Asking the Right Question
Romans 7 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 4 viewsGrowth in the Christian life involves asking one good question, and then meditating on the answer. As we conclude our study of Romans 7, we will see how Paul fights the sin in him by asking one good question.
Notes
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Illustration: As many of you know, part of the work I do for my other employer, the Three Rivers Baptist Association, is church consultation, helping churches to think biblically and hopefully about what their future may be. About two years ago, I was contacted by a pastor from a different denomination, who was beginning the work of church revitalization. He wanted to grab a cup of coffee at Panera Bread, and I was free, so I happily obliged, just to hear his story.
As we were talking, I normally try to have somewhere in the first conversation with either church or pastor the hard conversation that there is really only one reason a church declines in almost every instance I have seen: sin and disobedience. As I said this, he smiled and responded with a statement I was completely unprepared for: he simply said “well, then it’s a good thing I don’t sin anymore. I can help them figure out how to be perfect!”
Now, I reacted to this with an instinct that I would later feel badly for. I laughed, because I thought he was kidding! But he was not laughing. He then went on to explain how once he was justified, he was also perfectly sanctified, and so he just doesn’t sin anymore! I didn’t know quite how to respond to this, so I simply went with “wow, isn’t that interesting!” and ended the conversation pretty quickly. That was a conflict in theology that would change the trajectory of any conversation moving forward. I wish I’d had time to give him a lesson in Greek, because I suppose that we as a congregation have a good greek word for this view.
RC Sproul tells a similar story, but with a 12 year old boy who had believed he arrived at perfection. When Dr. Sproul asked him about Romans 7, the passage that we are studying today and that we have been studying this month, the boy responded that it was a real shame that Paul was not as sanctified as much as this boy was when Paul wrote Romans.
- For most of us, our life experience as believers in a fallen world leads us to reject this idea as some form of denial at best, and a gross mishandling of God’s Word at worst. But there is often in the life of the Christian a more subtle, and yet no less dangerous, deception at stake. In some cases, even though we don’t often say we are sinless, we can often live in denial of the power of sin, and avoid the fight altogether. I know this, because of my own experience. Instead of taking our own soul to task, we avoid the fight at hand and deflect away from the real source of the problem.
I have found that a sure fire way to determine if I am currently living in a form of denial of the power of sin comes when I am simply asking the wrong questions, and so avoiding the real problems at hand.
What are the wrong questions?
What are the wrong questions?
These wrong questions, at least in my life, have fallen into four categories.
What can I take? We look for a pain-free way to be a “better” Christian? It often doesn’t compute that the Christian life is hard, so I look for answers that are easy. That may be a new bible study, or a new book, or desperately looking for some three-step process for the successful Christian life. I may even schedule some time with a counselor, looking for advice, but the expectation is that the advice I will receive will somehow result in an easy solution to a hard problem with sin. I expect the fight with sin to be easy, and the victorious Christian life to be totally achievable in my own power, so I am looking for some way to, for lack of a better way of putting it, get to Romans 8 without having to go through Romans 7.
What can I feel? We seek a different experience instead of looking inside. We conclude that the great problem with our lives is in our experiences and feelings, so if I change those, I should be good. We go somewhere else to seek a new emotional high. So, the church doesn’t make me “feel” a certain thing, and I think I need that thing to be right, so I must need a new church. Or, this counselor doesn’t make me feel good, or in the case of biblical counseling, he or she asks me to do things that are hard, so I must just need a new counselor, one that can make me feel good about myself. Or, this job doesn’t make me “feel” fulfilled, so the answer must be another job. So, we frantically run from one job to the other, or one relationship to the other, or one experience to the other, hoping to find the joy of Romans 8, without the fight of Romans 7.
Where can I run? So, we avoid confronting our own sin and seek instead to run, or to numb ourselves to get away from the actual source of the real problem. This relationship didn’t go the way I wanted, so I need to get away from it, not run into it head on and work it out. This part of my life is too hard, so I can’t think about it. I can’t stand the content of my own thoughts, so I fill the air with noise and busyness. For anyone in ministry or who cares for others, this takes on an even more deadly dimension, where I am totally content to listen and take on your problems with you, but I do so that I can continue to deny and ignore my own.
Who can I blame? There has to be another reason for my problems; it can’t possibly be that I am to blame. Blame shifting of any kind is the second oldest sin in the book. I wouldn’t struggle so much with my weight if food wasn’t so good; it can’t possibly be because I lack self-control! My personal favorite, that I have both said and heard: I wouldn’t lose my temper so much if people weren’t so dumb! It can’t possibly be because I have refused to cultivate a gentle and quiet spirit!
