Romans Series: Chapter 7, Part 2
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Peace to Live By Romans Series: Chapter 7, Part 2 - Daniel Litton
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[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word, and contains extra material that was cut from the broadcast due to time constraints]
We come today to the second half of Romans chapter 7 in our study of the Book of Romans. Today will be the final message before the holiday break, and then we will resume in the middle of January with Romans chapter 8. I know; I know. A lot of you are looking forward to chapter 8, as am I. Nevertheless, this will give us something to look forward to in January, when Christmas is over, the gray clouds have settled in, and our favorite NFL team has been eliminated from the playoffs. Fear not; you will then have Romans chapter 8. On a serious note, I am really looking forward to studying it, and I think that we’re going to find that the second half of the Book of Romans is just has interesting and insightful as the first half has been. There is still a tremendous amount of things for us to discuss, and I believe we’re going to have a real good time.
I’ve really been looking forward to today’s message, and I think it is one we all like to turn to from time to time, and I believe this provides a good mid-series stopping point. As all of us know, today we will be dealing with the famous passage where the Apostle Paul talks about his struggle with his flesh, with the sin-nature. He presents us with two choices. These are two choices in how we live our lives, and it is between these two choices that all of us, as Christians, have to decide. So, turn in your Bibles, or tap in your Bible apps on your mobile devices, to Romans chapter 7. We are picking up in verse 14. Romans chapter 7, verse 14 states: “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (ESV).
Here is the beginning of the familiar section of Scripture in which Paul talks about his current condition as a believer, as one who is a new creation, already sanctified by Jesus. Before we get started in this discussion, however, one question comes to mind that I want us to consider and answer to avoid any confusion. How do we reconcile the fact that Paul says here, “I am of the flesh, sold under sin” with what he said last week in Romans chapter 7 and verse 5, when he said, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (ESV)? See? I’m confused. I thought Paul just said this week he is of the flesh, but then last week back in verse 5, he said, “while we were living in the flesh” as if we are not living in the flesh anymore. So, which is it? Are we in the flesh still, or are we not in the flesh? What’s going on here?
If you compare those two phrases carefully you’ll notice a difference in a small word, and that is he says “I am of the flesh” now versus “while we were living in the flesh.” So, it’s ‘of the flesh’ versus ‘in the flesh.’ And that’s important. We, as believers in Jesus, are no longer in the flesh. I think the best way to understand this is to think of ownership. Our flesh no longer owns us. It no longer calls the shots for us. In our new state as Christians, then, we are owner over the flesh. We can call the shots. We can still let sin reign over us if we want to, but we are not a slave to sin any longer. We, as Christians, are still ‘of the flesh’ in that we still live, we still reside, in our fleshly bodies which still contains its sin-nature, it’s just that sin-nature is not in full control anymore unless we let it be. We don’t lose that part of us until we die or are Raptured, one or the other. That part, then is sold under sin; but our entire personhood is not sold under sin, not our new creation, just our flesh.
Paul is continuing his focus, as he was at the beginning of this chapter, on speaking to and relating to Jewish Christians. Recall, he said in verse 1: “for I am speaking to those who know the law” (ESV).
Next, Paul says, “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 if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:15-17, ESV)
Paul moves here to discussing how he still struggles with sin within his flesh, how he still has to deal with the sin-nature inside of him, which is the same struggle that all of us, as born again believers, face in our lives. It is the experience of everyone of us. It is good for us to remind ourselves of what we went over two weeks ago, in Romans chapter 6, when Paul said, “Let not sin… reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Romans 6:12, ESV). See, back there Paul told us that we still can develop “passions” within our flesh that are sinful. Remember? We either have the choice to follow that sin, to follow sinful desires, or we have the choice to “Let not.” We have the choice to “Let not sin… reign in [our] mortal bod[ies].”
At the core of what Paul is stating here I believe is the fact that we cannot be perfect, no matter how hard we try. We can be legalistic—we can apply all the rules. But what will that do? That will just cause sin to increase more and more. The reality is, you cannot be perfect, I cannot be perfect. The church member cannot be perfect, the preacher cannot be perfect. The politician will make mistakes, a police officer will make mistakes, the judge will make mistakes. None of us can be perfect, no matter who we are, no matter what our occupations are, no matter how hard we try. You cannot be flawless in your relationship with your husband or wife. The same is true with your children. Friends fail friends. A boyfriend doesn’t always treat his girlfriend perfectly. I think you get the point. And even if we could pull off perfection in every area of life, people would still get upset with us because they themselves are flawed. People have different expectations from us based on their own, personal experiences. You ever think about that? Some people just aren’t pleased, no matter what we do or how perfect we try to perform.
