Romans 7:7-25 What's that Smell?

A podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God.

Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad that you're here. I hope that by the end, you're glad that you were here as well.

We are a church that is seeking to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service. And I hope that the text that we're gonna be looking at this morning in the Book of Romans challenges you and encourages you, encourages really all of us to trust God more and more with our lives.

And that's what we mean when we say growing in faith, that we take in God's word, we hear it, we listen to it, we believe that it's true, and then we go out and we live according to it. And so, in honesty, I believe that anything that places an increasing trust in ourselves is detrimental.

I think it's unhelpful in our spiritual life. Any teaching, any advice, any experience that makes us think that we have what it takes to please God is leading us away from the place that we need to be in our walk with God, away from the gospel that trust in what God has done as the primary movement of salvation in our history.

We are a people who are forgiven of our sins by grace through faith alone. We have a hope for a future, a future that will be without sin by grace through faith alone. And we live a life that is pleasing to God in the here and now by grace through faith alone.

In other words, our relationship with God is a gift from him from beginning to end. And that's part of this section of the book of Romans that we're looking at, particularly this text, but really the big movement as we're talking about sanctification, the big word that means the process by which God is making us more and more like him over the course of our lives after we have accepted him by faith.

And Paul has been working overtime to try to release us from what I would say is a pesky notion in humanity, probably in all of us, in our thoughts and in our hearts, the pesky notion that we're saved by grace and we now live by law.

We now live according to rules. We now live according to that and trying to keep that Old Testament law to make him happy that the reason God might smile at me today is because I obey him really good or I'm super better than other people or you can kind of fill in the blank for yourself.

I do this and therefore God likes me more when in fact he loves you so much that he sent his son to die on the cross for you and you can do nothing more to earn that. It is simply by grace through faith.

And our text last week used phrases like we are dead to the law. We are released from the law. We no longer serve God in the way of the written code that is that Old Testament law. When I mention the word law during this message this morning and here I'm introducing it, but it might be helpful for you to think 10 Commandments when you hear law just to kind of clarify or to give you something to grab a hold of in your mind every time I say law.

We are talking about the huge collection of laws, more than just the 10 Commandments, but certainly those. The collection of laws in the Old Testament that express the will of God toward his Old Testament people.

A law that we are no longer bound to, a law that we are released from. But now in our text we're gonna see that, I mean, how many of you are thinking, wait a second, I'm free from the 10 Commandments?

I don't have to obey those anymore? That's a little bit like, what do I obey then? And is it okay for me to murder? Is it okay for me to lie? Is it okay for me to commit adultery? What's going on here?

Don, you better correct yourself really quick. But now Paul here in the text is gonna, in our text this week, is gonna demonstrate that he's afraid that we're gonna go too far and cut out the Old Testament from our Bibles.

There was actually a guy who did this in the early church. His name was Marcion. He was labeled a heretic. He actually got rid of the Old Testament from his Bible and said, this is worthless now. But he must have ignored this passage that we're gonna look at here today.

The bottom line for our text this morning is that something kinda stinks in here. Now we all know it. We live our lives with this ongoing cloud of reality that our lives don't match up quite to what they ought to be.

We don't live up to God's standards even after we have been saved by his grace. And so after last week, some might be tempted to think that the stench is coming from the law because he talked down the law so much.

Take out the law, then we'll be okay. But Paul's gonna identify that the law is just fine. It isn't the law that is spoiled and is producing that funk in our lives. So what is it? Where is the smell of rot coming from?

And so let's open our Bibles to Romans chapter seven verses seven through 25 and see if you can identify what it is in this text that's producing that smell. Romans seven, seven through 25. By the way, it smells kinda delicious in here like coffee, but it's just an illustration, folks.

Romans seven, seven through the end of the chapter. Open up your scripture journals or your device. Navigate over there, grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you if you didn't bring a Bible with you.

If you don't have a Bible at home, take that one with you. We want everybody to have a copy of God's word so you can read it. I'll give you a second to turn over there. But Romans seven, seven through the end of the chapter.

God's precious, glorious, majestic, amazing revelation to us here we cast. 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, for 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 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 I want, but the evil 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 Christ Jesus our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

The Law Is Holy but Cannot Sanctify

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the reality check of this text, where we know that we are no longer slaves to sin, we are set free by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are no longer slaves to law, but we also recognize that to a person there's something wrong with us.

