Romans 7:14-20

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7. It's not the whole rest of chapter 7. I'm sorry. We'll finish up next week.
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There's chapter 7 verses 14 through 25 split between this week and next week.
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So technically today is 14 through... Now as we did last week,
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I am going to read back through chapter 7 so that we have proper context.
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As we go through, I want you to pay attention to the tenses that Paul is using throughout the whole chapter, but more especially in 14 through 25.
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The reason that this is important I will discuss here in just a little bit, but pay attention to where he's using past tense and present tense and future tense.
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It will help give you an idea of when in Paul's life he's talking about.
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Starting in verse 1, For do you not know, brothers, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?
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For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives.
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But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.
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But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. And if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.
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Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
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For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
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But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the
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Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. Now then,
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I'm sorry, what then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law,
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I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet, if the law had not said, you shall not covet.
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But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.
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For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died.
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The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.
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So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good.
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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.
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For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
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For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what
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I want, but I do the very thing that I hate. Now, if I do what
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I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer
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I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
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For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what
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I keep doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer
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I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when
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I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, 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.
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Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God in my mind, but with my flesh
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I serve the law of sin. Moving back to verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
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Paul here makes this statement for we. Okay, so who is the we?
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To who he is referring? Well, the proper context of Romans, obviously he is talking to the church in Rome, and because God has preserved the
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Scriptures, he is obviously speaking to us as well. We know the original audience.
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We know the current audience. So we know that he's talking to saints. We know the law of God.
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It is written on our hearts. We have it in our Scriptures. It is holy.
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It is good because it comes from God himself. It not only covers the things that we carry out on our flesh, but also the sins that we commit in our minds and in our hearts.
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It is most definitely a real thing. It is just not a tangible one.
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Yes, we can touch the Scriptures, but how do you touch a law?
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We do have things that are similar that can be used as examples, such as gravity or Newton's Third Law.
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These are also laws that govern the universe, but they're much, much lower than God's law.
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I'm not here to give a lesson about physics, but needless to say, the law of God is more real than you or I, even though we cannot see it.
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It is higher. It is a reflection of God's own character.
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It's perfection. He says, but the law is spiritual, but Paul says that I am of the flesh.
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Notice he says, I am, not I was or will be.
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I am current as of his writing of this letter.
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He is of the flesh, sold under sin.
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What Paul is saying is that the law is up here, and he is here, way down here, and even in his current condition as a justified believer, an apostle of Christ Jesus, he still struggles to be obedient to it.
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While the condemnation of the saints by the law is removed through the work in person of Jesus, sin and death, they no longer have a hold over us as they once did, but we still live in a world, in God's world, where we strive to be obedient to the law because of our love for Him.
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But because we live in the world, we are still under temptation, the corruption of our flesh.
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He continues in verse 15, for I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do, again notice,
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I do not do what I want, which is to obey the law of God, but I do the very thing
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I hate, which is sin. If you cannot identify with what
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Paul is talking about, we need to have a conversation after we get done here.
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We should all be able to identify. In verse 16 he says, now if I do what
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I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good, so now it is no longer
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I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. Paul is saying that if he can notice that he is in agreement with the law of God and wants to be obedient, and yet he is sinning, and he knows that he doesn't want to sin, but he's doing that which is contrary to the inner man, to his obedience, that there's something else at play.
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Something else is going on, and he concludes rightly that it must be sin present in his fleshly body.
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His spirit has been made new. He's indwelt with the Holy Spirit. So why is the sin still here?
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It is as he said before in chapter 6, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body and make you obey its passions.
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He's speaking to saints. Do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
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You've been made new. Why would you ever present yourself as instruments of sin?
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Why is Paul struggling with this? It is a constant condition that every saint must struggle with.
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There is still that desire for sin in our flesh, and while Paul wants to be able to be obedient, wants more than anything to be obedient to God, there's a part of him that is still in rebellion.
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He's fighting every day. We fight every day. It's an ongoing condition that we will have until the day that we are called home.
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This is why we do the things that we do that aid us. This is why we read the
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Word daily, why we pray daily, consistently, why we make a constant effort to devote ourselves to the things of God.
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We join other biblical churches with other saints so that they can help us and we can help them.
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This is why church discipline, why God instituted church discipline. This is all a part of that fight, a part of the war that goes on inside of us.
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We praise God that He has blessed us with the means to fight it. In 18, he says,
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This is something that all of us should have expressed at one point or another. How can
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I do anything, especially once convicted? When the
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Holy Spirit put the conviction of the law upon you and you're struggling with it, how can
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I possibly be obedient? Wretched man that I am, or woman, how?
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That immediate desire for obedience and yet the recognition of what you've done. Paul is still saying as an apostle, nothing good dwells in his flesh.
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For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. Same sentiment that we all share.
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For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what
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I keep doing. How many times have you recognized sin and yet you know that it's sin.
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You know you ought not do it, and yet in a moment, you've done it.
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Notice he says doing. Again, a present tense verb.
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Paul then reiterates in verse 16 and verse 20.
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Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer
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I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. Paul in verse 20 is not releasing anyone including himself from the responsibility of committing sin.
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That is called antinomianism, and we have covered that to great length and will continue to cover it at great length so long as we exegete the word here, but rather he is expressing a truth that we all struggle with, which is our personal assurance.
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Most people, most saints, at some point in their lives will struggle with assurance.
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One of the things to take away from this is the fact that Paul is struggling with his own sin.
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Number one, if Paul is struggling with his sin, rest assured all of the other saints will struggle with theirs.
