The War Within

Please remain standing now for the reading of

the word. We're looking at Romans

Romans 7 · chapter mention

chapter 7 this morning verses 14 to 25.

Romans 7

Romans 7:14–25

verses 14

to 25. Please listen to the reading of

God's word.

For we know that the law is spiritual,

but I am of the flesh sold under

sin.

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.

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.

So I find it to be a law

that when I want to do right, evil

lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God

in my inner being,

but I see in my members another law

waging war against the law of my mind

and making me captive to the law of

sin

that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver

me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our

Lord.

So then,

I myself serve the law of God with

my mind,

but with my flesh,

I serve the law of sin.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Romans

Romans 7:14–25

7

verses

14 to 25,

which we are considering

this morning

is undoubtedly

one of the best known passages

in Paul's letter to the Romans.

The reason this passage is so widely known

is that it's been so widely disputed

and the crux of the disputation

can be summarized with this question.

In these verses,

is Paul describing the experience

of an unregenerate

person

or is Paul describing

the experience

of a Christian?

In other words, do these verses pertain

to the plight of unbelievers

or do they pertain

to the plight

of believers?

Having read this passage, it's not difficult to

understand

the root of the controversy.

After all, the Apostle Paul,

this

towering figure in church history, who wrote almost

a quarter

of the New Testament,

who was not only a self described Hebrew

of Hebrews, but who also

whose admirable life in Christ is that of

a saint among saints,

this man describes in this passage

the experience of a person who seems to

be impotent to do good.

A person who is captive, almost like a

slave

to do evil acts,

describing himself as a wretched man

in a body of death.

One understands the apprehension to take Paul's words

at face value.

It is more palatable

to imagine that Paul, that is to say,

Saint Paul,

is instead, for pedagogical reasons,

using the first person perspective to describe the

sinful disposition

of a person who is not yet saved,

almost like in a

hypothetical

sense.

However,

as we shall see this morning,

the most clear understanding,

the most

consistent

explanation,

the most straightforward

interpretation,

the best exposition

of this text

is that Paul is in fact describing

his experience

as a Christian.

Because the fact of the matter is

that when one becomes a Christian,

the struggle against sin

doesn't magically go away.

Actually,

in a very real way the struggle against

sin

only begins

when one becomes a Christian.

In fact, I suggest to you that this

text

is a call for Christians

to strive

against sin.

Even though we are saved by grace through

faith

and not by our own works, this does

not mean that we are exempt

from pursuing lives of holiness.

The main point I want you to remember

from this sermon is this,

Christians must wage war against wickedness.

Christians

must wage war

against wickedness.

So keep that point in mind as we

consider this text under 3 headings.

Our first heading,

the tenacious tyranny of of the flesh.

The tenacious tyranny of the flesh.

2nd heading,

the righteous rebellion

of the spirit.

The righteous rebellion of the spirit.

And the 3rd heading, our sure salvation

in Christ.

Our sure salvation in Christ. So let's look

at the first heading, the tenacious

tyranny

of the flesh. In verse 14, we read,

for we know that the law is spiritual,

but I am of the flesh, sold under

sin.

Notice that Paul writes that

we know

that the law is spiritual

using the first person plural, we.

We know

that the law is spiritual.

The letter is written first of all to

1st century Christians in Rome

and then

in God's providence

to Christians

all around the world and across time even

to us

gathered today in The Woodlands.

But the audience was and is

a Christian audience.

And Paul,

even as he says that he is of

the flesh, writes,

we know

that the law is spiritual.

In other words,

he identifies

as a as a Christian

even though he is of the flesh.

After all, it is Christians who know

that the law is spiritual. In other words,

that the law is of divine origin that

it comes from God himself.

Unbelievers don't recognize

the divine origin or authority of the scripture

because such things are

spiritually discerned.

This is what Paul himself tells us in

1st Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14 where he

writes,

the natural person does not accept the things

of the spirit of God

for their folly to him,

And he is not able to understand them

because they

are spiritually

discerned.

So whatever Paul means when he writes that

he is of the flesh,

he is looking at it from the perspective

of a believer.

One who recognizes

that the law comes from God, that the

law is spiritual.

Verse 15 strengthens this assertion as Paul writes,

for I do not understand my own actions.

For I do not do what I want,

but the very

but I do the very thing

I hate.

