Romans No.15 Struggling with Sin

Thank you for coming. Glad you made it. We know it's difficult to make it for any specific time when you've got to battle through traffic and what have you, but we really are grateful for your company.

Those who came earlier this evening and set up a good hour of prayer, many thanks to them. And those who were with us at the crack of dawn at our earlier prayer meeting this morning, again, many thanks to you. I trust that it's been a good day as we committed one another to the Lord.

Now we're coming to what is, in effect, our 15th study from the Book of Romans. I would love to believe that you have remembered all the previous 14, but as we had quite a long time lapse, then though you'll not have recalled my notes, nonetheless, many of you have some idea as to the whole drift of this great letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church at Rome, perhaps the greatest treatise on the Gospel in the whole of the Bible. We pick up our reading from the 11th verse of this chapter.

Actually, we'll pick up the reading from verse 14 of this chapter. I think that's wrong there in the notes, verse 14. We know that the law is spiritual, that 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 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. Somebody wrote me a letter some months ago, a very close dear friend actually, and in the letter was this sentence.

Actually it was an apology. And the sentence that took my attention was this, I have looked within, I have looked within, and the apology followed. And at first glance I thought, well that's a very quaint expression isn't it, to look within.

It's got something of a sort of Victorian ring. And then as I contemplated that comment further, in the light of this particular passage of scripture, it seems to me that it illustrates what Paul is doing. He's looking within, he's looking at his own spiritual life, and he's finding certain things that he's sorry for.

One of the reasons why I reckon the Book of Psalms is amongst the most popular books of the Old Testament is because the psalmist often looks within, not so? He will tell you how he feels. He'll also tell you where he goes wrong. And the reason why people like ourselves love the Book of Psalms is because we too go wrong.

And we're glad sometimes, publicly, when a preacher will identify with a congregation and say, this is my weakness, this is where I find difficulty. Now the apostle Paul is not often persuaded to be autobiographical in writing his letters. In other words, he doesn't often speak about himself.

Occasionally he'll lift the curtain up and he'll tell us a bit about what he's doing. As, for example, in the Corinthian epistles. But here in Romans, you get another exception to the rule.

When he personalises the whole of his argument, and time and time again he refers to what he is doing. I am unspiritual, I do not understand what I do, and so on and so forth. Here, if you like, is the confession of the apostle Paul.

And will you notice this, that when he makes his confession, he doesn't put up an excuse. I am what I am because, well, I was badly treated when I was a kid. I am what I am because I bumped myself on my head when I was seven years of age.

I am what I am because of, well, bad treatment in my childhood. It's really fate. I'm controlled by the stars.

101 categories of excuses that sometimes moderns give to explain human behaviour are completely bypassed by Paul, who names sin for what it is. To quote Matthew Henry, a brat that cannot be tamed. A brat that cannot be tamed.

And he recognises sin in his own life, and it's refreshing to discover he doesn't blame anyone else but himself. And that's a good starting point for you and me when we look into our own lives. If you go on the Downs, on a clear day you see the landscape.

The beauty of Sussex stretching backwards north, stretching out south and eventually running into the sea. The landscape. Have you ever thought that there should be a word in the English language called the in-scape? The landscape, outwards.

The in-scape, inwards. It's easier to look outwardly at nature than what it is to look inwardly at your own nature. And it seems to me that this is what the Apostle Paul is now doing.

But there are those Christians who have not been able to stomach the contention that what the Apostle Paul describes in the seventh chapter could possibly be his experience as a Christian. We are told, you see, that Christians don't live like that. They can't speak in terms of constant defeat when temptation comes.

It's somewhat a bleak passage. It's somewhat pessimistic. Here is the mighty Apostle Paul.

He goes around the Roman Empire. He plants churches here, there and everywhere. He had a remarkable conversion.

Not so. How could he possibly then be describing his own in-scape in terms of Roman 7? It must surely be Paul going back to his pre-conversion days. Because Christians live in Romans 8. We're filled with the Spirit.

We're always rejoicing. I'm H-A-P-P-Y. I let Jesus in.

That changed everything. Well, it's nice. It's optimistic.

And in one sense, there's biblical promises to justify this. But it does fall a little bit hollow on our ears when we're in moments of honesty, contrasting what we ought to be and what we are. There are times when we're in Romans 8. There are times when we're in Romans 7. It seems to me that we sort of live between the two chapters.

And sometimes we're in Romans 7 more often than we ought to be. You see, there's no possibility applying pure logic that Paul can be dealing with his pre-conversion days. Even the tenses nail that argument.

We know that the law is spiritual. But I am unspiritual. Not I was unspiritual.

Sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. I am.

I do not understand what I am doing. It's present continuous all the way through. And what's more, drop your eyes down to the verse that speaks about delighting in God's law.

Look at verse 22. In my inner being, I delight in God's law. Does that describe a man before he's converted? Did you delight in God's law before you were converted? Did you really know what God's law was before you were converted? No, logic demands us to conclude that the Apostle Paul is here describing himself in his Christian days.

Listen to this. Alexander White, great Scottish preacher. All the good preachers come from Scotland.

He says this. He's writing Turn of the Century. And he's talking about the books that come off the bookseller's lists and are sent to him for review or for purchase.

He says, As often as my attentive bookseller sends me on approval a new commentary on Romans, I immediately turn to the seventh chapter. And if the commentator sets up a man of straw in the seventh chapter, I immediately shut the book. I at once send the book back and say, No, thank you.

And here's the Scottish bit. That is not the man for my hard-earned money. Paul's dealing with his conditions as a Christian and the problems that he faces.

It's not true to experience for us to say that the Christian is always on cloud seven, is it? It's not true to the autobiographies of great Christian men and women in the past. So what have you got here? Well, you've got a man who's uncomfortable because he's been convicted. Says Charles Simeon, an Anglican preacher whose pulpit was in Cambridge, and he preached there for 40 years or so.

The very first and indispensable sign of regeneration is self-loathing and abhorrence. The very first and indispensable sign of regeneration is self-loathing and abhorrence. And you're getting that with the apostle here, aren't you? When he talks about doing what he doesn't want to do and hating the actions as a result that he engages in.

Yes, this is a very dark passage of Scripture, my friends. The apostle says, I'm unspiritual. He says, I hate what I do.

He tells us, nothing good lives in me. Now, when you're in that sort of condition, when you recognize that sort of condition, in one sense, it's an advantage. You say, what do you mean? Well, when you go to the doctor, when you've come back from Portugal with a suntan, and you're looking at the peak of health, you go to the doctor when you're sick.

You've got a pain. Your lumbago is troubling you, or whatever. So you go to the doctor, and you seek his help.

Now, don't you see that when a person recognizes that spiritually they're not all that they should be, and they've got these inattentions between what they are and what they want to be, in effect, it's a summons for the doctor. Jesus always responds to the person who says, help. Blind Bartimaeus takes up his stand in Jericho, waits for Jesus to pass by, and says, Son of David, have mercy on me.

Here's a woman who's got rid of much of her money, consulting doctors to help her with her constant hemorrhaging. She is not improved one whit. The Lord Jesus comes by, and she touches the hem of his garment.

Help! Peter clambers out of the boat with that sort of confidence that we expect of Peter, but he's not quite thought through the problems of walking on water. And when the problems hit him, along with the waves, he starts to sink. And he shouts, help! And Jesus opens his arms and receives him.

Here's a man in the last throes of death. He's on the cross. Alongside him is none other than the Lord Jesus.

Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Help! The Lord Jesus always responds to the man who shouts, help! And it seems to me that this is summarizing the apostle. He recognizes there are many times in his Christian life when he does need help.

And when you cry for help, the Lord Jesus is very quick to respond and give you the aid that you require. Let me quote you another favorite preacher of mine, Thomas Watson. He's 300 years old.

He says, it is part of our worthiness to see our own unworthiness. You see, when you recognize you're not all that you should be, in one sense you can take comfort, because then you're in a condition that the Lord Jesus can come alongside and aid and assist you. So although this is a very dark passage, in one sense we are justified in going almost to the end of the passage and to realize that there is light at the end.

Because in the 25th verse, you find the apostle Paul saying, thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. In your notes, which you don't need to refer to just at the moment, I mention what you would never do if you were reading Agatha Christie. You never read the last chapter first, it ruins it.

That's why my wife loves Agatha Christie and I can't stand it, because I always read the last chapters of books and the last paragraphs of articles first. So when you get to this bleak passage of scripture, and it seems very dure and very depressing, note that at the end of the tunnel the apostle is saying, thanks be to God. And later on in the opening verse of the next chapter, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The help that he enlists is quickly dispatched by the Savior. So let's apply ourselves to the text for a moment. And if you had a chance to do any homework, you might have discovered, if you read slowly, that the 14th, 15th and 16th verses, and 17th actually, are repeated, perhaps not word for word, but certainly sense for sense, in the 18th, 19th and 20th verses.

He will tell us twice what he knows about himself. Look at verse 14. I am unspiritual.

Verse 18. I know that nothing good lives in me, in my sinful nature. He'll tell us about the frustration that results from that.