Not a single one of these questions lead us to the joyous life Paul describes in Galatians 5:25 when he writes
If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
Man, what a life that would be! Of keeping in step with the Spirit! Instead, we settle for lesser questions, that all lead to hopelessness in the long run, because they never truly address the problem at hand!
But this passage contains the one really great question that unlocks the door for us for Romans 8. We end the chapter that helps us see what the law does, so that we will cry out with Paul this one specific question that makes all the difference in the world! But before we get to that one question, we get from Paul a little more summary about why the Christian life is so hard! So, that’s my goal for today - an explanation from Paul of the internal strife he was experiencing, followed by Paul’s arrival at the one good question that leads us to change:
Why is it so hard?
Why is it so hard?
Christianity 101 - the Christian life is hard, right? I mean, at its very basic conception, none of us like Matthew 16:24-26
Matthew 16:24–26 (ESV)
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
Just the content of that alone tells us that this life is going to include death, loss and suffering! Add to that what Paul is teaching us in this passage, and what he taught us in the last passage: it isn’t easy to pursue righteousness. It isn’t easy to do the right thing! Wrong is easy. Right isn’t. Why?
He tells us exactly why in Romans 7:21
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
It’s like every time I really desire to do right, wrong is JUST RIGHT THERE! It’s like last week, I have to reach past the sweet sixteen donuts to get to the hard boiled egg. Or, to use Paul’s earlier reference to covetousness, just as my life hits a point where I should really, really be content, the next thing you know someone has something that I want, and I’m finding myself sinfully dissatisfied. And it isn’t like this is just a few times; it feels like all the time! It’s consistently wearisome, constantly creating a conflict in my life. Why? Why on earth?
Paul explains this concept for us by using one word, that has a bunch of different meanings in this passage - law. By using this same word so many times, we begin to see that there is an inner conflict of twos.
There are two me’s - first, there are two “me’s.” Now, what do I mean by this. We see the first “me” in Romans 7 22
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
In the heart of the Christian, there is true delight in obedience. I have experienced this. It’s the little inner “yes!” complete with the fist pump, that happens when I resist temptation! It’s the inner confirmation from the Spirit that when I loved my enemy, God was pleased. It’s the Spirit’s confirmation to my soul that, when I went out of my way and inconvenienced myself to help someone else, this was a way to fulfill the second great commandment. That just wasn’t there before I was a believer! I may have followed the rules, but the motive was different. In those moments when I can truly just think about God and my heart smiles, I delight in the law of God in my inner being. In those fleeting moments, we get just a quick glimpse of what life in the Garden must have always been like, to live in constant awareness of the smile of God. But that isn’t the only law...
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.
so there is this whole other law, meaning a whole different principle, at play that wages war against what is in my inner being. This law consistently fight against me, it seeks to hijack the law of my mind and take my inner mind captive! So, though there are glimpses of joy in obedience, there are also times of what can almost feel like a spiritual amnesia, when I forget how fantastic obedience is and run straight for the disobedience! What happens? In that moment, this other “me,” this other principle at play, takes the inner man captive and hijacks the good I desire to do.
In the dark, quiet moments, the lingering death in me taps on my soul relentlessly, like a form of spiritual Chinese water torture. It constantly tries to convince me that up is down and bad is good. It works to woo me back to death and slavery. It wears on me, constantly tapping on me, over and over again, and it feels like I can’t get away from it!
It happens like a landslide. When you see a landslide happen, it is almost always not becuase of one catastrophic event - it’s because of the slow effect of gravity, and rain, and wind over years and years. The dramatic landslide at the end is simply the logical result of years of erosion. Sin is like that. This law, this principle that wages war against the redeemed me, knows this. It chips, ever so patiently, against me, and it never relents. It just pokes, and pokes and pokes and tells me lie after lie, until I finally relent.
Just one more won’t hurt. One last time, and then you will quit.
You’re better off if you give in to this.
You don’t need to do that; someone else can do that. What you need is escape.
Any one of those 9 lies that we went through a couple of weeks ago, or in many cases the inner conflict goes through the whole course of those lies. Eventually, the continual erosion causes the ground to give way, unless something changes, and the landslide happens, and we surrender. The real issue isn’t THAT we surrender; it’s HOW we surrender, and TO WHOM we surrender. And that is where we are headed as we get to the right question.
