Death by Law

As we engage this text this morning, I'll be titling our remarks from Romans chapter 7, Death by Law.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

Death by Law.

It's a very uplifting and exciting passage of Scripture.

The years 1920 to 1933 were what we know as the era of prohibition in the United States.

Prohibition was an act that was passed in Congress and then made into legislation in 1920.

And it began with social progressives and businessmen who were tired of drunkenness on the job and religious temperance activists that envisioned the ushering in of a more moral society, social reform.

And so literally just over 100 years ago in 1920, the act of prohibition was passed.

Which, if you think about that, how monumental that would be to outlaw the production and distribution and sale of alcohol.

But while cultural reformers were rejoicing and exciting at this massive change, gangsters such as Al Capone and the five Mafia families in New York City, for just a few examples, began to take quick opportunity to profit from the outlaw of the mass production and distribution and sale of illegal alcohol.

And so great was the rise of organized crime under prohibition that it literally, in short order, turned the major cities in America into effective war zones as they proliferated all manner of vices such as bribery and corruption of law enforcement officials, uh striking rises in assault, homicide, prostitution, drug trafficking, black mail, money laundering, and tax evasion.

And so just after 13 years of this, people wised up and JFR or JDR rather.

FDR ran on the platform that he was going to reverse this and get America back on track to where it should be.

And so in 1933, it was repealed.

This is sort of a black mark on the history of America.

And while it's not a perfect example, it does serve as sort of an example, an analogy of the argument the Apostle Paul is actually going to make in Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 7, verses 7 through 25 find the Apostle Paul making the case that when God gave the moral law to Israel, the Torah as we know it, under the ministry of Moses so long before, that law actually had a sin-stimulating, sin-enfranchising, sin-empowering effect on the flesh when brought to bear upon depraved human hearts void of the Spirit of God.

Romans 7:7–25

This is a major thesis.

It's completely counterintuitive to what the Jewish mindset would be and actually what our mindset might be even this morning.

God's law had a sin-stimulating effect on the flesh of those who are depraved and void of God's spirit.

To understand Paul's argument, which I think is crucial to understanding this text, which is crucial to then applying it to our lives today, we need to back up for just a little bit and look at Romans chapter 5 and chapter 6 by way of summary.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 5, we find the Apostle Paul presenting Jesus Christ as the righteous one who would represent us before God, God's people.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Just as Adam had represented us before God and dashed all of humanity into sin and condemnation under God's justice in Jesus Christ, our righteous representative, we are lifted out of that, and before God we are counted righteous.

We who've broken the law can now be loved and accepted by God through Jesus' sacrifice.

That's chapter five.

Chapter six, the Apostle Paul responds to a way that we can sinfully respond to this free grace in Christ.

Some would say, well, if Jesus kept the law perfectly, if Jesus did his part, then what does it really matter if we try to obey the commands of Christ, if we try to keep the Ten Commandments, for example?

What does it matter if I kill, commit adultery, covet, blaspheme?

What does it matter if Jesus did it for me?

And so in Romans chapter 6, the Apostle Paul argues that God's graciousness in Jesus Christ extended far beyond him merely delivering us from the penalty of sin, to him delivering us from the power of sin and sin's dominance over our lives.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

The entirety of Romans chapter 6 is on that very thing.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

So as we come to Romans chapter 7, we should understand that Paul is actually continuing on with this idea of what it means to be under sin's dominion or freed from it.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

There's a phrase in Romans chapter 6 I want to echo in your minds as we enter chapter 7.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

It's a phrase that appears twice in chapter 6, and it's this Sin will no longer have dominion over you because you are not, because you are no longer under the law but under grace.

So just think about that.

It's kind of a mouthful.

Sin will no longer have dominion over you because you are no longer under the law, but under grace.

Before we jump to any conclusions about what he even means about under law versus under grace, just think about his logic here.

He is saying that sin will exercise dominion in the lives of people under the law.

But if you're no longer under the law but under grace, sin cannot therefore exercise dominion over you.

By his logic, sin, if we remain under the law, will remain an enslaving, dominating force in your life.

So whereas in Romans chapter 6, we have this beautiful, vivid, bright flowers of victory and glory in Jesus Christ.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Victory over sin, Romans chapter 7 is sort of like the photo-negative of that.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

What if you aren't released from the bound from the bonds of the law and enter into grace in Christ?

What if you remain under the law?

It's not a pretty picture.

And in fact, the Apostle Paul doesn't want it to be a pretty picture because he's writing to people, trying to convince them that Jesus is enough, but they aren't to continue in this way of living under the law.

