Sunday 12 • 10 • 17

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. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, 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. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? 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. — Romans 7:18-25

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

It's really not very often that children's movies deliver a storyline with any kind of nuance to them. The tired old theme is a concretely evil villain and an unswaying good hero, which is why I find Despicable Me to be such a refreshing series. If you're not familiar with it, it stars Steve Carell, who does the voice of Gru, who has this terrible kind of Russian accent and plays a bad guy turned good guy with three adopted little daughters. What's great about the story is that it provides over and over a sense of nuance. Every Despicable Me in the series asks the same question: Is Gru a good guy or a bad guy? And the opening of Despicable Me Three is no different. It starts with Gru being fired from the anti-villainy league and thinking about going back to a life of crime. And he just asks the question, is he good or is he bad?

That is our passage this morning to a tee. That is Romans 7.

I know that this passage elicits one of two responses, and usually very polar opposite. One of two responses from people as they hear it, and it's one of either crazy making or sanity restoring. Either you love it or you hate it. For some people, it's so intuitive. And as we've gone through the book of Romans, you may feel like this has just been really, really thick and a lot of theology. And this is the first passage where people are like, I know about that one. That's me. I get that one. For others of you, as we read through this passage, it's crazy making because we've talked about all these rich truths—dead to sin, alive to Christ—and it feels like Paul is taking away with his right hand what he has just given with his left hand.

So what is going on here? It makes sense to me that this is both. This is both crazy making and sanity restoring. Because Paul here shifts from theology and a theological treatise to personal testimony. His language here changes, and over and over in this chapter, this section in particular verses 7 through 25, you go from all this great theology to I, I, I, me, me, me. And Paul is telling you, this is what it feels like to be a Christian. This is not just about the Christian experience. This is about my Christian experience. And just like Gru, his testimony raises the question: Is Paul here a good guy or is he a bad guy?

Do you guys like when I give you an outline? Do you want an outline? Alright. Here's the outline for this morning: the reality of the struggle, the dangers of the flesh, the cry of the believer, and the sufficiency of the savior. So, four points. I know. I ate my Wheaties this morning. I warned you. Do you want an outline? You said yes. Alright. Hang in with me. They'll be short though. I'll be out of your way soon.

The Reality of the Struggle

The struggle is real. Now some people in reading this passage have said, wait a second. Is this a Christian? Or is Paul here speaking in a pre-conversion state? Is he talking about what it was like before he became a Christian? Because he says things here like:

I am of the flesh sold under sin — Romans 7:14

Or:

I know nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh — Romans 7:18

Now don't those sound like the statements of someone who is apart from Christ? Don't those sound like someone who is not a Christian? Those sound like the statements of someone who is not dead to sin, dead to the law, alive to Christ. It sounds like the Avett Brothers. If you're familiar with the Avett Brothers, they have this song where they say, "Something has me, something has me, and acting like someone I don't want to be. Something has me, something has me, acting like someone that isn't me."

So is this really a Christian? Here's why I really believe, and the vast majority of people who've studied this passage that are smarter than me believe, this is a post-conversion Paul. This is the life of a believer.

In verses seven through 13, we read that last week. This is the first part of his testimony, and it all begins with past tense. It's all in the past. This is what has happened to me. This is how when the law showed up in my life, it brought conviction, and it killed me. It just laid me dead. And this is what his experience was.

Now in verse 14, the tense changes and becomes present tense. He's describing now the present struggle in his life. Here's presently what's going on.

Now, can I just make a point of this: it is Christians who struggle with sin. Unbelievers, in general, do not struggle with their sin. They are happy with their sin. They're happy pagans apart from God. Like, this is fine. So when he's describing his ongoing struggle with sin, that's the description of a believer.

The second thing we see here is verse 22. He says:

I delight in the law in my inner being.

Or in verse 25:

I myself serve the law of God with my mind, that's the new man, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin.

And later we'll see next chapter, we're going to see where it is really the person who is not saved, who is not in Christ, who is hostile to God. A person who is not a Christian is not saying, "I really want to please God. I really can't do it. I can't do it. I struggle against myself, but I really want to please Him." No. That's not the mind of a person who is in Christ.