Now, I could go all high horse here and say I, Daniel Litton, as a preacher of God’s Word have mastered most areas of the Christian life, but that would be a lie. I think the problem with many brothers and sisters in coming to this passage here in Romans chapter 7 is a prideful problem. Christians oftentimes don’t want to admit that they are still sinners, that they still struggle with sin. All of us, if we are honest with ourselves, would have to admit that we still struggle with the sin nature. I know I struggle with it, and yet, I am called by God to preach and teach his Word. I have to depend, just like you do, on God’s grace and enablement, by the Spirit, to accomplish what he wants me to accomplish for the kingdom. I have to depend on God. I’m not saying we as Christians are slaves to sin, but we definitely still struggle with it. The unbeliever is a slave to sin. Nonetheless, if I don’t deal with this or that area, I can start to become enslaved to sin. If I am presented with a problem, for instance, and I start to worry about that problem for a while, I have fallen into the sin of worry. Let me take that one step further. If I continue to worry, and don’t correct my original problem of worrying, I can start to become enslaved to worry. Even we as Christians, if we are not careful, can give ourselves over to sin.
I think this is at the folly of one of the current movements we have seen in our society, which we have come to know as the MeToo movement. For starters, the Bible says that women are just as much offenders as men. Let’s get that out of the way. “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22-23, ESV). Paul doesn’t say, “For there is a distinction: for only men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So the basic premise of the movement is flawed. To say otherwise would be to go against God, to go against Scripture. In the same breath, we know that there are some males out there of have been particularly offensive in the area of sexual immorality. And those who are greatly offensive and are a danger to women should be brought to trial; there’s no doubt about that. The problem is that all men, and even all women, have not been perfect in the areas of political correctness in relating to the opposite sex.
To say that all men should act perfectly at all times in every way or they are a MeToo offender is just absurd to say the least. As I just said, the Bible says that women too are offenders; they do wrong in the area of sexual immorality, and in the area of relating to men. But my point is that no one, man or woman, can act perfectly all the time, in every way. It’s just not possible. That’s Paul’s argument in our text here today. You can try all you want, you can try with all your might, you can create tons of rules and regulations for yourself to follow, but there is going to be a moment, and probably a moment you didn’t even see coming, when you have not measured up to perfection. You didn’t treat your boyfriend or your girlfriend right. You didn’t treat your wife or your husband correctly. You showed interest in a girl, and you got rejected. Or, you were on that date, went in for the kiss, and man, you got rejected. Does that now mean your a MeToo offender? Oh no! May it never be, as Paul likes to say.
All this being said, as a final point in this area, we should not and cannot have a wrong view of ourselves in Christ if we want to be successful over sin in our lives. And this is a common problem for folks. It’s a common issue for the Christian deists I’ve been talking about throughout this series. After we have been born again, once we have come to the realization of our own, personal sinfulness, if we continue to see ourselves as pathetic sinners in Christ, then guess what? We are going to continue to struggle with sin. Sinful habits aren’t going to go away for us. And why is this? Because how we see ourselves in Christ is very significant and consequential. And notice I said “in Christ.” In other words, what we believe about ourselves is what we become. I talked about this in Romans chapter 6, remember? Our beliefs have power, whether they are good beliefs or bad beliefs, whether they are true or false. The kind of power will correspond to the validity of the belief. In reality, in Christ we are perfect in God’s eyes, and we have the power to overcome sin. It’s so very necessary for us to believe that truth, and thereby practice that truth. As Solomon told us and warned us, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7, KJV).
Regardless, we understand that at the moment we are making a choice, whatever it is, two opposing sides exist. It all plays out in our minds. It’s like the old cartoons where they were be an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. As Paul said, “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Sometimes Christians follow the wrong angel, the demonic one, and they find themselves going against God’s law. They find themselves in sin. Because of our sin-natures, and because the opposing option is available to us, occasionally we pick and choose that opposing option, the one that’s against what God has said. That’s our sin-nature. At times we follow that sin-nature reluctantly even though we know we shouldn’t. Other times we follow it deliberately even when we know what we are doing is wrong.
I want to take a moment here and discuss the relationship between the wrong things we choose and how closely those are related to demonic activity. I personally believe, that more often than not, the bad choices we make, the sinful ones, are tied into influence from a demon. As I’ve lived my own life, I’ve come to believe this over time to be the case. That doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible, that’s not what this section of Scripture in Romans chapter 7 is for. No, we are still responsible for bad choices that we make. Judas was still responsible for betraying Jesus, even though Satan had enter him. I mean that oftentimes I think that demons help enhance our sin-nature at the time it comes to making an incorrect choice. I think more often than not it’s not just our flesh making a bad choice, our sin-nature, but it’s our flesh working in cooperation with the influence of a demon.
People at times want to let Satan and his demons off the hook for wrong decisions, and put all the blame on the flesh, on the sin-nature. Nonetheless, I genuinely believe that demons try to influence us greatly, and even get to the point where they bring influence within us (more on this some other time). Don’t be naive and think that Satan and his demons don’t play off of your flesh. You better believe they do. Remember what Paul said? Let us recall. Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (ESV). Hmm. Here, Paul says we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood only.
