I am going to pick up where I left off in the last message, in Romans chapter 7. You can turn there with me if you would like to follow along, and I will pick up reading in the 14th verse.
Romans 7
English Standard Version
“14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”
Let us pray. Lord, as we come to your word, I pray you will open our understanding. Speak to us by your spirit. Allow our hearts and minds to be enlightened by the light of your word, to help us understand you, to help us understand our relationship to you, to help us understand ourselves. And Lord God, you created us, and you understand us better than we understand ourselves. Bless each one that sits here, and bless all those that listen online. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Well, it’s good to be back again this morning. I’m glad to see you all here. And this morning I am hoping to finish up looking at Romans chapter 7. It’s been a little while since we were last here in the book of Romans. We had communion last week and the holiday before that. So maybe before we dive into these verses, I’ll take a minute to refresh ourselves on the earlier part of this chapter, and where Paul is in his overall explanation in the book of Romans.
In the last message, we looked at the verses where Paul discovered that he was incapable of keeping the law. He discovered that no matter what he did, or how hard he tried, he could not keep his heart from coveting. Coveting in his heart is the specific sin that he’s using here in his illustration. And that is important to keep in mind as we read these verses because the evil thing Paul is talking about here is something, in the places we come from, almost no one would even consider a sin. But to Paul, it is an evil thing that he could not overcome—having feelings of covetousness, or jealousy, in his heart.
Paul made a discovery at some point in his life, that stopping his heart from ever coveting was impossible for him to do. Paul has framed this as a great and terrible discovery that he came upon at a certain point in his life. He suddenly came to realize the true depth of sin and his utter helplessness to ever live up to what the law required. The law required perfection, not just outwardly, but also from the heart. And Paul found the command to his heart was one he found impossible to keep.
In this chapter, Paul is using himself and his own experience as an illustration to explain to us that it is impossible to keep the law, and it is impossible, therefore, to be made holy by the law. Paul went to great lengths to explain to us in previous chapters that we cannot be justified by the law. And as we come into chapter 7, his chief point here is to bring home to us that we cannot be made holy by the law either. The law can neither justify us nor sanctify us. And it’s not because the law is bad in and of itself, but because as fallen men and women, it is not possible for us to actually fulfill the law perfectly. Sin is more than just what we say and do outwardly; sin goes to the very heart of fallen mankind. “Those things which proceed from the heart, those are the things that defile a man,” said Jesus.
Pretty dresses and fine suits can make the outside look good. Paul was dressed to the nines. He had designer-made phylacteries, he had big, beautiful broad borders on his garments. The outside looked wonderful. But in his heart, he coveted. And all those garments on the outside were worthless when he still had a sinful heart—a heart that hates, or a heart that is greedy, or a heart that is prideful, or a heart that is selfish, or a heart that is jealous, or a heart that is lustful, or a heart that is murderous. Man judges according to the outward appearance, but God judges according to the heart. Paul understood that. That is Old Testament. And Paul realized, at a point in his life, that not only could he not be justified by the law, he also could not be sanctified by the law. He realized he was doomed—unless someone could save him. He needed an outside factor, someone outside of himself, to do for him what he could not do for himself.
Chapter 7 is letting us know that we need a savior not just for justification, not just for salvation, but also to make us holy, or to sanctify us, because we cannot do such a thing by ourselves. But as Paul already mentioned, we have our fruit unto holiness. The fruit of the Spirit in our life is holy because it grows in our life because of the Holy Spirit. And what the Holy Spirit gives us is holy. The Holy Spirit makes us holy, which is not what we were taught in the places we came from, but it is what the Bible teaches. Jesus sanctified us through his blood. We are cleansed. And the Holy Spirit is in us. We are one: “I in them, and thou in me, that we may all be made perfect in one.” Christ in you, the hope of glory. The Holy Spirit in our lives makes us holy. It makes us the temple of God. And the temple is not holy because it is built of gold. It is not holy because of the sacrifices on the altar. The temple is holy because a holy God is living in it. And we are holy because a holy God is living in us. And we are being made holy by the Holy Spirit, producing the fruit of the Spirit in our life—our fruit unto holiness.
