Romans No.14 I am the problem

I was thinking when we were singing that beautiful Russian hymn, How Great Thou Art, is it the second verse that talks about the birds singing sweetly in the trees. It could only happen of course in America, but when I went to the Crystal Cathedral, a place as big as Notre Dame, the colourful American preacher there, Dr. Schuller, on one occasion he invited his congregation, if they had singing birds, to bring the birds to church with them. So this could only happen in Los Angeles.

And half a dozen cages were left, nobody collected the birds after the service. And Schuller was so impressed by the chirping of the birds that they decided to keep birds in the cathedral. And it sounds a little hackneyed and funny, but actually it's rather sweet when you go into this glass cathedral to have the sound of these twittering birds.

And sometimes actually when the man was preaching, it was good to listen to the... I hope that bit's not on the tape. Just excise it. Thank you for coming.

I was wondering as the barometer dropped, as the temperature dropped, Laura and Laura, how many folks would brave this evening, but it's nice to have you with us. Glad of your company. We've had two meetings already so far today in this lounge, at least in this lounge and the one upstairs.

17 or so men from various churches joined with us for the major part of the morning, bringing the affairs of the town to the Lord in prayer, sharing what the Lord is doing in our town and in Lansing. And we spent some moments as well reflecting on a study that I was glad to lead the men in. Let's go to Romans, shall we? We're galloping through Romans, really, compared with the rate that sometimes we take these epistles.

Let's go to Romans chapter 7 and verse 14, Romans 7, 14. And let me read the verses to you from the NIV version of the Bible. It's also very powerful in the authorised version of the Scriptures.

Romans 7, verse 14. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 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. 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 undoing.

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. 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, 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. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God! Through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Well, those aren't the easiest verses in the Bible, and yet in one sense I think an argument could be put that they are, if not the most sober, amongst the most somber verses that there is in the whole of Scripture.

Some years ago, and I've never been able to recall it, you might be able to help me and I should be very glad if you can later on or next week whenever you see me, I came across a poem that had as its title, The Problem of Me. And as the poem went from stanza to stanza it just unfurled the difficulty of living with oneself. If you have any idea where that poem is, where I can get a copy of it, I'd be glad of the information.

Self can be a problem, can't it? Two men were once walking, according to a story I read, in the Snowdon area of Wales. They were having a heart-to-heart chat about basic problems. They were elderly men.

And as they stopped, one with his walking stick drew the letter I on the ground. And he said to his friend, that's my problem, the problem of I, or put it grammatically correctly, the problem of me. And his friend said, yes, but this is the answer.

And he took his stick and he drew a parallel on the ground over against the I and he made the I into a cross. The problem of me is resolved by the solution, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here is the Apostle Paul.

I haven't done the arithmetic. I meant to do it, but with having a prayer meeting beforehand and having had a fairly full day, I really just haven't had the time. I meant to do the arithmetic of counting up the number of times the Apostle uses the pronoun I in those verses.

It must be around 20 at a guess. You can check me on that later on this evening. The difficulty that Paul had was the difficulty that you and I have.

It's the difficulty of the self. He is in a conundrum. He doesn't quite know how to understand himself.

And he reveals, surprisingly, something of the inner war that there is in his personality as he pens this further part of this epistle. It's so shocking what Paul has here to say that a number of folk have tried to help us out of the difficulty by suggesting he's not talking of himself. The idea is that in the opening verses especially, he has himself in mind.

But when you get to verse 14 and onwards, he's dealing with some abstract character. You see, you wouldn't expect the Apostle, would you, or any Apostle for that matter, to describe themselves in terms of, I am spiritual, sold as a slave to sin. And going on to speak of hatred as to their activity day by day.

It doesn't really fit the category of an Apostle as you and I might envisage the quality of the life of the Apostle. And so some have done a little bit of Sherlock Holmes study. And I think that they have gone beyond what Scripture allows.

By making the deduction, having contrasted tenses of the verbs in the first part of the chapter and the second part of the chapter, that actually the Apostle isn't really speaking of himself. He's just projecting some academic person and he's arguing from that to the readers of his letter so that they may understand that for some people there is this particular problem in their experience. But I think Paul is speaking of himself.

In fact, I would be so bold as to say this, when you get to the 14th verse of Romans 7, do you understand what I'm trying to get at? And come down to the 28th verse or whatever it is towards the end. It's not Paul, it's me. That's who he's talking about because he's describing my experience.

