Romans Chapter 7
“The Battle”

Introduction

First off, two disclaimers:

• This chapter is controversial in Christian scholarship, for reasons we’ll see. I realize you aren’t aware of all the problems with the chapter – but I’ll try to help you as I go along. And if you decide you disagree with my conclusion, that’s OK. I’d love to talk with you about it. But know that my sermon today will be based on my understanding of the passage – and it’s the “minority opinion.”
• This chapter, controversial as it is, really has to be taken as a whole to be understood. And it REALLY has to be taken with chapter 8 as well. But we don’t have time for all that this morning, so I’ll try to tie things together and we’ll have to wait for another week.

Previously (ch. 6) Paul has asserted that we are now free to choose whom we will serve – sin or God.  But that doesn’t end the story, unfortunately.  It’s not that one master has been destroyed and there is no longer a choice as to whom we serve.  Just because we are no longer enslaved to sin doesn’t mean that we are unable to sin.  It simply means that we have the choice now.

Old Law vs. “New way of the Spirit”

An Illustration From Marriage

(1) Do you not know, brothers-for I am speaking to men who know the law-that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? (2) For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. (3) So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

Paul now gives another example to illustrate his point.  He’s not giving any kind of teaching about marriage… in fact, this passage really has nothing to do with marriage.  He’s simply referring to Jewish law to make a point.  And his point is this: death brings about a change in the circumstances of the law. Under Jewish law, if a woman is with another man while her husband is still alive, she is committing adultery.  While her husband is alive, she is bound to that contract and “law,” and the consequences for breaking it were severe.

But once her husband dies, the commitment to the old contract dies with him.  The death signaled that the woman was free from one law and is now free to choose.

(4) So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. (5) For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. (6) But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

In a similar way, when we decided to place our trust in God and Jesus, we “died” to the old law that once bound us.  Jesus was like the husband who died – except Jesus did it WILLINGLY.  He died willingly so that we could be free from one law to be bound to another.  Since Jesus died, we can be free from the old way of living, and we can follow “the new way of the Spirit” and not the old written Law.

Struggling With Sin

(7) What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” (8) But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. (9) Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. (10) I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

(11) For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. (12) So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. (13) Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

Using rhetorical argument again, Paul recognizes that we could use this reasoning to think that the Law is a BAD THING – after all, if we are bound to it, it produces death.  And this is a common misconception.  We’re used to thinking: “Old Law is bad, new life is good.”

But he asserts that this is far from true – rather, the Law has always been a pure and holy thing, but like a bright light it shone on sin and revealed sin for what it really was.  As Paul points out in Galatians, the Law was kind of like a “teacher” that helped move us toward God and toward Jesus.  If not for the Law, we would not have known what was right and wrong to God – nor would we have known of our need for God.

The Battle Begins

Now here’s the part that’s controversial.

(14) We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. (15) I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. (16) And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. (17) As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. (18) I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. (19) For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. (20) Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

(21) So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. (22) For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; (23) but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. (24) What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (25) Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

The controversial part is this:  How is Paul speaking here?  There are a few ways to look at it, and they can be boiled down to two:

• He’s speaking as himself and other Jews, but before he placed his faith in Christ. This is the “majority view.” Paul is showing his predicament BEFORE he became a follower of Jesus.
• He’s speaking of himself at the current time – an in-between time, AFTER Christ has set him free from the old law, but BEFORE his own death has abolished the old law all together.

I hesitate to go against modern scholarship here.  These men and women are much wiser and much more educated than I am.  But my own life experiences have forced me to see things in a different way.

My assertion:

• Much of Christian scholarship seems to operate under the assumption that sin will no longer be a problem for us – as if it is erased from our current experience.
• Far from it, I believe that we now have the power not to sin, and that the real battle between flesh and Spirit has now begun.
• So what Paul describes here is not the viewpoint of an unregenerate sinner or Jew, but rather his own experience of the battle between flesh and Spirit that rages within us until the day we truly die and shed the sinful nature.

Think about it.  Many of us had no inkling of what was right or wrong before we had a desire to look into God’s Word and to follow it.  But the battle wasn’t won then – many people think this and even act according to it.

But to say the battle was won when the Spirit enters our life is like saying D-Day was won before the soldiers ever set foot on the beaches of Normandy.  The battle didn’t begin until those soldiers set foot in France and fired the first shots.

It’s the same in our lives.  The battle had not even begun until that point when the Spirit came into our lives and began the process of rooting out our sinful habits.

Sin is Still a Powerful Foe

So Paul finds the crux of the matter – sin is still a powerful force to reckon with.  Once God’s light has shone in us, we have the desire to do good and to follow his commands.  We want to do the right thing.  But, UNTIL WE FINALLY DIE, there will still be a battle between our old way and our new way.

Once we accepted Christ, we were given the power to reject sin.  But it didn’t mean that we automatically stopped sinning all together.  In fact, now we see even more clearly why our sinful actions are painful to God!

So still the battle is there – we want to do what is good, and yet our old habits and our tendencies to sin sometimes overcome our desire to follow God.  And the closer we get to God, the greater becomes our desire to please him and serve him.

What Can We Do?

If we had to leave things here, we would indeed have to say with Paul that we are “wretched creatures.”  Because of our new life in Christ, we have a new desire to love and serve him.  But we also have a clearer and deeper picture of our own sinfulness.

This would be a wretched life indeed if the story were to end here!  We have once been under one law, that bound us to specific actions that even now we are not able to keep perfectly.  If we are still bound to that old Law as Christians, then we are no better off.  In fact, we might be WORSE off, because of all people we can see our sin even more clearly.

Thankfully, the story doesn’t end here.  And thankfully I’m not going to leave everything for next week.  Let us read this word with thankfulness:

Life Through the Spirit

(1) Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, (2) because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (3) For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, (4) in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

©2010 Notes From Jon. All Rights Reserved.