And then the final piece of evidence for this is two thousand years of church history. For two thousand years, there have been so many believers who've read this passage and thought, "I could have written that. This is so me. That is so my story. That's what this feels like." The struggle is real. This is the internal struggle, not just of Paul, but of all Christians.

The best portrayal I've seen of this in any kind of media is in the film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers, part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There's a character named Gollum who is a miserable creature. His name used to be Sméagol and over time, his life has been captured by one desire: to have the ring of power. This ring has been lost. One of the hobbits found it. And so his entire life obsession is to have it back.

There's this great scene that's not in the books, but I think it totally fits with what Tolkien would have been like, "Yeah, that fits." Because it's Sméagol and Gollum, this kind of divided personality, having a debate with himself.

So if you'll humor me for a second, this is how the scene goes:

Gollum says, "We wants it. We needs it. Must have precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbits. Wicked, tricksy, false."

And Sméagol goes, "No. No. Not master."

Gollum says, "Yes, precious first, they will cheat you, hurt you, lie."

"No, master's my friend."

"You don't have any friends. Nobody likes you."

"Not listening. Not listening. You're a liar and a thief."

"No."

"Murderer. Go away. Go away. I hate you. I hate you. Why would you be without me? I saved us. It was me. We survived because of me."

"Not anymore."

"What did you say?"

"Master looks after us now. We don't need you."

"What? Leave and never come back."

"No. Leave and never come back."

Now, I have a kid who could do that much better. But you get it, right?

Isn't that what verses 15 through 20 sound like? This internal weird debate that Paul is having with himself, and it's frankly confusing. Let's walk through it slowly.

Look at verse 15. He says:

I don't understand my own actions. I don't know what I do. I do the thing I hate to do. I don't do the good I want to do. I do evil. It's evil that I keep on doing.

And we want to stop. We're like, "Okay, wait, Paul. When you say that, are you talking—is this new Paul or is this old Paul? Which, who is this talking?"

And then what does he say? Verse 17:

Well, when I do what I don't want to do, and when I don't do what I want to do, who is doing it?

And verse 17 says:

Well, that's not me, it's the sin living in me.

Okay, Paul. So what you're saying—is this you or not you? And then verse 18:

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh.

So what you're saying is nothing good dwells in you, Paul, your flesh. Is Paul you? Or is Paul the used to be you? Or is it the new you? I don't understand.

And I think Paul would be like, "Right, were you even listening to what I was saying? I don't understand. I said that. This is what this feels like. Isn't it?"

See, look what he says. He uses the emphatic in Greek all through this passage.

I myself, verse 25: "I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin."

Which is it? See, none of this struggle that Paul is describing here undoes the truths of anything that we've been preaching over the last few weeks. None of it undoes the fact that Christians are people who, when we look at the cross, we say that was my cross. I died when Jesus died. And when He came up out of that tomb, I came up out of that tomb, and I'm a new creation. The old is gone. The new has come. None of it undoes those things, but man, it feels like it, doesn't it? The struggle doesn't undo the truths, but it does undo our confidence.

See, Paul was telling us what the Christian life feels like to him. This is what it feels like. And man, this is so helpful to me. I hope this is helpful to you. Because isn't it the case that as we've gone through these chapters in five and six and seven, as we've gone through these sections, isn't the hard thing to believe? Isn't it hard to be like, wait. Okay, so I'm a new person. And I'm going to try to believe that, but I don't feel that. Can I get a witness on this? Yes, right? Isn't this the hard thing? Like, you're like, "I agree with you theologically. But personally, man, this is hard for me to get my head around. And I don't feel this way. I can try to believe it, but I don't feel this way."

And here's why that is true. Let me remind you of where we've been. We've said, chapter five verse 10: we were once enemies. God, through the blood of Jesus Christ, has brought us into the family. In chapter six verse six: the old self crucified in Christ, rendering it powerless to rule over us, to push us around, to enslave us anymore. We've been set free. Sin doesn't reign in you anymore. It doesn't have ruling authority over you. But—and this is the big but. There's a big but in this passage. That's a joke. Come on guys, lighten up. Okay, there's a big but in this passage.