In other words, Paul is saying that he

does not recognize

or approve

of his sinful acts.

In fact, he states, I hate them.

I hate what I do.

Does this sound like the words of an

unbeliever to you?

I affirm that the Bible is God's word.

I repudiate

and detest

my sin.

Well, no. Those are the words of a

Christian.

So before commenting on Paul's self description as

being of the flesh and sold under sin,

let me ask you 2 questions. 1st,

do you

recognize

and submit

to the authority

of the scriptures

as god's word?

Do you recognize it and submit to the

authority of the scriptures

as God's word?

The question is that whether you are a

Bible expert or not or whether you are

or whether you perfectly obey and keep God's

law.

The question is,

do you know that the law is spiritual?

Do you know that the Bible

comes from God?

Because if you do,

and I have a pretty good feeling that

most of you do,

then you should be encouraged

that this is evidence

of God's grace in your life.

That he has given you the ability to

know

what this book is.

That he has given you the ability to

know that this book

is a source of life

for you and for your family.

That this book is a manual of wisdom

to guide your decisions.

That this book is a bulwark against Satan

and against the destructive effects of sin,

that this book

is a tested path

for joy

and toward peace, and that ultimately,

this book,

the Bible, is the very fountain of immortality.

This knowledge is a priceless gift of God

to you.

Were it not for this gift, the Bible

would be foolishness to you

as it is to the world.

A world that through its rejection

and ridicule of this book has become more

dysfunctional

and more more dystopian

with each passing day.

Furthermore,

if you know that the law is spiritual,

that it comes from God,

not only should you recognize I'm sorry. Not

only should you realize

that such knowledge is God's gift,

but you should respond to such gift

by studying the Bible,

by submitting

to its authority,

and by striving to grow

in godliness.

In other words, as James tells us in

his letter,

Christians should not only be hearers of the

word,

Christians must be doers

of the word.

So let God's grace drive your desire

to please your heavenly father.

The second question I want to ask you

is this, do you hate your sin as

Paul does?

He says, I hate what I do.

Do you hate

your sin?

We all hate the consequences of getting caught,

but that's not the same thing as hating

our sin, is it?

To hate our sin, we must know

what it does to us.

We must know what it does to the

people that we love.

We must know what it costs

our heavenly father

and our savior.

So we have to grieve our sin, but

we also have to hate it.

Your sin wants to destroy you.

Your sin wants to destroy your family.

Your sin wants to destroy everyone that you

love.

As John Owen, the great Puritan theologian from

Oxford said,

be killing sin

or it will be killing you.

And the first step toward killing sin in

your life is to see it for what

it is.

It is deceitful

and murderous.

It is a predator

that seeks to devour you from without.

It is a cancer

that seeks to decimate you from within.

It is no respecter of age.

It is no respecter of gender.

It is no respecter of race.

It hates equally,

and it shows no mercy.

So identify

sin in your life.

Confess it and do battle against it. Strive

against sin.

That's what Paul does here.

He writes, I know I sin,

but I don't understand it.

I don't approve

it. I hate it.

Now we'll return to this idea of doing

battle against sin later, but right now I

want us to consider what Paul means when

he writes, as a Christian,

that he is of the flesh

sold under sin.

Essentially, the word that Paul uses

here to

to say,

that he is of the flesh can literally

be translated as fleshy or fleshly.

He is fleshly.

In In other words, Paul is juxtaposing

the spiritual,

divine,

righteous nature of the law

with his own

fleshly,

fallen,

sinful nature.

The divine nature of the law,

the fleshly nature of Paul.

He's juxtaposing those 2. Whereas the law is

perfect,

blameless, or as he wrote in verse 12,

holy

sorry, holy, righteous, and good.

Paul

has been sold, traded, and trafficked in the

slavish economy of sin. That's where he has

lived. That's where he has breathed. That's where

he has done his life,

in the slavish economy

of the fallen world. He says these two

things

are totally different.

They don't seem to go together.

They're at war with each other.

We fallen human beings, including Paul, are conceived

and born in the corruption of this fleshly

existence.

So you see, unlike

unregenerate human beings

who are firmly in the bondage

of sin and loyal to the tyranny of

death,

The regenerated human being,

the person who has been redeemed by Christ

from sin's domain,

represents the meeting point or the juncture

of these two warring kingdoms.

