Sunday Sermon: The War that Wages Within (Romans 7:13-20)

You are listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 7 and the Struggle to Bear Fruit for God

If you would open your Bible please to Romans chapter 7. Then we continue on in our study of the book of Romans. In Romans 7 we have been reading about how we have died to the law through the body of Christ so that we may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

In the section we are going to be looking at today we will be reading about that struggle to produce that fruit for God. For there continues to wage within us a war in our members. We have that desire to do what is pleasing to the Lord, but sometimes lack the ability to carry it out.

As we will read about in our passage today. It was the Puritan Thomas Tuke who said the following, the more a man loves God, the more he may be assured of God's love. Not because our love earns his, but because our love is a fruit of his love for us.

And may we continue to bear that fruit of God's love that he has shown to us through his son Christ Jesus our Lord. In honor of the word of the King would you please stand. This is Romans chapter 7. I'm reading verses 13 to 25.

Hear the word of the Lord. 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 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 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.

Christ Our Advocate in the Midst of Sin

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to our passage today, we read about the war that wages within. For even though we have been saved and set free from the law, as we had read in chapter 6, we are no longer under the law, but we are under grace, yet there still remains within us a war, a conflict between the one who desires to do right and the other one that still seems to go after the passion of the flesh.

Can we be sanctified beyond this that we would no longer desire those things in our flesh, but God we would want to do what is right, what is pleasing to You? We struggle with these things, sometimes we ask questions and maybe even doubt our own salvation, but I pray in what we are reading today, Lord, that we will be comforted in knowing that Christ is our advocate even when we sin.

We have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. So we would rely not on ourselves, not even on our own confidence, but we would rely upon Christ for all things, including the forgiveness of our sins and the ability to live lives of holiness before You.

It is in Jesus' name that we pray, Amen. In Matthew chapter 26, immediately following their time in the upper room at the Lord's table, Jesus and His disciples go out to the Mount of Olives where Jesus is going to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And Jesus turns and looks to His disciples and says to them, You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.

This is going to happen in fulfillment of what the scripture says. But after I am raised up, Jesus says, I will go before you to Galilee. Well, Peter answers Him at that point and says, Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.

And Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you, this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And Peter said to Him, Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you. And all the disciples said the same.

And you know how this goes. They go into the garden, Jesus prays, and when He comes out, He finds the disciples are sleeping. And He says directly to Peter, So could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

The Spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. After Jesus is arrested and He is taken before the council in this kangaroo trial, Peter was outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl came up to Him and said, You were with Jesus the Galilean.

But He denied it before them all, saying, I do not know what you mean. And when He went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw Him, and she said to the bystanders, This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.

And again, he denied it with an oath, I do not know the man. After a little while, the bystanders came up and said to Peter, Certainly you too were one of them, for your accent betrays you. Then he began to invoke a curse on himself, and he began to swear, and he said, I do not know the man.

And then immediately, the rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus before the rooster crows, You will deny me three times. Matthew records the last line of chapter 26, And he went out and wept bitterly.

Just a matter of hours before, Peter was so sure of himself. Even if they all deny you, I will die with you. They go into the garden, he can't even stay awake and pray with Jesus. Already the weakness in his flesh was being revealed.

So that Jesus even said to them, The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And then right there, as Jesus is at trial, and Peter is witnessing this, he is asked three times if he knows Him, and all three times, Peter denies it.

So that the rooster crows and what Jesus had said was fulfilled. And Peter's response to his realization was to go out and to weep bitterly over his weakness and over his sin. And my friends, I'm sure every single one of us have been in a situation where we knew the right thing to do.

We knew the thing we wanted to do, and you didn't do it, did you? You did the sinful thing. You knew it was wrong when you were walking into it. Sometimes our flesh just gets the better of us, and it could be momentary, just we kind of lose ourselves, or somebody triggers anger or something, you respond with anger.

Sometimes you don't even see it creeping up, it just kind of happens. But then there are other occasions where the temptation is right there, and you know you should say no. But you keep walking toward it anyway until you give in, and then the regret creeps in.

And you know what you've done, whether or not we outwardly weep bitterly, we feel that anguish in our spirits of knowing, I've done it again. I've betrayed my Savior again. I've denied Him again, knowing His Word and yet not doing it, wretched man that I am.