Here's the but: while sin doesn't have authority in the life of a believer like it did before, it still has power. It still has great power. The reign of sin in us is broken, but the power of it is still very much something we're struggling with.

Sin Has Power, Not Authority

GK Chesterton, a British author, said this one time. He's describing a picture, kind of a restaurant scene. He says: "If at this moment a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant right now, there would be no denying that he would have great power here. But I should be the first to arise and assure him that he had no authority whatsoever."

Did you get the distinction? He's saying that the rhino could come in and break tables, but he is not in charge of this restaurant. This isn't his place. In the same way, sin and the flesh still have power. They have no authority over your life. They can't tell you what to do. You're not under their reign and control. But man, can they still mess up your life? Can we all say yes? Right? Indwelling sin still has power.

Why else would Paul tell us things like this: "You must consider yourself dead to sin and alive in Christ"? Or in the next chapter, which we're going to look at next week, it's now your job to start putting things to death in your life. He wouldn't have to say that unless sin still had this sense of power over us.

So that's the first point: the struggle is real. But then look at this—the flesh is dangerous. Up to this point in Romans, Paul has talked in what I would consider to be kind of scientific, detached language about sin. He's talked about the merit of sin, that sin merits death. He's talked about the effects of sin, that sin is within and without our entire being. There's no part of us that it doesn't touch. And he talked about the remedy for sin: the death of Christ on the cross.

But here, Paul talks like a sinner. He's like, "No, this is what it's like." I think sometimes we think of the Apostle Paul as a guy who spent his entire life in a library, like he never knew what sin was like. He was thinking about heaven all the time. No. He writes here like a real sinner. Like a real, hardcore you and me sinner. Like he knows what this is like. He is not some super Christian. And he speaks here about the power of the rhino—what power does the rhino have to come and throw his weight around in your life?

And he does so with a very interesting word: law. He says that in verse 21. Sin is a law. Or he refers to it in verses 20 and 23 as "sin living in me." Now, why would he call it a law? I mean, it's kind of ironic because he's just been talking about God's law. And those who are in Christ Jesus have been set free, have died to the law, and are alive to Christ. So actually we obey from the heart, from within.

That was the last section. But here he uses the word, and this is why this is confusing, because he uses it differently. Sometimes we use the word law, like he did in the last section, to refer to precepts, to written code that you obey. But here he is not speaking of that. It wouldn't make sense for sin to be a law in the sense of precepts that are written down that you obey. So he's got to be using it in another way. Let's think of another way that we use the word law. Ah, good point. Like the law of gravity. The law of gravity is not something that is a written code, but it is something that all of us obey. Some of us better than others. Right? I've got about a two inch vertical. I have so little time off the ground. Right? Some of you are much better than me. But we all sit like gravity works like a law in the sense that it bends you to its will. It pulls you back. And when he described sin as a law, he's using it in that context, that it has the power to pull you back in. It pulls you back in.

And so I love this passage because you can use your imagination to think about all the different illustrations of the way that sin works within our lives. Sin's like a gangster. It always is an inside job for the mafia hit, right? Sin never takes a sick day, never takes a vacation, never takes a Sabbath. Sin is always like that unwelcome houseguest who never leaves. You can use all kinds of different illustrations for this. Go crazy this week.

The Flesh

But the reason that sin still feels so powerful to us is because of what Paul calls the flesh. And the flesh here is Paul's designation for the remnant of old you, the residue, what is left of the old you. It is not referring just to the physical body. And this has been a confusing point for Christians throughout the centuries. They've thought, okay, because we know of the passions of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, we always think of those in terms of appetites, of food and drink and sexuality and pleasure. And it includes those things, but it is not just those things. It's not body bad, inside good. That's Plato. Okay?