It's in the regenerate person that these two

things are war.

The domain of sin

and the domain of righteousness.

The kingdom of Satan

and the kingdom of Christ.

The realm of the flesh

and the realm of the spirit. It is

only within the believer

that this conflict takes place,

and then and this is precisely

the conflict that Paul describes in the passage

before us.

Look at verses 16 17.

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.

Do you see the conflict?

Paul

agrees with the law.

He agrees that the law is good.

He approves of it.

Again, this is not a statement that an

unbeliever can sign his name to.

The unbeliever is in rebellion against God.

He despises God's law.

He mocks it.

He denies its authority.

He does nothing to please God and Romans

8, Paul is gonna tell us that he

cannot do anything to please God in fact.

So he does nothing to please God but

instead does everything

as he himself pleases.

That's the nature of being in rebellion with

God. We all know it because we've all

done it.

We know what that's like.

So Paul, writing as a believer,

agrees that the law is good.

However, since he does what he does not

want to do,

namely

sin,

he admits his subjection

to a certain kind of tyranny.

It's no longer I who do it, but

sin that dwells within me, says Paul.

Please know that Paul is not making excuses

for himself.

He's not denying his own responsibility in this

matter.

In fact, he takes his own responsibility before

God so seriously

and he is so burdened and so disturbed

by his own sin

that in verse 24, he calls he calls

himself a wretched man.

Nevertheless,

Paul confesses that sin still exerts

power over him.

Notice that Paul's ability

to reason

is not the problem.

He knows what he is doing.

He knows it.

His heart's not the problem either. He approves

of God's law, and he disapproves

of his sinful sinful behavior. He hates it.

His affections are not the problem either.

He desires to do good,

but the very thing he doesn't wanna do,

that's what he does.

And because he knows what is right

and what is holy

and what is good, yet ends up doing

what's corrupt and sinful and wrong,

it's as if he is helpless

against sin's control.

Dear Christian, perhaps you have felt this kind

of frustration

in your own struggle against sin.

And you wish you could just press a

button

that would enable you to never again give

in to the temptation to sin.

And like Paul,

you don't understand your own actions

because you agree that the law is good,

because you end up doing the very thing

that you don't want to do.

So you become frustrated with yourself,

perhaps even to the point of questioning your

salvation.

Is that you this morning?

Well, Romans 7 ought to be an encouragement

to you

because it demonstrates that your frustration is not

evidence of your lack of faith, but rather

it is the direct result of your saving

faith.

Not that it is an excuse for your

ongoing sin,

but it ought to motivate you

to keep fighting against it.

The reason you are frustrated,

the reason you are conflicted

is because there is a war being waged

within you.

If you're still in slavery to sin

under death's dominion

and its objection to Satan,

you would feel

zero conflict over your sinful actions.

They would not bother you at all. Maybe,

again, you'd be bothered

by the idea of getting caught, but not

by the action itself.

If that is you,

then you should worry.

If your sin doesn't bother you, if you

only worry about being caught,

then you should be exceedingly concerned

for that would be a strong indicative

or strong indication

of an unregenerate

heart.

If that is you,

then you need to understand

why the Lord has brought you here this

morning.

Hasn't brought you here to make you feel

good.

Hasn't brought you here to entertain you.

He hasn't brought you here even to enjoy

fellowship.

He's brought you here to call you right

now

through his word, by his spirit to repent

of your sin and to turn to Christ

for salvation.

It is his precious gift to you.

His word says, seek the Lord while he

may be found. Now is the time of

God's favor. Today

is the day of salvation.

But I'm not good enough, you say. But

you don't have to be.

You don't have to be because Christ is

and he's done it all.

All you have to do is, in your

heart,

believe.

Believe that he is sufficient. Confess

your sins to him. Repent of them. Believe

in Christ's atoning death and resurrection.

Confess him as lord.

Entrust your life to him and you will

be saved.

Not on your own merit, but on the

merit of Jesus Christ.

Know that if you truly give yourself to

Christ, your sins will be instantly forgiven.

And the power of sin's guilt and shame

over you will immediately end,

but not your frustrations.

Because the more you learn about God's character,

the more you learn about his holiness,

the more you learn about your sinfulness,

the more frustrated

you will be

even as you experience enduring joy.

Your love for God will grow

and you will long to serve him all

the more

with your whole heart and mind

and soul and strength,

and you will be frustrated when you falter.

