Why We Do What We Don’t Want to Do

7/1/07 | Richard Van Dyke | Romans 7:14-25 | Listen
Series: Getting into the Good News

Do you ever wonder why, when your children do something wrong or fail to do what you told them and you ask them “Why did you do that?” they respond with, “I don’t know” and your response is “What do you mean you don’t know. How could you not know?” But Paul is describing the same situation for Christians in the passage before us today. William Barclay entitles his commentary on this passage The Human Situation and he’s right. This is truly the human situation. We know the good, but we don’t do it. We know what’s wrong and we fight against it and then we do it anyway. We say “I will” and then we don’t. We say “I won’t” and then we do. We make a promise and then we break it. We set a goal and we don’t go after it. We say “I’ll never do that again” and we do it. We get on our knees and say, “Oh, God, I’ll never do that again.” And then the next day, we do it or we say it again. That is the truly human experience for all of us.

Paul says that as believers in Jesus, we have this problem which he repeatedly describes in Romans 7:14-25, our passage for this morning. For perhaps as long as the church has known this text, interpreters have disagreed as to whether the person described is a Christian or non-Christian. Those who believe Paul is speaking about himself as an unbeliever point out that he describes the person as being “of flesh, sold into bondage” (v. 14), as having nothing good dwelling in him (v. 18), and as a “wretched man” trapped in a “body of…death” (v. 24). How then, it is argued, could such a person correspond to the Christian Paul describes in chapter 6 as having died to sin (v. 2), as having his old self crucified and no longer being enslaved to sin (v. 6), as being “freed from sin” (v.v. 7, 18, 22), as considering himself dead to sin (v. 11), and as being obedient from the heart to God’s Word (v. 17)?

Some interpreters believe that chapter 7 describes the carnal, or fleshly Christian, one who is living on a very low level or immature level of spirituality. Some suggest that this person is a frustrated, legalistic Christian who attempts in his own power to please God by trying to live up to the Mosaic Law. But the attitude expressed in chapter 7 is not typical of legalists, who tend to be self-satisfied with their fulfillment of the law or of carnal Christians who are satisfied with just being saved. The level of spiritual insight, brokenness, contrition, and humility that characterize the person depicted in Romans 7 are marks of a spiritual or mature believer.

Those who contend Paul is speaking about a believer in chapter 7 point out that this person desires to obey God’s law and hates doing what is evil (v.v. 15, 19, 21), that he is humble before God, realizing that nothing good dwells in his humanness. He gives thanks to Jesus Christ as his Lord and serves Him with his mind (v.25). The apostle has already established that none of those things characterize the unsaved.

It seems that there are strong arguments for the position of Paul as the mature believer (he’s been saved for 20 years when he writes Romans) who struggles with sin just as we do. Paul uses the first person to speak of himself and speaks in the present tense, not the past as he has done in the previous verses. The flesh is still within believers and he gives thanks to God through Jesus Christ as his savior from sin and he desires to serve Him with his mind. An unsaved person would not be characterized by these statements. For our purposes then, we’re going to approach this passage from the position of Paul’s being a mature believer who shares his struggle with sin. In this section of scripture Paul is going to describe our condition, examine the source or cause of that condition, and state a solution for the condition from which we can then make some application as we examine this process in our life called Sanctification.

First, Paul describes his condition as well as ours and uses three phrases. First, he describes us as unspiritual and sold as slaves in verses 14 & 15. What does Paul mean by these statements in light of the ones he made in 6:6 & 7, 17 & 18, 22. The word unspiritual is better translated “of the flesh”; in other words Paul is still earthbound and lives in the flesh (the body). When he says that he’s “sold as a slave to sin” he’s referring to the idea that while he lives in the flesh he still has the capacity to make himself a slave to sin. (Romans 6:16a) He’s saying that in the moment of failure, sin gets the upper hand, like a slave master temporarily getting control of a person who really isn’t his. He’s merely admitting that no matter how hard he tries, he’s never going to be free from the strong pull of sin in his flesh.

The second phrase he uses to describe his condition is in verse 18 when he says “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my flesh.” Flesh is a more accurate translation than sinful nature. Paul is acknowledging that in his flesh, what he thinks with his mind, what he watches with his eyes, what he says with his mouth, that nothing good dwells apart from the working of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 64:6). Paul is incapable of being perfectly good.

His third phrase he uses to describe our condition is in verse 21b, “evil is right there with me.” The Greek word for “right there with me” means right beside me. It means I am here and evil is glued to my side. It means I’m joined with sin as to a Siamese twin. Everywhere I go, evil goes with me. Even when I want to do good, all I have to do is reach out my hand and I can touch evil. It’s right there beside me (I John 5:21). Paul’s summary statements in 15 & 19 are the same: “What I want to do I don’t do, and what I hate, I do.” His summary statement in vs 22 & 23 is similar except here he uses the terminology of a war. We would all agree with Paul that the words that best describe what happens on a daily basis in our lives is a war, a struggle, or a conflict between two laws, the law of the flesh versus the law of the mind of the Spirit. There is a similar description found in Galatians 5:17. Paul says in this passage that the problem is not simply sin on the outside, but the problem we have to face is sin on the inside. The problem is not simply temptation “out there” but temptation “in here” (James 1:13-14). For all of us believers in Jesus Christ, sin is not something that simply is outside of us, but clearly Paul is saying that sin is something that we must wrestle with on the inside every single day. It is the battle nobody else sees. It goes on in your heart and mind. It involves attitudes, desires, thoughts and motivations. We come to church on Sunday and we look nice in church. But behind every smiling face is a story of a struggle, heartache, despair, defeat, victory, cowardice, bravery, fear and courage all mixed up together.