The Apostle Paul embarks upon this very struggle here in Romans chapter 7. It was in chapter 6 that we read about how we are not to submit our members, that is the members of our body, to sin any longer.

We are not under the slavery of sin, we've been set free. So do not be slaves of unrighteousness, Paul says, but be slaves instead to righteousness. And then if even now, as followers of Jesus, we become slaves of righteousness, if that's the case for every one of us, I've been set free, I've experienced my exodus, I have been brought out from the sin that I was enslaved to, and now I'm enslaved to Christ.

But why is it then that I still feel this desire to sin? Why do I still struggle with this? And why do I so stupidly walk into it when I know that I shouldn't, but I do it anyway? Have I lost my salvation?

Does God hate me now because I did not remain in His commandment? Then you should be able to relate to the Apostle Paul here as he goes through this, beginning in verse 13, talking about this struggle, this war that wages within himself, the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to be able to carry it out.

And what can we learn from this as we relate with Paul in his struggle? Now I've read verses 13 all the way through verse 25. We're not going to get that far today. This is really going to be split into two parts.

So we're looking at mainly 13 through 20 today, and then we'll finish the rest next week with verses 21 to 25. But as we look at this section, if you would outline it, if we draw out three points from this, we break this up into three parts.

Sin’s Strength Revealed by the Law

First of all, we read of sin's strength. We're reminded of the strength of sin, that even which still exists within us to want to rebel against God and do what is pleasing to our flesh. So sin's strength is the reminder that we get in verses 13 and 14.

But then we read of the saint's struggle. Now this is the apostle Paul autobiographically talking about the very struggle that he has within himself. But as we relate to this, we as saints also know that we go through this same struggle.

So we read of the saint's struggle in verses 15 through 20. And then finally we have the Savior's solution. And that's in verses 21 through 25. We'll tease that a little bit today. But as I said, getting more into the solution next week.

So first of all, being reminded again of sin's strength. And this brings us back into the section that we've looked at, or the half of the chapter we've considered thus far in Romans chapter 7. Look with me at verse 13 once again, where Paul says, did that which is good then bring death to me?

Remember that the law is good. What we concluded with last week in verse 12, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. When we hear the law, there awakens within us a desire to do what is sinful.

Chris had illustrated this a couple of weeks ago as being like that thought that is implanted in the head when you hear the law, you hear the commandment. You weren't even thinking about that sin before until you heard the commandment.

And now suddenly you're thinking about that sin. There was a movie that was made about this whole subject that you can like implant a thought in somebody's, you can implant a thought in someone's mind.

It was called Inception. And it was this idea that, you know, if you say something to somebody, don't think about white elephants. What are you suddenly thinking about? White elephants. And so when we hear in the law, do not do this, what are you now thinking about?

Because you've heard it in the law. The very sin that the law says not to do. And so Paul talks about how that very inception kind of idea comes into our minds whenever we hear the law because there remains in us a sinful tendency within our flesh to do that which is opposed to what is right.

And Paul says in chapter seven, what we read last week in verse seven, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet. The very example that Paul uses is the commandment that attacks the heart issue, the matter of.

The heart.

All the other commandments you see happen externally, murder, adultery, lying, all of these things play out outside the body, but covet, coveting that's, that's inside. You can't look at a person and just automatically know that they're coveting.

So he goes to the one commandment that's about what happens within the heart. I wouldn't even have known that I have this problem that's going on within myself. I thought I was a good person. As it said several times in the book of Proverbs, every man thinks he is right in his own eyes.

But then I hear this commandment that says you shall not covet and suddenly it has awakened in me all kinds of covetousness. It was sin seizing an opportunity through the law to awaken in me these desires.

And so as Paul is kind of dwelling upon that reality that exists still even within the heart of a believer, he says, so is the law a bad thing then if the law is going to be awakening those things within us?

By no means, Paul says. The law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. And you'll notice in the section that we're looking at today even calls the law spiritual. And so in verse 13 again, did that which is good bring death to me?

By no means. It wasn't the law that killed me. It was sin producing death in me through what is good. So God gives us the law. It's his commandment.

It's good.

Good.

But sin is this thing that is within me that wants to go against that which is good. In order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. And Paul saying in verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin.

I'm going to come back to that line here in just a moment. Several years ago when I was pastoring a church in Kansas, our church had a name that would appear at the top of most Google searches. Whenever somebody would come into town and be looking for a church, we would appear near the top of the list.