He already talked in Romans chapter 4, saying that Abraham was saved before circumcision, even though circumcision was part of a mandate of the Mosaic law.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

He's trying to convince them that they no longer have to abide by dietary rules that were causing division in the church in Rome, we'll read later in chapter 14.

Or abide by the festivals that were required of all Jews under the law.

So it's a very practical reason why Paul would want the Christians to see themselves as no longer under the law.

So as we now enter into our text, there are two verses that immediately precede our text of 7 through 25.

And those are verses 5 and 6.

Justin preached from those a couple weeks ago.

I want to read those again together with us to highlight what the Apostle Paul is going to then work out in our text.

So read with me in Romans chapter 7, verses 5 and 6.

Romans 7:5

Paul says, 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.

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive.

That's a very key word he's going to capitalize on later.

And when he says having died to that which held us captive, he's talking about the law.

If you read the first four verses of this chapter, so that we now serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Notice how Paul speaks in verse, in the first part of verse 6 or verse 8, where he says, first part of verse 6, he says, but now.

Here we have two eras of salvation history.

We have the under law and we have the under grace.

What things were like in verse 5 under the law is contrasted to what they're like now under grace.

Those who have died to the law, those that had been held captive, but are now free to serve in the newness of the Spirit and not of the old way of the written code.

Two eras of salvation history.

I'm going to spare you a couple hours of lectures and just tell you that he's talking about what's called the old covenant and the new covenant.

The old covenant we also could call the Mosaic covenant because it was the covenant God made with Israel through the ministry of Moses.

And we don't have to be left guessing that he's talking about in covenant language about the old and new covenants, under law, under grace, under old covenant, under new covenant, because he tells us at the end of verse 6.

We now serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

This is classic new covenant, old covenant language that's brought up by the prophets, like Jeremiah chapter 31, that says, Israel have broken the old covenant, they're under God's condemnation, but a new covenant will be forged by God one day through Messiah, and the law will not be engraved in stone as it was in the old covenant through Moses.

Jeremiah 31 · chapter mention

Remember Charleston Hessen up in Mount Sinai?

Most of the young people here are like Charleston, who?

Yeah, he played Moses in a movie.

So God through Charleston Heston gave Israel the old, the old covenant law, and he engraved it in stones, tables of stone.

But in the new covenant God will forge, it will not be written on stone.

It'll by the Spirit of God be engraven in human hearts so that we can obey God with the new power, the power of the Spirit, from the heart, and not with mere external written code.

So clearly he's talking about two eras of salvation history.

All the time up until Jesus, and then now, since Jesus is here on.

This is very important to know, and things will hopefully become clearer as we enter our text.

Now, all of this may sound well and good to you and me as we live on a different continent than Jews and Jewish Christians, as we live in a different era, 2,000 years hence, since the writing of this text.

But if you were a Jew when Paul wrote this and you read it, or if you were a Jewish Christian that had been that were a Christian but had been raised in a Jewish family, the hair would begin to stand up on the back of your neck about right now.

Because you know what it means for people to blaspheme God's law.

And that's exactly what it sounds like Paul is doing.

It was hard enough to hear in Romans chapter 4 that Abraham was saved prior to circumcision.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

He kind of dissed circumcision, which was a law for the Jews.

It was hard enough in the opening verses of chapter 7 for him to liken God's law to a toxic marriage partner, that the only way to escape was to die.

I mean, some of you know what that's like.

But in a marriage with a toxic, I mean, that's pretty insulting, right, to God's law to say that you have to die to it to get away from it.

That's what he said about God's law in the first four verses.

But now he's saying in verse five that sinful passions are actually aroused by the law as opposed to curbed.

I mean, if this isn't blasphemy, what is?

Or at least that's how it sounded to Jewish ears.

For this reason, we're gonna find in our text that the Apostle Paul, in verses 7 through 25, is gonna be doing a couple things.

Number one, he's gonna be defending himself from the charge that he is blaspheming God's law by showing over and over again that the law is actually good.

And in his gospel, in his theology, he's not dissing the law.

He's actually gonna show that the law is good.

And yet at the same time, he's gonna show that those under the law remain enslaved to sin because the law is good, but it cannot save.

And this is our main idea in the passage.

The main idea is that God's law is good, but it cannot save.

That is, it cannot deliver a person who is under that old way of relating to God through the law from the dominion of sin over their lives.