And here is the thing: there is absolutely nothing we can do in that on our own. I could not make myself bear fruit. Jesus said, “On your own, you can do nothing. Except ye abide in me, you will wither and die.” It is only through him abiding in us, and us abiding in him, that we bear fruit. And I cannot make myself a temple of God. Truly, a temple cannot be made by man. A temple can only be made by God. I could build a building, but it is only a temple when God chooses to live in the temple. Otherwise, it’s just an empty building. And the same with my life: I cannot make myself a temple of God. God has to come in and make me a temple. But when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, we are temples of God—not temples of stone and gold, but temples of flesh and blood. God is in us, and He is in us doing a work. The Holy Spirit is in us doing a work, bringing forth fruit—the fruit of the Spirit.
We will learn more about that as we go on in the book of Romans. But here, in chapter 7, Paul is establishing the point that it is impossible for man to make himself holy.
And this was a great realization that came to the apostle Paul at some point during his life. In this chapter, he doesn’t tell us just when that realization came to him, but most likely it came to him somewhere in the proximity of his Damascus road experience.
Earlier in chapter 7, Paul talked about how sin had deceived him by the law. There was a time when sin had deceived him into thinking it was possible for him to keep the law. Paul explained there, in verse 11, that sin had actually used the law to deceive him. If you think you can actually keep the law, you have actually been deceived by sin. People who think they can keep the law are actually deceived by sin. Sin has deceived them about the very word of God.
So, now that we have that little refresher, and we understand Paul is demonstrating to us how impossible it is to be made holy by the law, let’s dive back in here at verse 14, and we will pick up where we left off.
“14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.” So Paul here is saying, the law is not the problem; I am the problem. The law is spiritual; it is from God. But he is of the flesh; he is sold under sin. His flesh is enslaved to sin. So he is taking personal responsibility for his shortcomings. He is not trying to excuse the
fact that he has a covetous heart, but he is explaining why it was not possible for him to obey the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.” Let’s read on, verse 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.” Now, this verse is why I chose to use the English Standard Version. There is a sentence here, which is in the original Greek manuscripts, that for some reason is omitted in the King James. And I think that sentence helps explain what Paul is saying. He is saying, “I do not understand my own actions.” It’s like he has no self-control. Even though, in his mind, he does not want to disobey the law, he can’t help it, and he does it anyway. His heart goes on coveting, and he can’t make it stop. Verse 16.
“16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.” So here in verse 16, Paul is starting to analyze why he does the thing he hates. What is making him do this? His conscience tells him he is doing something wrong. He agrees with his conscience that it is wrong. His conscience confirms to him that the law is good and the law is right: “Thou shalt not covet.” In himself, he knows this is right. Verse 17.
“17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” Now, this verse is important to read correctly. In verse 15, Paul took personal responsibility for his actions. But here in verse 17, he is examining the part of him that is making him do wrong. He sees sin in himself. He sees a part of himself that wants to do right. And then he sees sin, a part of him he cannot control, that does what is wrong. And he acknowledges that sin is dwelling in him. There is a sin in him that he cannot control, and it sets up this internal war, this internal struggle.
Which is explained in verse 18:
“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.”
This is a really sad state the apostle Paul is describing here. We can imagine how tormented Paul must have felt at times. He knew what was right. He wanted desperately to do what was right, but he totally lacked the ability to do it. In his example of coveting, he knew he should not covet, but he had no ability to stop his heart from coveting.
Verse 19:
“19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
He is describing a total inability to stop this thing that is going on in his life. He wants to do good, but instead, he does evil. He is not able to will the impulse away.
“20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”
Again, Paul is not excusing himself for doing wrong. He is analyzing himself, to demonstrate that there is a part of himself he cannot control.
Verse 21:
“21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”
And this is the conclusion of Paul’s self-examination. He has a law operating inside him. You might call it a law of nature, a rule within himself, that is part of his very nature. And the law is that even when he wants to do what is right, evil is still present. There is an inescapable evil, which, remember, in his example, is a heart that covets. Even when he wants to do what is right, his heart is right there still coveting.