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There is only one sinless one who has ever been, but we all struggle with this.
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We sin. Sometimes we deal with habitual sin, which the church is there to help us with, call us out for, and with the help of the
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Holy Spirit, He brings us to conviction and repentance, but we all struggle with it.
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But he is also saying that the fact that he recognizes that he is sinning is an assurance in and of itself.
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Before him, I, you, before our justification, before conviction, before being indwelt with the
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Holy Spirit, we carried on in our sin blatantly with disregard.
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What? Oh man, I did something wrong. Whatever. That was the basis of our feeling about it.
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I know something we ought not do, but you know, whatever. Now when you do those things, you recognize what they are.
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Do you think that if you weren't justified, indwelt with the Holy Spirit, that he would convict you of that thing you've done?
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That you would feel a godly sorrow for it? That in and of itself is an assurance.
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Now, he delights in the law and has a real desire to be obedient.
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Whereas before, Paul kept the law because he was a Pharisee. It was for his own merit.
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Now he truly wants to be obedient because he loves
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God as we do. Why am
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I making such a fuss about the tenses that Paul is using here? Just a small history lesson real fast.
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I'll make it quick, I promise. The reason that you will hear people make a fuss about these verses is because a teaching arose in the 19th century that was based on the teachings of John Wesley, which were taken by people like Phoebe Palmer and developed into what we call now the
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Holiness Movement. This may sound familiar to some people, but this doctrine teaches that there is a second work of grace.
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It is experiential, wherein which the believer can achieve a state of sinlessness or holiness in this life.
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This teaching became so popular that led to the formation of the Holiness Movement and thusly churches, including the
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Pentecostal Holiness Church. I'm sure you are familiar with the Church of God, Church of the
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Nazarene, which is its largest proponent, and the
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Salvation Army, even the
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Wesleyan Church. Some folks even taught that there were three blessings.
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The first was to justify, the second was to completely sanctify, and the third blessing, or the
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Pentecostal blessing, was the bestowing of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the apostolic gifts.
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Admiral Blackman Crumpler brought this teaching to North Carolina in 1896 and how popular it is, but do not make this mistake of assuming that this teaching is gone.
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It is not. It infiltrated other churches, many
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Baptist churches. Today it is better known as the spirit -filled life.
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You may have heard books with that terminology in it. What they are teaching is that there is first conviction and justification, and that in that there are two classes of Christians.
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All Christians go through the blessing of justification, right?
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We are all justified, and those pursue holiness, pursue obedience through the reading of the
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Word, through prayer, through attending the church, all in an effort to be more obedient, but there's also a higher class of Christians that have been giving a second blessing.
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They are sinless. R .C. Sproul has a story about meeting a seventeen -year -old who professed sinlessness, and in his conversation with this young man,
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Sproul asked him if he thought that for some reason he had achieved a higher holiness than Paul, who we just read, and the young man's answer was yes.
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This is not something that is discussed a lot, but the reason I bring it up is because this area, our town, is saturated with this teaching.
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It serves only to cause harm, and the idea that there are two different classes of Christian in the world is a lie from the pit of hell.
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It serves only to cause harm. There is no chasing sinlessness in this life.
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It will not happen. So saith the Word of God. If Paul cannot achieve sinlessness in his earthly life, how arrogant you must be to believe that you can achieve it.
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The other issue is that the teachers and proponents of this doctrine now, today, in the holiness movement, many of them, not all, but many of them, profess that it is through secret knowledge that you can obtain the second blessing.
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Well, that's Gnosticism, which is like a third century heresy, the whole shebang of Gnosticism.
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But here's the rub. Here's the issue when someone says, oh, I know something you don't know.
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Okay, this is how you should respond. If the Word of God is sufficient, if the
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Word of God is sufficient, then there is no secret that you can hold. Not a one.
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If it's written down, guess what? Not a secret. So they either have a convoluted idea of what the
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Scripture says, or they've made something up, and they're lying to you. Odds are, if someone tells you they have secret knowledge from God, they're lying to you.
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The issue remains that when we read in proper context the Scriptures, there is no way that you can come to this conclusion of a second or a third blessing.
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Not in its proper context. Let Scripture interpret Scripture.
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How do we view a verse in Romans? Through the chapter in Romans. How do we view the chapter?
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Through the book. How do we view the book? From the Testament. How do we view the
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Testament? Through the lens of the rest of Holy Scripture. The fact that this is expressed, what
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Paul is expressing, a struggle. It is, as I said before, the experience of all saints who have ever lived and ever will live.
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What a gift it is that God has shared Paul's experience with us. An encouragement.
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What an encouragement it is to know that even those we hold in high esteem, such as Paul, Spurgeon, Athanasius, pick a saint.
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Pick an early church father. Pick a teacher today.
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None of us are immune. No one is from this struggle. You are not alone.
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This is the reason that you join a local church. You're not alone even when you're by yourself.
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If you're a saint, you're in what with the Holy Spirit. He's doing the work, and he does not fail.
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But we join with others like us so that we can be there for one another. The sinlessness that some misinterpret from this passage.
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While unachievable in this life, we will have in the next, and we are assured and reassured of that.
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We'll continue with verse 21 next week, but I'll leave you with Paul's words from Philippians chapter 3 verses 13 and 14.
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Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do.
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Forget what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.
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I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.
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While we do have the blessing of the remembrance of our sin and the work that Christ has done in us, we ought not dwell in it.
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We're to press forward, strive to be more obedient, be more thankful as the
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Holy Spirit continuously transforms us into the image of God. Thank you.