We see this, I think, very clear in verses seven and verse thirteen, because this text in verses seven through twelve is the first sort of section, and then in verses thirteen through twenty five is the second section.

So we're gonna look at these two sort of thesis verses to give us an overall lay of the land.

Read with me in verse seven and verse thirteen.

What then shall we say?

That the law is sin?

By no means.

This is one of the strongest ways you can possibly deny something.

In some translations read, God forbid.

Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet.

But here's the bad news.

But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

For apart from the law, sin lies dead.

This is before we move on to verse 13.

Notice what he's saying here.

He's saying the law's good.

In fact, the law is contrasted when it when it when we're weighed in the balance of the law, it's contrasted with our sin.

So the law is clearly good, but the law has a sin-stimulating effect.

Sin comes alive when it's weighed in the balance of the law.

Verse 13 says a similar thing.

Did that which is good, namely the law, then bring death to me?

By no means.

It was sin producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

You may wonder if if sin stimulates the pat if the law stimulates the sinful passions of man, then why would God give the law in the first place?

Well, he tells us right here.

It's so that sin would become exceeding sinful.

The whole experiment with Israel was just setting the stage for Messiah.

We would go along in sort of blissful ignorance, we'd be completely destroyed by sin, and wouldn't even really realize it if the law had not come and shown just how sinful we were, setting the stage for Jesus, our perfect law keeper.

So the law is good, he says, but it cannot save.

In fact, far from it, it actually works against us, and sin through the law destroys us.

Paul wants us to get two things straight in this entire text.

First, that God's law cannot break the power of sin, and second, it's not the law's fault.

He's not imputing the righteousness of God's law.

The law is good, it's perfect.

The law, what it does is it reveals the character of God.

It reveals God's God's holy uh his holy will for mankind.

But due to sin and human depravity, it empowers the enslaving forces of sin.

God's law is good, but it cannot save.

A summary of verses 7 through 12 would go like this: the law exposes and excites sin.

There's a twofold role of the law.

It exposes sin and it also excites sin.

When I was about 12 years old, um there was nothing I enjoyed really more than exploring the woods around our house.

We lived um, we uh we lived in the midst of thousands of acres of woods and in farm country, and uh the farmers around us that own the land and own the land that we lived on gave me permission to hunt deer and squirrels and roam around and do things.

And they didn't give me permission to chop down trees and make teepees, but I did that too.

But what would happen is I would I would literally go out with my BB gun and then eventually turn into a 410 shotgun, then eventually a 22 rifle, and I would go explore for hours, and there was nothing I enjoyed more.

And I would cross creeks and fence lines, and on these fence lines and creeks sometimes, if you went far enough, would be no trespassing signs.

And it would be very evident at that point that the farmer that I had gotten permission from didn't own that property.

But you know what I found?

Some of the most enjoyable times I ever had was when I crossed that creek and went on the forbidden property.

When I trespassed, when I transgressed where I didn't belong.

I remember how fun it was to just you kind of had this adrenaline rush sneaking around.

You see, you just imagine that someone was gonna be, you know, stepping out from behind a tree and like saying, Ha, I got you.

And so you were kind of excited the whole time.

You'd you'd find deer stands and food plots and old farm equipment and campsites, and there were a few times where I heard the sound of a truck or a four-wheeler on the trail and I hit the ground or I ran back.

Very exciting times for a little 12-year-old.

It was kind of like the whole phenomenon of a sign that says wet paint, don't touch.

You know, if you just want to see see human rebellion in action, just put up a random sign on the wall that says wet paint, don't touch, and put a camera there.

People are gonna walk by and they're gonna look around, they're gonna like touch it just to, you know, that's what happens.

Or wet cement, they're gonna have to, you know, put their finger in it or something.

What's happening here is what Paul is really talking about here.

That the presence of the law doesn't diminish the desire to sin.

And even if someone who's kind of a scaredy cat is afraid to go across the creek and and trespass as a 12-year-old, in their heart, they kind of want to.

That sign that says keep out makes you want to go over that hill and see what's on the other side all the more.

And I think that's what Paul's point here is in verses 7 through 12.

He tells of a time, it seems, in his life, when he had lived in relative ignorance.

He had explored and roamed the woods of human behavior, and there were no trespassing signs in sight.

But eventually, as he came of age, likely, and came to an awareness of the Torah that his parents would teach him as a young child, and as he began to train under Gamaliel, he found that the more he knew the law as a student under the greatest, um, the greatest rabbi in Jewish history, Gamaliel, the more he knew the law, the more sin he saw in his life, and the more difficult it became to control his sinful passions.