It reminds me of that cartoon strip Pogo where the hero comes and says “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

That’s an accurate description of our condition which I doubt any of us would deny. It’s the battle between who we are positionally (our old nature has been crucified, we are clothed in Christ’s holiness and perfection) yet how we still live practically (sinners who need to repent and be forgiven each day).

After Paul has described our condition, he then mentions the source of that condition, again using 3 phrases. Two of those phrases are the same and are found in v 17 & 20: “It is sin living in me.” Paul says that sin is actually present in the members of his body. As long as you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you will never be completely free from the pull of the sin that is inside of you. As long as you are in your mortal bodies, you will wrestle with sin. Paul was a new man but the sinful self is still very real. As one commentator stated-“The cry of defeat ‘no longer I but sin’ is the opposite of the cry of victory’ no longer I but Christ’ from Galatians 2:20”.

Sin (hamartia) originally conveyed the idea of missing the mark as when hunting with a bow and arrow and then came to mean missing or falling short of any goal, standard, or purpose. In Scripture “sin” often describes our thoughts, words and deeds that miss the ultimate purpose God has for each individual, these thoughts, words and deeds falling short of God’s perfect standard of holiness. In many of Paul’s uses of hamartia in Romans 5-8, Paul places the definite article “the” before “sin” (even though the “the” is not translated in most English versions). What Paul is doing with “sin” (hamartia) is to use this word not to describe the actions or results (sins we commit) but to describe the underlying root cause, the principle or, in medical terms the “virus” we have all inherited from Adam.

“The Sin” is like a highly contagious, lethal virus which every man, woman and child has inherited because every person alive can trace their lineage back to Adam, the first man. The presence of “The Sin” gene in our “moral make up” is the reason every man, woman and child commits sins. The Sin in each man makes it impossible for man to live in a way that pleases God.

Every one of us needs to understand the evil of our flesh. On the one hand if a person is LOST, he needs to understand that the evil of his flesh points to the SIN of Adam which dominates a lost person. But once you are SAVED you still need to remember that you have that evil propensity dwelling in your flesh. We know that this is true because there is a battle with the flesh every day of our lives. (Gal 5:17 1 Pe 2:11 Mt 26:41).

The third source that he mentions is the two laws he sees at work. In his inner being, in his spirit, he delights to do God’s law but in his flesh (the members of his body, the old sinful patterns and habits built up over 10, 20, 30 years of life) he does just exactly the opposite of what delights God. He restates this source in the last part of verse 25. This war between these two laws isn’t a skirmish or a one time battle but is in the present tense and describes a long term, we might even say life time, campaign. Peter talks about a similar war in I Peter 2:11.

In the classic allegory “The Holy War” John Bunyan pictures a city and he calls the city Man’s Soul because it represents the soul of man. And he pictures the city as surrounded by high walls. And the enemy wants to assault the soul of man but he has no way over the walls or through the walls. The only way the enemy can get to the soul is through the gate. The only way that the World or Satan can get to the otherwise impregnable soul of a believer is through the gate of fleshly lusts, the gate of fallen desire and we open the gate, even on a crack, so often.

Sin still indwells believers but the difference now is that we have been crucified with Christ and the body of Sin’s power has been rendered ineffective or inoperative, we are no longer slaves to “the Sin” (Romans 6:6).

Paul’s ultimate summary statement is found in his gut-wrenching cry of v 24. The word wretched means afflicted, miserable, in a distressed condition. J. Vernon McGee says “the word wretched carries with it the idea of exhaustion because of the struggle.”

In Our Daily Bread we read the following devotional entitled “Get Off My Back”…

“Roman emperors saw torture as a legitimate way to put muscle and teeth into their laws. They were known to bind the body of a murder victim to the back of his killer. Under penalty of death, no one was allowed to release the condemned criminal. This terrible practice calls to mind the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 7. It’s as if he felt that something dead was strapped to him and accompanied him wherever he went.”

The devotional continues, “As children of God, we long for purity and holiness, yet at times we feel helplessly bound to the “dead body” of our flesh. Even though we are new creatures in Christ and we know that the physical body itself is not evil, the tendency to sin is always with us. This causes us to cry out with the apostle, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).