Verse 16 of Romans 7: “Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.” (ESV)
Two things happen at the moment we make the wrong choice, when we choose to sin. First, when we do wrong, and then feel bad for it, we show that we agree with what God has said. After all, we have identified whatever incorrect action we have done as sin. We feel bad, coming to understand that we have sinned, and then we confess that sin with our mouths, showing that we agree with God’s law, whether we just confess it to God or whether we confess it to others. Over in 1 Timothy chapter 1, Paul says the following in talking to Timothy: “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted” (1 Timothy 1:8-11, ESV).
So, what was the Jewish Law’s purpose? It was to show people their sin, as Paul said earlier in this book of Romans. This also means that the righteous person is never to live by any law system in their lives. Uh-oh. Yes, you have that right. Can you bring to mind any brothers or sisters who try to live under a law system they have created? Are you trying to do that today? Paul’s got bad news for you. A series of laws cannot help a righteous person, a believer, one of us who has been born again, it can only help an unrighteous person by showing them where their sin is. That’s what he just told Timothy in saying “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient.” Paul also said in Romans chapter 4: “ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void” (Romans 4:14, ESV).
Verse 17 of Romans 7: “So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 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. 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.” (Romans 7:17-20, ESV)
Before we break this section down, I want to paraphrase what I believe Paul is saying here so that you can understand where I am coming from: “If we follow sin in our lives, sin will have its way in us. For I know that nothing good dwells within me alone, that is, in my flesh alone, by itself. For I have the desire to do what is right in my mind, but not the ability to carry it out with my flesh alone. For I do not do the good I want when I try alone to do things, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, the sin that I don’t want to do in my mind but I do it anyway, it is no longer under my power that I am doing, but I have given myself over to sin’s power.” I hope that helps you see how I am reading this passage.
As new creations in Christ, it’s as if we have both sides of the coin now. We are a new creation in Christ, but we also still have the sin-nature. We have both. The unbeliever only has the sin-nature. He or she is not a new creation. Therefore, he or she is powerless when it comes to pleasing God. The person couldn’t be pleasing to God no matter how hard they tried. They are powerless to do what is right in his sight. Nevertheless, how are we as Christians to get the power to do what is right? Do we get it from our flesh? No, our flesh cannot produce the good results that we want. Where do we get our help then? We have to rely on the Holy Spirit, on his enablement, on his power, his empowering of us, with his grace, in order to do what is right. I think most of us haven’t come yet to understand this. Yet, this is the most important paragraph of this sermon.
Paul said, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” If we choose to sin, as Christians, over doing what is right, we are giving ourselves over to sin’s power.
If we choose to follow our flesh in our lives without the Holy Spirit’s input, we cannot live the life that God wants us to live. Following our flesh is not just following obvious sins outwardly, but following our flesh is also just that—living without God’s power. With our flesh alone, we cannot serve God. We can follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in our lives in conjunction with our knowledge of the Word of God, or we can just follow what we think the Word of God is telling us with no input from the Holy Spirit. Those are the two choices for the Christian. What happens when we just try to follow rules we have created from the pages of Scripture? Well, our sin increases. “What? How’s that?” someone might ask. Following rules cannot make us righteous. If you try to make a rule not to do something, you find that all your thinking about is the fact that your not supposed to be doing that sin. The rule actually makes you think more about the sin you’re trying not to do. No, friend, we have to live by God’s grace that enables us not to sin. With God’s grace comes our freedom. God does work in us on our behalf while we depend on him. God is responsible to help us; yet, if we don’t believe, we take the responsibility from him and give it to ourselves, and that is burdensome for us.
Let me tell you a little secret, and this is going to cause some blow outs for many of you out there. I’m about to dynamite your whole philosophy of Christian living. We, as Christians, are not supposed to live by trying harder. We aren’t supposed to live by our own efforts in keeping a certain set of rules. Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4, ESV). You see, a branch cannot bear fruit by trying to bear that fruit itself. It just can’t do it no matter what. It doesn’t have the capacity in and of itself. It is by the branch’s connection to the vine that it can grow and bear fruit. In the same way, it is by our own, personal connections with the Spirit of Jesus that we our in fellowship with him and actually bear fruit. "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63, ESV). The branch doesn’t make a list of rules and regulations in order to bear its fruit. It depends on the nourishment from the vine.
Then Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (John 15:5-6, ESV). It is by our depending on Jesus, on his power, that we bear much fruit in our own personal lives, and in our own ministry. It is the only way we can bear fruit, as Jesus just said, “for apart from me you can do nothing.” This is the same thing as Paul said, when he said, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” We should not live by our fleshy efforts. We have to depend on Jesus to accomplish through us what he wants and desires to accomplish. If we try to come up with our own plans, and do things our own, creative ways, we are living by the flesh. If we try to formulate a way to live from following verses from the Bible, adhering to them faithfully by our own efforts, we’re in trouble. There are a great deal of people and churches operating this way.