Well, actually we have a nature that is still under a judgment. It will one day be done away with, but still hates God, loves sin, and loves to rebel. Does anybody identify with this? Right? Flesh still at work within us. Flesh is bigger than just our bodies, and it is active and must be battled and subdued and over time be put to death by a Christian. That's where we're going with this.

Stranger Things as Illustration

Stranger Things two has afforded a lot of really helpful sermon illustrations for this point, for both flesh and sin, both the way that flesh is everywhere and the way that sin entices. So somebody yelled at me for this this morning. I'm sorry. It's been six weeks. Okay? If you haven't been watching this at this point, it's fair game.

So here's the way that flesh works. Okay. Season one of Stranger Things, there is this evil thing that is contained within the Hawkins Laboratory in this little town. And the police chief and the little kids in the show are battling this thing, and they think in season one they've contained it and shut it down. Well, season two opens up, and what does Hopper, the chief of police, discover? But this thing is not just contained in the lab, but there are tentacles of this underground that have grown and spread out all over this little town. And so he digs down through the ground and finds tentacles of this in the dirt about six feet down. And he digs down further and drops into this tunnel, and he's overwhelmed at how complex and interwoven and overlapping that the spiral of this evil has spread out all over the place. I mean, that is such a great picture for what Richard Loveless writes about when he talks about the flesh. He says this: flesh is something more akin to the psychological term complex, an organic network of compulsive attitudes and beliefs and behavior rooted deeply in our alienation from God. Man, doesn't that sound right? This organic complex? Well, I found it here too. I thought it was just limited to this little area of my life. No, it's over here, and it's over there, and it's over there. It's everywhere.

But the other part that Stranger Things two helps me with is about the way that sin works and entices. So, again, in the show, there's a young boy named Dustin who one night is coming back to his house, and he sees his trash can rattling. And he opens up his trash can and inside is just this little cute kind of little creature and he can't figure out what it is. It looks sort of amphibian, reptilish. And he brings it into his house and he begins to feed it nougat from candy bars.

And he nurtures this thing, takes it into his bedroom, eventually puts up a little case for it, and doesn't tell his friends about it. Doesn't tell them what's going on until eventually he comes home a few days later and it's eaten the cat. Now, I could take that entire paragraph and substitute the word sin for the little creature named Dart, and it works. Because this is what we do. We're like, we don't ask the questions of like, how did that get in my trash can, I wonder? And should I really bring it into my bedroom? And feed it nougat? And nurture it? And don't tell anybody. And just let it grow. And you wake up one morning and it's eaten your cat. Okay. Maybe not. But it's destroyed your life. It is your ability to contain. Isn't that how sin works?

This is why Paul's testimony of his present life with Christ sounds just so psychologically distressing. I mean, do you feel him kind of worked up in this? Seeing sin for what it is, both in terms of how easy it is and enticing it is to sin, and also how vast flesh is tunneled—I mean, these things, it's always psychologically distressing. If it's not, that's a problem. We keep doing the things we know we shouldn't do. We want to obey Jesus, but you are your own worst enemy. There's an enemy inside. Yeah. There's an enemy inside.

The Cry of the Believer

And so what this leads him to is the cry of the believer. The distress in Paul leads him to cry out.

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? — Romans 7:24

Now sometimes I think when we read the Bible, we have a tendency to lobotomize every speaker in the Bible. So you could read this and be like, Paul saying, "wretched man that I am." And that is not—I think there's a lot of emotion in this phrase. I think there's a lot in here. There's distress. There's deep distress in this. And I want you to hear in these words two things. One is a warning, and the other is a comfort.

Here's the warning: Paul's outcry of pain shows us that no one ever gets so advanced in the Christian life that they no longer see their sin. In fact, it warns us that if you ever perceive yourself to be in a place in your life where you're sort of over sin or you're sort of past that, you're maturing beyond those things, you should be deeply concerned because you're deceived. You're blind. If that weren't the case, why would Paul tell us in the next chapter to not live according to the flesh? See, do you see? The more mature, the more spiritually discerning that you get, the more you advance, the more you grow, the more you see of flesh and sin, not less. The more you have eyes to see, and you're trained to understand that.