We still don't follow your laws, we're still not capable of keeping up with all those Old Testament commands and rules and regulations, and there's still something in us that pulls us towards sin, there's still something in us that seems to be a friend of the world, seems to be a friend of sin, and seems to be a friend of evil, and seems to even tempt ourselves at times, and so Father I pray that you would make sense of that struggle that we all wrestle with through this text, I thank you that in your grace you've revealed this, so that those who are here and are just kind of at wit's end, not really knowing what to do with their faulty struggles and their frailty, Father that they might begin to recognize some of the pathways to victory, that we still have this old sinful nature within us that is raging and waging war, and Father I pray that we would learn the patterns of our own lives, and where we are feeding that flesh, where we are feeding that sin nature, and to learn to begin the process of starving it, to consider it dead, and to consider ourselves alive to you, Father I thank you that in the midst of this battle we can rejoice because the battle is indeed won for those who belong to you, and even the sign of life, this war that wages within us is in itself a sign that we belong to you, and that in the end you will complete what you have started in us, this process of wrestling and moving towards your sanctification, your really Christ likeness, and so Father as people who are going to be set free from sin, I pray that you would help us to lift our voices in praise and worship to you this morning, that would motivate us, the salvation that we have in Christ, and we might have fervor, enthusiasm, excitement, that we would be moved in our spirits as we have an opportunity to sing these songs before you in Jesus name, amen.

Now you can go ahead and be seated, but like I say at the start of every message, if you need to get up and get more coffee, juice or donuts you can take advantage of that in the back there, and if you need to get up and use the restrooms they're out the barn doors down the hallway on the left hand side, so our goal is to really keep our focus on Romans seven, seven through 25 for the remainder of our time together, and so if you could turn your Bibles or on your device back over to that text in case you lost your spot, just so you can reference that as I'm gonna walk us through that text and really see what God has to communicate to us here in Matawan in 2019 from this really ancient text, and I wanna start off just by asking, have you ever stated the truth so hard that you feared people were gonna take what you said and run with it even further?

Do you know what I'm talking about? You overstated your case or you said it so strongly that you were worried, you stated so strongly that you love 80s music that you're now afraid someone is gonna go out and buy you a copy of Cyndi Lauper's greatest hits or something like that, right?

You're kind of a little afraid, so you feel the need to head it off at the pass, and no that's not what I meant, so you wanna clarify, not that kind of 80s music or whatever, so Paul has made a strong case in the text last week against the law as the means of our sanctification.

He's not against the law, he's not against the Old Testament law, those commands and rules and regulations that God had given to regulate that old covenant with his people Israel, but he's not against that, but he says this is not the tool that God uses to bring us closer to himself in this life.

That's a faulty understanding of the law, that's the wrong use of the law. That's like trying to use a hammer to put a screw in a wall, it doesn't work very well. You can do it, but it's not gonna function correctly and it's not gonna hold any weight and it's not gonna be good, and so it's not the tool that God has given us to primarily draw close to him in this life.

We are not living this Christian life as self-sufficient law keepers, instead we are meant to be God lovers, we are brought into a loving relationship with God through Christ and we are now those who if we are saved, if we are redeemed, if we are bought by the blood of Christ and we are those who understanding that great sacrifice want to please him with our hearts.

We are now those who want to find what makes him smile, what gives him joy and then to go do those things. And Paul will use this text at the end of chapter seven here this text we're looking at this morning to carefully share the reasons that the law cannot sanctify us, it cannot make us holy, it cannot fix the problem.

And he does this by explaining where the smell is coming from in four main movements here in the text. So in verses seven through 12, here's kind of the outline for those of you that like to take notes and outline.

Verses seven through 12, it isn't the law, the smell isn't coming from the law. Second, 13 through 20, it is sin. There, I gave you the answer. It is sin, sin is where that smell is coming from. And then the third movement, 21 through 24, I am the problem.

And the fourth part, only one verse, verse 25 to sum up. As I said, I am the problem, Christ is the solution. So it isn't the law, it is sin. I am the problem, Christ is the solution. And so let's start with where that smell is coming from.

First and foremost, he says, it isn't the law's problem. It's not coming from the law. I do not believe that a single person in this room has asked the question Paul proposes in verse seven. I don't believe you've formulated the question that way because I think our problem rests in a little bit of a different direction, but he's saying to those who were kind of religious in the first century, he's saying, so does all this bad talk about the law and saying that it doesn't sanctify us, it doesn't draw us closer to God, it can't fix our problem, does that mean that the law is sinful?

Does that mean that the law is sin? Well, our problem is more likely that we have given the law a greater role than it deserves, if anything. In our modern society, it might be that we've thought that obeying certain things or going to church on Sunday or giving to the poor or giving to the church or all of these actions and behaviors, law-keeping, law-abiding, tithing, doing good to other people is what is gonna make us better.

