A Tale of Two Laws (Romans 7:21-8:4)

And our gospel reading this morning comes from Matthew chapter 11, verses 25 to 30.

Matthew 11:25–30

At that time Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Let us confess our faith in the words of the Apostles' Creed.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

And let us pray.

Grant us, O Lord, we pray, the Spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we who can do no good thing apart from you may be enabled to live according to your will.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, a long, long time ago, when I was a very young and hip theology student, maybe not that long ago, studying at Moody Bible in Chicago, I lucked out, or I should say I was very blessed, to uh have just an absolute wonderful uh internship.

Part of our program, of course, to graduate, we had to we had to do something of a work placement or an internship that had to do with with our major.

And as you can imagine, finding uh real wonderful internships that have to do with theology aren't aren't exactly uh well, they can be challenging to find.

But I was really blessed to make a few connections and be able to work at uh Moody Church, which uh has shares the same founder as as my school, Moody Bible Institute, D.L.

Moody, the evangelist.

Uh I worked in their media department, and what I spent 20 hours of my summer doing each uh each and every week.

Well, as I was saying, not too long ago, I was uh here I was, I was a theology student doing my internship at Moody Church, and my internship involved um answering emails on behalf of the lead pastor, Erwin Lutzer.

See, on the website there was uh an Ask Pastor Lutzer section where people from the public could go on the website and maybe they were had a particular Bible question, theology question, life application question, um, and they would, I mean, they'd be interested in in this really preeminent pastor's thoughts on this on the subject.

So they would write in their question, and it was a really wonderful internship for so many ways, because I spent so much time hitting the books, which is something I really enjoyed doing, and researching questions and topics that I'd that never even occurred to me, and uh and then learning to connect the theology that I was learning with its application, which is something that I got really excited about.

Seeing theology, good theology, make such a difference in in my life and the lives of others.

One of the questions I was surprised by, but I received so frequently, was a question like this.

So someone from the public would write in something like this.

They would write, Dear Pastor Lutzer, and of course they're they're getting me because so many folks are writing into Pastor Lutzer, but I wouldn't pretend to be Pastor Lutzer, by the way.

I'd very much say, Thank you for your submission.

He's not able to respond to all of this correspondence.

But anyway, that's aside the point.

Here's the question I would get.

The question would be this something like, Dear Pastor Lutzer, I've read a lot in the New Testament from Jesus and elsewhere about fasting.

And it's true, the Bible has a lot to say about fasting.

I've read a lot about fasting, and fasting is something that I'd really like to do.

But every time I start fasting, this thought occurs to me that, hey, this is a great way to lose that extra five pounds that I've been meaning to lose.

And then they say, I sort of realize that, oh my goodness, that's that's really selfish and and vain of me to think that's that's kind of sinful.

That's that's not the right motivation to do a fast.

Maybe I shouldn't fast if that's my motivation.

And then they would say, well, so I think that, so I think I won't fast, but then I realize I'm not following Jesus' commandment to fast, and that's a sin.

So they would say, I'm I feel caught between a rock and a hard place.

I want to fast, but I end up fasting for the wrong reasons, or I choose not to fast because it's the wrong reason to do so, and I feel like I'm not following Jesus' command.

And can you can you help me out there?

I mean, maybe we've experienced something like that in our own spiritual life.

I mean, it doesn't have to be fasting, right?

You can fill in the blank.

Maybe it's something like I really want to be generous with my time or with the abundance that God's given me, but when I'm generous, I really want people to notice me.

I really want people to think, wow, he's really going, he or she is, they're really going above and beyond what's required of them.

What a remarkable thing.

Right?

I have to confess, every time I I prepare a sermon, there's part of part of part there's part of me in my brain going, wow, you're gonna prepare an A-plus sermon, just wow, everyone, right?

And then I have to get on my knees at some point during the week and say, God, I feel like I'm more preoccupied with how this is going to be perceived than opening up your word, which is exactly what I want to do.

I mean, maybe we, I trust that in some way or another, we all feel this tension.