You see, the greater the legalism we find then, the greater the sin. I know this may be a shock to some of you; I know; I lived for years believing that following rules was how you made for a better, more Spirit-filled life. All legalism does is hide sin, it doesn’t take it away. It enhances the presentation of people, so that they appear that they are with little to no sin, but in actuality it is the more a person follows the Spirit’s enabling that they more closely align their character with that of Christ. It’s like Jesus said to the Pharisees: ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28, ESV).
Romans 7:21: “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!” (Romans 7:21-24, ESV)
After accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we then, in becoming a new creation, were implanted with the desire to do what is right. We had a new desire to please God, to follow goodness in our lives. But we get to make the choice on how we will accomplish this goodness, on what route will will take. There are two choices. We must decide daily to operate in this desire with the Spirit of God’s enablement.
Living under grace means we are able to carry out what is pleasing to God because we are following the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Recently I was driving a couple hours outside of Columbus. I knew where I wanted to go, and feeling lazy, I decided I would just follow the GPS app on my smartphone in order to get there. So, I typed in the address, it gave me three routes, I chose one, and off I went. Things went well for a while. But about a third of the way there, the GPS app routed me off the freeway and started taking me on back roads. I was going left, right, up, and down, on hardly paved roads that you could barely pass by oncoming traffic. After about twenty minutes of this, I checked my smartphone to see what was going on. Turns out it had changed routes on me to save a few minutes, and it was taking me on all these back country roads in order to do this. After complaining about it, I found out the way I was really supposed to go.
You see, I relied on the GPS app to get where I was going initially. This is like following a law system. I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to make any choices in where I was going. All I had to do was follow the directions my phone told me. It wasn’t until just following the directions wasn’t working that I had to pick up my phone and figure out the way on my own. I had to figure out what roads I needed to be on because just rigorously following the directions had failed me. This is what we do when we follow a law system from the Bible. We are blindly following rules, and over time it doesn’t work out. Why doesn’t it get us where we want to be? Because that is not how we are supposed to live. We are not to live under a law without personal input, and this personal input from the third person of the Trinity, the Spirit of God. We are supposed to live by following the Spirit in our lives, which means looking at the Bible and then following the way God wants us go. Not just looking at the Bible.
Paul said in Galatians 5: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (ESV). This passage from Galatians confirms for us that in this section today in Romans chapter 7, that Paul is talking about his current condition as a Christian, and not his previous condition before his conversion experience, or for the Jew living under the Jewish Law--which in this case would have been the same thing with Paul. Paul’s point in both Romans chapter 7 and Galatians chapter 5 is that we are to choose not to walk by the flesh, to walk by our sin-natures, to live following a Christian life without God’s ‘real’ input, but instead we are to choose to be led by the Spirit.
Walking by the flesh, as we’ve already stated, will manifest itself in sin, in doing the things that are against what God wants, and really against what we want in our new minds as Christians. For Paul says, continuing on in Galatians: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21, ESV). Even if we try to create rules to prevent these things in our lives, as Christians, it won’t work. That is a common misunderstanding. Creating rules against these things only increases our desire to do them. And notice from Paul’s list this is just not the common unbeliever’s sins. But it also includes a lot of, shall we say, church-going sins, which are often accepted in church dare I say. Note them, the middle ones on the list: “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy.” A lot of these sins we see just as much in church as we see among unbelievers. Paul told us last week, earlier in this chapter, “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6, ESV).
Having said all this, don’t misunderstand me; rules can be good in our lives, as Christians. They definitely are good. But they will not stop the indulgence of the flesh. In other words, creating rules won’t make us less sinful, or less sin-filled. The way we move away from sin, or keep our sin-nature at bay, if you will, is by fellowshipping with God in our lives, abiding in Jesus, by spending regular time with him, growing closer to him, which lets his life flow out through us by the Spirit.
Back in Romans 7, Paul asks, “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 7:24-25, ESV)
Notice how Paul says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He doesn’t say, “Yes, praise the Lord. I have been delivered from my body of death!” That’s because it hasn’t happened yet. It hadn’t happened yet for him at the time he wrote this, and it hasn’t happened yet for us. Again, we still have to deal with the sin-nature in our lives. We have not been freed from any effect whatsoever of dealing with the sin-nature. We are not like Adam in the Garden, where originally he didn’t have a sin-nature. No, Christian, we still, even after our conversion, have, and have to deal with, the sin-nature. Otherwise, if we were like Adam in the Garden before he sinned, we could always, one hundred percent of the time, choose not to sin. But you know you’re not going to do that; I’m not going to do that. That’s just not going to happen until we are with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s finish with a section of Scripture from Galatians chapter 4. I think Paul’s allegory here will help seal in our minds what we’ve been talking about today. We are going to cheat a little bit here, and touch on some themes we are going to see in the next chapter, the chapter we’ve all been waiting for, Romans chapter 8. Let’s take a few bites here so we have something to chew on while we’re on holiday break. Galatians 4:1-7: “I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (ESV).
Anyone today can become a new creation in Jesus; anyone can be adopted as God’s son or daughter. By believing in what Jesus has accomplished on the cross on your behalf, the old can be gone for you and you can have new life in Christ today. Go to God right now in prayer and tell him you believe.