And perchance if you're like me, and in many ways I hope you're not, but if perchance you too sometimes discover that the biggest problem in life is yourself, then you will identify with what the Apostle here is sharing. Now Paul has no problem in regard to his knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, has he? Look at verse 14. He doesn't seem to think that the law of God, as summarised in the Ten Commandments, was in any way brought about by any other medium than by the Holy Spirit.

You see, there are those people who think that somehow the Old Testament Scriptures, they're so very legalistic and they didn't come from the throne room of heaven. And when you move into the New Testament, you move into the area of the Spirit, if you like, and there's a distinction drawn between the Gospel and the law, as though the author of the Gospel and the author of the law are different entities. The Apostle makes it very plain that that's not the case.

Verse 14, we know that the law, the Ten Commandments, the Old Testament, is spiritual in its origin. Of course, we've already had some idea about that, haven't we? Because in the seventh verse of this chapter, he's told us that the law certainly is not sinful. And in the thirteenth verse, he's told us that in his estimation, the law is indeed good.

So he progresses. Verse 7, the law is not sinful. Verse 13, the law is good.

Verse 14, the law is spiritual. It comes from the Holy Spirit. But Paul has got this terrible problem of knowing that the law is good and being utterly incapable of keeping it.

Do you notice how he describes himself? He says, he is sold as a slave to sin. Now, I find one of the hardest things for Christian people to understand me when I'm trying to teach, and I believe that what I'm saying is accurate or else I wouldn't be saying this, that there is no such thing as free will that describes the condition of the unregenerate person. If our will was free, then Paul couldn't describe himself in any sense as being a slave to sin.

A slave isn't free. If a slave was free, he wouldn't be a slave, would he? And neither were you and I free in our non-Christian days. Not unless you believe that freedom is experienced in any way in a prison.

Now, listen, I'm going to follow this example through and you'll see what I'm getting at. In one sense, you see, it is possible to suggest that there is a limited degree of freedom in a prison. If in the unlikely circumstance you were plonked in Lewis jail for any period of time, I hope it will be brief if this is a prophetic word, then there will be certain things that you will be able to do without asking permission of the warden.

Presumably you could clean your teeth, you could wash your hands, presumably you could write a letter. But the main thing that you would want to do in order not to be a prisoner, that you're prohibited from doing. You can't get out.

You can't get out of the prison. And when you were in your days before you were a Christian, you were like that. If you had any freedoms, the level that I've illustrated within Lewis jail, what you couldn't do was get out of a condition in which you found yourself.

It needed the gospel of God's grace to be released into your heart, because it's whom the sun sets free who's free indeed. There's only emancipation, not through human endeavour, but through the gospel of Jesus Christ reaching out and loosing those chains that bind you. So the apostle has learned very early on in his life that any freedoms that he has have come about as a result of the grace of God.

Now you see, even when you move on from being a non-converted person, even when you move from the state of unbelief to belief, from being a pagan to being a Christian, you'll have to bear in mind that in the months and the years which are still to come, you will never be anything in your own strengths. The only way you will progress in the Christian faith is by your utter dependence upon God. He is sovereign, he's the prime mover, he initiates your salvation, he gives you a power by which you're able to live for his honour and for his glory.

So here is Paul, I argue, as a Christian, still faced with the problem of the old nature warring against the new nature. Sometimes as a Christian I feel that there is a war going on in my spirit. I too know what I want to do.

In every situation I've got a fair idea as to what the good is. My problem is knowing what to do and doing it are two distinct things. Verses 14 through to 28 are not the easiest verses of scripture to expound.

And so what I've done, I keep saying 28 actually, it never got to 28 did it? 25. What I have done is I've sifted through these verses hour after hour, I'm not exaggerating. And I'm bringing to you now what I claim to find within these verses in terms of four pictures which focus, fade, refocus, fade, focus, fade and refocus again.

And I think that what I discover here can be proven to be the teaching of the Apostle Paul and will help to make plain the repetitive nature of what he has to say in these verses. So here is Paul, here is you, here is Mr Everyman in terms of a Christian struggling with, identifying himself as he seeks to live for the Lord Jesus Christ. The first picture, if you like that I see, I've entitled A Puzzle Which Baffles Me.

Verse 14 through to verse 21, five times the Apostle Paul tells us, I do not understand myself. NIV puts it, I do not even acknowledge my actions as my own. Someone has said that the most common disease that there is in the world today is eye disease.

That's a clever pun, eye disease. A friend Israeli said, talk to a man about himself and you'll find that he's entranced and will listen for hours. D.L. Moody said, I have had more trouble with D.L. Moody than with any other man.

Now this is what Paul is saying here, is it not? Let me rapidly read the 15th and 16th verses. 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. And so he continues.

