Music.
Good. So we're continuing our series in the book of Romans, so if you have a
Bible with you, I want to encourage you to take it out.
Turn to Romans, which is in the New Testament of the Bible.
The New Testament is the back part of the Bible.
Well, the old is in the front, the new is in the back.
Back, the New Testament starts out with the Gospels, which are four accounts
of the life and ministry of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
and then goes into a book called,
Acts, which is the general history of the early church right after Jesus' ministry,
and then a letter to the church in Romans.
And that's where we've been studying the last few months, and that's where we're
going to be today. Today, we're going to study the whole chapter,
the whole seventh chapter of Romans.
And don't laugh because we are going to get through it.
We're going to get through it as quickly as we can possibly do,
as quickly as we possibly can.
But if you remember last week, we came off of Romans chapter 6,
where Paul was describing the relationship that believers in Jesus Christ have
now with sin and with righteousness.
That through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are set free from the power and the bondage of sin.
And now we have become slaves to something else altogether.
We are no longer enslaved to sin, but now we are slaves of righteousness,
righteousness which leads to holiness and
eternal life and so
now but we're in Romans chapter 7 and Romans chapter
7 is an interesting one because some believe
and if we you'll I think you'll see as we read it and
it kind of exists a little bit as kind of
sounds a little bit like a diary entry for the apostle
Paul who is really being vulnerable and
and with a lot of candor sharing his increasing
struggle with the power of sin and how he desires in his heart to be free from
the power of sin and to live in the power of the spirit but it feels he says
like in him are two warring factions.
The side that desires him to die under the power of judgment and the law and
the side that desires for him to live in the power of the spirit.
And he ends the chapter with this like big question of like,
who is gonna solve this problem for me?
Where do I, essentially, where do I go from here? Here's the reality.
I know what I want to do and I know what I should do, but guess what?
I keep on doing what I don't wanna do and what I shouldn't do,
and I'm having a hard time with it, essentially.
But he begins the conversation a lot earlier, in kind of a strange way,
but he uses an illustration from marriage.
And this is an illustration that was more contextual to marriage in the ancient
Near East, and both in Judaism and in Rome.
So we're going to get there in a minute. but what Paul's going to talk about
a lot here is what we hear in the Old Testament and New Testament as called the law.
And for us, for you and I, if you're not a practicing Jew, if you're not an Orthodox Jew even now,
the law seems a little bit kind of like out there in the spiritual ether of
like not really understanding how it applies to us and if it applies to us and what it means.
We see it written a lot about and talked a lot about in the Gospels and in the
New Testament, especially in the Old Testament.
But what is the law and why do we, why do you and I, need to be concerned with
it at all? Paul addresses this question.
So when we say the law, what is it that we mean?
What is it that we are talking about?
Each of us has at least some kind of understanding of what the law is in our
contemporary culture, right?
It is something that generally is supposed to govern our society as we live.
It is, sometimes it is followed, right?
And sometimes it is broken, right?
Like, well, yeah, I'm not a lawbreaker at all, right? I follow all the laws, right?
Yet me too, right? Until I'm late driving somewhere, and then I am a lawbreaker, right?
Then I'm getting there as soon as I need to, okay?
But in general, the law is meant to protect.
Meant to protect me. It's meant to protect you. It's meant to protect our individuals
and groups and communities.
And sometimes, I think this is not a hard thing to imagine, sometimes the things
that are meant for good can appear now to even be burdensome.
Especially when those things, they get twisted or they get maligned or they
get used in ways that they were really never meant to be used.
The same is true for religious law or the law that we would be talking about
here when we talk in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
When it comes to religious law,
there was none more expansive than what existed for the Jewish people.
There were 613 commandments or laws in the Jewish law for them to follow.
613 to be exact. And they ranged throughout all kinds of different categories,
but generally they ranged from having a moral and ethical demand or command on someone,
like do not lie,
right? Do not steal.
Do not covet.