So sin obviously exposes sin, but Paul found that it further excited sin.

For example, in verses 10 and 11, he said, the very commandment that promised life, it proved to be death to me.

The promise in keeping the law, God says, Hey, keep the law and you'll live.

The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, like those slick-haired mobsters back in the 1920s, it deceived me and through it killed me.

And of course, in verse 5, as we wrote a moment read a moment ago, our sinful passions are aroused by the law and they produce in us death.

Now it seems kind of backwards, doesn't it?

I mean, it seems like the more rules you have, then the more righteous you're gonna be, right?

That's sort of the way we intuitively think about rules.

And I think the answer is yes, that's true, if it weren't for a sin nature, if it weren't for human depravity, if it weren't for that innate rebellion within us with a in our fallen nature that was handed down from Adam, then rules probably would help us stay out of, it would quell the desires and passions of the heart.

But Paul says it actually excites rebellion in his prohibitions.

And if you have any doubt of this, if you're still not convinced, if you're a parent, what do you do when your child won't get in the car and you're saying go get in the car?

If they're young enough, you know, you can trick them, you use reverse psychology, right?

You actually get him to do what you want him to do by telling them not to do it, right?

Our parents did that.

My parents didn't do that very much.

My dad had a black belt in a black belt in discipline, and he would take it off occasionally.

Reverse psychology.

It preys on the rebellion in a little kid's heart, right?

Don't don't you get in that car.

Nope, don't you do it.

Don't you put your seatbelt on, don't you stop screaming, and of course, the kid, if they're young enough and foolish enough, they they will do the opposite, not realizing that you are preying on their rebellion.

Verse 12, Paul concludes this section and says, This so the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

So there's his point.

That's the big idea, right?

That that God's law is holy.

I'm not imputing God's law, but the law has an effect on the depraved human heart that actually leaves it worse off than it was before.

In verses 13 through 24, our second section, we read, we might summarize as sin enslaves the mind under the law.

That's a pretty good summary of what he's going to describe in these verses.

Sin enslaves the mind under the law.

And remember, if you still have that phrase echoing in your mind from Romans chapter 6 that I mentioned earlier, sin will not have dominion over you because you're no longer under the law but under grace.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Well, we're obviously talking about being under the law here.

And we're going to find that true to form, sin enslaves the mind under the law.

In verses 13 to 24, Paul is going to famously narrate the scruples of a very conflicted person.

A person who's been brought to the brink of despair because of the evident stranglehold that sin has on their lives.

Pastor Justin read our text for us a little bit ago, and wasn't it?

It's almost a tongue twister.

If you think about, you know, the things I want to do, I can't do, the things I don't want to do, end up doing.

And you have this internal conflict over and over again.

He says in verse 15, as a good representative verse to describe this, for I do not understand my own actions.

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.

It's very important, I think, to ask, and I've been asking myself this.

I asked myself this when we were on vacation a month ago, and it kind of came to me walking on the beach.

It was sort of one of those spiritual moments.

And I was meditating on this passage, and I was thinking, why in the world would Paul include this conflicted person in this text about, you know, him as a young man?

Uh, the more he learned the law, the more sin was excited in his life.

Like, what in the world is this whole conflicted person doing here?

And it becomes evident if we look in verse 16 why he tells this conflicted story here, this conflicted person narrative.

Verse 16 says, Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.

What's Paul's big main point in this whole section?

The law is good, but you're enslaved by the law because of sin.

It's not the law's fault.

So this conflicted narrative, the whole point of the argument is that a person who's under the law is gonna find themselves enslaved to sin.

And in so being enslaved to sin, and actually in their minds, they actually want to keep the law.

I mean, there's many people in prison right now that say, you know what, I knew I shouldn't have killed that guy, and uh I knew I shouldn't have done it before I did it, and then after I stabbed him, I now regret it since then.

It's possible in your mind to agree with the goodness of the law, I know I shouldn't cheat on my wife, but then you end up cheating on your wife.

I know I shouldn't lie, and I may even be caught in the lie, but then you end up lying.

The mind can actually agree with the law, and in so agreeing with the lie, it proves the law is good.

But the fact that you don't obey the law proves that sins at fault.

So Paul's big idea is demonstrated by this narrative of the conflicted man.

In verses 21 through 24, Paul then concludes the narrative, and sort of like you do when you tell a story and then give the moral the story, he's gonna tell us the moral of the story.

Verses 21 through 24.