-Daniel Litton
We come today to the second half of Romans chapter 7 in our study of the Book of Romans. Today will be the final message before the holiday break, and then we will resume in the middle of January with Romans chapter 8. I know; I know. A lot of you are looking forward to chapter 8, as am I. Nevertheless, this will give us something to look forward to in January, when Christmas is over, the gray clouds have settled in, and our favorite NFL team has been eliminated from the playoffs. Fear not; you will then have Romans chapter 8. On a serious note, I am really looking forward to studying it, and I think that we’re going to find that the second half of the Book of Romans is just has interesting and insightful as the first half has been. There is still a tremendous amount of things for us to discuss, and I believe we’re going to have a real good time.
I’ve really been looking forward to today’s message, and I think it is one we all like to turn to from time to time, and I believe this provides a good mid-series stopping point. As all of us know, today we will be dealing with the famous passage where the Apostle Paul talks about his struggle with his flesh, with the sin-nature. He presents us with two choices. These are two choices in how we live our lives, and it is between these two choices that all of us, as Christians, have to decide. So, turn in your Bibles, or tap in your Bible apps on your mobile devices, to Romans chapter 7. We are picking up in verse 14. Romans chapter 7, verse 14 states: “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (ESV).
Here is the beginning of the familiar section of Scripture in which Paul talks about his current condition as a believer, as one who is a new creation, already sanctified by Jesus. Before we get started in this discussion, however, one question comes to mind that I want us to consider and answer to avoid any confusion. How do we reconcile the fact that Paul says here, “I am of the flesh, sold under sin” with what he said last week in Romans chapter 7 and verse 5, when he said, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (ESV)? See? I’m confused. I thought Paul just said this week he is of the flesh, but then last week back in verse 5, he said, “while we were living in the flesh” as if we are not living in the flesh anymore. So, which is it? Are we in the flesh still, or are we not in the flesh? What’s going on here?
If you compare those two phrases carefully you’ll notice a difference in a small word, and that is he says “I am of the flesh” now versus “while we were living in the flesh.” So, it’s ‘of the flesh’ versus ‘in the flesh.’ And that’s important. We, as believers in Jesus, are no longer in the flesh. I think the best way to understand this is to think of ownership. Our flesh no longer owns us. It no longer calls the shots for us. In our new state as Christians, then, we are owner over the flesh. We can call the shots. We can still let sin reign over us if we want to, but we are not a slave to sin any longer. We, as Christians, are still ‘of the flesh’ in that we still live, we still reside, in our fleshly bodies which still contains its sin-nature, it’s just that sin-nature is not in full control anymore unless we let it be. We don’t lose that part of us until we die or are Raptured, one or the other. That part, then is sold under sin; but our entire personhood is not sold under sin, not our new creation, just our flesh.
Paul is continuing his focus, as he was at the beginning of this chapter, on speaking to and relating to Jewish Christians. Recall, he said in verse 1: “for I am speaking to those who know the law” (ESV).
Next, Paul says, “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 if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:15-17, ESV)
Paul moves here to discussing how he still struggles with sin within his flesh, how he still has to deal with the sin-nature inside of him, which is the same struggle that all of us, as born again believers, face in our lives. It is the experience of everyone of us. It is good for us to remind ourselves of what we went over two weeks ago, in Romans chapter 6, when Paul said, “Let not sin… reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Romans 6:12, ESV). See, back there Paul told us that we still can develop “passions” within our flesh that are sinful. Remember? We either have the choice to follow that sin, to follow sinful desires, or we have the choice to “Let not.” We have the choice to “Let not sin… reign in [our] mortal bod[ies].”
At the core of what Paul is stating here I believe is the fact that we cannot be perfect, no matter how hard we try. We can be legalistic—we can apply all the rules. But what will that do? That will just cause sin to increase more and more. The reality is, you cannot be perfect, I cannot be perfect. The church member cannot be perfect, the preacher cannot be perfect. The politician will make mistakes, a police officer will make mistakes, the judge will make mistakes. None of us can be perfect, no matter who we are, no matter what our occupations are, no matter how hard we try. You cannot be flawless in your relationship with your husband or wife. The same is true with your children. Friends fail friends. A boyfriend doesn’t always treat his girlfriend perfectly. I think you get the point. And even if we could pull off perfection in every area of life, people would still get upset with us because they themselves are flawed. People have different expectations from us based on their own, personal experiences. You ever think about that? Some people just aren’t pleased, no matter what we do or how perfect we try to perform.