You see, I was going to give you an example from the psychology of Freud, but I think that would take too long and maybe it would lose some of you. Here is just the logic of the Apostle Paul. Within his life he finds two principles, the old nature and the new nature.

The old nature indicates him at his worst, the new nature indicates him at his best. And he discovers himself, generally speaking, to be in between the two extremes and sometimes he's at the worst extreme rather than at the best extreme. I don't believe that you live your life always at the lowest extreme, but I do think that you have the same frustrations as I, that you want to move to be the best and you're not always capable of achieving that goal.

And it's a puzzle which baffles the Apostle Paul, and it's a puzzle which baffles many of us here. It's not that Paul didn't have holy desires, he knew what he wanted to do. I could say hand over my heart there is nothing in this world that I want to be more than this, a holy man.

If that sounds pious then I'm sorry, but it is true. I know what I want to be, but what baffles me is knowing that and being honest about it, I find it so very difficult to achieve. A puzzle which baffles me, that's the first picture I see.

Here's the next one as that one fades. The tenant who indwells me. Now that's easy for us to understand, I think, to grasp hold of.

Look at verse 8 for a moment, higher up the chapter obviously. He talks about sin does the Apostle and he personalises it. He talks about sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.

He almost thinks of sin in terms of a person, does he not? Look at the 11th verse. For sin seized the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death, through the commandment finished me. You see, the Apostle sees sin personalised.

And he also sees goodness personalised. So, we've got this image. Let's imagine that you own a flat, alright? And there are two possible tenants.

There's a reliable tenant and there is a tenant who will use the flat improperly. And in your wisdom, you know full well that you ought to get the good tenant in. You'll have no problems with him.

But unfortunately, the bad tenant got in first. And you don't seem to be able to get him out. He has squatter's rights, so to speak.

Now, that's the problem. The Apostle is identifying and developing in the 17th verse of our chapter. As it is no longer I myself who do it, it is sin living in me.

You see, the bad tenant has got in. And it seems as though you can't shift him. Drop down to 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. So, this is the problem. The puzzle which baffles the Apostle.

The puzzle which baffles me. The tenant who indwells me. And that leads him on to talk about, in the phraseology that he uses, the labourer who ruins me.

Maybe that's an even easier picture to grasp. A labourer. Look at verse 21, will you? Here is the language of the workman.

So, I find this law at work. See the verb there? At work. Drop down to verse 23.

I see another law at work in the members of my body. What he has here is a building site. And he doesn't like what's happening.

Prince Charles is not very impressed. The landscape in London. I think he's dead right, actually.

I think they've ruined London. It's almost obscene. And to have allowed Wren's masterpiece to have been eclipsed by those ugly offices, skyscrapers which look like huge filing boxes.

Have you ever noticed how obsessed architects are with the imagery of a filing box? I wonder when they put up blocks of flats, people in my home city in Sheffield are jumping out of the 20th story. It would drive me mad, too. People weren't made to be housed in those sort of conditions.

Now, the apostle here has the building site in perspective. And he's moved us on to the idea of a bad workman as well as the idea of good plans. The bad workman comes on the scene.

There might well be the warning sign, danger, man at work, the wrong man. Again, go back to verse 23 if you've lost the point, if you've lost the place. I see another law at work in the member of my body.

Go back to verse 21. So I find this law at work when I want to do good. Evil is right there.

This is sabotage. That's an interesting word, sabotage. It's not Greek, it's French actually, at least the derivative.

It derives from the French sabot, which means shoe. And the idea is of throwing a shoe into machinery to stop the machinery from working properly. And there's sabotage here on this building site, if you please.

Now, look, there's nothing matter with the plans whatsoever. Look at verse 22. Prince Charles would have been delighted.

In my inner being, I delight in God's law. I know what the plans are and how good they will be if they are put into effect. But you've got this wretched, bad workman who's causing the whole thing to be jerry-built, who's preventing the erecting of a fine, splendid edifice.

As the architect, we can't blame the architect in this instance. We have to blame the workman, the laborer. The design that the architect wants to come into realization, it doesn't because of this bad, bad laborer.

So here's the apostle. He speaks about himself. The problem which puzzles me.

The tenant who indwells me. And that picture fades and refocuses with the laborer who ruins me. And then finally, the war which preoccupies me.

It's always a tragedy when there's a war, isn't it? Look at verse 23. 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. If there's a war, there are two opposing sides, not so? And one endeavors to outmaneuver the other.