Verse 15. I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do. Look, will you, at verse 19.

For what I do is not the good I want to do, no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Isn't that frustration? And what's his explanation? Well, look, will you, at the 20th verse. If I do not do what I want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

And back to verse 15, where he tells us more or less the same. 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 forth. Verse 17.

It is sin living in me. So, to quote John Starr. Here is a man who longs to do good, he hates to do evil, he hates it with a holy hatred, and if he does sin, it is against his mind, his will, his consent, it is against the whole tenor of his life.

Herein lies the conflict of the Christian, says John Starr. Why are you so troubled, though? Why are you so troubled when you're not what you should be? Let me pan out an illustration which I'm bending a little bit. It's not original.

Imagine a lady who's a housekeeper. The man's got no one to look after the home, so he employs this housekeeper. She's good.

She makes a good pot of tea. So we'd say in Yorkshire, she mashes it well. As you would say down here, she brews it.

She's good about the kitchen. She keeps the place in apple pie order, to use another Yorkshire expression. But then one day, this man who's employed her, because she came to him, first of all, without a contract, he just enlisted her, paid her, but he didn't quite tell her what to do.

He just left it to her initiative. Then one day, he starts to write down his regulations, you see, and he gives her sort of a job description, and he pins it up on the kitchen wall. She doesn't like that too much.

And occasionally, she doesn't quite fulfil what he's put on the kitchen wall. In fact, the truth of the matter is that she could be dismissed from time to time because she's broken the regulations that he is now wanting to enforce. But he doesn't dismiss her.

In fact, he's a very wonderful employer. It becomes patently obvious to this woman, as time goes by, that actually her employer loves her. And she discovers that she too loves him.

And so the happy day comes. They walk down the centre aisle of Worthing Tabernacle. Yet another Saturday has been devoured as far as my diary is concerned, and I marry them.

Marital bliss is their lot from now on. She goes home. She does exactly the same sort of duty, but it's a different perspective, isn't it? And if she displeases her husband, because she's not quite come up to what he really wants of her, she now feels very hurt and very upset on the basis that she loves him.

Now, don't you understand my little parable, which, as I said, I've extended somewhat because I think it makes it even that much more plain. In one sense, you've got the whole history of man and the relationship to God in my parable. Man lives without the commandments.

He's on planet Earth. If you like, he's the housekeeper. And then the Ten Commandments are given, and he reads them, and he doesn't like some of them, so he doesn't keep them all.

And yet God, in his grace, nonetheless, allows this housekeeper to continue on planet Earth. And suddenly, there is a discovery, as far as the housekeeper is concerned, that this God loves him so much he sent Jesus to die for him. There's a love match, conversion.

Call it what you will. And the whole perspective has changed. Now, does that not illustrate your conversion? Why do you get upset because you've sinned? Not because you've broken the law of God in and of itself, though that will hurt you actually more than it will hurt the law.

The law will still remain. God's law is fixed. It's unmovable.

But it's not just because you've attempted to break the law. You love him, and you've let him down. Oh, wretched person that I am, that I should do that to the one who has loved me so much.

You see, this is Paul's dilemma, isn't it? And this is why you can associate yourself with my little parable of the housekeeper, because it speaks of you. It speaks of me. And so here is the apostle.

And in effect, he acknowledges that he's the man who is wrong. As we acknowledge, just interpreting my little story, if we had one of the Old Testament prophets here, he'd say, Thou art the man. And we would have to agree that that is indeed correct.

So we drop down to the 21st verse and onwards. And what did we discover there? Well, the identification of the problem. What is the problem? Where is it contained? Well, it's contained, verse 23, in the members of my body.

I see another law at work in the members of my body. Now look back to verse 21, will you? Or rather, verse 22, because there the apostle talks about in my inner being, I delight in God's law. This is a tension, you see.

In my inner being, in my mind, in my will, I delight in God's law. I want to do God's law. But there is that about me, my flesh, the members of my body, which I find very, very difficult to control.

There's a principle in my body that seems to urge me to do things that I know that are wrong. I delight in this, but this is what I do. I hurt the one who I love.

And as a result, I'm in a constant state of being upset at my own inability to give to him what he really deserves and what I wish to make a present to him day by day in terms of fidelity and consistency. You see, when you feed your mind, as you folk do at the tab so much, as you read your Bible, as you listen to exposition of Scripture, as you sing songs, as you come around the Lord's table, when you feed your mind, then you're glory, don't you, in God, his gracious provisions for you and for me? And that's wonderful. But in one sense, you're making the situation... Don't misunderstand this.