Now, I could go all high horse here and say I, Daniel Litton, as a preacher of God’s Word have mastered most areas of the Christian life, but that would be a lie. I think the problem with many brothers and sisters in coming to this passage here in Romans chapter 7 is a prideful problem. Christians oftentimes don’t want to admit that they are still sinners, that they still struggle with sin. All of us, if we are honest with ourselves, would have to admit that we still struggle with the sin nature. I know I struggle with it, and yet, I am called by God to preach and teach his Word. I have to depend, just like you do, on God’s grace and enablement, by the Spirit, to accomplish what he wants me to accomplish for the kingdom. I have to depend on God. I’m not saying we as Christians are slaves to sin, but we definitely still struggle with it. The unbeliever is a slave to sin. Nonetheless, if I don’t deal with this or that area, I can start to become enslaved to sin. If I am presented with a problem, for instance, and I start to worry about that problem for a while, I have fallen into the sin of worry. Let me take that one step further. If I continue to worry, and don’t correct my original problem of worrying, I can start to become enslaved to worry. Even we as Christians, if we are not careful, can give ourselves over to sin.
I think this is at the folly of one of the current movements we have seen in our society, which we have come to know as the MeToo movement. For starters, the Bible says that women are just as much offenders as men. Let’s get that out of the way. “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22-23, ESV). Paul doesn’t say, “For there is a distinction: for only men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So the basic premise of the movement is flawed. To say otherwise would be to go against God, to go against Scripture. In the same breath, we know that there are some males out there of have been particularly offensive in the area of sexual immorality. And those who are greatly offensive and are a danger to women should be brought to trial; there’s no doubt about that. The problem is that all men, and even all women, have not been perfect in the areas of political correctness in relating to the opposite sex.
To say that all men should act perfectly at all times in every way or they are a MeToo offender is just absurd to say the least. As I just said, the Bible says that women too are offenders; they do wrong in the area of sexual immorality, and in the area of relating to men. But my point is that no one, man or woman, can act perfectly all the time, in every way. It’s just not possible. That’s Paul’s argument in our text here today. You can try all you want, you can try with all your might, you can create tons of rules and regulations for yourself to follow, but there is going to be a moment, and probably a moment you didn’t even see coming, when you have not measured up to perfection. You didn’t treat your boyfriend or your girlfriend right. You didn’t treat your wife or your husband correctly. You showed interest in a girl, and you got rejected. Or, you were on that date, went in for the kiss, and man, you got rejected. Does that now mean your a MeToo offender? Oh no! May it never be, as Paul likes to say.
All this being said, as a final point in this area, we should not and cannot have a wrong view of ourselves in Christ if we want to be successful over sin in our lives. And this is a common problem for folks. It’s a common issue for the Christian deists I’ve been talking about throughout this series. After we have been born again, once we have come to the realization of our own, personal sinfulness, if we continue to see ourselves as pathetic sinners in Christ, then guess what? We are going to continue to struggle with sin. Sinful habits aren’t going to go away for us. And why is this? Because how we see ourselves in Christ is very significant and consequential. And notice I said “in Christ.” In other words, what we believe about ourselves is what we become. I talked about this in Romans chapter 6, remember? Our beliefs have power, whether they are good beliefs or bad beliefs, whether they are true or false. The kind of power will correspond to the validity of the belief. In reality, in Christ we are perfect in God’s eyes, and we have the power to overcome sin. It’s so very necessary for us to believe that truth, and thereby practice that truth. As Solomon told us and warned us, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7, KJV).
Regardless, we understand that at the moment we are making a choice, whatever it is, two opposing sides exist. It all plays out in our minds. It’s like the old cartoons where they were be an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. As Paul said, “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Sometimes Christians follow the wrong angel, the demonic one, and they find themselves going against God’s law. They find themselves in sin. Because of our sin-natures, and because the opposing option is available to us, occasionally we pick and choose that opposing option, the one that’s against what God has said. That’s our sin-nature. At times we follow that sin-nature reluctantly even though we know we shouldn’t. Other times we follow it deliberately even when we know what we are doing is wrong.
I want to take a moment here and discuss the relationship between the wrong things we choose and how closely those are related to demonic activity. I personally believe, that more often than not, the bad choices we make, the sinful ones, are tied into influence from a demon. As I’ve lived my own life, I’ve come to believe this over time to be the case. That doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible, that’s not what this section of Scripture in Romans chapter 7 is for. No, we are still responsible for bad choices that we make. Judas was still responsible for betraying Jesus, even though Satan had enter him. I mean that oftentimes I think that demons help enhance our sin-nature at the time it comes to making an incorrect choice. I think more often than not it’s not just our flesh making a bad choice, our sin-nature, but it’s our flesh working in cooperation with the influence of a demon.
People at times want to let Satan and his demons off the hook for wrong decisions, and put all the blame on the flesh, on the sin-nature. Nonetheless, I genuinely believe that demons try to influence us greatly, and even get to the point where they bring influence within us (more on this some other time). Don’t be naive and think that Satan and his demons don’t play off of your flesh. You better believe they do. Remember what Paul said? Let us recall. Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (ESV). Hmm. Here, Paul says we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood only.