Do not murder. Do not commit adultery.
There was this ethical or moral component to it. Do not do this. Make sure you do this.
There was sections of the 613 commandments that looked more like a fancy diet
plan than anything else.
Do not eat pork. pork. We do not eat shellfish, right? There was dietary restrictions.
There was also a ceremonial section of that law.
These commands and these laws were meant to guide the ritual life,
what we would call the religious life proper of the Jewish faith.
So that would be things like what happens in the temple and
ceremonial washing before special feasts
and religious holidays and and things that
that that guided the spiritual life of
the Jewish people and listen um ancient
Jews worked very very hard
as hard as they possibly could to abide
by and keep all of these
laws laws they were it was
what their whole life and society was kind
of um what it kind of rotated around was
keeping the law maintaining a covenant relationship with the lord now even today
um uh practicing jews what would that term that we would call practicing jews
um uh still still ranging from fairly like laissez-faire to kind of like very orthodox Jews,
still seek to abide by the 613 commandments of the law even today.
And in manner of speaking, both for ancient Jews and practicing Jews now,
their adherence to the law was a measure of their faithfulness to God.
The more laws we obey, the closer that we stick to obedience to these things,
the more perfect we are in our practice of and adherence to these laws,
the more, the higher the measure of our faithfulness to God, the closer we are to God.
And so Jewish people, responding to the message of the good news of Jesus Christ in the New Testament,
who was the Jewish Messiah, he was a Jew himself, following the heart and spirit
of these Jewish laws themselves.
When they would come to faith in Jesus Christ as Jewish people,
they would really, really struggle to, in their heart, in their mind,
and in their religious practice,
break free from this belief and practice that to be in relationship with God
meant following or adhering perfectly to a written code of 613 things.
Things it was really difficult from that
for them to step away from both
the religious and cultural practice that demanded
in order for them to be in right relationship with god
they must do x y z a b c
a one two three which is why
you see paul in so many letters
of the new testament arguing with jewish people
about whether or not new believers
needed to do things like follow dietary restrictions get
circumcised or not get circumcised what was
the role of baptism right because there was this constant struggle in the Jewish
culture of which Jesus came out of of how much of the old law must we adhere
to must we obey in order to continue in our faithfulness of God.
And so since following Jesus was seen in the ancient world, not as a new religion.
Do you recognize that? That when Jesus, when people started to believe by faith
in Jesus, calling him Savior and Lord and Messiah,
that the outside world, the Roman culture, the Roman world, didn't see what
was happening there with those new believers as a new religion or as a new branch of faith.
It wasn't like, oh, all of these, this new religion started.
It's called Christianity. They're following this guy named Jesus.
In fact, it wasn't that at all. What it was perceived as is like,
okay, there's this weird sect inside of Judaism.
This weird sect of Jews who now believe that their Messiah has come And that
they no longer need to follow in adherence to perfection, the law,
but they now just follow him who completely fulfilled the law.
So it was seen not as a new religion, but as an offshoot or as a sect of Judaism.
Gentile converts to Christianity were sometimes pressured to continue to follow
all of the rules of ancient Judaism if they wanted to be a true follower of Jesus.
Hey, if you want to truly follow Jesus, you still need to follow all these rules.
You need to make sure you're perfect in following all these rules.
Make sure you follow all these rules. He's a Jewish Messiah.
Let me remind you. and we have all of these rules, we have the law that guides our life together.
And man, I've got to tell you, when you kind of contemplate that reality,
that even in the days, weeks, and months after Jesus had ascended back into
heaven and new believers were coming to faith in him,
that old believers were trumpeting this message that, hey, look,
to follow Jesus means to follow the rules perfectly.
To follow Jesus means to continue to follow these 613 commandments.
And I'm like, you know, the more things change, the more they actually just kind of stay the same.
The more it really just feels like they kind of stay the same. Because here we are,
some 2,000 years of separation from the moment that Jesus ascended.
