PAUSE: The War

Romans 7.14-25

If you weren’t here last week, you’re both lucky and unlucky. Last week Joe preached through the entire chapter 7 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Preaching through an entire chapter is not easy, and Joe did a great job. So if you missed it, you’re unlucky, because, well, you missed it. It’s on our website, and I encourage you to go there and listen to it.

But you’re lucky too, because I’m going to go over a lot of the same territory today, only less clearly and well-organized.

We’ve done this before in this series—we try to not spend multiple weeks on a single text, so we don’t lose the train of Paul’s argument. But there are some passages in which Paul says something which isn’t his main point, but which is so huge that we want to take a break and see it in more detail.

So that’s what we’re doing today; we’re going back to last week’s text, and we’ll be focusing mostly on v. 14-25, to talk about what Paul calls the “law of sin”. It’s kind of a confusing term, so I just like to call it “the war.”

And here’s why we’re doing this. For many Christians, there is a kind of life cycle. They meet Christ, and they accept the good news of the gospel with joy, and they begin living for him. They’re told in the gospel that Christ has set them free from sin, but then they find themselves struggling with sin anyway—struggling with disobedience to God. And there seems to be a sort of disconnect between what they hear in the gospel and what they see in their lives. So they start to doubt. They start doubting the gospel is real, or they start doubting themselves, or they start doubting that God loves them, because things aren’t going as they expected them to go. And the discouragement gets even more pronounced the older they get, because they see this same cycle repeat itself again and again: faith, struggle, doubt; faith, struggle, doubt.

I can’t count the number of times I have had just this kind of conversation with many of you; it comes up a lot. So today, instead of saying anything radically different from what Joe said last week, I just want to press on it a little more, partially because it’s kind of confusing.

It’s confusing because we have two seemingly opposing ideas at work here.

The first is that we are genuinely, truly, and powerfully set free from sin in Jesus Christ—we have died to sin, Paul says in chapter 6; Christ killed our sin on the cross.

The second is that our sin is still at work in us, trying to get us to sin more.

It’s hard to see how those two ideas don’t contradict each other. And it’s even harder to not be discouraged when we find ourselves still sinning, even though we know sin no longer has dominion over us, because we are no longer under the law, but under grace (6.14).

We want that to happen right away. And if we stop at Romans 6, and don’t continue on to Romans 7, we may get the impression that it should happen that way. But if we do that, we end up with a different kind of prosperity gospel—a gospel which promises easy holiness and immediate transformation, which is something the Bible never promised us. We’ll see what Paul says in Romans 6, and we’ll get discouraged, thinking, Why isn’t MY life like this?

But we have to see that the freedom of Romans 6 and the struggle of Romans 7 are not actually opposed to one another; he’s talking about two different facets of the same process (which Paul will finish describing in chapter 8).

Romans 6 describes reality. We are free from sin. If we are in Christ, sin has lost its power to condemn us, and sin has lost its power to control us. We all serve something, and now that we are in Christ, we serve God, and we present our members to him as instruments of righteousness, to obey him.

Romans 7 describes our experience. Presenting our members to him as instruments of righteousness is not easy. We see a war at work in ourselves, because we want to live for God, but we never manage to do it perfectly—we never entirely succeed.

And in Romans 8, Paul returns to the reality: thank God, we don’t have to succeed, because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Can you see how Romans 7 fits? I love this chapter, because for a short time, it takes a step away from pure theology and it speaks about experience. This is the chapter in which we can see ourselves reflected. Paul describes what it feels like to be a human being whose body has not yet been glorified, a body which is still on this side of Christ’s return, a body that hasn’t been resurrected and transformed… He talks about what it's like to be a human being like this… and still, really and truly, be set free from sin.

What is it like? Paul says it’s like a war.

Mind and Body (v. 14-20)

V. 14:

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.

We all know the story: people who are overweight or out of shape want to get fit. So they start eating better, and they start exercising, because they genuinely want to be healthier. But then they have a bad day. And inevitably, they return to their old vice: they crack open the soda, they go back to their cake. (Or if it’s me: I go back to my coffee and cookies.) They still want to be healthy; but on this particular day, it just feels too hard.

New desires don’t necessarily produce new actions. If God has given us faith in Christ, he has given us a new heart to desire the right things, and his Spirit to pull us in the direction of those desires. But while he has transformed us on the inside, he hasn’t given us new bodies. At least until Christ returns, our bodies are still laden with sin.

He says in v. 14:

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

This is the key verse of this passage, because in this verse, Paul explains what’s actually going on.

First he says that the law is spiritual. This is a bit confusing, because up to now Paul has used this word “law” to talk about the law of Moses. The Law of Moses is what the Jews had to follow in order to be declared righteous by God—but none of them could do it. And Paul has just spent six chapters explaining how Christ solved that problem, by taking on human flesh and accomplishing the Law for his people. Now at this point a lot of Christians will think that because Christ did this, the Law is thrown out like an old shoe.

