, a man who knew the gospel, followed Christ, had times when sin got the upper hand. I’m sure Peter too experienced the inner conflict Paul describes in Romans 7 and he went home and with bitter tears cried out “O wretched man that I am! Deliver me Jesus.”

I love the scene in John 21 at the end of the book after Jesus rises from the dead and he takes Peter aside and says to Peter, “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter answers “Yes, Lord you know that I love you.” Then Jesus asks him again “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter answers, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” Then a third time, just as Peter denied Jesus three times, Jesus asks him “Peter, do you love me?” And the Bible says that “Peter was grieved.” With his head hung low, wretched man that he was, Peter says, “Lord, you know all things and you know I love you.”

12. 1 John 1:8

The last and final reason. Reason number 12 why I believe Romans 7 is a post Christian experience, 1 John 1:8. 1 John 1:8 written by another disciples of Jesus from the beginning, the apostle John, in a letter he writes to be distrubuted to all the Christian churches, he says this, 1 John 1:8-9 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

What I am getting at here is theology. How you interpret the Bible will dictate your theology, what you believe about God and his gospel. And here is my point. It is extremely difficult to see how one can interpret Romans 7 as someone who is not yet a Christian, and not end up with a theology called “Christian Perfectionism” or “Entire Santification.” Now I know those are big words, but basically what that means is that the Christian reaches a state where there is no inner battle and no sin in the beliver, they are perfect and entirely sanctified. And such a belief is a direct violation of 1 John 1:8, “if we say we have no sin we are deceived.”

And here is why I bring it up, because I don’t know about you but it seems to me that in a lot of churches or in a lot of Christians that I meet they seem to talk and act as though they don’t have any sin anymore. That somehow because they are following Jesus they have become perfect. And that simply is not true. We are still sinners. We are just sinners who are being saved and who are being opened up more and more to the joy of the gospel and who are on a mission to spread the fame of Jesus across the world.

I think Romans 7 was put in our Bible to humble us. To from ever have anything to boast about except Jesus. We are always in need of him and he alone is the savior who is delivering and who will ultimately and finally deliver us from this body of sin and death one day.

II. The Gospel Response
- theme one: true hedonism
- theme two: true war

Okay. So what do we do? How are we to respond? Where does the gospel fit in all of this? It seems pretty clear to me that Romans 7 is in fact a Christian experience. Where does that leave us?

Last week I focused on the theme of hedonism. I said that this text is a vivid portral of the Christian orientation to long for, look to, and seek after joy in God through Jesus. We are all naturally inclined to want to be happy and that is not bad, that is how God made us. But he made us in a way where the fit thing that satisfies our longing for happiness is him. The gospel is a joyful gospel and so the first theme to focus on in this text is the hedonism, that as Chrisitians our sights are to be set on pleasure in God, that is our orientation and our hope whether we are in the middle of a struggle, or in a season of grace without struggle, it is pleasure. The joyful God is where we have our sights.

This week the theme I want to focus on is true war. A very quick way to divide a room in half or to prick a group of people’s passion is to bring up the current war or whatever it is going on now in the middle east. Legally, we are not allowed to have a stance as a church, so I’ll be careful. I just want to note that war is a big deal. Some of the men who are in our church who are in the military have trained for war or even fought in them. Some of our grandparents or great grandparents know much about war. War is something that has plagued humanity for thousands of years. Do you ever wonder why? Do you really think the reason for wars have been because of politics or nationalism or money or whatever the case? I don’t think so.

Here is where I think wars come from. “I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin (Rom 7:23).” The Bible’s perspective is that wars begin with the law of sin inside individuals.

There is an implicit imperative in this verse that we must fight as Christians. We must learn how to wage war with our souls. Ephesians 6:12 says, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” We must learn how to wage war so that we will not be taken captive by the law of sin. We can’t say we won’t fight, that we are just against violence, for then you have already given in. No, we must fight.

Now there are different kinds of battles. There are big battles and there are small battles. I think Romans 7 is a big battle sort of struggle…but there are also little struggles every day. When our mood swings and you say unkind things to your spouse or when you are hungry and tired at the end of the day and the girl at the drive through at in-n-out can’t get your order right and when she finally does it’s all screwed up, charges you more and forgets your drink, which is probably a good thing so you didn’t throw it at her. J Those are small battles. Like battling to get up in the morning early enough to pray and read the Bible. Then there are bigger battles, battles with addiction and adultery and all kinds of grevious sins that if you give in reap harsh hard consequences that may cause a darkness to descend over you for sometime. Battles, fighting, waging war.