The good that we want to do, but we're caught in our mixed motives, aren't we?

Here's what we see in Romans chapter 7, and concluding in Romans chapter 8, Paul says that whenever he wants to do the good, the good that he wants to do, the good that he desires to do, the good that God's commanded him to do, he feels the tension between the good and the evil that lies close at hand.

Romans 7 · chapter mention Romans 8 · chapter mention

Paul uses the particular example of covetousness earlier.

And it's true, whatever sphere of life we experience, whenever we want to do the good, if we're honest with ourselves, our motives are mixed at best.

So here we are, here we are in the book of Romans, this book where Paul is exploring the majesty of the gospel, the gospel which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

We know from the first four chapters that God's the gospel reveals God's righteousness, and it exposes the fact that we are unrighteous and we need to be justified.

And now what we see in chapters five to eight where we've been dropped is that through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, we've been justified.

We've been made right with God, and now we share that very same resurrection newness of life by being joined with Jesus.

And what we saw last week in our study is we saw that baptism is that sacramental sign that joins us to our new life in Him.

We've been brought from death and guilt in Adam into new life.

We have peace with God.

We've been justified through faith, and now we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

That's what Paul writes in Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

And yet, here we are at war with our own inner members.

That's Paul's experience.

Maybe that's our experience too.

There's a battle raging inside of us when we want to do good, we recognize that the presence and power and perniciousness of sin.

First, in in John writes in his first epistle, he says, if we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

The truth is not in us.

We've been brought from death and guilt in Adam into new life in Christ, and yet there's still a battle going on, isn't there?

Yet there's still a draw to sin, yet we're still a bag of mixed motives, aren't we?

And sometimes that can tempt us to despair.

It can tempt me to despair.

Because I feel like, how can I glorify a holy and good God who has given me so much and so abundantly in Christ, and yet here am I, not even able to fast with right motives.

Fill in the blank, right?

So what's the hope for a Christian?

In the midst of this warfare, in the midst of our mixed motives, what's our hope?

Here's the good news that Paul wants us to receive this morning that we are liberated from the law of sin, that is the principle, the rule, the presence of sin.

We are liberated from the sin through the life of the Spirit.

And the reality is, friends, that on this side of eternity, we will continually define our new life in Christ doing battle against our old death in Adam.

And that's not a sign that we're less than Christian.

In fact, that's a sign of true discipleship.

I think.

If we f if we experience that tension, that is that is a testimony to us that we are following in obedience to Christ and recognizing our own powerlessness to carry out the commands that he gives us.

We need grace.

We need to be liberated through the life of the Spirit.

So let's dive into what Paul has for us this morning.

Paul uh Paul builds his argument in the book of Romans like a lair cake, right?

He's got his foundation, and now he's building lair upon layer.

And this particular layer of his argument, I think, starts somewhere around chapter 7, verse 7, where Paul recognizes that God has done this new thing in Christ to bring us from death to life.

And now for his Jewish readers, uh for his his uh Jewish convert readers, he's asking the question, well, what's the purpose of the law?

If God's plan all along is to is to renew humanity in Christ, what was the purpose of giving God's law at all?

And the law that he has in mind here is the commandments we find in the Old Testament.

What's God's purpose at all?

Is the law sin?

Because it seems to inspire sin in Paul's case.

He seems to say that it exposed my covetousness in chapter seven.

But he says this law seemed to incite that very kind of sin that I didn't want to do.

I didn't, he he's let me read this in in um chapter seven, verse eight here.

Sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment, that is God's commandment, his law, sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

So is the law sin?

It's producing these bad things.

Paul says, no, he concludes, verse 11, the law is holy, and its commandments are holy, good, and righteous.

God's commandments are good, and yet it seems to inspire the worst out of us sinners because we are a mixed bag of motives at best.

Our old Adam is warring against our new life in Christ, and here's our old Adam clinging on to the law, and it's inspiring a greater sin than we had started out.

Did that which is good then bring death to me, Paul asks?

By no means.

It was sin producing death in me through that which is good.

So what's the problem?