Far away, both culturally and practically, from an ancient Near Eastern culture.
Here we are, some 2,000 years later in Christianity, and we still often get
plagued with this notion or this idea that to be a true follower of Jesus Christ,
you must simply, only,
and exclusively just follow the rules.
Just follow the rules. 2,000 some odd years later.
And the same issue that Paul was addressing in Romans, we still struggle and fight against now.
Hey, to follow Jesus, new believer, it just means you got to do these things
and it means you got to not do these things.
Just follow the rules. We don't have 613 of those commandments,
but we do have our own kind of rules.
Follow the rules. Don't break the rules. say the right things,
do the right things, think the right things, sometimes just looking good enough,
is, for you and I, good enough to say that someone is a follower of Jesus.
Just looking good enough, just saying the right things enough times is enough
for us to say, oh, they're such good people, right? Right?
We have a bunch of good people here.
Right? Just a bunch of good people following Jesus. Right?
Paul's going to say it. I'm going to say it. We all need to say it over and over and over again.
Listen, church, there is nothing good inside of us except Jesus Christ himself.
There is nothing good in me except Jesus. Right?
And no adherence to a written law.
No adherence to 613 commandments makes me any more right or good or justified
in the eyes of God or in the eyes of men than anything else.
Only thing that makes me right and good is the blood of Jesus applied.
See, we have come back to the place that Jesus came to set us free from sometimes.
We come back to this place of saying, hey, look, just exclusively follow these
rules, look good enough, act good enough, say the right things,
think the right things, do the right things, be good enough, and it's good enough.
Somehow, after the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament, We,
the church 2,000 some years later,
have come back to the place that Jesus literally came to set us free from.
We've returned to the old man.
To use an analogy from last week. We've returned to a rigid moralism that it
says as long as I follow some list of rules and commands perfectly,
then I will find myself in favor with God,
and all will be well.
But what have we learned? If we've learned anything from the first six chapters
of Romans that we've been studying, what have we learned?
It's this, is that we will never be made right with God by simply trying harder. Right?
We will never be made right with God by simply trying harder.
Just try harder to be more gooder.
Right?
We will never be made right with God by simply trying harder because righteousness
or right standing with God is a gift from God given to us through Jesus Christ.
We cannot earn it.
Righteousness is a gift from God given to us through our faith in Jesus Christ.
We cannot earn it. This is Paul's whole message in Romans chapter six,
at least the second half of it, right?
Don't you know that when you yourself, when you offer your, I'm sorry,
Romans chapter three, right?
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
So what then of Romans chapter 7?
If we get there, right, we get to that point of Romans chapter 7,
what exactly does Paul aim to talk about there?
Well, like I said, it kind of reads like a little bit of Paul's diary entry,
his spiritual diary entry.
Dear diary, I tried again and I failed.
The end. Next day, dear diary, I tried harder, I failed harder. The end.
The next day, dear diary, I continue to try and I continue to fail.
It's funny when we apply it to Paul, right? Because it distracts us from the
reality that we, when we continue to try,
and we continue to try just a little bit harder, and we strive just a little bit more, right?
We polish the surface of our lives feeling like if we make it just good enough
on the outside that maybe it will change something on the inside.
But the more we polish, the more tired we get, right?
And the less direction that we actually move towards the Savior.
Because we fool ourselves, we deceive ourselves.
We don't fool ourselves. Our hearts are deceived in believing that if we simply
wash the outside of the cup enough, it will eventually make the inside of the cup clean.
And we just simply never get there.
And so we end up exasperated at the end of the day, at the end of the week,
at an end of a spiritual season that we are walking through, asking the question,
why can't I experience transformation?
Why am I still stuck here?
Why am I still failing all of the time?
This is what Paul deals with in Romans chapter seven. It's his own, it's his own like,
it's his own like confession that this is a reality that he experiences in his life.