What I want to do to conclude this sermon is to give you some ways that can help you fight for joy. That’s actually the subtitle of one of John Piper’s books, “When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy.” Go read that book, there’s one way.

There are all kinds of means that God has provided for us to fight for and find joy in him. In our theology class that starts this Wednesday, there is one week where we talk about all the “means” there are to choose from in our fight to follow Jesus. By “means” what we are talking about are ways that God in the Bible has shown himself to work through in order to increase our satisfaction in him. There are a ton, I’ll just give you five. Reading the Bible and praying are on the top of the list but those are things you should just be doing everyday anyway, so I’m not going to mention them.

1. Preach to yourself. King David did this. In Psalm 42:5 David says, “Why are you so downcast oh my soul, put your hope in God and praise his name.” Sometimes you have to preach to yourself…you may have to get in the mirror and look at yourself and tell yourself who you are in Jesus in order to get through certain moments or days of temptation.

2. Wait in Silence. Again David says this in Psalm 62:1-2 “My soul waits in silence for God only; He only is my rock and my salvation.” There is so much noise in life…seeeming almost especially when you go to try and pray. Sometimes you just need to physically get on your knees or lay down prostrate with your face toward the floor and lay in silence and wait for God and his Spirit to fill you with his presence and power.

3. Fast from Food. In Luke 5:35 Jesus says that he expects fasting to be part of our normal life and mission as Christians, I’d say once a week a good rule of thumb. Fasting has an interesting effect on you if you are doing it for a spiritual reason and not just to get skinnier. Every time you feel hunger (yes, I mean real fasting not the wanna be kind where you fast from TV or something, fasting in the Bible is from food and drink), you think of God and the gospel and your need and desire for Him.

4. Change your geography. Several times in the gospel accounts we read about Jesus just leaving and going off by himself up on the mountain to pray and occasionally he would stay there the whole night. Sometimes you have to remove yourself from your current situation to be able to see everything from a better perspective and to be in a place where God can speak to you.

5. Talk to someone about Jesus. Philemon 6 says “I pray that you might be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” That is an amazing verse because it says that part of having a full and good life as a Christian is dependent upon us talking about Jesus. Your goal is life is not what job you will end up doing and how much money you will make but in what way you as an individual person will be able to best glorify God with your giftings and share Jesus with the people where you are using them.

Okay, so that is just a few means that you can use, there are a ton more, but those are a few…weapons you can use in the war for your soul.

Conclusion

This has been a sermon about sin, the sin which indwells us as believers making us at times conflicted when sin gets the upper hand. The answer is to seek joy in God and to wage war with our souls.

For the kids, today’s sermon is about how Jesus is so good and how he is what we need but it isn’t always easy to follow Jesus…so sometimes when you know one thing is right and you are thinking about not doing it, you have to fight with yourself…and the best ways to fight with yourself are found in the Bible. So as soon as you can you need to start reading the Bible or having your mom or dad read it to you.

For us bigger kids, I want to close with a quote from John Owen, the great puritan theologian. I have been reading one of the best books I have ever read on this subject. It has an amazing title, is called, “The Nature, Power, Deceipt and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers; Together with the Ways of Its Working and Means of Prevention, Opened, Encinced, and Applied: with a Resolution of Sundry Cases of Conscience Thereunto Appertaining.”

“There is a constant enemy in every one’s own heart; and what an enemy it is. (Many) live and walk as though they intended to go to heaven hood-winked and asleep, as though they had no enemy to deal withal. Many live in the dark to themselves all their days; whatever else they know, they know not themselves. They know their outward estates, how rich they are, and the condition of their bodies as to health and sickness they are careful to examine; but as to their inward man, and their principles as to God and eternity, they know little or nothing of themselves.

Indeed, few labor to grow wise in this matter, few study themselves as they ought, are acquainted with the evils of their own hearts as they ought; on which yet the whole course of their obedience, and consequently of their eternal condition, doth depend. An acquaintance with these several principles and their actings is the principal part of our wisdom. Next to the free grace of God in our justification by the blood of Christ, they are the only things wherein the glory of God and our own souls are concerned. These are the springs of our holiness and our sins, of our joys and troubles, of our refreshments and sorrows. It is, then, all our concernments to be thoroughly acquainted with these things, who intend to walk with God and to glorify him in this world.”

Let’s pray.