What's our problem here for Paul?

Our problem is not God's law.

God's law is holy, righteous, and good.

Our problem is that we are powerless sinners.

We cannot in our own power fulfill what the law commands.

The law is good and spiritual, but sin has twisted that good into evil.

Paul writes this, verses 15 and uh he writes, We know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh.

I'm in Adam, is what Paul's saying.

He's not being despairing of flesh, by the way, as though this is the spiritual realm versus our evil fleshly realm.

That's not what Paul's doing.

Paul is saying that we are in Adam, who represents our humanity, our fallen humanity.

I'm in the flesh.

I'm in Adam, sold under sin.

And he goes on to say, I don't understand my actions, and we have his famous wrestling with himself.

I do the things I don't want to do, I do the and I don't do the things that I want to do.

Have you ever felt like that?

Have you ever done something and been like, I can't believe I did that?

I can't believe I said that to my spouse.

I can't believe I had that thought leaving that person's office.

I don't even, I feel like I don't know myself in this moment.

I think Paul knows exactly what that feels like.

He sees the waging war of the new Adam, the life in the in or pardon me, the life in the new Adam who is Christ, against the death of the old Adam in sin.

Now, biblical scholars will debate, if you're familiar with this passage, you know that there's some there's some debate about who exactly Paul is talking about with this eye.

Is Paul talking about an unbeliever, someone who's not regenerate, someone who's not been made new, who's still struggling with sin?

Is he talking about an Old Testament believer who is regenerate but doesn't yet have the full indwelling of the Spirit?

Is he talking about a personified Israel?

Is he talking about an immature Christian?

And there's many valid reasons to think any number of those things.

But here's what I'm going to say.

I think there's good reason for us to believe that Paul is talking about his own personal experience, and Paul is using his own personal experience to invite us to join ours to him.

Because I think if we're honest with ourselves, we recognize that war that's waging in our hearts.

We desire to do the good that God commands us, and yet we find ourselves wrestling with our own fallen sinfulness.

I think there's a few reasons to think that.

Paul is talking in a present tense.

He's switched from a past tense into a present tense.

He's uh concluding with a sort of present tension in chapter 7, verse 25 here.

And he's talking about a future deliverance.

Here we are in the midst of this tension between the good that we want to do and the evil that we uh are drawn to because of our fallen sinfulness.

And we are here waiting for that full future restoration.

So Paul says, verse 21, I find it to be a law, I find it to be a rule, I find it to be a rule of thumb that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

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.

Paul's language provokes that that um that image of Cain.

Do you remember that story of Cain and Abel?

The very first murder in the Bible.

Here's Cain, who, uh or Abel who's who's given a worthy sacrifice to the Lord, and here's Cain, who is intensely jealous of his brother and his brother's sacrifice.

And sin is being born in Cain's heart, isn't it?

Before Cain ever uh raises his hand against his brother evil, there's sin right in his heart, and so God gives Cain this warning.

Evil is crouching at the door, Cain.

Its desire is contrary to you.

Sin wants to grab a hold of you, it wants to ravish you, but you must control it.

Sin is like a wild animal that is hunting after you, Cain.

I mean, this has been the human conflict ever since.

This is the conflict in my heart.

This is the conflict in our hearts.

And Paul understands that no rigorous religion or vigorous law-keeping will uh will prevent us from experiencing that conflict.

There's no amount of sheer willpower or pulling up our bootstraps that gets us out of this inner war.

Wretched man that I am, is how Paul concludes.

Who will deliver me from this body of death?

And that's the end result of this, isn't it?

The end result of sin we've seen is death.

The wages of sin is death.

And so here we find ourselves wrestling with our old Adam nature.

Even in the midst of our new life, it's like there's a dissonance, it's like there's a tension, it's like there's an ongoing struggle, a battle, it's as though we're, it's as though we're prisoners of war struggling with the reality of our liberation in Christ.

The reality is it's it's like we've been split in two.

I think of this classic episode of Star Trek.

Maybe you can remember this with me.