And so we often tend to err on the other side. So that's why I say it's not likely that any of us have literally asked the question, is the Old Testament law, is keeping the Ten Commandments sinful? But you see, he has made such a strong case about the law and what it can't do that he's afraid that people are gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In honesty, it's a reasonable question. In light of how thoroughly and completely he pushed the law out as a possible sanctifying influence in the life of a believer, he made it clear that we have died to the law, we are released from bondage to the law, and he now fears that we're gonna take it a step further than what he stated.

Well, then the law is stupid. The law is terrible. The law, if it increases sinfulness, must be unhelpful at best and unholy at worst, right? Maybe the law in itself is unholy. But he answers this question with, of course, a strong no way, by no means.

He kind of likes that phrase throughout the book of Romans. He asks a question and then negates it right away and then explains why it isn't the case. And he clarifies that the law is the way that sin is made clear to us as an affront to God.

He uses an example of coveting as a great example here in the text. Sin lets us know what is and isn't against God. There are some sins that the world doesn't see as sin. Have you noticed that? There are some things that we hold to and we believe are sinful that the world doesn't.

And some of those are really internal things, like an example of that would be pride. Now, does the world actually hate pride? Think about that for a second. I think the world almost kind of champions pride to some degree.

It's a good thing. It's a value. And in some cases, it's actually a virtue to be proud. It's a virtue to be strong. It's a virtue to win and keep winning. Coveting would be another of those sins that I think is an internal sin that is a little bit more internal and less easy to see.

And the world doesn't quite know what to do with it. I don't really see the world out there battling with covetousness. Do you see what I'm saying? In a culture that defines morality in terms of harm to others, by the way, did you know that that's the way the world is beginning to define right from wrong?

It's just simply whether it hurts somebody or not. Well, does coveting hurt anybody in the end? Kind of not, right? Like, I mean, it might hurt you, but that's up to you. That's your business. That's nobody else's.

And so you can kind of see how coveting works as a really good illustration of this here in the text. What could possibly be wrong with coveting? It's an internal sin. It's an appetite word. It's a hunger word.

I mean, our commercials are centered on making you want something you don't have, right? Materialism, our economy is based on you wanting something you don't have and all that, and that's not to denigrate our economy.

It's just to simply say that's kind of the way that our culture and society works. It takes for granted that we're sinful and we want more stuff. But Paul is saying that once he saw that the Lord told him to not covet, it says it in the text, once he saw that the Lord said not to covet, he came to know that it's against God to covet.

It's not, you see, the primary issue with sin is not whether it hurts somebody. Now, a lot of sins do hurt others, and it hurts ourselves as well, but not everything that's sin hurts somebody else. What it is is ultimately what is that behavior, that action, that thought in relationship to God, right?

Isn't that the real question that sin addresses is whether or not what we're doing is against God? It has very, I mean, at the end of the day, like David commits adultery, murders the wife and tries to cover it up and all this stuff, and at the end, you kind of go, he says, I'm against God and God alone have I sinned.

You gotta go, well, what about Uriah? What about all of the other things that you did in there? Well, certainly it was against others, but primarily sin at its core is an affront against God. And so, apart from the law, sin, he says in the text, sin is not as active.

Without knowing what is and isn't right and what is and isn't wrong, sin is not as active and powerful in our lives. But in verse 80 says what we all know to be true. The law gives life and breath to sin.

The law is like an open window to a fire. And twice in this text, in verse eight and verse 11, he says sin is shown to be eager to seize, the quote, seize an opportunity. Sin is opportunistic in your life.

Sin is, he personifies it here, like as if sin is a person, as if it's a living, moving being and it's got a will and its will is to look for a chance, seize an opportunity to bring you down. How many of you can relate to that?

You've seen it in your life. You've seen sin grab something in your life and beat you with it. Sin will grab whatever it has at its disposal and bludgeon us to death. And it will even grab the law is what Paul is saying here.

It's not the law's fault. But it is sin that will grab this law and beat us. So as I read about coveting, what he's getting at here, as you hear the word coveting, as you think about what coveting means, as you let that roll over your mind, you might even find your minds right here and right now wandering off into things that you cannot have.

The very notion of thinking about coveting often brings it into our minds. For me, it turns out to be nice houses. That's where my mind goes when I hear this. For you, it might be nice cars, it might be other things.