That is what Paul is describing for us

in Romans 7.

This is the frustrated cry of a person

who deeply loves God

and who hates sinning against him.

Look at verses 18 to 21, where Paul

essentially

repeats himself

evidencing the frustration

in his soul.

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.

You see that Paul repeats himself

and he adds that there is no good

in him.

You may ask, how can someone

who has been redeemed by Christ,

someone who has been regenerated by the Holy

Spirit,

Someone like Paul. How can someone like that

say that he does evil and that there

is nothing good in him?

When Paul writes that nothing good dwells in

him, that is in his flesh,

What he means is that in his fleshly

constitution

or in what remains of his fallen nature

that is in his old self apart

from the spirit's intervention,

there is nothing good or virtuous.

The only vestige

of our old

sinful nature

that still remains in us

is characterized

by a voracious

appetite

towards sin.

Some Christians believe that fallen human beings

before

they accept the forgiveness that is freely offered

in Christ,

before they are regenerated,

that they have the ability, however weak,

and the desire, however faint,

to do what is good,

to choose to repent of sin and to

believe in Christ on their own.

So that through their free will, without God's

irresistible

regeneration of their hearts,

they contribute to their salvation

by offering their own ascent

freely.

Paul will explicitly correct

this well intent well intended misunderstanding in Romans

8. But here already, Paul implicitly

offers a correction to for us.

For if nothing good dwells

in the dying,

fleshly nature of the regenerate man,

which continues to grasp desperately

at at any sin, for any sin that

might feed its appetite,

how much less

should we attribute any good to the vigorously

wicked,

proudly rebellious,

fleshly nature of the unregenerate

man?

No. It must be said

that our salvation from first to last is

the work of God's grace

and that we are the recipients of the

Lord's unmerited

favor to the uttermost.

Praise be to God.

In verse 20,

Paul repeats his hapless conclusion

of verse 17. He writes, when I sin,

it is no longer I who do it,

but

sin that dwells

within me.

What we have here is an x-ray

of the human soul.

Paul's fallen,

unregenerate soul was a slave of sin.

Paul was under sin's domain

and control.

Sin was Paul's master.

But then,

on the famous road to Damascus,

Paul met the risen Christ

and Christ redeemed

Paul. He purchased him with his blood and

made Paul his.

In Christ, Paul died to sin

and became a new creation.

However,

though Paul was

instantly justified before God through the atoning work

of Jesus,

Paul's sanctification, that is his growth in holiness,

like that of all believers,

entails the gradual

but sure work of God's spirit throughout his

life

as the old nature is put to death

and the new nature

reigns in its place.

The x-ray of Romans 7 shows us that

the old

sinful nature

is a defeated despot

that remains defiant and deliberate in its death.

Though all though our all nature is mortally

wounded and agonizing,

its sinful disposition

remains a tenacious

and terrible

tyrant

to the very end.

So again,

I say to you that Romans 7 ought

to encourage you this morning

because its x-ray correctly diagnosis

the source of your inner conflict.

There is a tenacious tyrant

trying to keep its old throne in your

soul.

And because old habits die hard,

your thoughts and actions still operate under the

old regime

and its orders

from time

to time.

But be encouraged.

Your soul struggle is a sure sign that

the tyrant's rule is coming to an end.

This brings us to our much shorter second

heading

this morning, the righteous rebellion

of the spirit. Look at verses 21 to

23.

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 my

members 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.

Paul writes that evil lies

close at hand

and that his members obey a sinful law

or rule

or regime,

waging war against Paul even taking him captive

sometimes.

Unfortunately, this is standard operating procedure in a

fallen world

and we are far too familiar with this

miserable pattern. Aren't we?

But what is truly significant, what is truly

remarkable

is that Paul writes that he wants to

do what is right

and that he delights in the law of

God in his inner being.

This is evidence of the righteous rebellion of

the spirit.

The reason any person

wants to do what is right,

and the reason any person

delights

in the law of God in his inner

being is that such person has been redeemed

and belongs now to another master.

Within that person, the Holy Spirit has initiated

a rebellion of the heart,

turning that person's affections,

that person's desires,

that person's dreams, and that person's hopes on

their head.

The righteous rebellion of the spirit has taken

root and new orders from a new king

with a new mission have been issued.