War is always tragic because it means, of course, the loss of life. And the tragedy here is that the party that causes the war seems to be winning every skirmish. And the tragedy peaks when you begin to realize that the theater of war is not external, it's internal.

Look again at verse 23. I see another law at work in the members of my body. Not talking about the members of the church.

Not talking about a community here. He's isolating himself. He's speaking especially of his own soul's condition.

Within my being, there is a war. And the war is being lost. 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.

If you put all this together, then the picture does stand out. As I mentioned 20 minutes or so ago, it's one of the most somber, sobering pictures in the Bible. But remember this.

The apostle has not in all his reasoning made reference to one very vital factor in Christian experience. He's made no reference at all to the Holy Spirit. He's going to.

He's going to make an extensive statement about the doctrine of the Spirit in the 8th chapter. Why has the apostle not mentioned the Holy Spirit in these verses? Because, you see, he's underlying the point that I was trying to emphasize right at the beginning. You cannot free yourself from unbelief by your own initiative.

Your will is not free. It is the sovereign grace of God that moves into your personality and causes you to find the freedom that there is in Christ. He causes the scales to fall off your eyes.

Salvation has God as its originator and all the glory shall go to the Lord. Now, not only is your salvation traceable back to the Lord, but your preservation. I can only do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I know what it is to start well in the Spirit and move into the realm of the flesh. Believing that somehow, because I've got so many years clocked up as a Christian, I can depend upon my own resources. I can't.

Once I try to do that, then all these pictures start to haunt me as I discover that my own abilities render me incapable of being the sort of person that God wants me to be. And so I cry out, and sometimes I have actually done this, Oh, wretched man that I am! I know what I want to be. I know to whom I belong.

And yet I can't seem to acquire that standard of holiness that I yearn for. And the answer comes back, that when I'm driven to a state of confessing my wretchedness, then my eyes are turned again to the great provision that God makes in the Gospel. Thanks be to God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Of course you can't cope on your own. God never intended you to cope on your own. Your experience of 20 years ago when you became a Christian or whatever it is, is not sufficient for you to continue today.

You need constantly to be going to the bank of heaven and drawing from the resources that are yours under the signature of Jesus Christ and knowing the infilling of the Holy Spirit. The only solution, the only antidote to the problem that you've got in verse 14 through to verse 25 is what follows in chapter 8. When Jacob was at Peniel, you remember the time came during that long vigil in the presence of an assailant that he believed later on he came to realize was God. The only way in which Jacob could know any real respite, any relief was by submitting to a superior power, wasn't it? Don't you see that's exactly the same as far as you and I are concerned? Submitting to the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Says the great John Owen, we have no power from God unless we live in the persuasion that we have none of our own. We have no power from God unless we live in the persuasion that we have none of our own. Jesus for us is all our righteousness.

Jesus in us is all our strength in an ungodly world. How do you cope with the problem of I? Well, the old man said as he was talking to his friend, you draw a line across the I and you make the I into a cross and you realize that you're crucified with Christ. You're a dead man and a dead man desperately needs, obviously, life for him to be raised from the dead.

He needs power. It's the power of the Holy Spirit and it's only as you and I know the fullness of the Spirit day by day and week by week that we can be saved from the nightmare that is almost perpetual for some Christians of finding themselves in the experience set out so dramatically in these verses. So I conclude my argument is that this passage describes Christian experience more often than not.

But my application is not pessimistic. It's optimistic. Jacob, after Peniel, moved out into the light of a new day.

Remember how in Genesis we're told that the sun starts to rise and Jacob limps away into the horizon where there's lightning and lightning becoming more and more bright as he moves into it. So from the seventh chapter of Romans, the darkness of that chapter, you move into the eighth where there's light and even more light where there's strength and even more strength. Who can deliver a Christian from the wretchedness he feels when he knows he's not living as God would have him to live? The answer is Jesus Christ can do it by the power of the Spirit and not just an academic thing.

It's a felt thing. It must consume the whole of our nature. That's why for the 17 years I've been here at the TAB, I have never agreed to teaching the doctrine of the Spirit in terms of pure theology.

I must encourage you. I must entice you. I must persuade you into knowing the fullness, the mighty baptism, the glorious overwhelming of the Spirit of God for that and only that is the antidote for us when we find ourselves in the situation which Paul describes in these verses.

Thank God for the honesty of Paul. Thank God for the way the Word applies to us and we can identify with the experience of God's beloved servant. Let's pray.

Just a moment to prayerfully reflect on that what I've tried to share which I've tried to share Then we'll sing a hymn and then if any friends want to leave at this juncture feel quite free to do so.