Verse 16 of Romans 7: “Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.” (ESV)
Two things happen at the moment we make the wrong choice, when we choose to sin. First, when we do wrong, and then feel bad for it, we show that we agree with what God has said. After all, we have identified whatever incorrect action we have done as sin. We feel bad, coming to understand that we have sinned, and then we confess that sin with our mouths, showing that we agree with God’s law, whether we just confess it to God or whether we confess it to others. Over in 1 Timothy chapter 1, Paul says the following in talking to Timothy: “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted” (1 Timothy 1:8-11, ESV).
So, what was the Jewish Law’s purpose? It was to show people their sin, as Paul said earlier in this book of Romans. This also means that the righteous person is never to live by any law system in their lives. Uh-oh. Yes, you have that right. Can you bring to mind any brothers or sisters who try to live under a law system they have created? Are you trying to do that today? Paul’s got bad news for you. A series of laws cannot help a righteous person, a believer, one of us who has been born again, it can only help an unrighteous person by showing them where their sin is. That’s what he just told Timothy in saying “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient.” Paul also said in Romans chapter 4: “ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void” (Romans 4:14, ESV).
Verse 17 of Romans 7: “So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 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. 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.” (Romans 7:17-20, ESV)
Before we break this section down, I want to paraphrase what I believe Paul is saying here so that you can understand where I am coming from: “If we follow sin in our lives, sin will have its way in us. For I know that nothing good dwells within me alone, that is, in my flesh alone, by itself. For I have the desire to do what is right in my mind, but not the ability to carry it out with my flesh alone. For I do not do the good I want when I try alone to do things, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, the sin that I don’t want to do in my mind but I do it anyway, it is no longer under my power that I am doing, but I have given myself over to sin’s power.” I hope that helps you see how I am reading this passage.
As new creations in Christ, it’s as if we have both sides of the coin now. We are a new creation in Christ, but we also still have the sin-nature. We have both. The unbeliever only has the sin-nature. He or she is not a new creation. Therefore, he or she is powerless when it comes to pleasing God. The person couldn’t be pleasing to God no matter how hard they tried. They are powerless to do what is right in his sight. Nevertheless, how are we as Christians to get the power to do what is right? Do we get it from our flesh? No, our flesh cannot produce the good results that we want. Where do we get our help then? We have to rely on the Holy Spirit, on his enablement, on his power, his empowering of us, with his grace, in order to do what is right. I think most of us haven’t come yet to understand this. Yet, this is the most important paragraph of this sermon.
Paul said, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” If we choose to sin, as Christians, over doing what is right, we are giving ourselves over to sin’s power.
If we choose to follow our flesh in our lives without the Holy Spirit’s input, we cannot live the life that God wants us to live. Following our flesh is not just following obvious sins outwardly, but following our flesh is also just that—living without God’s power. With our flesh alone, we cannot serve God. We can follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in our lives in conjunction with our knowledge of the Word of God, or we can just follow what we think the Word of God is telling us with no input from the Holy Spirit. Those are the two choices for the Christian. What happens when we just try to follow rules we have created from the pages of Scripture? Well, our sin increases. “What? How’s that?” someone might ask. Following rules cannot make us righteous. If you try to make a rule not to do something, you find that all your thinking about is the fact that your not supposed to be doing that sin. The rule actually makes you think more about the sin you’re trying not to do. No, friend, we have to live by God’s grace that enables us not to sin. With God’s grace comes our freedom. God does work in us on our behalf while we depend on him. God is responsible to help us; yet, if we don’t believe, we take the responsibility from him and give it to ourselves, and that is burdensome for us.
Let me tell you a little secret, and this is going to cause some blow outs for many of you out there. I’m about to dynamite your whole philosophy of Christian living. We, as Christians, are not supposed to live by trying harder. We aren’t supposed to live by our own efforts in keeping a certain set of rules. Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4, ESV). You see, a branch cannot bear fruit by trying to bear that fruit itself. It just can’t do it no matter what. It doesn’t have the capacity in and of itself. It is by the branch’s connection to the vine that it can grow and bear fruit. In the same way, it is by our own, personal connections with the Spirit of Jesus that we our in fellowship with him and actually bear fruit. "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63, ESV). The branch doesn’t make a list of rules and regulations in order to bear its fruit. It depends on the nourishment from the vine.
Then Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (John 15:5-6, ESV). It is by our depending on Jesus, on his power, that we bear much fruit in our own personal lives, and in our own ministry. It is the only way we can bear fruit, as Jesus just said, “for apart from me you can do nothing.” This is the same thing as Paul said, when he said, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” We should not live by our fleshy efforts. We have to depend on Jesus to accomplish through us what he wants and desires to accomplish. If we try to come up with our own plans, and do things our own, creative ways, we are living by the flesh. If we try to formulate a way to live from following verses from the Bible, adhering to them faithfully by our own efforts, we’re in trouble. There are a great deal of people and churches operating this way.
You see, the greater the legalism we find then, the greater the sin. I know this may be a shock to some of you; I know; I lived for years believing that following rules was how you made for a better, more Spirit-filled life. All legalism does is hide sin, it doesn’t take it away. It enhances the presentation of people, so that they appear that they are with little to no sin, but in actuality it is the more a person follows the Spirit’s enabling that they more closely align their character with that of Christ. It’s like Jesus said to the Pharisees: ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28, ESV).