And so oftentimes when someone would come into town and be low on gas, they might come to our church, they're low on money and they're low on gas. They would come by and say, Hey, could you help me out and fill up my tank?

This might happen once or twice a week. And so occasionally I would say to the person, yeah, sure. Follow me down to the gas station. We're just one right on the corner on the same block that the church was on.

I said, come with me down there. I'll fill up your tank and let's talk a little bit. I would use that as an opportunity to share the gospel with this person. This person had this idea that I can call a church and a church will fill up my gas tank for me.

Now, sure, I'll do it for you, but you got to listen to the gospel. I'd say about nine out of 10 times, the person whose tank I'm filling up doesn't actually know the gospel. So there were occasions where it would have been a Christian, sure, that said, I know that my brothers will help me out.

But most of the time it was a person that didn't know the gospel at all. There was one man in particular I was helping out and we're filling his tank. And I said to him, do you think that you're a good person?

That was how I opened that up. And he said, oh yeah, you know, I think I do. I do pretty good. I try to do the best that I can. And I said, well, can I examine you on this? And we've talked about this before, using the law to expose sin that is within it.

And so I asked him about, have you ever told lies? Have you ever had impure thoughts about another person, even hating somebody or calling them.

Names?

And as I'm asking him these questions, he goes, you know, you know, I'm really not that religious a person. I'm really more spiritual. I'm a spiritual person. I'm just not that religious. And I use Romans 7 14.

And I said, funny, you mentioned that because God says the law is spiritual. So if you say that you're a spiritual person, then you should also be keeping the law of God, right? And as he's standing there thinking about that, he thought, you know, I've never considered that before.

I've never considered the law, this spiritual thing, just always this list of don'ts that I was supposed to do or rather not do. But now that you say that the law is spiritual, I realize, he said, that I need to be giving more thought to it than I was.

Now, we're filling up a tank, so this wasn't a lengthy conversation, but at least was able to plant the seeds and show him that you're not as good as you think you are. And the law exposes that. And what's the solution to that then going to be?

And the answer is Christ. So you realize how unrighteous you are and how much you need Christ to forgive you of your sin and make you right with God. Now as I made this point last week, we need the gospel when we come to faith in Jesus.

Christ.

We heard the gospel and it is by believing in the gospel, as Paul said at the very beginning of Romans, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes through faith in Jesus Christ, dying for our sins, rising again from the dead, ascending into heaven, seated at the right hand of God, where he intercedes for us.

We hear these things about Christ and we're convicted over our sin and put faith in him and we're forgiven our sins and have everlasting life. We needed that in order to become a Christian. You had to hear of that in order to be saved.

But we need Christ for more than just our conversion. We need Christ every day. As I opened with my prayer this morning, I quoted from 1 John 2, it's right there at the very beginning of the chapter that John says, my little children, I've written these things to you that you may not sin.

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. So John writes these things so that those who read them would be encouraged in the things of Christ and walk in the way of Christ.

But when you stumble, when you fall, Paul says, did it again, John says that there before the Father, there is someone who is advocating for us. I love that word because an advocate is someone who speaks favorably on behalf of another.

And Jesus is there speaking favorably on our behalf before God, though we do stupid and wretched things. And yet our high priest is there before the Father for us saying he or she belongs to.

Me.

And we are kept in the favor of God by his mercy and grace alone, not by your ability to do well or do good, but because God is good to us. So Paul says the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin.

Now that line right there, right here in Romans 7 .14 has caused some confusion about this passage. Now I'm going to mention the different interpretations of this passage. That doesn't mean I'm going to give you all of the different interpretations of this passage.

I'm going to give you the right one. But there are different views or interpretations about what Paul goes on to dwell on, to kind of ramble about almost. You might even consider that from here through verse 20 or even to the end of the chapter.

So where Paul is talking about the thing that I want to do is not the thing that I do, but rather I end up doing the thing that I don't want to do. That's what I keep on doing. I love the play with words there.

That's the same frustration I have whenever I fall into my sinful nature. But where Paul says, I am of the flesh sold under sin, this has led some people to believe to interpret this passage as Paul is not actually talking about his current Christian state.

This is not post-conversion Paul. This is actually pre-conversion Paul. So Paul's talking about where as a Jew, he had the law, but he didn't have the ability to do the law. Like we're going to get into chapter 8 where Paul says that those who do not have Christ have no ability to keep the law.