But that’s not the case. Jesus himself says in Matthew 5.17:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

And we know it because of what the author of the letter to the Hebrews says in Hebrews 8.10. Speaking of God’s people under the new covenant—those who are in Christ—he quotes Jeremiah 31.10, saying:

10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Okay, so let’s put all this together. Christ comes to fulfill the Law, and he does. But in fulfilling the Law, he doesn’t throw it away. Paul says in 7.12 that the law is holy, and the commandment is righteous and good.

We know how God works. He doesn’t make good things and then throw them away once sin has used them for evil. He restores them to their intended goal. Christ canceled the legal function of the law for his people—he abolished the need to keep the law in order to be saved (because he kept the law for us).

But the character of God that the law described, the holy will of God for his people, is still very much the same.

So rather than do away with the law, God solves the problem of the relationship between our sin and the law (which Joe talked about last week), and he applies the law in a different way. He applies it directly to our hearts by his Spirit. This is what Paul means in v. 14 when he says that the law is spiritual.

Think about the last time you were tempted to sin, and you felt something in you saying, No, God does not want me to do this. I shouldn’t do it. Whether you listened to that voice or not, that is the law of God, applied to your heart. That is the Spirit, holding up the temptation on one hand, and God’s law on the other, and saying, Between the two of these, here’s what you should do: flee temptation, and be like God.

When Paul talks about “the law of God,” or “the law of the mind,” in this chapter, that’s what he’s talking about: the character and will of God that we know is right. And because he’s given us a new heart, we really do want to do what is right.

But then he adds a contrast to this spiritual law, this “law of the mind”, when he says, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

In other words: God applies his law to our minds and our hearts, by his Spirit. But our flesh—our bodies, still marked by sin—will fight against that law, every second of our lives.

We see it all over these verses.

V. 15:

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…

V. 18:

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.

And we get horribly frustrated, because we want to scream out, BUT THAT’S NOT WHO I AM ANYMORE! I’ve been set free from sin! I’ve been declared righteous by God! We know these things are true—we know who we are now—and yet, something else is in us, pulling us in the opposite direction.

20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

I (the justified, forgiven person I am) want one thing; but my body (still laden with the old habits of sin) pulls me in the other direction.

The War Between Mind and Body (v. 21-25)

If we don’t understand why this happens, it can be incredibly confusing.

Loanne and I recently bought a printer. I’m pretty good with technology, so I wasn’t worried. I followed the instructions, I checked it out, everything seemed to be working properly…but then on the second document we tried to print, the paper jammed, and it only printed half of what it was supposed to. And for a while, we just looked at the thing, totally mystified. I know this works, it’s brand new; this shouldn’t be happening. What’s going on?

Without Romans 7, we’d read this letter and then live our entire Christian lives in that kind of confusion. This should be working. I’m free from sin, why am I still sinning? I don’t get it.

So I am very thankful that Paul included this chapter. He starts by setting up the terrain, in the verses we just saw—we have the law of God, applied to our hearts by his Spirit, on one side; and we have our flesh, our bodies, still laden with sin, on the other side.

Put these two things together under the same roof, and what’s going to happen? They’re going to fight. V. 21:

V. 21:

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.

Let’s just take a second and think about how we probably just read that passage. Most Christians read v. 21-25 like a death sentence. Woe is me—every time I try to do good, I fail! I CAN’T DO IT.

We need to be really clear: that is not the tone Paul is striking in these verses. These verses should fill us with the same kind of excitement that you feel before a boxing match. A battle is about to take place. It’s going to be hard. It might even be bloody. But it’s good.

In one corner, we have v. 22:

I delight in the law of God, in my inner being…

I see who God is and what he is like, and I approve. I want to be like this. This is how I want to live.

In the other corner, we have v. 23:

…but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind [God’s will and character, applied to my heart and mind] and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

In every Christian, between the mind that embraces God and the body that is habituated to sin, there is a war.

This kind of struggle is not totally foreign to us; we see it in our ordinary lives, just on a different level.

Have you ever seen those videos of people trying to walk on the Skydeck of the Willis Tower in Chicago? The Skydeck is basically a glass balcony that sticks out from the building. The walls are glass, and the floor is glass. This balcony is on the 103rd floor, 1,353 feet (412 meters) from the ground.

It’s really funny to watch people try to walk out on it. Some do it with no problem; others absolutely lose their minds. They can’t go near it. It doesn’t matter that the glass is incredibly thick, and so reinforced that it could support the weight of a car. They know it’s solid, but they freak out, because all they can see is the empty air beneath their feet. That’s the body, fighting against the mind and winning.