He says, 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, which simply means the immaterial part of his person, his rational faculties.

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 the body of this death?

For some of you, it comes as no surprise that this is one of the most debated texts of scripture in the New Testament for Bible-believing people.

And the crux of the debate, which we simply can't exhaust and explain this morning unless we had a lot more time.

I couldn't exhaust it myself, but but I couldn't even exhaust you unless I had another hour or two.

The crux of the debate is the identity of the person speaking in verses 14 to 24.

Who is this person?

Because it's written in the first person, that is, he says I, I think uh 24 times, 25 times, he says me six times, he says my seven times, and the apostle Paul writes the letter to the Romans, so it's got to be Paul, right?

That's one assumption, we might say, because it's first person.

But then it's also written in the present tense, it sounds like Paul is clearly talking about his life, right?

Paul's talking and he's talking about his current situation as he's writing this letter.

Paul describing his own Christian walk and his own ongoing struggle with sin.

And so we can chalk this up.

Well, we know as Christians, sometimes we do things we shouldn't do.

And so this is clearly what Paul's talking about describing his own Christian walk, his ongoing struggle with sin.

But I'm gonna respectfully disagree with that view this morning, while also admitting that I have ardently held to the three major views of this text at some point in the last month.

So if you disagree with me, I'm very patient with you this morning.

There are good arguments on all sides, but I have I have been, as I've studied this, I've been more and more and more convinced and compelled by this view that I'm going to present this morning of the text.

I do agree that the most natural and obvious way to read the text is that it is Paul talking about himself, since he doesn't signal anywhere that uh he's talking about someone else.

And if you say, well, he's talking about a hypothetical person, um, one commentator said that if he were talking about a hypothetical person, the sheer emotion expressed in this text, the sheer conflict, the psychology involved here, the despair he expresses would be melodramatic.

It would be artificial, incredibly theatrical if Paul were not speaking of his own experience.

And so I would agree that Paul is talking about his own experience, but that brings up the bigger question.

Is Paul describing his present situation at the time of the writing, or is he describing his experience prior to trusting in Jesus Christ, his experience as a Jew living under the law?

I believe in these verses, Paul is describing his pre-conversion life, living under the old covenant of works.

Romans 6, the old the new covenant brings you out of the bondage of sin.

But what do we see in these verses here?

We see a man who's conflicted, a man who's sold under sin, a man who's brought into captivity to the law of sin and death.

As such, he describes this frustration and conflict of an unbelieving, of him as an unbelieving, albeit zealous Jew.

Do you think Paul could say before he um was converted that he delighted in the Torah?

Absolutely, he could.

He gave his entire life to the Torah.

Every day his parents would recite to him the Torah.

He memorized portions of the Torah.

As we read in the New Testament, like all of Paul's letters are just riddled with quotations from the Torah, because he he lived the Torah.

He ate, slept, and drank the Torah.

He delighted in it.

But the fact is he couldn't keep it.

And that Torah was toxic to him because he was still under the old covenant law.

Now, the summary then of this passage would be that sin enslaves the mind under the law.

And Paul is talking about that period in his life when he was enslaved to sin under the law.

Unfortunately, we don't have the time to represent the other views.

It's kind of nice when you don't have to, you know, it's not a real debate, right?

Because they're not here to defend themselves.

But but the fact is, um, if you have any questions or objections, I invite you please to talk to me later.

I don't want the last month of my life to be wasted, all right?

Let's let's go ahead and talk this out very soon before I forget everything I know here.

I want to give you briefly five reasons.

And uh, because we've already said a few things, I'm probably gonna skip two of them, but I'll give you five reasons at least on the screen for why I believe this view is correct.

And then when we apply the text, I think it'll come clear why it matters.

Why this is actually, I think, a glorious interpretation of this passage.

So the first, the first um reason why I do believe this wretched man passage is not describing Paul in his normal Christian life, but his pre-conversion life under the laws, number one, the language of complete defeat and despair in verses 14 to 24.

They do not fit well with Paul's own victorious post-conversion life.

You could say, well, Paul was just being modest.

He was sort of being exaggerating, making it sound worse than it was.

Well, what use would that be?

If he's really trying to prove a point, why would he exaggerate to prove the point?

Why wouldn't he just be honest?

It doesn't seem to fit well with his own life.

For example, in verse 14 of this text, it says, I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

But he says in Romans chapter 8, verses 8 and 9, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Romans 8:8

And then he says, You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

If in fact God's spirit dwells in you at all.

Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

Suggesting that this Paul identifying with his flesh and then being sold into sin, it doesn't sound like the you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

Clearly, his flesh was no longer the status or the identity of him under Christ.

Verse 18, another example of this of our text says, For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is good, but but I do not have the ability to carry it out.

That's a pretty strong phrase, Paul, especially for the man who wrote in Philippians 2 13, it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Hebrews 13, 21, arguably written by Paul.

He prays, Now may God, uh may the God of peace equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight.

If Paul is trying to make a case for his struggle with sin, he overstated it based on everything else he says in his letters.

Verse 23, he says he's made a captive to the law of sin.

Is this really the same Paul who says in 1 Corinthians 6, 12, that all things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything?

Or in chapter 9, verse 21, uh 27 of 1 Corinthians, I discipline my body, he says, and I keep it, present tense, under control, lest after preaching to others I myself will be disqualified.

In Paul's view, the wretched man is disqualified from ministry because he can't stop doing evil and he can't do the good.

What kind of pastor would that be?

Yeah, I meant to do this, but didn't get around to it, sorry.

Yeah, I know I should have stopped uh cheating and uh uh pilfering funds, but you know, the old sin nature.

Paul said, if I do these things, I'm disqualified.

So it seems hardly that he's describing himself.

But then the crux, the crux of the other position is this.

Verse 24 Wretched man that I am, how can you get around?

Paul saying, I am present tense, this wretched man who's conflicted and enslaved.

Well, there's two answers to that.

One is to just quote 1 Corinthians 15, 10, which says this By the grace of God I am what I am.

And his grace towards me was not in vain.

On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though not I, but the grace of God with me.

In 1 Corinthians 15, he's identifying the grace of God with who he is, not his wretched condition, but with him being industrious, him being victorious.

And there's another way to answer this present tense of the passage sort of objection, and that is to mention that in linguistics and rhetoric, there's something called the historical present.

It's also called the narrative present or the dramatic present, and it's used in storytelling.

According to one dictionary, the historical present is the use of the present tense when referring to past events in order to add immediacy to what is being said or written.

You're telling a story from the past, but you're telling in the present tense in order to add immediacy to what is written.

And to illustrate this, I'm going to tell you a story.

So I'm sitting in college algebra, and this huge guy walks in, this other student.

He walks in and he walks straight over to me and he looks at me and he says, You're sitting in my seat.

So I look up at him and I say, This is the same seat I've sat in every day this entire semester.

You're in the wrong classroom, bro.

This is college algebra, not fizz ed.

So the next week I wake up in the hospital and I'm in a body cast.

Okay, end of story.

So that's obviously a fictitious story, right?

I just made that up.

I made it up a week ago.

Um, but the fact is, at no point did you think that I was talking about my present condition right now as I'm talking to you, but I use present tense verbs the whole way through.

I could have told it.

I was sitting in class, and this guy walked in and he said to me, but I told him present tense, you didn't bat an eye.

We do this in storytelling all the time.

I do believe Paul is using the historical present to draw us into the drama and the despair of this pre-Christian life under the law.

The second argument is the description of a believer's freedom from sin's power in chapter six.

It contradicts the idea that the wretched man's a new covenant believer.

The description of a believer's freedom from sin's power in chapter six, as we've talked about, it contradicts the idea that the wretched man is a new covenant believer.

Why?

Well, in Romans chapter six, just to just borrow a couple phrases from there, we read things like this.

6 verse 6, it says, We are no longer enslaved to sin.

6.14.

Sin will no longer have dominion over you.

622.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

That language doesn't fit with that conflicted man in ver in chapter 7, I do believe.

This language of triumph and victory over sin's compulsions sounds incompatible with the conflicted man who is sin dominated, who is sin captivated, who is a wretched man, who is sold under sin.

Argument number three, the descriptions of pre- and post-conversion in chapter seven, five, and six, as we began with, it suggests in those verses leading up to our passage that he's going to be describing the pre-convert.

He says, While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit in a death.

That describes chapter 7, the rest of chapter 7, to a T.

But then the post-conversion life in verse 6 says they're released from the law, having died to what held you captive, so that you now serve in the new way of the spirit and not the old way of the written code.

Reason number four, argument number four.

The predominance of sin, death, and flesh verbiage in the text, with no mention of God's indwelling spirit, suggests that this is Paul the pre-convert.

He mentions sin ten times in those in that little narrative, that present tense narrative, sin ten times, death three times, flesh, members, body, five times, God's spirit, zero times.