So with those bookends in place, there are some that have interpreted this passage to mean Paul is dwelling on who he was before he became a Christian. And before he became a Christian, he had no ability to keep the law.

The problem with that interpretation is that all the verbs in this passage are present tense. This is not Paul saying, I was this way. I had this struggle. This is the way it was before the Holy Spirit came in.

But now that I have the Holy Spirit, now I do have the ability to keep the law. Paul is speaking in the very present tense here. When I was a young man and I was studying through the book of Romans, this is exactly the way that I understood this chapter.

That Paul is talking about a present struggle that he is having. I didn't even have the foggiest idea that he could have potentially been talking about a pre-conversion Paul before he even became a Christian and his struggle with, though I had the law, I had no ability to keep the law, and I didn't even know what was going on inside of me.

I had to read theology to find out that there are people that have other ideas about this passage than what the plain meaning of the text is. So Paul is plainly discussing something within himself that, as I said in the very beginning, any one of us can relate to.

We've all had this struggle. And beware any other explanations of this passage that would then take you out of that.

The Saint’s Inner Conflict Between Mind and Flesh

Struggle.

Because now you're left with, okay, well I need somebody in here that I can relate to, otherwise I'm going right back to Peter, who wanted to please his Savior and be there with Him to the death, but couldn't carry it out and went out and wept bitterly.

So here Paul mentions the very struggle that he has in himself, the war that wages within. Though he desires to do what is right, yet he still finds those occasions where he goes right back doing the foolish sinful thing.

So in the next portion we've considered now sin's strength in verses 13 and 14. In the next portion we have the saint's struggle in verses 15 to 20. Look with me again at verse 15. For I do not understand my own actions.

Amen, brother, hallelujah. I don't. I don't understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I was able to relate to this a lot growing up as a young man and listening to contemporary Christian music.

There was a band called the Small Town Poets and they had a song in which they sang, Oh, I'm into everything I hate. That was the way the chorus of the song went. Michael W. Smith had a song on his Eye to Eye album in which the song Live and Learn begins Never should have tasted that forbidden fruit.

Why do I do what I always do what I don't want to do? I'm like, yes, I relate to that. And so then I wrote a song myself in 07 in which I said, I get myself into all kinds of trouble. I do the things that I don't want to do, but when it comes to clear out all the rubble, there might be something here worth holding to.

So I felt this struggle again and again. In my flesh, a desire to want to do what is pleasing to God, but an inability to carry it out. Jonathan Edwards wrote a book that was called Freedom of the Will.

And in this book, he explores simply what is the will and then what sort of freedom do we have in the will, those who aren't Christians and even those who are. What sort of freedom of the will does mankind have?

And when it came to defining the will, answering that question, what is the will? Jonathan Edwards answered that question very simply this way, the will is the mind choosing. And that goes exactly with this passage, especially when we read at the very end of verse 25, Paul says that I serve the law of God with my mind.

So there is that desire within our minds to want to choose what is right. And Edwards said that if the mind wasn't involved, then there would be nothing moral. So if it's entirely a decision out of the body, if we're just talking about the flesh or chemical processes that are happening within us, then no decision of ours is truly moral.

But because we are making a decision with the mind, there is the inclination to want to make a particular decision, then therefore those decisions that we make are moral decisions. Even those who are not in Christ, when they make a decision, that moral or that decision could be immoral, but it is still on a spectrum of morality.

So in our mind, we decide what is the best choice in any given moment. And you have never made a choice in your life that you didn't want to do. Now as I say that, you might think to yourself, oh come on, there's all kinds of things I've done in my life that I didn't want to do.

Might even be thinking to yourself, coming here this morning. I didn't want to do that. I was tired when I woke up today. I'm sore because of all the fun I had on Saturday. But I know it's my duty to go to church.

Or maybe I knew that my spouse was needling me. Or for those of you whose parents drug you here, my parents were making me come even though I didn't want to go. Now you may say that, but still your decision to come was yours.

You still came, even if your motivation was not I want to come to church and worship God. I hope you repent later. But if that was not what was driving you to come to church, maybe it was because I just don't want to make my spouse upset.

Or because I don't want the guilt that I'll feel later because I didn't go to church when I knew that I needed to. Whatever other reason there might have been, you still made the decision that you wanted.