Second warning from this: the more holy we become, the less holy we feel. And that's a really important point. It's so helpful to me. When Paul grows, he doesn't say, "What an uncomfortable man I'm becoming right now. What a wretch I am." I mean, there's an intensity to that. There's this real sense of intensity. Even when we know and see ourselves making progress against habitual sins and bad habits, we'll grow more and more aware of the rebellious and sinful roots within us. The holier we are, the more we cry, "What a wretched man that I am," not the less. So it actually may be the opposite of how it feels, where you're like, "Ugh." Where before you were like, "Meh." The more you see, the more distressed you become.

Third warning: no one gets so advanced they don't struggle with sin. You should always expect a fight. You know, if you got a happy mama bear in the woods, she's not going to be that dangerous to you. You got a wounded mother bear in the woods? You better watch out. And when we submit ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ, our flesh is dealt a mortal blow and it is more active and more dangerous. You find yourselves tempted in ways you didn't before you became a Christian, you're normal. Because flesh is stirred up. It's bowing up for a fight, and you better bow up against it. More on that next week.

The Comfort

But this also yields to us such great comfort. I want you to hear the comfort of this cry. The comfort of this cry to me is that it is typical when we struggle with sin, when we see patterns, we see habits in our lives to think, "Man, I am such a terrible Christian. I'm so immature. I'm becoming, I'm so very wicked." And Romans 7 encourages us that temptation and conflict with sin, even some relapses into sin—do you hear that? Even some relapses into sin—are consistent with us being a growing Christian.

Think of fever or mucus. Okay. This is the gross part in the sermon today. But it's cold season and flu season coming up. And this is the time of year when you'll get in touch with those things that make our lives feel miserable.

You know, extra mucus that you don't really think you need and a fever. Now, what are those signs of? Those are signs, not just that you're sick, but that your body is fighting infection and fighting virus. They are signs that you're alive. Your body is saying, you can't take this over. There is a fight within you. Now how does it make you feel? Wretched. This is why whenever we get like excess of mucus or excess of fever, we go beeline straight to Rite Aid to manage those symptoms. I do not want to feel this way anymore. Does that word wretched remind you of anything we just talked about? Because this is what we should be really encouraged by. The presence of fever in the life of a Christian. The presence of mucus in the life of a Christian. Right? The presence of these things that make us feel wretched are a sign of the Spirit's power and work within you. The fact that you are an unhappy Christian right now in your sin? Good. You're alive. Be encouraged. Spirit is working within you. You're not rolling over and playing dead. People who don't love Jesus don't feel wretched about their sin. People who don't want to obey Him don't feel there's any sense of discomfort. But you in your place of discomfort this morning, you who dragged in here this morning and you feel like the worst person in this room, you know what? You're in the right place because the spirit's in you and at work. Praise God. Praise God.

I love how Brene Brown puts this. Brene Brown is a writer and thinker who has done a lot of research. I don't usually quote a lot of Brene Brown, but this is gold. She went to a therapist several years ago and said, I'm thinking about going back to church. And her therapist was like, I think that's a great idea. So she goes back to church, and she said, going to church, she was expecting church to be a place of comfort, a place where she was encouraged and comforted. And this is what she says: church wasn't the epidural I was expecting. It was a midwife. It just stood next to me and said, push. It's supposed to hurt a little bit. Man, I wish I'd written that. That is gold. Because we come in here, all of you come in here this morning, you're like, Please give me some comfort. This is hard, and this is discouraging. I'm struggling. And I'm like, push. It's gonna hurt a little bit. You're like, thanks. But man, this is what we see. God is working something bigger in us than just our comfort. He is birthing something in our lives and changing us and bringing new life in us beyond what we can imagine. And it's gonna hurt a little bit, and it doesn't bring comfort. And so we cry out:

Wretched man that I am, who's going to deliver me from this body of death?