Why am I always failing what Paul essentially says paraphrased in Pastor Cameron's
words why am I always failing because I am always trying and rarely trusting,
I am always failing because I am always trying harder and rarely trusting more.
Paul starts out in Romans chapter 7 with this really interesting illustration.
Kind of seems out of place if you were to just read it all on your own.
But you've got to place it within the context of what he's trying to communicate.
So listen here. Romans chapter 7, verse 1. Do you not know, brothers and sisters,
for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has authority over
a man only as long as he lives.
For example, he says.
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.
So then if she marries another man while her husband is still alive,
she's 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.
Well, okay, Paul, where are, what? what does this have to do with anything here
that we've been talking about?
And so, but then he uses this
example of marriage and
being united with one another and death causing a break in that bond or that
unification here on earth to talk about how when we are united with Christ Christ by faith,
as we talked about in Romans chapter six, right?
When we are united with Christ by faith and that's exemplified or symbolized in our baptism.
That the law in us or the moralism in us or the idea that we just have to do
more, be better, try harder in order to be in right standing before God,
that when we are unified with Christ in our baptism,
that old way of thinking about our relationship with God is put to death and
we are separated from it.
We are broken free from it. it no longer, that idea no longer has any binding effect in our life.
As death breaks the legal bond between husband and wife, so our death with Christ
breaks the bond that formerly enslaved us to the law.
This rigid moralism that says you just got to do better, try harder.
And we are now free to live into our union, our unification with Jesus Christ
as he himself is the spirit, not the written code.
Watch what Paul says. Verse 4.
So my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ.
You died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another.
We might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead in order that
we might bear fruit to God.
We belong to Jesus, that we might bear fruit to God.
We don't belong to the rigidity of the law that keeps us in a pattern of moralism,
thinking that if we just do more and try harder and be better,
that that's what it takes.
We have died to that idea, and we now belong to God in Jesus Christ so that
we can go out and bear fruit that is in keeping with our repentance.
Verse 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.
But now, by dying to what once bound us, 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.
We have been, through faith in Jesus Christ, through our unification with Jesus Christ,
we have been released from the bondage to
the written code so that now we may live in
and through the spirit we serve
in the new way of the spirit instead of despair there is joy instead of bondage
to the law there is now freedom through Christ instead of death to the law there
is now life in the spirit we are no we no longer belong to the law but to Jesus.
And so we might walk away with this idea, right, that, oh, because Jesus has
set us free from the law and has put the law to death,
then the law must, like, bad law.
Bad. It's bad. The law is bad. It has no purpose.
It's only, the law is judgmental. And the law, you want to stay away from the
law. Thank you, Jesus, for killing the law on our behalf, right?
But not so, Paul says. He says the law actually has a really,
really important function in our relationship with and our understanding of our need for a Savior.
It is actually critical and crucial crucial to our understanding of how we are
actually saved is the presence of the law in our lives.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Paul says in Romans 7 verse 7.
Is the law bad? Is it sin?
Certainly not, Paul says. Indeed, I would have not known what sin was.
This is a really interesting, important thing to understand about our relationship
as followers of Jesus with the law.
We actually should stand, can stand, right, in a place of being grateful for
the law that we are now free from.
We actually can stand in a place of being grateful for the thing that Jesus
has set us free from. But why?
Why would we stand in a place of gratefulness for something that Jesus came and set us free from?
Listen, because the law reveals the sin that exists in our hearts,
whether or not we were aware of its presence.
The law stands as a spotlight or a flashlight on our own efforts to self-deceive that we have sin here.
And it says the presence of the law illuminates the darkness of the human heart.
Actually, I'm going to read to you Romans 7, verse 7 out of the Living Bible
translation because I believe that it really captures this idea.
It says this, Well then, am I suggesting that these laws of God are evil?
Of course not. No, the law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin.
I would never had known the sin in my heart, the evil desires that are hidden
there, if the law had not said, you must not have evil desires in your heart.
