Sin, the Law, & the Gospel
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Introduction
Introduction
Have you ever had this thought?
I can’t believe I did/said that.
A statement like that enters our mind when confronted by someone else or our conscience about something wrong we have said or done. Several things are happening at once when a statement like that enters our consciousness, not the least of which is the truth that most people have too high of an opinion of themselves. If we truly understood the depth of our depravity and the full extent of the fall, maybe we wouldn’t be surprised that we were able to do or say something evil. As we will see, the propensity to sin is baked into our being, so it probably shouldn’t surprise us when we stumble and fall. Arguably, we should be more surprised that we can stand upright.
But there is another mental process going on when such a thought occurs to us, and that is, we all want to do the right thing. Sin sometimes gets the better of us, and we make a terrible decision. But, in our mind, we want to do what’s right, so when we are confronted with the reality that we have done the opposite, we express our disbelief. How could I have done that? How could I have said that?
So, what I want us to think about this morning is what is happening when we want to do what’s right, but we don’t. We know the Ten Commands, our Lord’s Summary of the Law, and what it should look like ethically and morally to be a disciple of Jesus Christ (generally speaking), so why do we continue to sin and do the things we don’t want to do?
Law & Gospel
Law & Gospel
For all the good that he did, Martin Luther drove a rigid distinction between the Law and the Gospel. Here are two quotes.
“Hence, whoever knows well this art of distinguishing between Law and Gospel, him place at the head and call him a doctor of Holy Scripture."
“Distinguishing between the law and the gospel is the highest art in Christendom, one who every person who values the name Christian ought to recognize, know, and possess. Where this is lacking, it is not possible to tell who is a Christian and who is a pagan or Jew. That much is at stake in this distinction.”
And yet, let’s look again at the first words of our epistle reading.
So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
In Romans 7, Paul is reflecting on three things at once: Adam’s experience with the commandment, Israel’s experience with the Law, and his own experience with the Law. The one thing Paul will not do is say that the Law or the commandment was the problem. But if the problem wasn’t the law, what was it?
Did that which is good, 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.
Sin & Gospel
Sin & Gospel
I understand that Paul uses a Law/Gospel distinction, but when we know what Paul means by that distinction, we can recognize that the distinction to be made is not between Law and Gospel but between sin and the Gospel. It is Sin that produces death in you when the commandment comes. Why does this happen?
Because the law is…
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
Our dualistic minds, which we’ve inherited wrongly from Platonic tradition, want to read this verse with a dichotomy between the two parts of me: my spirit and my flesh. But that is not what Paul is saying. Paul doesn’t say “spirit,” he says “spiritual,” and he doesn’t say “of the flesh” (despite the ESV translation) but “fleshly.” Paul is not talking about the dichotomy of the human being. He is talking about two orientations in life. The first orientation is fleshly, and it looks back to Egypt. The other orientation is spiritual and looks forward to the Promised Land. And if you’re wondering why I’d bring up the New Exodus here, I’d ask you to direct your attention to the last three words of verse 14: “sold under sin.” That is the language of slavery. Let’s talk about how this works.
The 10 Commandments are often printed so that they begin with the first commandment. This is the wrong place to begin the 10 Commandments. The 10 Commandments do not start with the first commandment. The first words of the 10 Commandments are this:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
This is massively important. The Law follows the Gospel. The Law came to a people who had been redeemed and set free. Israel did not receive the Law in Egypt as a pre-requisite for their salvation. Israel received the Law after it had been set free. So we receive the Law, and our Lord’s summary of the Law, and the morality of the Beatitudes not as people trying to earn our freedom but as those who have already been set free.
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
But if we have been set free, why then do we continue to sin? And the answer has to do with our location on the map. We have been set free, but we have yet to arrive. We are in the liminal space between the inauguration and the consummation of our salvation. In prophetic terms, the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts to take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. This is why we want to do the right thing.
But, while we have the Holy Spirit, what we do not yet have is the redemptions of our bodies. Our bodies are still fallen. Our bodies are still of the flesh and in slavery to sin, so when the commandment comes, sin rears its ugly head and tries to turn us away from the Promised Land and back to Egypt.
Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
Paul is likely alluding to Abel here. In Genesis, God says to Abel:
If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
Paul continues:
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
We do the things we don’t want to do, no matter how much our mind wants to do them, because our bodies are not yet redeemed. Our bodies are still slaves to sin. We have been set free and had the Holy Spirit poured out into our hearts, but we have not yet arrived at the Promised Land of the resurrection of the dead. And so there will always be this pull inside us between the land of sin and death and the promised land of eternal life.
So what are we to do in this liminal space? Are we to throw our hands up and say, “Well, that’s just the way it is, I suppose”? This is where our Gospel reading comes into play. We will begin to see the point if we recognize the interplay between temple and body. When Jesus comes to the Temple, he finds something “fleshly.” You might even say that he asks himself, “I can’t believe they’re doing that in here.”
What does he do when he finds something fleshly in the temple rather than spiritual? He starts turning over tables. John writes:
His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
The Lord said to Able: “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” The answer to sin in our lives isn’t to throw our hands up and say, “Well, that’s just the way things are.” The answer is to start turning over tables. The answer is to be zealous about putting to death what is still fleshly in you and rule over it rather than letting it rule over you.
Technically speaking, you will not be delivered from this body of death until the last, great Easter Day. Between now and then, you will be pulled in both directions. Your mind will pull you to the Promised Land of Resurrection, where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Your fallen body will pull you back to the land of sin and death. But you don’t have to surrender to this tension. You can choose to start turning over tables. You can choose to be zealous about putting to death what is still fleshly in you and rule over it rather than letting it rule over you. You can choose to set your eyes forward and follow the Spirit of God wherever he leads you. You will always feel that tension, but it doesn’t have to rule over you.
Amen.