Often following Christ is a real struggle. Have you ever thought or said things like: “I am just not good enough. I just cannot seem to do what I want to do. I have made resolutions, I have turned over new leaves until there are no more leaves to turn over. I want to do what is right, but as hard as I try to do it, I find that I cannot do it. What is wrong with me? I am supposed to be a Christian. I see what the Bible says, but I cannot seem to live up to it. There must be other people who are living up to what God says. Why can't I?” Have you ever felt like that? Maybe you came to this meeting today feeling like that.
That is the human condition, even for believers. As a matter of fact, it is especially for believers. Some people labor under the misimpression that whenever people come to know Christ their problems are over. They are soon rudely awakened by the reality that their problems, far from being over, really just begin. Some have struggled to the point of absolute despair and discouragement.
Many people seem like they are on the mountain top, but things are not always as they seem. We put on a facade at times, a front, especially when we are around other Christians. When you come to church, you look as good as you can. You are on your best behavior, you try to keep your kids on their best behavior, because you want to seem the best that you can be. But, often that is not the real picture.
This is indicative of the fact that we all struggle with sin. Especially now that we have come to Christ do we struggle, because we understand the commandments of God and the requirements of His Word. Placing our own lives beside His word and making the comparison of what we are as opposed to what we ought to be, we see the disparity of the two and want to do something about it. So, we roll our sleeves up and try to change. And we find out that as hard as we work, we just simply cannot do it.
This is what Romans 7 is all about. It uncovers the true human condition, but it is not just a diagnosis of that condition. It is a prescription as well, a remedy for that situation. Verse 7 says,
What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ``Do not covet.”
By Paul's time, the rabbis had defined precisely 613 commandments from the Old Testament Law. The people were required to live by those commandments. They were righteous commandments. They were designed to stimulate man to righteousness and to show man what righteousness was. So the commandment is good, holy and righteous. When the commandment says, “You shall not covet,” it is pointing us to a lifestyle of selflessness. But in pointing us to this lifestyle of selflessness, it reveals to us what is unrighteousness as well, namely selfishness, or covetousness. In pointing out the right, it reveals to us what is wrong. You see, the Law defines sin. Before we understood the commandment, we did not know our own malady, our own plight, our own sinfulness. Paul says, here, that he understood from the good commandment of God what sin really was in his own life. Paul made a startling discovery about himself as he came to understand the righteous requirements of the Law. We make that same discovery. Through the law we discover our sinful condition.
But the Law not only defines sin, it also provokes it. Look at verse 8,
But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead.
When the Law said, “Do not do it,” his own sinful desires said, “Do it!” And he obeyed his sinful desire, and as a result, the commandment which said “Thou shalt not covet” produced in him all kinds of coveting.
Was it the commandment that produced it in him, or was it his own sinful nature? It was his own sinful nature that produced it. It was his own evil tendency to do wrong that drove him to disobey the Law. There is something about knowing the Law which produces in us a rebellious desire to disobey it. Tell a child, “You can do anything you want, but do not look in this drawer. Look in any other drawer in the house, but there is this one special drawer. Do not EVER look in that drawer.” Well, you can be sure, more sure than you were of the sun coming up this morning, that whenever your back is turned that drawer is going to be the object of interest.
What is it that produces that kind of sinful desire in us? It is the fallen nature we inherited from Adam. What Paul is saying here is simply that the Law reveals the blackness of that nature and the depth of human sin. He says, in verses 9 and 10,
Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.
The Law also reveals that we are dead on the inside. When Paul understood the Law, he discovered that truth about himself. It is an important discovery to make. Have you made that discovery about your own life? If you are here today and you have never really committed your life to Jesus Christ, do you understand the depth of human sin and death you possess? You must understand your plight before you can understand what to do about it.
Paul also made another discovery, a discovery of the deception of sin. Look at verses 11-13,
For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
Do not underestimate the power of sin in your own life. It is so easy to not understand what was happening to you. Never play with sin. There is an old saying, “If you hang around the creek bank long enough, you are going to slide in.” Yet, we walk right up to the edge of temptation and linger there, as if somehow it will not deceive us this time. We think we know what we are doing. We can handle it. Then, what happens? We slide in, and sin entraps us and it deceives us.
Verse 14 gives us another spiritual principle,
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
First, he said, “Do not underestimate the power of sin.” Now he says, “Do not overestimate your own goodness.” If you will not underestimate the power of sin, and if you will not overestimate your own goodness and strength to resist it, you will find yourself in safe territory.
Now, we come to the point of our sermon today, the dilemma we all face as Christians. Verses 15 and 16 say,
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
The Law is good; we have already established that. You recognize that is what you ought to be doing. But, as much as you try to keep it, you find that you cannot keep it. This is our dilemma. What is going on? A war, that's what! There is a war raging in you, a spiritual battle going on. He says, “I can't do what I would like to do. What in the world is happening to my life?” Verses 17-19 tell us,
As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
He is saying simply that we are struggling with our old sin nature, as Christians. We are struggling with all of those years we have been thoroughly committed to the practice of sin. And it is a very real struggle, a struggle that all Christians face. Here we see Paul struggling as a believer in Christ. And we struggle as Christians, too.