But your mind begins to wander off into the things that you want that you cannot have. And in a similar way, a person waging war with alcohol or waging war with pornography cannot readily fight it with a law set up in their life that says, I will not look at pornography, I will not drink alcohol.

How does that work for you? The more you think about it, the more you are enticed to it. So that as the law mentions specific sins, he's saying, those very sins cause an unholy curiosity, as I talked about last week, and even a temptation to the very thing that the law is prohibiting.

How many of you know what I'm talking about? That I don't even need to go on about this anymore because you know, you've seen it, you've experienced it in your own life, that there's a nature in you that is drawn and attracted to sin.

Raise your hand if you can just identify that. That's good, that's the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right? All of us know it, we know it in our hearts. We know that there's this wrestling and this war and there's something in us that has a hook to sin, that it entices and it draws us in.

So in verse nine, Paul speaks of some general time in his past when he lived without the knowledge of the law. We don't know exactly when that was. It may be that he's imagining and remembering his childhood before he had formal teaching and training in the law, or even a time where in his studies, he was studying a specific law that he was not aware of at the time and it became known to him.

But all of us can relate to knowing that something is against the rules and you come to know it, like however that is, by reading it or by somebody sharing it with you or by a parent telling you, or whatever it is, but you suddenly know and it comes to mind, this is wrong.

But he says when the law was made known to his mind, sin coaxed to life that area of his thoughts. And he says quite directly, I died, my soul died at the point where the law was made known to me and in that area, I was corrupted, I was broken and I had an unholy curiosity that developed in that area where it became known to me that certain behavior was sin.

Therefore, the very command, he says, that promised life to all who keep it proved to be death to us. You see, the law does indeed promise eternal life to anybody who can keep it, but Paul has gone on and on, chapter after chapter in the book of Romans, especially those first three chapters, to draw us all to the conclusion that we cannot keep it.

It'd be great if we could, but we can't and we cannot because of sin in our lives and in our hearts. This is a fact, by the way, of the religious life. And despite some of the difficult phrases he uses here in the text, the bottom line is that the law brings about a death through an enticement to break it.

Nothing highlights our own fallen condition more than the reality that when we hear a law, we become curious about breaking it. Sin in us seizes the opportunity through the law and tricks us unto death.

Of course, he's going on and on explaining that this is not the law's fault. The law isn't the problem. The law is not responsible for the funk in our lives. In verse 12, Paul clarifies the law itself.

He states emphatically and directly, the law is holy. The individual commandments are holy, righteous, and good. There's a goodness that surrounds the law. So that all of those Old Testament psalms where Psalm 19 or even Psalm 119 that's singing and extolling the glories and the beauty of the law, they all stand.

It's not like we disagree with those. Paul isn't pushing those aside and disagreeing with those. They are indeed good because they accurately reflect God himself. So what Paul has sought to establish for us is a reinstating of the glory and holiness of God's law.

Despite the fact that he's already told us, it is not the tool that has been given to us to draw closer in obedience to God in the Christian life. It's good. It's very capable of showing God's character.

It's very capable of showing us our failure and our inability. It's a great diagnostic tool, but just like a doctor would say, okay, we're gonna fix this, this x-ray machine is gonna take care of it.

We're gonna just put your arm, your broken arm, we're gonna put it in this x-ray machine, and voila, it's gonna be all, how many of you would be looking for a new doctor if the doctor told you that the x-ray machine was gonna fix your broken bone?

Only two of you, okay. Smart ones. The rest of you, I'm concerned. Either you're not paying attention, no. But that's not the way that it works. It's great at diagnosing. It's great at revealing. It's great at showing.

So the law, in a sense, is like an x-ray machine. It doesn't solve the problem, but what it does is it reveals the problem. It shows, yes, you got a broken bone here. It needs to, then here's the solution.

Does anybody have a name that might present itself as the solution to your sin problem? Jesus, right? He's the solution. He's the remedy. The law is the diagnostic tool that does a great job at diagnosing, but when you put it in the place of Jesus to try to fix your life or try to draw close to God, oh my goodness, you're in for a world of hurt.

You're into a world, he keeps using the word death here. That's a pretty severe word. That's a pretty severe picture of what the law will yield in your lives if you lean on it, if you trust in it for the solution, if you trust in it to help you.

So if that smell in our lives isn't coming from the law, then where's the rot? And I've gotten this far into the message without establishing very clearly that you all recognize the smell of rot in your life.

If you're a follower of Christ, I'm convinced that you smell it. I'm convinced you see it. I'm convinced you live with it. I'm convinced that you woke up with it this morning and it's in some either low-key, low-burn kind of effect on your life at all times.

