04.17. LESSON 17

LESSON 17

Bear in mind that the subject of Romans 7:1-25 is, not Justification, but Sanctification—not how to obtain pardon for past sins, but deliverance from present indwelling sin. "Sin" is not evil deeds, but an evil principle, even "The law of sin which dwelleth in my members"—not primarily what men do, but what they are. It is a power, which impregnably entrenched in human nature, has "reigned in death" since the race, on probation in Adam, was "sold under sin" in Adam’s fall.

Paul’s "I of myself" is the key to his inability to find deliverance from the power and bondage of sin. His disability which causes the stern inner conflict and chaos, with its bewildering meeting of two seas of good and evil impulses and its pathetic "I would" and "I would not," so dramatically depicted, is the lack of power to do what his reason, will, and conscience, all, insist that he should do. "So now it is no more I that do it (what I hate), but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." Surely, if it can be put into human speech, here is a man handicapped with a radical defect in nature, yea, an inherent evil tendency in his flesh that counter-works his earnest spiritual strivings, which he can neither eradicate nor master by himself—the animal runs away with the man. Paul is here laying the foundation for his teaching in the next chapter that, instead of Christians struggling in their unaided natural strength to take sanctification by force, they are to continue to take God’s gifts, in God’s way, as they have already done in the matter of justification. As for Paul himself, the carnal Paul of Romans 7:1-25 grew into the spiritual Paul of Romans 8:1-39 before he wrote the book of Romans.

Paul’s Religious Evolution

Paul, who enters the Bible as an abettor of Stephen’s martyrdom, is soon the determined, unflinching Jewish persecutor of the church. On his way to destroy the church in Damascus, he was apprehended by the glorified Christ speaking unto him out of heaven saying: "I have appeared unto thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness both of the things wherein thou halt seen me, and of the things wherein I will appear unto thee" (Acts 26:16). Christ said of Paul at this time: "He is a chosen vessel unto me" (Acts 9:15), to preach and to learn suffering.

We learn from these two statements by Christ that communication between him and Paul was to be maintained. After Paul’s conversion, Acts reports five more miraculous appearances to him. These appearances, however, thrust no magical spiritual growth upon him; his personal character grew, as do the characters of all Christians, according to mental and moral law. Paul’s epistles allude to "visions and revelations of the Lord" as if they were not unusual; he describes one revelation in which he was "caught up into Paradise" for a most intimate, personal interview (2 Corinthians 12:1-4). From the biographic and autobiographic matter in Acts and Paul’s letters, respectively, we learn vastly more about him—his views of life, death, the future; his purposes, labors, prayers; his fears, joys, tears; his sufferings, tribulations, burdens, and buffeting his body to keep it in subjection—than about any other early Christian. By combining Acts 9:1-43 and Galatians 1:1-24, we learn that Paul began preaching in Damascus "straightway" after his conversion, and that his ministry there was broken into two periods of time by a visit into Arabia. Why this Arabian interruption? I think the logic of life and truth makes plausible the inference that, when Paul encountered the inevitable opposition, he, but a babe in Christ honestly mistaken, tried to meet it, as he had always met opposition, in his own superior natural strength ("I of myself"); and that Christ to forestall this wrecking of Christianity and to season Paul for his chosen work, sent him, willing to learn, into Arabia as a fit place to guide him into a better understanding and assimilation of his new religion. "Visions and revelations" in Arabia are not improbable. Like wrestling, striving Jacob of old (Genesis 32:22-32) Paul had to come to an end of himself before he could be "a prince of God." To convert a learned, proud, respected, self-occupied Pharisee, who had been laboriously "blameless" in all the more than six hundred laws and traditions of his party for some twenty years, into a Christ-occupied man, which meant becoming "the filth of the world," was a catastrophic dissolution and re-creation. The evolution of Saul into Paul was a tremendous achievement, utterly beyond all human working, but possible "Through faith in the working of God" (Colossians 2:12). Probably it took the time in Arabia plus a few years of Paul’s relative obscurity as apostle before he began his mission travels, or even longer, to bring him up to the spiritual elevation where he could say: "I have learned... the secret both to abound and to be in want... I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me." His going up to Paradise occurred during these obscure years. When the extreme difficulty of any man’s, especially a man of Paul’s natural strength and background, renouncing flesh and legal righteousness; and of realizing that should his striving eventually lift him to the pinnacle of human morality and religion, even there, the wrath of God awaits him—when these things, and the fact that so few Christians ever learn suffering and self-abnegation for Christ’s sake, as Paul did, are taken into consideration, the inference I think, becomes all the more reasonable. Certainly, it is not "contrary to the doctrine" we have learned. As it has benefited me, may it benefit others.

Paul Chosen as Apostle and as Pattern

Paul’s wholly yielding himself up to Christ’s making gave Christ a fit instrument to demonstrate what he can do for in, and through men who do not mar their making by trying, in their own fleshly strength, to help him out. God cannot save men until they cease trying, by law and unaided self-effort, to save themselves. Christ chose Paul Gentile apostle and Christian pattern because he knew what he could make out of capable, willing, suffering, cooperating Paul. This explains, I think, why Luke and Paul himself were moved by God to write down so fully Paul’s case history. "It was not written for his sake alone... but for our sakes also." Five times, Paul exhorts his "children" to "imitate" him—a thing no one of the other seven writers of the New Testament does even once. How profoundly interesting and profitable when an earnest, experienced, wise "man of God’ unlocks to others, in so far as is possible, the secrets of God’s dealings with him.

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