If you have experienced the effects of the aging process on the human body, you will better understand this passage of Scripture. I do not know what sports you like, perhaps golf or racquetball or tennis. In any case, if you try to play as you grow older, often the things your brain commands your body to do are not always the things you do. As you take a swing at the ball as it rebounds off the wall, you find that it is not in the same place your racquet is. Or, you take a swing at the little ball on the ground, knowing the exact spot you want it to be placed down the fairway and find out that your intention has nothing to do with the flight of the ball.
If you understand this, you will understand what Paul is talking about here. He is saying, “I went into this thing with a desire to obey God's Law. I even attempted to obey it. I gave it my best shot. And it did not come out that way. I tried to do a good thing and I ended up sinning. How is that?” There is a struggle with our old sin nature. Look at verse 20,
Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Does this sound confusing? He is doing it, yet he is not doing it. Is this a schizophrenic individual talking here? How can I be doing it and not doing it? It is me but it is not me. What he is saying here is that the person sinning is not the real you any longer. The real you, the inner you, the one who has been set free by the death of Christ is liberated from sin. What is happening is that the real you is desiring to obey God. That is why we have this struggle to begin with.
Before we met Christ, we had no desire to do anything except our own thing — righteous or unrighteous, it did not really matter. We did what we wanted to do. We had no desire to keep the commandments of God unless they fit into our own scheme of things. And so, we were not burdened by a guilty conscience. Our consciences had been seared with a hot iron, as the Scripture says. We did not care. But when we came to know Christ, we found that there was a new standard and we began to care. We had become born again. We were made alive for the first time, that is what it means to be born again. We were made alive to the things of God, and for the first time in our existence, we really cared about righteousness. We wanted to please God and do what was right. This was the first evidence of God's saving grace which I noticed in my own life. I now wanted to do what God wanted me to do.
What Paul is saying is that there has been a change on the inside, and the real me, the new me wants to keep God's Word, to keep God's Law. But the old me, the old sinful habit patterns I built up over 20, 30, or 40 years of life does not want to change. So I struggle with sin. Verses 21-23 say,
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law;
He is saying, “I know that it is wrong to be angry, I know that it is wrong to be selfish, I know that it is wrong to covet, I know that it is wrong to think evil thoughts, I know that it is wrong to use my tongue to slander my brother and my sister, I joyfully agree with the commandment of God.”
… but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
We know that it is wrong to speak evil of our brothers and sisters, and yet when we hear another person doing it, we want to enter into it. We know we should not do it, but there is something in us that delights in it. It is hard to understand it. The answer is that the real you, the inner person who is created after the image of Christ wants to keep Christ's Law, but the old you wants to still engage in sin. Sin's effects die hard.
When we take a good long look at the depth of sin in our hearts we say,
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (v. 24)
When we fight in our own strength, we lose. When we look at our own selves, we quit. This leads to despair and hopelessness!
But is it not hopelessness. In fact, this is precisely the place that God wants us. If you are struggling with sin, if you are struggling with the requirements of God's Law, He wants you to come to the end of yourself. That is the place to which you will eventually come. You might beat your head against the wall for a while, but sooner or later you will say, “Who can change me?”
Coming to the end of yourself is not bad, if when we do we turn to Him. The challenge for Christians in our contemporary society is to quit trying to do it themselves. That is the hardest lesson you will ever learn.
I participated in a pastor's conference recently where we discussed commitment. The observation was made that most people participate in church on their own terms. They participate at their own level of desire, rather than participating with a sense of true commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the work. Unhappily many people try to live their Christian life that way. They want righteousness, but on their terms, according to their rules. So we fail, and even that failure is evidence of the mercy of God. God loves you and me so much that He allows us to fail so that we will turn to Him. The failure itself may be the very thing that draws us to God.
Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (v. 25)
The implication of the text is that when we give up, Christ sets us free. The Living Bible says, Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free. He is the deliverer. Only Christ can set you free. Christ is not only your Savior, Christ is your LIFE. He did not come simply to forgive your sins, He came to inhabit your mortal body with His indwelling presence and to live His life through yours in order to make you an instrument of His life. You are a container of God. The living Lord lives in you. And the life which we contain is the life which sets us free. Only Christ living in us can give us the power to struggle victoriously against the old sinful nature. And as we surrender to Him, we will find His power to be real, and His word to be true.
We can learn some very important lessons from this. We can learn that we cannot struggle victoriously in our own strength and that it is futile to try. We can learn that we are not very different from any other Christian when we struggle with sin. Everybody struggles. Your struggles might be different from mine but we all struggle. And that is OK, if in the midst of that struggle we find that we cannot do it, turn to God and let Him take charge.
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