“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.”
This is something. He loves the law of God; he knows it is good and right, and he wants to obey it. But he sees that law of nature in his members, the members of his body. He sees it making him captive. His covetousness is winning, and the part of him that wants to do right loses to the part of him that is covetous. The part that wants to do what is right is taken captive by the part that wants to do wrong. And he describes this as a war within himself, that is raging. Part of himself is fighting with the other part of himself for control—fighting to do what is right, fighting to obey the law, but often losing.
And Paul cries out in verse 24:
“24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Paul has a cry; he has a longing. He wants to be free from that battle, free from the struggle. And who wouldn’t be?
And Paul says something here in verse 24, and if you have noticed, he has been saying this throughout. And I want to draw your attention to it. He says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” A “body of death.” He is talking there about his natural, physical body. That is where this struggle is happening, within his body of death. And if we went back to verse 23, Paul talked about the law that was operating in the members of his body, as opposed to verse 22, a desire to serve God in his inner being, or in his soul and in his spirit.
What he is describing here is a battle between his spirit and his flesh—between his spirit and his body. And this focus on his body, he has actually been talking about the body for two chapters now.
Let me just bring in those verses. Back in chapter 6, verse 6, he said:
“6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin (he is talking about the physical body) might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”
He is saying here again, this is coming from the body. And let me jump down to verse 12:
“12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.”
Again, it is very clear he is talking about the natural body. And let me just forward to chapter 8, so I can show you where Paul is going with all this.
Verse 23:
“23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
This is where Paul is heading. Here below, we still have these natural bodies, which Paul called a body of sin and a body of death. And in this groaning within ourselves, we read in verse 23, this struggle. We are waiting for the redemption of our bodies. There is an element of this that will never be fully taken care of until the redemption of our bodies. That doesn’t mean God is okay with sin. That doesn’t mean we have a license to live in sin. But Paul is laying his finger on the root cause of this problem, and it is our natural bodies, which are still subject to death. And what causes death? Sin. Is not the fact that our bodies die proof that our bodies have sin in them? That is exactly what Paul has said.
In chapter 6 and chapter 7, Paul is trying to explain this to us and help us realize that as believers, as Christians who are born again, we are in an in-between state. We are a work in progress. We are seeking to live for God, but there are still things that come upon us, and often they are things no one else can even see—things in our hearts. I don’t think Paul was out stealing or acting out because he was covetous, but he knew it was in his heart. And that is enough. That is enough to be sin in the eyes of God.
So what about that? Paul is saved; he loved God. He loved His word. He wanted desperately not to covet, but the law offered no solution to that. But Jesus Christ does. And that ultimate solution will arrive with the redemption of our bodies. When Christ appears, we shall be like Him.
But what about now? What about this in-between state? What kind of life should we seek to live? How should we look at our shortcomings? Well, let me go back to chapter 7, and read a couple more verses that will tell us how to look at it:
“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.”
Now turn over to chapter 8:
“8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
And if you notice, there in verse 8, there is a sentence missing compared to the King James. And again, this is why I chose the ESV here. That sentence you see in King James is not in the original. Just like the King James left out a sentence in chapter 7, they added a sentence in chapter 8. And unless you take time to look at other translations and compare them to the original, you will miss things like that.
So I am not going to spend much more time here this morning because we will pick up here at the next message. But there is no more condemnation when we are in Christ Jesus. We are in the mortal bodies, but we are also in Christ Jesus. And one day, we will be free from these corrupt bodies. But for now, we can rejoice like Paul did:
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the spirit of life, that is, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, has set you free IN Christ Jesus—there is that unity—from the law of sin and death. It’s a new day. It’s a new covenant. We have a Savior to do what we could not do.
Praise the Lord. Let me close in prayer.
Heavenly Father, take these few words this morning and help us to understand. Bless each soul that hears, and Lord, draw them closer to you. Help them in their lives to be made ever more like our Savior. The works He did, we shall do also. And Lord, we know the greatest work You did was to show us Your love on Calvary. Help us as we go from this place; keep us safe and bring us back again this evening. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.