You know what one of my dreams for this church is? That we would become a place where we're so in touch with the cry of the believer that we stop comparing ourselves to each other. Isn't it the case in our community groups, in our common life that we are always evaluating? We're like, yeah, you have no idea what it's like to be me. We evaluate other people's battles, and we're like, they don't have anything going on. Everybody else seems like they have their stuff together except for you. What if we were a place as a community where people walked in here and we said, you know what? I haven't struggled with that one, but the tentacles of the flesh are all over my life. I know what that's like. That is a hard place to be in. Let me encourage you. Can you imagine the power of that kind of community? Where we stopped evaluating people's moral progress because all of us are not done, none of us are where we're going to be. Jesus isn't finished, praise God. He's going to finish the job. But none of us are where we're supposed to be. And so we stop evaluating all the time. Stop measuring self and measuring others. Please Lord, may it be so.

The Sufficiency of Our Savior

See, this leads us to the sufficiency of our Savior. Paul ends his testimony at the feet of Jesus. And this is where seeing the power of our sin, seeing the inside job of the flesh should always take you.

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of death? — Romans 7:24

Should always lead us to:

Thanks be to the Lord Jesus Christ. — Romans 7:25

Thanks be to Him. He's gonna answer that. We have to always go there. We always have to answer that. See, notice where Paul doesn't go. There are so many little cul de sacs we take instead of this. He doesn't go to despair. Unfortunately, we get stuck in verse 24. We get stuck there. We see our sin, maybe sins we thought, hey, that wasn't really, that's not a problem for me anymore.

And you see it again and you collapse in defeat. Or you see flesh tentacles in a new part of your life where you're like, I've never struggled with that before. Why now? And you go into despondency. You go into this black hole of despair. And I just want to yell at you, danger, danger, danger. Because don't stop there. Don't stop at verse 24. Always go to verse 25. You don't get stuck in the cul de sac of despair.

Another trap that we get stuck in is the cul de sac of determination. Notice Paul says, "Who will set me free?" He doesn't say, "What will set me free?" And I find that Christians, we love rules and steps and a little formula. Just give me four things to do. He doesn't say, what's going to set me free from this body of death? Well, here's four things to do after church today. No. He says Jesus.

We go to determination. We go, he doesn't look for a way to fix himself. I do. Paul's like, no, Jesus. And he doesn't go to denial. Paul doesn't pretend. He doesn't fudge the record. He doesn't say, it's not really sin. No. He's very honest. Good guys and bad guys, there is only one good guy. There's only one good guy, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. He goes to Jesus.

Seeing our sin, seeing flesh tentacles in your life must always drive you to verse 25.

Thanks be to God for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God for the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, it leads to despair and determination and denial.

My favorite nineteenth century dead theologian and preacher from Scotland, Robert Murray McShane, has a famous quote which I've said over and over to you in this church. We need to put it on every dashboard mirror, every piece of paper in our house: For every one look at your sin, you take ten looks at your Savior. He also adds to that, believers, you're a tempted people. You're always poor and needy, and God intends it to be so, to give you constant errands to go back to Jesus. Some say it is not good to be a believer, but see to whom we go. See, go to Jesus.

Here's the refrain of Romans that we're going to hear over and over in this book: How much more? How much more?

You see your sin this afternoon? I guarantee it's going to happen. See your sin this afternoon? More grace. There's more. You see this week, flesh. You're very aware of flesh. Guess what? There's more of Jesus for that, covers that. You just saw more that needs redeeming. Grace greater than all our sin. More yuck in your life? He is not surprised. Grace, way more powerful than the flesh. Take a look at Him. He is more than sufficient for everything that you've seen of yourself, and He is not surprised. He is not surprised.

We cut out the emotional thing to Paul's words about "wretched man that I am," so we also cut the joy out of the Bible. We lobotomize "wretched man that I am." I think we also lobotomize "thanks be to God for the Lord Jesus Christ."

Can we say that with joy in our hearts? Man, thanks be to God for the Lord Jesus Christ. He is so sufficient for you. Thanks be to God for the Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for the Lord Jesus Christ. He is sufficient. Grace greater than all our sin.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.