Listen to me carefully or else you'll make a wrong conclusion. In one sense, you make the situation worse because you extol the greatness of God and the provisions of God. You know about the Lord Jesus.

You love the Lord Jesus. You love his table. You love his word.

And then when it's been so easy to be holy in the tab, you go back on a Sunday night and you've got a problem with your wife and she's got one with you. Or on a Monday, Tuesday, frustration sets in and you react in a way that you know you shouldn't react. Within your body, there seems to be these traits, these principles that take over.

And so you've got these two tensions within you. This is what the apostle Paul says. He talks in terms of trying in some way, trying in some way to come to terms with this.

Now, people have attempted. They've attempted to minimize the effect of the body on the spirit. See, this is basically the reason why there were hermits and monks, the whole history of monasticism.

You've heard about penances that the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church to this day engages in. Well, in one sense, although I think these are aberrations, that means I think these are misguided methods. I can appreciate the reason why they came about.

The idea was to subdue the flesh. So you wear your hair shirt. Here's George Whitefield.

He's in Oxford. And he's got no peace at all. He's got the same dilemma a couple hundred years later as Martin Luther had.

Martin Luther was concerned to find a gracious God. And he was concerned to subdue his flesh. And he used to whip himself in the monastery.

To us, that seems almost disgusting. But he did it for this reason. He wanted to bring his body under subjection.

George Whitefield used to go around in the cold, freezing air of Oxford in the month of January in the early morning till his skin was almost black with cold, somehow trying to find by this self-inflicted penance a way in which he could subdue his own fleshly nature and be pleasing in the sight of God. Now, you can understand these men doing that sort of thing if you can comprehend what Paul means when in anguish he cries out, verse 24, What a wretched man I am! Do you ever feel wretched? Sometimes I think we Protestants are overcritical on Catholics and their aberrations historically. I appreciate why some of them did what they did do.

And I wish that we evangelicals would not sponge so much on grace that we lessen the consequences of sin in our own spiritual disposition and in the reaction of God to sin. It is not a light thing. What a wretched man I am, says the apostle, who will rescue me from this body of death.

Well, we finish with a light at the end of the tunnel. Here are two exclamations. Verse 24, What a wretched man I am! Exclamation.

Verse 25, Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! An exclamation. You see, there is deliverance, isn't there? As far as our body is concerned, there is going to be ultimate deliverance. One day our body is going to be changed into His glorious body.

I am looking forward to that, aren't you? No more aches, no more pains, no more short-sightedness. Our body, like His glorious body, no more urges that are difficult to control. How wonderful! That is going to happen one day.

But the aid that Jesus offers, because we have got the picture of us shouting help, is never just a long-term promise. It is not just pie in the sky when you die. Oh, don't let that criticism that some people direct towards as robbers of the glory that we have of our expectation of heaven.

But you see, there is more immediate help available. One thing missing from chapter 7 of Romans is any reference to the Holy Spirit and the resolution of our problems. The aid that the Lord extends to us is through the Holy Ghost who the Savior sends as He returns to heaven so that you and I might have the empowering to be able to cope with the problems of the flesh.

So, here is Paul, and he talks to us about the struggle that we have with sin. He spells it out well. He spells it out darkly.

He spells it out honestly. But he goes on to tell us this, that there is victory, not just in the future, but right now, as we open our hearts and lives more to the fullness of His Spirit so that what we cannot do on our own we can do by His grace. But for me to continue to show you that would be for me to eat into the next study.

And I don't want to do that because I want you to come to the next study in about three weeks' time. So let's now just commit ourselves afresh to the Lord. And would you look out, Jeanette, the song, When Peace Like a River Attendeth My Way.

We'll sing that in a moment. I think it's in When Peace Like a River. You could switch the lights out in the middle here.

It will help us to see the words. They're rather small there. Middle light.

Middle on. Okay? Let's stand and sing. When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever my lot, the heart will know.

It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul, with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul.

The Satan should laugh if the trial should come. Let his lust assurance control, that Christ hath regarded my helpless estate, and hath shed his own blood for my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul, with my soul.

It is well, it is well with my soul. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious Lord, my sin not in part but for all, is knelt on his cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul, my soul.

It is well with me, be it Christ, be it Christ, hence to reign. If God and above me shall rule, no pain shall be mine, for in death, as in life, thou wilt whisper thy peace to my soul. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul, my soul.

It is well, it is well with my soul, with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious Lord, my sin not in part but for all, is knelt on his cross, and I bear it no more.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. The ladies. It is well.

The men. It is well. With my soul.

With my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul.