Getting Sin Right & Giving the Gospel

So we really need to take notice of what Paul is describing here, that our sinful nature, our fleshly passions are what drive us to sin, and the law is good, and spiritual, and right, and by it our sins are brought to light and exposed.

So Paul is describing an internal conflict, but not merely an internal one, but a conflict of the spirit against the flesh. In his mind, he agrees with the law of God, the commands of God, that they should be obeyed and fulfilled, but his flesh fights him and produces sinful acts.

That is what he means by, 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, and that he serves the law of God with his mind, but with his flesh serves the law of sin.

Now here is the way Ms. Edwards describes the conflict.

So we have to know, because we like to run to the no condemnation, but there's other things that's happening y 'all, especially in Romans chapter 7. It's one of my favorite passages, because he's just a little bit scatterbrained, and I can relate to that.

So he's talking about like, hey, the things that I want to do, I don't do, things I know I should do. It's kind of like, I know I should not have the donut, but then the donut has a whisper, and it's like, yes, it won't be that bad.

Remember, you ate a salad yesterday. That's what happens, right? And you're like, yeah, the salad is going to go in, and with the donut, it's going to win. And so we start telling ourselves stuff, because there's an internal war being waged.

That's what's happening. And Paul is saying the same thing happens in our spiritual life. I want to do right things, because when you get saved, the Holy Spirit's in there telling you, you got to do the right thing, but your flesh is like,.

This wrong thing feels good. Okay, no, the internal struggle is not like justifying eating something that is bad for you. It's the struggle not to sin, because sin is rebellion against the God who created us, against the divine man who lived and died for us, and it quenches the spirit that dwells within us.

It's important that we talk about sin correctly. If you misrepresent our problem or minimize our problem, you cheapen the gospel and the necessary work Christ accomplished to fix our problem. Presenting the gospel to the unbeliever, presenting sin as the evil it is and our rebellion in it as being against a holy God, deserving of wrath and justice, is very important to laying out our very need for Christ.

Pastor John MacArthur explains how the biblical teaching on sin is our ally in presenting.

The gospel. If the sinner is held responsible for the revelation of God in creation, Romans 1, if the sinner is held responsible for the revelation of God in conscience, Romans 2, he is surely to be held responsible for the written and preached revelation of God in Scripture so that the sinner is without excuse on that account as well.

Furthermore, the New Testament is very clear that the sinner can understand the law of God enough so that the law of God is the only ally the gospel has in the sinner's heart. You only have one ally, you only have one point of agreement in a fallen sinner's heart, and that is sin, so that the sinner's law and conscience are an ally to the basic gospel.

The sinner knows he's a sinner, and when the revelation of God comes against him, it escalates that knowledge of sin, it clarifies that knowledge of sin. That's why we preach the law, and the sinner is undone and then understands, even on a superficial level, the offer of the gospel and grace.

The only ally you have in the sinner is the assault that the Bible makes on the sinner at the point of his sin. And so if we mute that and remove that and dance around in some speech-act theory so that we don't say anything that people don't like, you have cut yourself off from the only ally you have in an unredeemed heart, and that is the reality of sin and the work of the conscience accusing the unbeliever.

If we portray sin as something so slight as simply eating food that we know is bad for us, or that it's mistakes, or the result of believing lies about our identity, etc., etc., we disciple others to minimize sin.

This directly affects our sanctification. We need to get doctrine about sin correct, and the extremely popular purpose-driven gospel does not. The main problem within the purpose-driven gospel is that we don't realize that God made us for a purpose, and that purpose is one of God's means by which He will change the world.

We sin, or make mistakes, or do things we know are bad for ourselves because we don't really know how important we are to God's great plan. If we know our purpose, we know our identity, and therefore we will walk in that identity, living out the great plan God has for us, and using us to change the world.

God loves and desires to use us for His purposes is the good news according to the purpose-driven gospel, but that is not the gospel. Our problem is not a lack of purpose. It is the nature that we are born with that makes our will or desires to first be against God's will and desires, and in following our own will and desires, we transgress the law of God.

That is what Paul is describing in Romans 7 after laying out for us in Romans 1 and 2 how the nature of both Gentiles and the Jews, aka all of humanity, without the Holy Spirit not only suppress the truth and follow our own wills and desires, but we create gods who are like ourselves and therefore pursue idolatry.

Why do I make this point in clarifying all of this? Well, because this will become a common theme in each and every message given by the speakers. That our conflict is a battle of the mind and our sin is trivial, but we see from this passage and Romans 8 that the battle is between the spirit and the flesh.

For the Christian, the mind delights in the law of God internally, but our flesh fights us to keep us from fulfilling that law, causing us to sin. So there are internal and outward actions being talked about here, but if-gathering will make it all about internal identity issues such as a lack of self-confidence, lack of control, comparison, lack of joy and hope, fear, not feeling accepted or adequate, etc.

All supposedly keeping us from accomplishing what God has called us to instead of our struggle with sin and obedience to the law.