It's exactly what Paul says here. He was like,
I had no idea that I was carrying around in me a heart that was covetous towards
all things around me until the law pointed out that I should not covet.
I just thought that this was kind of like a natural way to live life.
I thought this was normal.
I was generalizing and rationalizing the things that I was doing,
the things that I was thinking,
the things that I was feeling until the law of the Lord came into my life and
illuminated that the very natural state of my heart was actually one that was naturally dark.
In James, the epistle James says that the law itself is not sin and is not bad,
but what it actually is, is a mirror that reflects the inner life of the one
that looks at it intently.
So when we look intently at the
law, the law becomes a mirror and we see ourselves for who we really are.
For what really exists, for what is really here. James chapter 1, verses 22 through 25.
Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says. This is good advice, right?
Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says. It says, anyone who
listens to the word but does not do what it says is like one who looks at his
face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
But the one who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues
to do this, not forgetting what they have heard,
but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.
So why bring up the law at all if Christ has set us free from it?
Because the law exists as a
way that the Lord reveals and illuminates the
sin that already exists inside of us it gives it a name it describes and defines
it it becomes a mirror for our own unrighteousness so that we are left with
the question what shall I do who will save me where can I go from here.
Paul goes on to say in Romans chapter 7.
This is interesting here, okay?
Is that the law, the law brings to life, what is the purpose of the law in the life of the Christian?
What is the purpose of the law in the one that is following Jesus?
It's this, is that the law brings to life the sin that has been dormant in us.
It activates it to life. life. Now, this is not a good thing.
We're not saying that this is a positive thing, but what we are saying is that
there is a seed of sin and evil that exists within our souls, right?
And then when the law is held up and we see it for who it is,
we would naturally think that, well, like, oh, there's darkness there.
Get that out of me, right?
But an actual, what the phenomenon, remember, this is Paul's confession of what
happens, not what should be ideal.
But what happens is that sometimes when we see what the law says,
and then we recognize it in our
own hearts, the sin that has been dormant there now springs to new life.
This is like when you tell a kid, hey, don't touch that.
Oh, you mean this right here?
Don't touch this?
Why do they do that? Why do they do that?
Because we said not to, right? Did they think about touching this before we said not to?
No, no. But the law, the command, sprang, brought to life the dormant sin that said break the law.
Break the law. Break that commandment. Do it. Do it.
Kind of like this.
When there is a, just say, let's just say that there is a church in the Jamestown
area that plans a February break scavenger hunt in the city and we end at a popular sledding hill,
that's the last thing that you have to do except that you get there and there's
this sign, no sledding allowed.
But guess what? If you look down that hill, You know what happens all day,
every day at Allen Park, Banshell?
Sledding happens. Now, I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not anyone
in this building or on this stage got on a sled and slid down that hill that day.
But what I will tell you is when kids or people, pastors, see a sign that says
no sledding, they're like, no sledding?
Man, I will ride my sled standing up down this hill.
Like, this happens, right? Does it happen to you?
It happens to me. It happens to me where people are like, don't do that.
I'm like, I'm doing that now.
Wasn't going to until you said don't. Now I'm going to. Why?
Why? Because there was something dormant.
There's something dormant in the recesses of my soul that was waiting for someone
to say don't so that I could.
If we were to restate or kind of summarize verses 8 and 9, it says this.
It says, verses 8 and 9 in Romans, But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment,
produced in me, right, it produced in me every kind of covetous desire.
For apart from the law, sin was as good as dead in me. I didn't even recognize
that I coveted apart from the law.
Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, what did sin do?
It sprang to life, and I died.
I now became a slave to the sin that I didn't know was there.
The law came in, showed me the commandment. It sprung up that covetous,
to use Paul's example, desire in me, and now it is bringing nothing but death into my life.
If we were to kind of summarize or restate verses 8 and 9, I would say it like
this, but sin, setting up kind of a base of operations through the commandment not to covet,
produced in me coveting of every kind.