And THEN, to make things worse, it uses the law, as we just talked about, as a base of operations, to accuse me once I’ve given in to sin! So, if my surrender is to sin, now my flesh, and the evil one and his minions accuse me with the law! I hear “you aren’t a Christian; look at what you just did!” as the battle rages, the law stands, immovable, perfect as God’s righteous standard, and it accuses me, and I see even more clearly my imperfections. It exhausts me, because no matter how hard I try, I can’t measure up. It indicts me, because being guilty of one part of it means being guilty of it all. You feel the shame of failure, and you determine that you are what the accuser has said you are. If this happens, one failure breeds another, and the next thing you know, you are a long, long way from where you started.
And this is why it’s so hard! This isn’t just a sometimes battle; it is always raging! The relentlessness of the war within can make us feel like we are both losing and losers. the thin facade of my self-righteousness is eroded. The flimsy mask of self-reliance is finally pulled away, and I am exposed. I can’t do anything that God has said I should do. Just the most basic law: “Love the Lord God with all your heart soul mind and strength.” My heart is so wishy-washy. There are some times I do this, but not all the time! If I define this the way God does, it exposes me. I can’t measure up. I can’t do what the law requires, even when I have the Spirit! Even the regenerated me can only sometimes produce what is God honoring.
So, I fear: is sometimes good enough? Is partial obedience better than nothing? But I know better. I know it’s not. I know that imperfection can never meet the demands of a perfect, righteous God. And so, finally exhausted, feeling hopeless, and at the end of myself, I finally ask the right question
Wretched Man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?
Wretched Man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?
And right there, at that question, the Spirit meets me. The Law has exposed me. But it wasn’t so that I would be hopeless forever. It was so that I would abandon hope in my ability to do any good in myself, apart from what God does in me!
It’s the crux of Christianity: my greatest hope comes at the point I display my greatest hopelessness. It’s Helm’s Deep in my soul. At the point I see the night at darkest, at the point when I have abandoned hope in myself, and I realize that there is no hope in me fighting my way out of this, hope comes, not exactly like Tolkien said, on first light of the fifth day; but rather at first light of the Third day! Because it is in that hopelessness that I can see what Malachi promised: the Sun of Righteousness has come, with healing in His wings! And so, as I cry out, helpless to kill the sin within by my own power “wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?” As I finally ask the right question, I behold My God, seated on His Throne! I say, as Paul said “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ Our Lord!”
It’s the question that has an answer!
God’s merciful answer
God’s merciful answer
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
not through the law. Not through my own self-righteousness. Not through trying harder. Not through working more. Not through asking the wrong questions.
God’s way is not pain free. Though we ask “how can I be free of pain in the Christian life,” pain is the medium God uses to produce something. So, we ask “what can I take?” God shows us: only Christ can bring victory.
God’s way is not always through experience. Though we ask “how can I feel something different,” the reality is what we are experiencing and feeling may be precisely what God desires to use in our life to produce godliness. So, we ask “what can I feel?” God shows us: we are to feel the end of ourselves, so we can experience the fulness of Christ.
God’s way is not in running. We deny what is really going on, who we really are, and what we have really done, when the reality is we are to abandon hope in our works, to confess our unworthiness and trust in Christ completely for not just salvation, but for growth in Christ!
When we stop asking “how can I save myself?” and start asking “who will save me?” we now see God at work in us, bringing life out of death, defeating our enemies for us, even as we work to put the old man to death.
What is Romans 7 asking me to do?
What is Romans 7 asking me to do?
Respond in faith to what the law reveals in you! Consider what we have learned in this chapter:
we were once married to the law, but that marriage is broken by our death with Christ, and now we are married and bound to Christ forever!
The law reveals God’s righteous demands, and serves as the means by which we see our need for redemption
The law exposes lingering death in the life of the believer, and shows us our continual need for help.
Our failure to meet the law’s demands, and our awareness of that failure, is what God uses to make us ready for grace.
Is the law at work in your life? Do you see your failure to live up to God’s righteous standard? It may be that you are ready for grace. Repent and believe the Gospel!
Christian: get in the fight! how? Begin with simply crying out to God! Take the time to learn more of grace, more of salvation. Look inward deeply, then upward deeply. And then, avail yourself of God’s means of grace:
prayer: he hears our prayers!
The Word: He has given us what we need!
Community: our faith is shared!
learn to look inside and hate the sin that is still there. The evidence of Christian maturity is more struggle vs. sin, not less! What are you killing?
Benediction:
Romans 7:6 (ESV)
But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive,
so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.