Here's Captain Kirk who's been beamed up from whatever planet he's visiting this week.

And as as is known to happen, the transporter has some has some trouble, right?

The transporter is that teleporter they use to get from one place to another.

It has some trouble, and now not one Captain Kirk materializes, but two Captain Kirks materialize.

One has preserved Kirk's good nature, his virtue, his love, his compassion.

The other is is his more visceral nature, his ambition, his his um uh his his drive, his his his kind of carnal instincts here.

And now these two Kirks spend the rest of the episode battling against one another and all culminates into this fist fight that the two do in the uh in the engine room of the Enterprise.

It's almost that image that comes to mind.

It's as though we're we're at war within ourselves.

Our very persons are in conflict.

Good and evil, the the good that desires to do what God wants us, and the evil that aspires to sin.

I want to do right, Paul says in verse 21.

I delight in the law of God and my inner being.

I myself serve the law of God with my mind, verse 25.

And the end result of that is life and peace in chapter 8, verse 4.

And yet, when I want to do good, evil lies close at hand.

I see in my members another law waging war, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, wretched man that I am.

With my flesh I serve the law of sin, verse 25.

Now here's the difference between our situation with Captain Kirk and right here in uh in Paul's church.

There's probably a few differences, let's be honest.

But here's just one of them.

At the end of this episode, Kirk realizes that it's for the best, that he needs to be reintegrated.

So back in the transporter he goes, and his his drive is reunited with his compassion here.

But Paul doesn't see that as the resolution to our tension.

He sees a death in old Adam, our old sinful visceral nature.

That needs to be put to death so that we can have new life, new kingdom life through Christ our Lord.

And so in chapter eight, here we are in the midst of our warfare, here we are in the midst of this tension, Paul recognized a very essential truth of who we are in Christ.

And friends, this is the hope, the confidence that we can grab on to.

God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.

This is chapter eight, verse three.

By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

See, this brings us right back to the problem that Paul's laid out for us in the first few chapters of Romans.

The problem is not the law.

The law is wholly righteous and good.

The problem is that we are not righteous.

The problem is that we have not met the righteous requirement of God's good and holy law.

I cannot perform righteousness.

I'm powerless to do it.

The law is weakened by the flesh.

Despite my best trying and my desire for sin wages war against my desire to do what is right.

I want to fast, but I think about losing some weight.

I want to be generous, but suddenly I want recognition.

My inner members are waging war against the good that I want to do.

So what's my hope in the midst of all this?

Despite my best efforts, what do I need?

I don't need a moral teacher.

I don't need a guru who's going to step in and give me a few tips for life to try harder.

I need what Paul describes: I need a deliverer.

By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, God condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.

This is that great exchange that we explored just a few short weeks ago.

This is the great exchange that God would take on our sinful flesh in Christ and put it to death, so that we who by faith are joined to Christ can have newness of life and the fulfillment of His Holy Spirit.

This is the great and sweet exchange that takes place when we put our trust, when we put our faith in Jesus.

He died our death in the flesh, so that we could be raised by new life through the indwelling of his Holy Spirit.

We are liberated from the law and the principality of sin to experience new and fullness of life through the liberating Holy Spirit.

Now we can experience the glory of his resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit, and the To set one's mind on the Spirit is, Paul says in chapter 8, verse 4, life and peace.

Isn't that what we desire, friends?

In the midst of tension, in the midst of this ongoing warfare, we desire peace.

Not just absence of conflict, not just relaxation.

We desire restoration of what has been put out of order.

We desire renewal.

We desire restoration.

We desire a fulfillment to our eternal longing for the kingdom.

And that's what we're experiencing in the Holy Spirit, a renewal of our sinful human flesh.

So now, friends, in Christ, placing our faith in the one who's gone before us, this new Adam who's won for us new life, we can rest assured that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Yes, I am a mixed bag of motives, but I've been made new in Christ.

I have only to look at my deliverer to rest assured that I am forgiven, that I am at peace with God through Jesus Christ my Savior.

When we feel that tension, when we feel accused of our sinfulness, I suspect it's because we've started to look inward for our assurance.