To make.

No one makes a decision indifferently. You understand what I mean? So if you're presented after church today with lunch, and you have two options, and you approach those options indifferently, you will never eat.

Because you will look at those two options. You will go, I don't know which one I want. That one looks appetizing. That one looks appetizing. But one is not winning out over the other. And so you just don't choose.

I've made jokes with my wife about how before I came into her life, I don't know how she survived. Because I feel like we enter into this decision all the time. There's two options, and she can't pick.

And so I pick for her. Okay, it's that one. How did you live before I came into your life? We've been married 15 years. I'm still asking her that question. But again, if you were truly indifferent, then you would never be able to make a choice.

And you would just starve to death. Because one option is not winning out over the other. But ultimately, whenever faced with two decisions, you always pick one. Even if you still can't make up your mind which one is better, you still choose one.

Over the other.

And you've never made a decision that you did not really want to make. We all make decisions that are in our mind to incline our will that therefore drives the body in order to do. And so this was Edward's argument in The Freedom of the Will.

There has never been a decision that you have made that you did not want to make. And no decision is ever made with indifference. And so when it comes to the option to do good or to do bad, you may want to do the right.

Thing.

But you end up choosing the bad thing. And why did you do that? And really, the answer to that question is, because you wanted to. Now to relate with this struggle that Paul is having here, like if you're still on the fence about, I don't know, is Paul really talking about his present circumstance or is he talking about something that he was struggling with before he became a Christian?

Just consider that our Savior has said to us in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 5, verse 48, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Do you want to? Do you want to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect?

Then do it.

That was an easy sermon. I even gave good application right there at the end. Or when the Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 1 15, as he who called you is holy, so also you be holy in all of your conduct. Do you want to be holy?

Then do it.

Or the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, flee from sexual immorality. Do you want to flee from that which is sinful? Then flee. Or when he says to Timothy, flee from youthful passions and instead pursue these things, righteousness, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

So do what is right and do it with the body of Christ. Is that what you desire?

Then do it.

You want to do it, right? I want to be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect. I want to be holy as God is holy. But why am I not? Why do I therefore struggle with it? So we as Christians, when we come into faith in Jesus Christ, we are fully justified.

We are completely justified. Talked about this with justification back in chapters 3, 4, and 5. So by faith in Jesus Christ, I am justified, declared innocent before God. I am forgiven my sin, but I'm not yet fully sanctified.

And as I said to you last week with regard to our sin, when we are convicted over our sin and we come to faith in Jesus Christ, God does not in that moment make us fully aware of all of our sin or even the seriousness of our sin when we come to Christ.

The reality of that would be so utterly crushing we would not be able to bear it. And so as you have grown in sanctification, you've come to greater knowledge of just how sinful you are. But with that knowledge has also come the understanding of just how gracious God is.

And this is God's choice. This is God's choice to sanctify us and grow us and do it in whatever way is pleasing to us. In fact, that question was answered in the book of Job. God's saying that I can test a person however I choose to test him as God had tested Job.

And so we can go through these tests, these trials toward our sanctification, toward becoming more Christ-like, toward looking at him more and more and less and less of ourselves. And this is the process that God has each and every one of us on.

Unique and specific to each and every one of you. There are circumstances and situations going on in your life. I would not even be able to cover them all in a single sermon. But God is using those situations and circumstances to sanctify you and make you more like him.

That you would more and more do less and less of the sin and more and more of the holiness that he has called us to. Yet Paul says, I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.

Verse 16. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So there's an agreement there, even though Paul is doing what he didn't want to do. Now, as I say that, you're like, well, wait a minute.

You just made the argument that you've never made a decision that you didn't want. But again, Paul is talking about the difference between what he wants in his mind and what he wants in his flesh. And so what he wants in his mind is to please God.

But what he wants in his flesh is contrary to God. And so that's the war that wages within. He still ends up ultimately doing what it was that he wanted to do. Whether his mind or his flesh won out. But he still did what he wanted.

And again, why do you sin? Because it's what you wanted to do. There was a video that I did a number of years ago in which there was a particular sin that I was specifying in that video. And I said, stop doing this.

And a pastor friend of mine contacted me when he saw that video. And he said, brother, I think you're really burdening people with that charge of stop doing this. And I said, well, the point of the video is that you actually do have the capacity to stop it, but you won't.