WWUTT 1256 Did That Which is Good Bring Death to Me? (Romans 7:13-15)

Romans 7 and the Debate Over Christian Experience

Through the first six chapters of Romans, Paul has argued that we are not justified by our works, but by faith. And in chapter 7, he points out we're not sanctified by our works either, but by faith in Christ, when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary that we may be equipped for every good work in Jesus Christ our Lord. Please tell others about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of Romans 7, we ended at about the halfway point last week, so we'll pick up our study there. But to keep all of this in context, let me begin by reading verses 7 through 25.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, "...what then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law, 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. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. 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.

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. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

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.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.

So now it is no longer 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.

For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God in 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. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Now to remind you of the debate that is going on here regarding Romans 7.

Not the debate that is going on here in the text that we just read. We see what the debate is. There is the internal conflict that exists within Paul's mind, using himself as the example that he wants to do the right thing, but sin in his members keeps him from doing the right thing.

He also has that desire to do the wrong thing. So there is that constant back and forth that is going on. The war that is happening here in his mind. But the debate outside of Romans 7, the debate that we have had for, I don't know how long this debate goes back.

I know it at least goes back to before Martin Lloyd-Jones because, I don't know, maybe he's the earliest commentator that I've read regarding these passages in Romans chapter 7. The debate that often exists here regarding this chapter is, are we reading about the Christian experience or are we reading about an unbeliever here?

Is Paul talking about himself pre-conversion or is he talking about himself as a Christian man, a conflict that goes on in his mind and a Christian man or the conflict that was in his mind when he was an unbeliever?

Let me just say that without answering that question too directly, like I'm not going to say that, well, Paul is talking about himself as a believer. I would rather answer that question this way. Paul is not talking about himself as an unbeliever.

Clearly he's not. And how do I say he's clearly not regarding himself when he was in unbelief before he became a Christian, as he's talking about these things in Romans 7? It's because he's talking about the law being holy and righteous and good.

And before you became a Christian, you did not think of the law as holy and righteous and good. So verse 12, so the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good then bring death to me?

No, 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. And Paul says in verse 15, or sorry, verse 16, I agree with the law that it is good.

Verse 18, for I know that nothing good dwells in me for I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out. That's not talking about an unbeliever. An unbeliever does not know that nothing good dwells in him.

An unbeliever does not have the desire to do the right thing, meaning the godly thing here, because we're talking about specifically what the law says. The unbeliever does not have the desire to do that, but has no ability to carry it out.

The unbeliever has no ability to carry it out, but they're not desiring to do the right thing and then finding themselves helpless to be able to do the right thing. I think one of the reasons why the apostle Paul doesn't explicitly say here, whether he's talking about himself as a believer or himself as an unbeliever, I think the reasons are two.

First of all, I don't think he has to. I think in the progression of what we've been reading in Romans, when we're talking about like back in chapter six of no longer submitting yourself to unrighteousness, but becoming submissive to righteousness, no longer submitting your members as slaves of sin, but submitting yourselves as slaves of the righteousness that we have in Christ Jesus.

When we're going from Romans six, and suddenly we get to Romans seven, and we think that Paul is writing an entire section hearkening back to who he was before he was a believer. That's a complete derailment of the progression that we've been following regarding the doctrine of justification by faith that Paul has been laying out in the book of Romans.

So when we get to Romans seven, he's not going back to before he was justified. He's talking here about sanctification. And even in our sanctification, there's still going to be a conflict within the mind.

Let me just give you the example from Christ himself being tempted in the desert in Matthew chapter four. Before he began his earthly ministry, he was baptized by John. He goes out to the desert to fast and pray for 40 days, and there he's tempted by Satan.

He's tempted. So Satan is offering him things to tempt him to step away from the ministry, to even compromise his own holiness and go after these worldly things, or even put the Lord God to the test, or even worship someone other than God.

Hence, Satan saying to Jesus, bow down before me and all the kingdoms here of the world are yours. So Satan is tempting Jesus with these things. Was Jesus unholy because he was being tempted by those things?

Absolutely not. We know he wasn't unholy, that in temptation he was not being unholy. So what Paul is talking about here in Romans chapter seven, now here we're talking about a man. We're not talking about the son of God who was without sin from his conception.