You know you're in a battle. You know you're in a war. You know you are doing things you don't want to do. You know you are not measuring up to God's standard. You know something is off. You know you do not do the very law that your heart wishes you could keep.

You do not love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you don't love your neighbor as yourself. So what gives? Then what is it in our lives that's producing the stench? What is it that's causing the smell?

That's the second part. It is sin that is the problem, says Paul in verses 13 through 20. It isn't the law that is responsible for the death in us, but it's sin that's responsible for this ongoing, waging war that we have.

In verse 13, it's proven to be even more grotesque. Sin is proven to be even more grotesque through the law. I mean, ask yourself, how can sin become more sinful? Look at verse 13 with me. Go ahead and put your eyes on it.

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 so that it's revealed, so you know what it is, and here it is, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Sin becoming even more sinful. That's kind of a strange phrase. How can that be? Well, it's one thing. Think of it this way. It's one thing to commit sin in ignorance without the knowledge of the law, but it takes the knowledge of the law to be a high-handed transgressor against the Almighty God.

To know who has issued the command and then sin. How many of you know that that's a big deal? That's a huge deal because you now know in the law, what the law does is it reveals the will of God so that you can diagnose your problem and say, I'm not just a sinner.

I'm not just a person who fails once in a while or lets myself down or lets my wife down or lets my husband down or lets my employer down. That's not my problem. My problem is rebellion against the Almighty God, my creator.

Do you see the difference? Are those two different things? So very different diagnoses, but getting the diagnosis right is what the law does for us. It shows us our inability and our ineffectiveness in keeping the law and obeying the Almighty God.

That's the kicker in this. Sin becomes more sinful as you see and you read the law and you read the word and you say, this is God's standard? Holy cow, I'm in trouble. I can't do this. And Paul shifts now in verse 14 to present tense verbs.

This is important because as he's sinning, you gotta put yourself, when you're reading scripture, you gotta put yourself in the shoes of the guy sitting there at his desk with a quill pen in hand and a scroll of parchment that he keeps on rolling as he's writing.

And he's been writing in past tense verbs up to verse 14. And now Paul, sitting there at his desk, begins to write in present tense verbs. So what we would assume, rightly, is that he's now writing about himself in the present tense, where he is living, where he is at right then and there.

And as he's writing the remainder of this text, I'm convinced that he's speaking of his present experience as an apostle and Christian. There's a lot of debates. And the reason I'm not gonna get into all of this because I read so much this week.

I read, I read, and I read. And there are many debates back and forth. And I read four large commentaries on this. And two of them agreed and two of them disagreed with what I'm about to share with you.

But I'm pretty confident about where I stand on this. And that's whether or not this is Paul talking about his experience before he came to faith in Christ. There's some reasons that people wanna say that.

Or is this the Christian experience? Do you expect to have a war inside as a Christian? Or is he just writing about the war that he had before he came to faith in Christ? And I believe that Paul, here in the remainder of this text, is telling us what we experience.

He's saying this is the way that the Christian life looks. And it is a struggle and it is a war and it is a battle. And how many of you would testify right now, you'd raise your hand and say, the battle for me began when I came to faith in Christ.

That's when the war with sin began. I didn't fight a whole lot with sin before that. But man, once I became a follower of Christ, that's when the war, that's when the battle began in here. And I believe that that's what Paul is getting at, is he's helping us all to actually take comfort and solace, not to be okay with sin, not to be settled into it, but to say this is a, I mean, if you're having a knock down, drag out battle, welcome to the club.

This is what life looks like in Christ. This is the nature of it. You're gonna hate sin now. You're gonna love God now. And you're gonna be able to do some things that please him because you're now alive to him in your spirit.

But there's a battle that you need to be aware of. And you need to fight well this battle and have some tools, and by the end, I hope we have some tools to be able to fight this battle. And particularly next week, we're gonna see the number one tool that we have in the battle against this sin.

But again, there have been debates back and forth about this text. And verse 14 is one of the hardest, from my perspective, to deal with in terms of my position, that this is a Christian Paul writing about his Christian life.

Because Paul here tackles head on the reality that we are simultaneously justified by God. He's already declared that back in chapter five and six. I'm no longer enslaved to sin, chapter six. Now alive to God in our spirits, but in our flesh.

By the way, when you see the word flesh in Paul, this is where we can really get off on a rabbit trail of wrong thinking. Because flesh sounds like our bodies, right? Sounds like he's making a, you'll see the word spiritual later, and you'll see the word flesh.