Romans 7:21: “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!” (Romans 7:21-24, ESV)
After accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we then, in becoming a new creation, were implanted with the desire to do what is right. We had a new desire to please God, to follow goodness in our lives. But we get to make the choice on how we will accomplish this goodness, on what route will will take. There are two choices. We must decide daily to operate in this desire with the Spirit of God’s enablement.
Living under grace means we are able to carry out what is pleasing to God because we are following the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Recently I was driving a couple hours outside of Columbus. I knew where I wanted to go, and feeling lazy, I decided I would just follow the GPS app on my smartphone in order to get there. So, I typed in the address, it gave me three routes, I chose one, and off I went. Things went well for a while. But about a third of the way there, the GPS app routed me off the freeway and started taking me on back roads. I was going left, right, up, and down, on hardly paved roads that you could barely pass by oncoming traffic. After about twenty minutes of this, I checked my smartphone to see what was going on. Turns out it had changed routes on me to save a few minutes, and it was taking me on all these back country roads in order to do this. After complaining about it, I found out the way I was really supposed to go.
You see, I relied on the GPS app to get where I was going initially. This is like following a law system. I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to make any choices in where I was going. All I had to do was follow the directions my phone told me. It wasn’t until just following the directions wasn’t working that I had to pick up my phone and figure out the way on my own. I had to figure out what roads I needed to be on because just rigorously following the directions had failed me. This is what we do when we follow a law system from the Bible. We are blindly following rules, and over time it doesn’t work out. Why doesn’t it get us where we want to be? Because that is not how we are supposed to live. We are not to live under a law without personal input, and this personal input from the third person of the Trinity, the Spirit of God. We are supposed to live by following the Spirit in our lives, which means looking at the Bible and then following the way God wants us go. Not just looking at the Bible.
Paul said in Galatians 5: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (ESV). This passage from Galatians confirms for us that in this section today in Romans chapter 7, that Paul is talking about his current condition as a Christian, and not his previous condition before his conversion experience, or for the Jew living under the Jewish Law--which in this case would have been the same thing with Paul. Paul’s point in both Romans chapter 7 and Galatians chapter 5 is that we are to choose not to walk by the flesh, to walk by our sin-natures, to live following a Christian life without God’s ‘real’ input, but instead we are to choose to be led by the Spirit.
Walking by the flesh, as we’ve already stated, will manifest itself in sin, in doing the things that are against what God wants, and really against what we want in our new minds as Christians. For Paul says, continuing on in Galatians: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21, ESV). Even if we try to create rules to prevent these things in our lives, as Christians, it won’t work. That is a common misunderstanding. Creating rules against these things only increases our desire to do them. And notice from Paul’s list this is just not the common unbeliever’s sins. But it also includes a lot of, shall we say, church-going sins, which are often accepted in church dare I say. Note them, the middle ones on the list: “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy.” A lot of these sins we see just as much in church as we see among unbelievers. Paul told us last week, earlier in this chapter, “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6, ESV).
Having said all this, don’t misunderstand me; rules can be good in our lives, as Christians. They definitely are good. But they will not stop the indulgence of the flesh. In other words, creating rules won’t make us less sinful, or less sin-filled. The way we move away from sin, or keep our sin-nature at bay, if you will, is by fellowshipping with God in our lives, abiding in Jesus, by spending regular time with him, growing closer to him, which lets his life flow out through us by the Spirit.
Back in Romans 7, Paul asks, “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 7:24-25, ESV)
Notice how Paul says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He doesn’t say, “Yes, praise the Lord. I have been delivered from my body of death!” That’s because it hasn’t happened yet. It hadn’t happened yet for him at the time he wrote this, and it hasn’t happened yet for us. Again, we still have to deal with the sin-nature in our lives. We have not been freed from any effect whatsoever of dealing with the sin-nature. We are not like Adam in the Garden, where originally he didn’t have a sin-nature. No, Christian, we still, even after our conversion, have, and have to deal with, the sin-nature. Otherwise, if we were like Adam in the Garden before he sinned, we could always, one hundred percent of the time, choose not to sin. But you know you’re not going to do that; I’m not going to do that. That’s just not going to happen until we are with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s finish with a section of Scripture from Galatians chapter 4. I think Paul’s allegory here will help seal in our minds what we’ve been talking about today. We are going to cheat a little bit here, and touch on some themes we are going to see in the next chapter, the chapter we’ve all been waiting for, Romans chapter 8. Let’s take a few bites here so we have something to chew on while we’re on holiday break. Galatians 4:1-7: “I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (ESV).
Anyone today can become a new creation in Jesus; anyone can be adopted as God’s son or daughter. By believing in what Jesus has accomplished on the cross on your behalf, the old can be gone for you and you can have new life in Christ today. Go to God right now in prayer and tell him you believe.
-Daniel Litton