We're talking about a man here who was born in sin, but has been reborn into the righteousness of Christ. That's what we would be talking about here in Romans seven. So the man here does still have sin within his members, warring against his mind.

You know that because you have that conflict and that problem all the time. Every single day you are faced with challenges to do the right thing or the wrong thing. And sometimes you don't pick the right thing.

Sometimes you sin and you do the wrong thing. Did you stop being holy because you chose the wrong thing? Because you chose the sin instead of the righteous action? No you didn't become unholy because the holiness that you have isn't yours anyway.

It is a holiness that comes from Christ. It is not your holiness, it's Christ's holiness. That's good news because if it was your holiness and you messed up once, it's not holiness anymore. It's the holiness that comes from Christ so that when you make a mistake, God is still merciful to you.

When you sin, when you transgress the law, God still shows you mercy and grace and covers over your sin. You will be convicted by your sin because you have the Holy Spirit living within you. This is not permission or license to sin.

That was the argument that Paul made back in Romans chapter six. We must submit ourselves as slaves to righteousness. But when you sin, we should not have a feeling of failure in the sense that we think that our holiness has been compromised.

It was never your holiness to begin with. You had no holiness. The holiness came from Christ. And God was merciful to you when he rescued you out of sin and made you reborn in his son and he is still going to be merciful to you as you're growing in this process of sanctification.

That's wonderful good news. So in second Peter chapter two, Peter gives an example of lot. Let me let me start in second Peter two verse four. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.

If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.

And if he rescued righteous lot, here's where I'm going, but I had to start at the beginning of a sentence. Verse seven, if he rescued righteous lot, righteous lot, okay. Greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

Okay. How many times there did you hear lot described as righteous? Verse seven, righteous lot, verse eight, righteous man, his righteous soul, three times lot was referred to somebody as righteous. Is lot a righteous man?

Well, the Bible says that he is, but if you were to, if you were to go just on, you know, a human judgment of righteousness, who would say that lot was righteous for wanting to offer his daughters to be raped, or then later on, even allowing himself to be raped by his own daughters, which would happen later.

Who would call lot a righteous man in that regard? Lot is righteous, not because of his righteousness. He was righteous because he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Remember back to Romans chapter four, when we read in verse three, what does the scripture say?

Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now, to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. To the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Just as Abraham was justified by his faith, the same is true with lot. He was justified by his faith and not just in the decision to listen to God's messengers when they came into the city and told lot to flee from that place.

And he obeyed lot was righteous because he would not indulge himself in the debauchery that was going on around him all the time in the very city in which he lived. It was not good for lot to be there in the first place, but in his righteous soul, it says here in second Peter chapter two, in his righteous soul, he was tormented over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. And that's a lot. The lot was a the lot lot was was a godly man who was under trial while he was there in Sodom and Gomorrah, and he remained unstained by their lawless deeds that were going on all around him.

Now, it was not good for a lot when the when the the people of the city came upon lot's house and they said, send out the two messengers so we can rape them. Lot instead says, well, here, have my two daughters instead that that wasn't good.

And it's right for us to look at that and go a lot. What are you doing, man? But that act, just that offering, which, of course, wasn't even carried out anyway, that offering did not make lot ungodly because the godliness that he had was something that was given to him by God.

It's not something that he inherently achieved or accomplished even by his own works. It's because the Lord was with him. The Lord was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, but the righteous that were there that were rescued out was lot.

That was it. And his family was rescued along with him because God was merciful to lot, though we we saw the sin of his wife turn around and look at Sodom as it was burning. And then she turned into a pillar of salt.

And then we saw the wickedness of lots daughters later on when they got their father drunk and slept with him, believing that there was no man that was ever going to have them if they if they didn't do that now and continue on their line.

They thought after seeing the destruction of Sodom, the whole world is gone. So here's what we have to do in order to to have offspring. Anyway, a really, really dark story. But this is the seriousness.

This is the seriousness of sin. This is how complicated sin is. And that's what makes Roman seven so complicated. That's why we struggle so much with understanding what Paul is talking about here and why we get into that debate of wondering whether he's talking about the Christian experience or the unbelievers experience.

Sanctification, Not Justification, in Romans 7

Paul says in Roman 713, did that which is good talking about the law, which is good, did it bring death to me? No. That phrase that we have that comes up over and over again throughout Romans, by no means.

My connoitre, 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. So sin is shown to be sin when we see the commandment of God.