Which comes in stark contrast to the next chapter.

If you just go into Romans chapter eight, he mentions spirit, the spirit of God, 14 times as he describes a believer's life in Christ.

Argument number five, and I won't belabor this.

The third use of the law, which is what John Calvin wrote about, that God's law actually, after you're converted, becomes a means to edify and guide believers in godliness.

The third use of the law would be denied if Paul has believers in mind.

His entire argument in Romans chapter 7 is the law is toxic to us.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

Well, if that us is post-conversion, then you don't have a third use of the law.

Get rid of it.

Get as far away from the law as possible.

But we believe in scripture, like Jesus said whenever he gave the Great Commission, he says, go into all nations and make disciples, and then baptize them, and then what?

Teach them to observe everything I've commanded you.

You see, in Christ, under the new covenant, there's still the law, there's still the commands of Christ, and they're meant to guide us into godliness, but they're no longer condemning us, and they're no longer, they're no longer stimulating sin in us because we have the Spirit of God writing these laws on our hearts.

So those are the arguments.

And if you disagree, then do let me know later.

Let's apply this text real quickly.

One way we can apply this text is to realize that this story of Paul prior to Jesus is not just his story, but it's our story as well.

Our story is this we believe religion breaks the power of sin.

It's kind of an intuitive thing, right?

You can go all over the world and you have people that are sacrificing chickens and goats.

You can you can you can hear their prayers, their mantras everywhere.

And this religion is meant to make them a better person.

That's what Paul believed as well prior to his conversion.

He believed that he was above his peers in zeal for the law, and that he was a better person because of it.

Religion, however, cannot break the power of sin.

It's a lie.

And I can't help this morning, and as I've been preparing for this message, I can't help but be mindful that there are likely persons or people here this morning that actually are pre-converts.

Whether you realize it or not, maybe.

That you haven't yet been brought by the Spirit into that new covenant relationship with God through the Spirit, and you're still relating to God by the list of rules, that all they do is excite more sin, all they do is condemn you because you can't keep them perfectly.

And I want to talk to you for just a moment.

I wonder, maybe you've never been brought yet to the point, whether by the scourging of the law or by the sweetness of God's grace, to abandon all hope of salvation apart from Jesus Christ and his indwelling spirit.

If you're a pre-convert, you probably have never come to the point where you abandon all hope of salvation, of effective, real, lasting personal change in your life outside of Jesus.

But I want you to hear the Apostle Paul now.

Hear him when he says that religion, that self-effort, self-help effort, moral reform by which you seek to improve your standing before God and release to break the shackles of sin that hold you so tightly, that these are false hopes that cannot break the power of sin or earn the favor of God.

And in fact, the best you can do, if that's how you're relating to God, the best you can do is to manage your sin, is to try not to let it become public.

Maybe behavior modification, maybe put enough pressures around you, you can sort of squeeze that sin into certain avenues that are more tolerable.

Kind of like rearranging the furniture on the Titanic as it sinks to its icy grave.

If you haven't come yet to the point in your life where you cry out like this wretched man, oh wretched man that I am, oh wretched woman that I am, who can deliver me from the body of this death?

You've never been brought to an end of yourself.

But you will be by God's grace, I pray.

If you've never seen yourself as wretched, then you've never looked deeply enough into the unblinking eyes of God's pure law and seen what the law says about you.

That you are wretched at this very moment.

It's my prayer that God in his great mercy would make this story the story of the infamous slave trader turned pastor.

John Newton, what a wonderful story.

Slave trader, horrific person, turned into the softest pastor that was ever made.

He said these words, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

He got that word from here.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was wasp, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.

I pray that that'll be your experience if you're not yet converted today.

But then quickly, does this text offer any guidance to the believer?

Or is it just about the pre-converts and you're sort of past that can move on?

No, our story, I think, is included in this.

We believers, we live as willing slaves in quiet despair.

We live as willing slaves in quiet despair.

Indeed, as a believer, you may find yourself, as we've been talking about this wretched man, you may be thinking to yourself, man, that actually sounds a lot like me.

Conflicted?

Can't stop doing the things I don't want.

Never seem to do the things I want to do.

And you could, of course, think, well, maybe I'm unconverted, which could be the case.

But there's another option.

You can be a believer and you can have begun well, seeing yourself righteous in God's sight because of Jesus' sacrifice for you, and you as being filled with this spirit and empowered to live a renewed life, and yet you can backslide into forgetting these things, and you begin to relate to God as if you were still under that law, the old covenant, that was based on your performance, that was based on your devotion, and it's void of the Spirit of God.