Or, think in the opposite direction. How many moms here have given birth? How many of you, before your children were born, were actively looking forward to the delivery? Not having the baby after, but actually giving birth?

And yet, you did it. Moms do it all the time. They know it’s going to be awful. But they do it, because there’s a bigger and better goal behind it, and they’ve got their eyes set on that goal: the goal of getting to be with their baby. That’s the mind, fighting against the body, and winning.

This is the kind of battle going on in us, except that it’s on a much bigger scale, with much bigger stakes. It is a war that happens, not despite the faith that God gave us, but because of the faith that God gave us.

My sin-laden body tries to convince me that I am still the person I used to be. My body is still used to throwing certain emotions at me, at certain times. It is still used to throwing certain desires at me.

(And by the way, when we talk about “the body,” our emotions are included, because our emotions are very much a physical, biological product: our brains tell us something, and we feel a certain way. It tells us we’re in danger, and we feel scared. It tells us we’ve been wronged, and we feel angry. There is a reason why we get red in the face when we’re embarrassed or mad.)

But God has told me the truth. When God saved me, he gave me faith, he gave me his Spirit, he gave me a new identity. I am no longer a sinner. I am a child of God, declared righteous. That is who I am.

So what do I do? Remember chapter 6, verse 11?

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Do you see how Paul actually de-mystifies the fight against sin? We want God to give us a kind of Spirit transfusion, where God swoops in and gives us an IV drip of holiness, gives us superhuman powers of resistance against sin. We want to feel God doing that.

But nine times out of ten, he says, “No. I’ve given you everything you need. I’ve told you who you are, and who I am for you. So trust that it’s true—consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ—and fight.”

I know some of you don’t want this to be true. But this is the apostle Paul, SuperChristian, speaking about himself. If this is his experience, it’s likely to be ours as well.

In addition, when Paul writes this, he’s been a Christian for a long time. This is Paul, speaking of his experience after years of following Christ. And guess what? At the time of his death, he still had the same body, the same flesh sold under sin, that he had before Christ met him on the road to Damascus. I’m positive that he made progress over the course of those years, because if we know anything about our bodies and our minds, it’s that just as they formed old habits, they can form new ones. But this war he describes continued until his death.

And most of us can’t even begin to imagine that kind of perseverance, much less desire it. We want to see progress, now. We want to feel like we’re making it. We want to hurry the process.

But we will have these sin-laden bodies until our death, or until Christ returns, whichever comes first. So as long as we’re alive, the war will continue. We have to see further than our noses. We have to persevere, over the long haul, and be patient with the process. Our flesh won’t change in a day.

Conclusion

Which leads us to how this text calls us to respond. Trying to force an application here is challenging, because the real application of chapter 7 doesn’t come until chapter 8, which we’ll see next week. But there are at least two things we can take away from it, even now.

I kind of just said the first one:

1. Don’t stop reading at the end of Romans 7.

Obeying God isn’t easy. We see a battle at work in ourselves, because we want to live for God, but we find ourselves struggling to do it—we never fully succeed. And thank God we don’t have to succeed, because there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. It is no longer the law, but the Spirit, who guides us and enables us to grow.

We have been set free from sin, which means our sinful bodies are no longer the decisive force in our lives. If we are in Christ, our bodies don’t get to decide for us any longer. Because we have been set free from sin, we can set our minds on the things of the Spirit, to live according to the Spirit. (But that, we’ll see next week.)

2. Don’t be afraid of the fight.

I know some of you are discouraged with what you see as a lack of progress. You feel yourself tempted to sin, and you’re despairing over the temptation you face; you feel like a fraud, because if you were really a good Christian, you wouldn’t be tempted like this. You want to serve God, but it’s a struggle.

If that’s you, please listen carefully: your struggle is not a failure. The fact that you feel pulled in two different directions is good news. It means that you “delight in the law of God in your inner being”, and this new mind that God has given you is fighting against your sin. It means you’ve stepped into the ring.

When Paul talks about “walking according to the Spirit” in 8.4-5, that’s what it looks like: fighting. That fight is a gift: it is proof of the Spirit in us, teaching us to walk in step with him.

So rather than fretting over our conflicting impulses, what do we do? We set our minds on the Spirit, and we follow him. We fight. And over time, the sinful impulses that our bodies have learned through our nature and through our habits and through our experiences…these impulses begin to change, through the new nature he has given us, and through new habits and new experiences that the Spirit helps us develop.

It’s going to hurt—a physical therapist pushes an injured man to help him learn to walk. It’s painful—but it’s good. It’s effective. It’s helping.

Don’t be discouraged by the fight, and don’t be afraid of the fight. The fight means you’re alive. Keep going.