So Paul has described our condition with the phrases “unspiritual, sold as slaves to sin, nothing good lives in us, and evil is right there with me” then he shows us the sources through the phrases “it is sin living in me” and the fact that there are still “two laws at work within us”; and then he summarizes all this in his cry “what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Let me in my last point highlight Paul’s solution to this problem and then make some applications. In verse 25 he shouts “thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord.” If we compare this verse to I Corinthians 15:57, Paul makes the same statement except he adds in place of the dash “He (God) gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The hope is the resurrection of the body that Paul needs to be delivered from in the previous verse. That’s the context of I Corinthians 15. We know that the body is going to die because we all inherit the curse of Adam’s sin and that the body joins forces with sin and bears fruit for death (Rom 7:5) and that it partners with sin to bring us into bondage over and over again (Rom 6:13).

So the body is a “body of death” not because it’s intrinsically evil, but because it’s fallen and Paul realizes and is thankful for the fact that the body will one day be delivered from the power of sin and even the presence of sin. He talks about that in more detail in Romans 8:18-25, the passage I’ll be preaching on next month and so we’ll hold off that discussion until then.

What practical applications can we make from Paul’s teaching in this passage?

(1) Even though our old nature is dead (Romans 6:6) we still live in the flesh which still wants to do what it was destined to do from our birth (the sin gene) so that the battle is between the flesh and the Spirit (the new nature) (Gal 5:16 & 17).

(2) The only person who ever lived a sinless life was Jesus because he had no sin nature and he had the unlimited power of deity to be obedient to the Father. The rest of us will never be sinless although we should strive to sin less. Most of us are going to struggle with some sins for many years. We’re going to win some battles and we’re going to lose some. We’re going to be knocked down and we’re going to get back up. We’re going to keep on struggling and, through the help of God, we’re going to one day win some of these battles. But we’ll never ultimately win the total victory until we are with Jesus Christ face to face. But until then we can walk in significant victory. But there is going to be a war. Even the seemingly best saints of God are going to struggle. How else can you explain pastors that fall? How else can you explain seemingly godly people going into adultery? How else can you explain Christian leaders and Sunday school teachers who admit heinous sins? How do you explain the people of God who end up in jail? How do you explain God’s people giving in to anger, bitterness, rage, gossip and all the rest? The only way that I know how to explain it is the reality of indwelling sin and the struggle we all face.

(3) The situation isn’t hopeless. We have the Holy Spirit to help us if we will depend upon Him and be obedient to Him (John 15:5). A church bulletin captured this reality in the following prayer: “So far today, Lord, I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped; I haven’t lost my temper; I haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent. I’m very thankful for that. But in a few moments, Lord, I’m going to get out of bed. And from then on, I’m gong to need a lot of help.” Remember, our complete redemption comes to us in stages. We’ve been justified and freed from the penalty of sin (Romans 8:1) and we are in the process of being sanctified which is being freed from the power of sin with the help of the Holy Spirit, and we will be glorified at the resurrection which is to be free from the presence of sin. Remember who you are in Christ-a free man or woman, a new man. In dependence upon the Holy Spirit, act in accordance with who you are.

(4) Recognize that Christ died so that we could experience forgiveness once for all and on a daily basis. In a dream, Martin Luther found himself being attacked by Satan. The devil unrolled a long scroll containing a list of Luther’s sins, and held it before him. On reaching the end of the scroll Luther asked the devil, “Is that all?” “No,” came the reply, and a second scroll was thrust in front of him. Then, after a second came a third. But now the devil had no more. “You’ve forgotten something,” Luther exclaimed triumphantly. “Quickly write on each of them, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ God’s son cleanses us from all sins.’” Satan uses the same approach on us. At times he’ll spread out all of our sins before us too. He wants to convince us that there’s no hope-that Jesus couldn’t possibly forgive us for all of the sinful things we’ve done. He wants us to believe that there’s no hope for us so that as a result there will be no reason left not to satisfy every sinful desire and every immoral desire.

Let me close with a story. This story is about an Eskimo fishermen who came to town every Saturday afternoon. He always brought his two dogs with him. One was white and the other was black. He had taught them to fight on command. Every Saturday afternoon in the town square the people would gather and these two dogs would fight and the fisherman would take bets. On one Saturday the black dog would win; another Saturday, the white dog would win-but the fisherman always won! His friend began to ask him how he did it. He said, “ I starve one and feed the other. The one I feed always wins because he is stronger.”

This story about the two dogs is apt because it tells us something about the inner warfare that comes into the life of a person who is born again. We have two forces within us, both struggling for mastery. Which one will dominate us? It depends on which one we feed.

Just as the Israelites in Egypt were slaves and didn’t have the power in themselves to free themselves, God was their deliverer who rescued them from their slavery by His power.

(Paul was thankful that even though he still waged war with the power of sin, Jesus was his deliverer). I think it would be appropriate to close this part of our service by reminding us of what God has done, and you silently saying thank-you to God.

Jesus you are my deliverer from sin

I no longer am sin’s slave

I no longer have to be a prisoner of sin but I’m a prisoner of yours.

My help comes not from myself but from you, my Savior

Victory does not come through our fleshly schemes or self-improvement methods, but victory comes through you, the Living God.