Do you know the law perfectly when you become a Christian? No, you don't know the law perfectly. You don't know the law perfectly now. And there are things that when you're sitting in church, you hear the pastor say that in the sermon, you're convicted in your heart.

Boy, I've got some things I need to change. I've got some sins I still need to work out in my life. Right. You still hear that. That's still ongoing in your Christian walk, in your sanctification. You were completely justified when you became a Christian, but you were not yet fully sanctified.

You're not you're not yet fully sanctified. Now, I know that because you've not gone to be with God forever in glory. There are some within the Methodist tradition that believe you can attain some sort of perfect sanctification on this side of heaven.

For the life of me, I don't know how they justify that. But there is this belief that there is a belief even within certain denominations that you can attain a perfect sanctification. No, Paul says in Philippians chapter one, I'm confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it on the day of Christ and not before.

So you are not yet fully sanctified in this life. There are still sins, transgressions, desires, temptations that need to be worked out. And that happens through the word of God. Again, Jesus praying in John 17, 17 to the father, sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. You are sanctified by the hearing of the word of God that you may be convicted in your members of any of that existing sin desire that's still there. So you would turn from that and obey God.

It doesn't mean that you're no longer justified in the presence of God. It doesn't even mean you aren't holy anymore. Holy means to be set apart. And you've been set apart for him to desire good works and to grow in these things that we are commanded through the word of God, to desire God's will and to obey it.

Jesus was perfect. He was sinless. You are not. So you're still fighting against that within yourself. Paul says again to the Philippians, not that I am already perfect or have already attained this, but I seek to make it my own because Christ has made me his own.

So as you go through God's word and you continue to learn and study these things, you're going to come to these convictions in your spirit. John Bunyan wrote about this in a book called Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, who had come to a deep conviction of his sin and had longed to be holy, but could not be.

This was a Christian man who was writing about this. He longed to be holy, but was still fighting against those sinful desires within his own flesh. And I think it's in that same spirit that the apostle Paul is writing right here.

Hence why he concludes with this wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? The body itself is still subject to death. It's still going to perish and die because of the corruption that exists in the world.

And your body is subject to that corruption, still coming to corruption, wasting away and eventually will die. If the Lord tarries. You are guaranteed that you are going to die unless unless the Lord Christ comes back within your lifetime, you will die.

That's one statistic that we can rely on is always true. One out of every one person dies. And so your body is going to die because it's subject to corruption, because it exists in this world, subject to corruption.

You're still going to be fighting those desires and those temptations to sin. It's why you need to keep yourself far away from sin. If it wasn't possible for you to sin, then you could walk around anywhere you want to in this world and not even be worried about being tempted by it.

But that is that's flirting with danger. We should never put ourselves in those positions. We should, as best as we can, stay away from those things that are unholy and commit ourselves to living lives of holiness, being around people who desire the same thing with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart, as Paul put it with Timothy and saying to the Corinthians, do not be yoked with unbelievers for bad company corrupts good morals.

So we must desire those things that are holy, that we may keep ourselves from falling into sin because you're still capable of that. You're still subject to that. So wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body that still fights against those sin desires?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. He is our hope because he ultimately is going to deliver us out of the evil plight of this world and into complete glorification and purity forever with him in heaven.

Amen. I cannot wait for that day because I totally relate to everything that Paul is talking about here in Romans chapter seven. I hope you do, too, because you still need the sanctification just like I do.

Let's stop there. I think we only got as far as two verses or something. Romans 7 verses 13 and 14. I don't think I got to 14. Anyway, that's where we're going to end and we'll pick up there tomorrow and continue our study of Romans 7.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the grace that you show to us daily and help us to walk in these good things that you've given to us through your son, Jesus Christ. We've received the grace of God. Help us to show the grace of God.

We've been called to holiness. Help us walk in holiness. You've forgiven us of our sins. So let us not return to our sins again. We've been set free from that. May we walk in freedom, giving glory to our God whom we've been set free to worship and desiring to be like our Savior.

We walk as Jesus walked, committing ourselves to the will of the Father as Jesus did. And as Paul will say later on in Romans 12, 1, this is our spiritual act of worship, presenting ourselves as holy and living sacrifices unto the Lord.

Keep us in that today, a mind that is set on Christ to the praise of your glorious grace. Amen.

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