It may take some time for all the

soldiers to receive the new orders

and it may take longer still for all

the soldiers to be retrained,

but the plans are already in motion.

The tide of the war has turned

and victory is inevitable.

Love for God's law is it and a

sincere hatred of sin are sure

signs

that the righteous rebellion of the spirit

is already flying its banner in a person's

heart.

This brings us to our last heading this

morning, our sure salvation in Christ.

Look at verses 24 and 25.

Wretched man that I am,

who will deliver me from this body of

death?

Thanks be to God

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then I myself serve the law of

God with my mind,

but with my flesh

I serve

the law of sin.

Paul concludes chapter 7

of this letter

by recognizing that 2 different laws are waging

war within his being,

the law of God

and the law of sin.

Paul's mind which has been renewed by the

spirit represents his new

redeemed nature.

Paul's flesh

on the other hand represents his old nature

which slowly

but surely

is dying.

For the believer, therefore, the struggle is real.

The war within is between the old sinful

nature

and the new redeemed nature.

And every time you sin,

you will feel the frustration.

You will feel like a wretched human being,

but don't give up.

Don't desist in your pursuit of godliness.

The struggle itself

is a sign of the victory that Christ

has already secured

and of the change that is already taking

root in your heart.

So when you feel for the frustration of

sin overcome

overcome you.

Overcome it

by imitating Paul.

First he cries, Wretched man that I am.

Who will deliver me from this body of

death?

But then he cries, Thanks be to God

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

If you're going to successfully wage war against

sin,

you must own

it and disown it.

In other words, like Paul, you must first

own your sin.

Don't make excuses for it. Confess it.

The Apostle

John writes in 1st John 19, if we

confess our sins,

He is faithful and just

to forgive us our sins and to cleanse

us from all unrighteousness.

Paul cries out, Wretched man that I am.

Who will deliver

me? Repenting and grieving over sin is a

necessary step in the road to victory over

it.

You don't defeat the tyrant in your soul

because you are mightier than it. You defeat

it because you have a champion who is.

That's why you not only have to own

your sin, you also have to disown it.

Identify it but don't be identified by it.

You belong to Christ now.

Take your sin to Him

and let Him deal with it.

Pray that He will strengthen you when you

are tempted.

Pray that He will sustain you when you

are weak.

Pray that He will lift you up when

you fall down.

Pray that He will become more lovely to

you, that His word will become more precious

to you,

that His will will become will become more

important to you than anything else.

And then, set out to do it,

to live according to your new orders.

Develop the spiritual discipline

of weekly corporate worship and of daily household

worship.

Develop the spiritual discipline

of bible study with God's people

and of daily

personal devotions.

Develop the spiritual discipline of weekly corporate prayer

and of daily prayer when you wake up

and when you go to bed

before meals,

before school,

with your family,

and on your own.

Develop

the spiritual discipline

of communing with God through the sacrament

and a fellowship with believers on the Lord's

Day

and throughout the week.

The point is that you don't want to

give quarter.

Give no quarter.

Give no quarter to that tyrant who once

ruled in your heart.

He's fighting,

but he's on the run.

He still wins some battles,

but he's lost the war.

That's why Paul's second cry is, Thanks be

to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Because Christ is the sure deliverer of everyone

who calls upon his name.

On September 2, 1945, Japan signed its official

surrender

bringing the 2nd World War to an end.

However, one of Japan's soldiers named Hiro Onoda

kept fighting for another 29 years.

Onoda had been hiding in the jungle of

1 of the Philippines Islands

when the war ended

and he never received orders to stop fighting.

So he kept fighting.

He continued to fight launching guerrilla style warfare

on the population of that island

for almost 3 decades.

When a Japanese adventurer traveling on that island

encountered Onoda

in 1974,

he informed him that the war had long

been over.

Onoda told him that he would not give

up the fight

until he received orders from his commanding officer.

He finally gave up his arms in March

of 1974,

when his wartime commander traveled to the island

and ordered him to lay down his weapons.

Dear Christian, there's a war being waged within

you.

But it has actually been over for a

very long time.

Your old nature is still following orders from

an old commanding officer

that has already been defeated.

The righteous rebellion of the spirit is already

flying its flag.

And the king is marching with his army

to take sole possession of his throne in

your heart.

So wage war against wickedness

and keep fighting the good fight. Let's pray.