For apart from the law, sin is dead or dormant. and I was alive,
blissfully indifferent to the searching demands of the law.
But when the commandment to not covet came, sin sprang to life in my life and
I felt the sentence of death.
See, once Paul realized what covetousness was, all he could do was covet.
See, as soon as the reality of the law of God is revealed in our lives,
the sin that lays dormant in us is activated to defy, to disobey,
and to revolt against that command.
Not only does the law bring sin to life, but Paul says the law actually brings death.
It kills, verses 10 and 11.
I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death for sin.
Seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me and through
the commandment put me to death.
See, the commands, the law, if it was perfectly kept,
the law itself says, Leviticus chapter 18, verse 15, that if this law is perfectly kept, it brings life.
But when it is broken, the law can only bring and produce what? Death.
So kept perfectly the law brings life example Jesus right broken it brings death
example us Romans chapter 6 verse 23 for the wages of sin is what death.
The law, verse 12 and 13, we're going on. So then, he says, the law is holy.
It's not sinful.
It's not to be cast off. The law actually is holy. And the commandment is holy,
righteous, and good. Why?
Listen, because anything that yanks us out of our self-deception that we are
okay and good enough and we just need to be better and work harder.
Anything that rips us out of that state of self-deception is good and holy and
is going to bring life for us.
Anything that breaks the hardened crust of our heart that we have allowed to
form as we consistently plug our ears to the calling of the Holy Spirit to repent
and to return to the Lord,
to be refreshed by confession and repentance and forgiveness.
But every time the Lord speaks into our hearts, into our lives,
and we are like this, our hearts are gradually hardened and darkened.
Paul says that in Romans chapter one and chapter two, right?
But the law is actually holy and good because it gives us here,
again, one more picture of God's
graceful action to rip us away from self-deception that, hey, I'm okay.
And this thing that I'm doing is okay. And these actions that I'm taking are okay.
And this relationship that I have is okay. And these thoughts that I'm having are okay.
I just need to try a little harder and God will see that it's okay.
But in 12 and 13, he says, so then the law is holy And the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.
Did that which is good then become death to me? Verse 13. 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.
This is a tremendous grace from God that we might see the sin of our hearts
as utterly sinful and not just as something that we normalize,
rationalize, or generalize away.
That the presence of the law in our life is actually a gift that gives us a
glimpse into the way that God sees our own sin so that we may,
by his grace, see it the same way and turn to him.
See, before we came under the teaching of the gospel, some of us were blissfully unaware of our sin.
This might be part of your testimony coming to faith in Jesus.
Everything in life was just hunky-dory perfect, right?
Then we began to see somewhat of God's righteous requirements for our lives,
his call to righteousness,
his call to holiness, and our own sinfulness has now become painfully apparent.
And then as we have continued to walk and journey with Jesus,
as we have become Christians, life is now a continuing revelation of the radical nature of our sin.
Do you know that the closer and closer and closer you walk with Jesus,
the more and more and more you will come to see the utter disgust of your own sin?
Because you will begin to see it as he sees it.
As the spirit of God, right, completely engulfs your life and lives within you.
The spirit of God testifies to your spirit, the utter disgrace that your sin is.
As I get closer to God, God, everything in life is just going to go up. Well, yes, okay?
But also understand that we become radically more aware of our sin as we become
radically more present with Jesus.
Radically more. So every day, every week, month, year, every moment,
I become more aware that though I have been born again and that my sin is covered
by the blood of Jesus Christ,
that I am thoroughly sinful before the Lord.
And so now Paul comes to this moment in verse 14, all the way from verse 14
through verse 24, the rest of the chapter,
where he begins to describe kind of what it's like for a believer to struggle
against the law on their own.
On their own.
This is all candor from Paul here. There is no pretentious type of piety.
And what I believe, what I hear here is that this is like the cry of every believer
now who is trying so hard,
but is simply relying on themselves.
I just got to do better. I just need more knowledge.