This is what happened to the Galatians in Galatians 3.

Paul says, Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

Are you so foolish?

Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected, matured, sanctified by the flesh?

That's someone who started well, but has forgotten the gospel and has started relating to God back under the law again, as if they are tied to the law, as if they are relating to God based on their own performance without the Spirit.

And what does he say to them?

He tells them the gospel.

He tells them there's a way out of the cycle of sin, shame, regret, withdrawal, repeat.

Sin, shame, regret, withdrawal, repeat.

There's a way out of this, and it is our gospel conviction.

Our gospel conviction this morning is that there is freedom by the Spirit.

By faith.

Notice two things there, the spirit and faith, because faith in the gospel is how you usher in the liberating power of the Spirit into your life.

It's not coincidental that just after crying out in despair, a wretched man that I am, Paul can't contain himself.

And he sort of interrupts his depressed narrative and he says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, who gives us this victory.

The universal story of defeat, despair, and death that he tells under the law doesn't have to be your story anymore.

And as a believer, it doesn't have to be your story, and it must not be your story.

And so he says to those Galatians who had backslidden into this law mentality in Galatians 5, 16, he says, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

There it appears again in Galatians, this idea of being under the law and being void of the spirit and its power.

Walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

I want to leave you with this.

Some of you this morning need to reframe the narrative of your sin problems.

Me too.

It's a continual work, right?

We need to reframe the narrative of how you think about your pornography or sexual indulgence sins.

How you think about your compulsive shopping or spending or eating disorders that are causing so much havoc in your life.

Your chronic doubt.

Your chronic cynicism.

Reframe how you think about these besetting sins.

Your crippling fear of man, recurring conflict in marriage, your oppressive behavior towards those who are under your authority for some of you.

And for some of you, your spiteful, punishing, passive aggressivity.

Your substance abuse, you name it.

These are works of the flesh in your life, and they're not ultimately a result of nurture or nature, or mama did it to me, or daddy did it to me, or if I had a better job, if I had a better spouse, or if I had better health.

It's none of those things.

Paul says this.

If you're a believer, you're not walking in the spirit.

If you walk in the spirit, you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh.

And yet we find ourselves so often not thinking and talking and living in light of the reality of who we are in Jesus Christ in the new covenant, having been pronounced by your heavenly Father righteous, filled with the Holy Spirit, beloved, victorious over sin in Jesus Christ.

And you know what?

We deny these things.

You say to Tim, you say, Tim, I've tried everything, you don't understand.

I want you to hear yourself right now.

If you say to me right now, Tim, you don't understand, I've tried those things.

You're expressing disbelief in the gospel.

What you are just admitting is that you find it hard to believe to be true what God has said is true about you.

Galatians 3, 5 says this Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Do you need a miracle in your sanctification today?

Do you need a miracle to break what seems like the chains of sin that have you so tightly bound?

If you need a miracle through the Spirit of God, you know how you're gonna get that?

Not by relating to God through the law, but by hearing the gospel with faith, he says.

Walking by faith in the gospel, that is what God says about you, is the key that unlocks the liberating power of the Spirit in your life.

And to doubt that freedom is a reality is to forfeit that freedom in practice.

If you don't believe the gospel, you're not gonna live in the power of the gospel or the spirit.

To doubt freedom in Christ is your reality as a believer is to forfeit that power, that freedom in Christ in practice.

I'm gonna close the next minute with a gospel vision.

All I want out of you and me this morning is this.

That we believe what God says about us.

That you believe the good news of the gospel, that if you're in Christ Jesus, mind-blowingly wonderful, almost difficult to believe things are true about you that God has said are true about you.

The fact is that whatever, to whatever degree you and I are not believing what God says about us in the gospel, to that same degree we are not walking in the power of the Spirit and its fullness in our lives.

Doubt and fear and unbelief are self-fulfilling prophecies.

Jesus said in his own ministry several times, according to your faith, may it be unto you.

And so if your perception is that you're still a slave to sin, you will be.

A willing slave who doesn't know he's been set free.

And so we do what Paul says in Romans chapter 6 and verse 11.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

We must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Consider ourselves dead to sin.

And as you consider yourself dead to sin, you usher in the power of the Holy Spirit.

As you step into, lean into all the things that God says are true of you as a believer in Jesus, the Spirit begins to work through the gospel in sanctification.

And this is not the power of positive thinking, this is the power of gospel thinking.

Let's pray.