We've started to look to our own performance, and Paul is telling us that's not going to cut it.

Look to your deliverer.

Look to the one who's on the cross, look to the one who died your death, and you will rest assured that there is no condemnation now in Christ our Lord, because he has condemned your sin in his flesh.

He took it upon himself.

This is the invitation that Christ gives us to find rest for your souls in Matthew chapter 11, to find true peace, to find true restoration in him and in him alone.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

And now we live a life in accordance with his Holy Spirit.

We've been liberated from the law of sin.

Sin no longer ha sin no longer calls the shots, it no longer has the power of our life.

Yes, we we wage war with it because we wait for the fullness of our deliverance in the future.

But sin has no claim over our lives.

We are made new in Christ.

So here, friends, we now live a life of obedience, of yielding to the Holy Spirit, taking on Christ's yoke, which is easy, and his burden which is light, knowing that though the law is powerless to supply the righteousness it demands, the Spirit fills us with all grace and with all truth to perform that righteousness which he is shaping us into, that righteousness which we share.

So that, like Paul writes early in chapter seven, we may bear fruit for God, we who serve the new way of the Spirit.

A number of weeks ago we we explored the parable of the vine.

And what we said, what we discussed together is that if we want to bear fruit for the Lord, it's not about trying harder to be nicer.

It's about apprenticing ourselves with Christ, drawing nearer to the life of the vine, so that his life can flow through us and we will bear that very same fruit of the Spirit which we desire.

So, friends, if we desire to bear fruit, if we desire to live a life of liberation in the Spirit, we have only to draw near to our Lord Jesus Christ, to draw near in his word, to draw near in sacrament, to draw near in prayer and in obedience in the quietness of our hearts and the busyness of our days, to invite the Holy Spirit's presence, the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, to come and to fill us and to liberate us from that power of sin.

We are not claimed by sin, we are claimed by our Lord Jesus Christ.

And now as we yield ourselves to Him, we discover more and more freedom and liberation as we walk the way of the Spirit.

So is that tension between our current wrestling with sin and our new life in the Spirit, does that witness to us that we are we're being bad Christians, we're being hypocritical?

I think it means the opposite.

Those of us who wrestle with sin are those of us who have been filled by the Spirit and claimed by Christ.

We desire to do what is good, and we yield ourselves more and more to his faithful leading and lordship.

So we are liberated from the law of sin by the life of the Holy Spirit.

Though we desire to do good, we might desire to fast, we might desire to be generous, and we find we're a mixed bag of motives.

That's okay.

We can lay that at the foot of the cross, recognizing that Christ has taken that sinfulness on Himself and broken its power for us.

And we can recognize two things.

Number one, just like Paul recognizes in chapter 7, verse 25, that we serve the law of God with our minds, but with the flesh we serve the law of sin.

We will constantly be engaged in this tension and warfare between our new life in Christ and the sinfulness of the flesh on this side of eternity, so we look forward to that day when we will experience a full deliverance.

And as we yield ourselves to this new life in the Spirit, we can rest assured that we are being drawn near by grace and filled with his liberation.

And the second thing we can do is we can look to our deliverer.

We can find assurance in our Lord Jesus Christ, who's gone before us, looking outside of ourselves and to the cross.

He has taken that condemnation in his own flesh so that we don't have to bear it.

Peace has been declared.

We're at peace if we are justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The victory over sin and its power is one.

And here we are yielding ourselves more and more to the liberating life of the Spirit, knowing that the way of the Spirit is the way of life and peace.

So, Lord, would you give us more of that life and peace today?

We who wrestle with our sin, we who wrestle with our mixed motivations, we who wait for that fullness of our deliverance, which will happen at the coming of your kingdom.

Would you, Lord, bear with us, just as you bore with us in our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, you bore our sin and death, so that, Lord, we can experience the liberation of the outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

Fill us once again, renew us always.

Teach us to walk in the way of Christ, the way of obedience, which is the way of the cross, and which is the way to life and glory.

And all this we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.