I just got to try harder. I gotta pull myself up by my bootstraps I just have
to do more I gotta do it I gotta do it I gotta do it,
This is the cry of every believer Who is trying but relying on themselves But
Paul finds himself just continued To be dominated by sin Talking about Paul here.
The great church planter The writer of two thirds of the New Testament met the
resurrected Jesus himself on the road to Damascus was struck blind by the glory of Jesus.
Whose spiritual lineage we can trace back to us you are a Christian because of Paul,
Because Paul took the gospel, had the special dispensation from the Lord to
take the gospel out of the Jewish culture and out of the Jewish faith to the Gentiles.
It was him who did it.
So Paul finds himself dominated by sin, and so we should not be too surprised
when we find ourselves there too. But what does he say?
He says, I know, verse 14, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual.
I am sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do.
For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.
And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
As it is, it's no longer I myself who do it, but it's sin living in me.
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.
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.
Anyone's testimony in the room? My testimony, right?
Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it's no longer I who do it,
but it is sin living in me that does it.
So he says it here in verse 21. He kind of like, that was his confession.
Here's his explanation.
So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being, I delight in God's law.
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.
Paul understands what is happening in the spiritual realm and records it essentially
here. So I find this law at work.
There is two things inside of me waging war. I want to delight in God's heart.
I want to delight in God's word. I want to delight in God's law.
But I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against
the law of my mind, making me a prisoner once again to the law of sin at work in my members.
Paul recognizes that he is a man that, for lack of a better term,
has two natures, one that is delighting
in God's law and the other that is waging war against God's law.
And he writes about this other places too. It's not just Romans chapter 7.
In Galatians chapter 5, he writes about this.
He says, For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit,
and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.
They are in conflict with one another so that you do not do what you want.
And if you're anything like Paul, and you're anything like me,
you would get to this point in like this, and you're like putting all these
pieces together, and like, I don't know, I, hearing these things for the first
time, processing them, thinking about them, praying on them,
I'm like getting frustrated.
Internally, right? So I'm like, Lord, I want to do the right thing.
I want my heart to be aligned with yours. I want to fully delight in your law.
I want your spirit's power in me, but Lord,
over here, the law of sin is still waging war in my body, and I'm still doing
things that I don't want to do, and not doing things that I do want to do,
and I don't, what is, like, I am sick of this,
like, when does this end?
That's why I say this is almost like a diary entry of Paul who is lamenting
over the constant war in his flesh between the sinful nature and the presence
of the spirit and it catalogs and recounts the aching frustration of fighting
and striving in our own strength strength,
and I think it is a good and fair representation of how many of us continue to walk today,
struggling with these two things.
But listen, Paul asks this question in verse 24 and 25.
This is our last point for the morning. It's this, is that the law,
the presence of the law drives us to the Savior.
The presence of, what is the purpose of the law in our life as followers of Jesus?
What is the, it's not just at the moment of salvation that it drives us to the to the Savior.
It is at every moment where we are continually aware of the waging war that's
going on within us, right?
Where we step away from our attempts to just do better, try harder,
be gooder, and we instead turn towards the Savior who is Jesus and away from
just applying more more rigid moralism to our life, to try and defeat the power of sin.
If this is for us to say, this is for us to say every day. This is not just
for us to say at the moment of salvation.
This is for us to say every day. Verse 24, what a wretched man I am,
Paul says, who will rescue me from this body of death?
It's a great question.
The law drives us to a savior. What a wretched man I am.
Who will rescue me from this body of death? The word wretch here means someone
who is in a miserable and distressed condition.
But notice what Paul says here and what he doesn't say. What doesn't Paul say?
Paul doesn't say, what am I going to do about this?
What am I going to do about this? How am I going to solve this?
What are the steps or the processes that I'm gonna put in my life to make sure
that I beat this thing inside of me?
Paul does not say, what am I going to do with this? What does he do?
Who will save me from this body of death? What does Paul know? It ain't gonna be me.
I'm not saving myself. I've tried over and over and over and over and over again,
and I'm a terrible Savior.
Who will save me from this body of death? And then he answers, right?
What a wretch man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Paul recognizes and we
must recognize that in our constant struggle
against the power of sin which seeks
to destroy us which seeks to keep
us in darkness and deception which wages
war against the members of our body
that wants to tell us that oh your sin is fine it's normal
normal everyone doesn't rationalizing in
a way keeping us in self-deception just try
harder just do more just read the
book just listen to the podcast just go to church more just serve a little bit
more just do this just do that just work really hard and eventually God is going
to see your good intentions and everything on the inside will be transformed
if you continue to just spit fit and polish everything on the outside.
And Paul says, look, I've tried it all.
I've done it all. I've been faultless in my following of the law.
And here I am still so aware of the darkness of my own heart.
And I can't seem to solve it on my own.
And I've tried and I've tried and I've tried. And I'm frustrated that nothing is changing.
But wait, who will save me?
Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And then I think in all of our Bibles, there's a separation between chapter
7 verses 24 and 25 and Romans chapter 8 verse 1.
And I think it's like tragic, right?
Because chapter 8 is like, chapter 8 verse 1 and 2 is Paul's like period at the end of the sentence.
That addresses the emotional state of the follower of Jesus who is continually
frustrated by the presence of this war waging on in them.
Because what happens? What happens is that we approach now life with this thought
or this idea, what is wrong with me?
No one else is dealing with any of these problems. Everyone else is walking
in complete faithfulness to the Lord. There must be something really broken about me.
God must be so angry with me.
He's obviously looking down from heaven.
He's got the lightning bolt like a javelin spear, and he's just ready for one
more sin. He's going to throw it. He hates me, right?
Why do I even try anymore?
I'm so ashamed of the things that I'm doing. I love going to church,
but I don't want to anymore more because I just feel this sense of judgment.
So I'm going to stop and I'm going to break free from my Christian community.
I'm going to stop reading my Bible. I'm going to stop pursuing in prayer.
And that now becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
Of I can't break free. I can't break free. I can't break free.
I can't break free. God is mad at me.
God is judging me. God is condemning me because I'm not a good enough Christian. Whatever that means.
Because what we're seeing here is there's no such thing as a good enough Christian, right?
There are all of us who, by faith in Jesus Christ,
continue to have this waging war where we do not do the things that we want
to do and do the things that we shouldn't do and how we're seeking to please
the heart of God within our own lives, right?
But living in frustration that we just can't seem to get there.
And Paul says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord that it is he
who sets us free from this.
And then he goes into Romans chapter eight, verse one and two,
and he says this, therefore, remember it's at the end of this whole conversation.
Therefore, there is now, listen, you need to hear this, right?
This is not from Pastor Cameron to you, right?
This is not even from the Apostle Paul to you. This is from the heart of God
to you this morning that lives in this state of like, the Lord is so mad at
me because I'm not good enough.
There is, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
because through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit of life.
The Lord does not condemn you.
The Lord has set you free.
From slavery to doing it all yourself through the law.
So that you can be united with him and allow his spirit to set you free for
the life that he desires for you.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word to us this morning.
Lord we thank you for the law we thank you for the law that has brought life,
we thank you for the law that has been like a mirror that illuminates our sins
so that we may no longer live in this state of deception self-deception on who we are,
Lord I pray that you you would use your law to help draw us to yourself.
Father, we thank you that we can cease striving.
Not cease working hard to pursue you, Lord, Lord, but that we can cease the
striving that says, my right standing before the Lord is all up to how hard I work,
how good I am, the good things that I do and the bad things that I avoid.
Music.
Because Lord, you have brought us life through your spirit.
Lord, we stand and we worship you now. Lord, because you are worthy of our praise.
You are holy and glorious, Lord. So let our praises reach your throne and be pleasing to you.
In Jesus' name, amen.