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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 7 An
Illustration From Marriage (Ch. 7:1 – 6) In
chapter 7 verse 1 Paul is reminding the reader that he is speaking to
people who know the Law. Therefore
he is going to proceed by using an analogy from the Law to back up his
point. Paul says, that
according to the Law, a woman is bound to her husband in marriage as long
as he lives. If he dies, she
is free to marry another man. If
she marries another man while her husband is alive, she is committing
adultery. In
the same respect, the Law has died so that we could be remarried to
another. We were once married
to the Law, but not any more. We
are free to be married to Christ, where we can produce fruit of a
righteous life. This is just
one of a number of verses in the New Testament that tells us that the Law
of Moses has been laid aside, with all of its 613 rules, that includes the
big rule that many churches like to keep and promote, and that's tithing. When
we were married to the Law, our sinful passions were aroused. Paul talked
about that in earlier verses when he told us the Law made us sin even
more. (Rom. 5:20) The fruit of that sin was death.
We have now been released to serve God in a new way.
This new way is by the Spirit of God, and not by merely obeying
rules. Here is another mention of the Holy Spirit. This
is now the third time Paul mentions the Holy Spirit.
This time he makes a clear statement.
He says that there is a new way in which we serve God. The old way
of obeying the Law is gone. The
new way is by the Holy Spirit‘s enabling.
This is the crux of the whole New Testament.
This is what the Old Testament people were waiting for, that is the
Holy Spirit living within us, enabling us to obey God.
The Law could never help us obey God.
It only made us sin more. It
told us that we were sinners. It
could not help us in living right. Many
churches, at least in the past, that were very legal in nature often
downplayed the place the Holy Spirit played in the life of the believer.
Paul basically says that the Holy Spirit replaced the Law.
Other churches who do promote the activity of the Holy Spirit and
are legalistic as well, confuse the issue by trying to combine living by
rules and living by the Spirit. This
does not work.
Struggling
With Sin (ch. 7:7-25) Before
we begin this section, let me warn you that there is a lot of thought that
is needed to understand this passage.
There has been much debate and disagreement over the centuries on
how to interpret what Paul is saying in Romans 7.
I do not pretend to have all the answers.
I only have some thoughts. So
be prepared to think a bit. Another
thing to think about is this. The
whole of the Bible is all about man's struggle with sin. Another way to
say this is that the whole Bible is all about the history of humanity in
conflict with Deity. This
chapter really shows this to be true. Paul
begins this section with yet another one of his logical questions.
“Is the Law sin?” You
might think Paul had little respect for the Law after all that he has just
said. Someone might ask, “is
the Law sin?” His answer is,
“far from it”. Then he
proceeds to give another reason for the Law’s existence.
“I would not have known what sin was, except through the Law”.
The Law taught us what sin was. It
told us that stealing was wrong. The
Greek word “aphorme” that is translated as “seizing” in verses 8
and 11 ( NIV) means, “to mount an attack“.
This word would have been used when an army was preparing for war.
The idea here is that sin within a person mounted an attack on that
person once the Law told sin that it was in the wrong.
Paul presents sin here in chapter seven as a separate identity,
something that is not a part of him, yet lives within him.
Paul
says, the sin to covet, once it sees the command not to covet, produced an
abundance of covetous desires within him.
He wanted to covet more than ever once the Law said not to. One
puzzling question over the centuries is this.
Is Paul speaking about himself, or is he speaking about mankind in
general in this chapter? In
verse 9 he says “once I was alive apart from the Law, but when the
commandment came sin sprang to life”.
Is he talking about himself here, or is he talking about mankind in
general? Was
Paul ever apart from the Law. I
am not sure he was. The Law
was in existence all through his life.
We do know that from Adam to Moses, mankind was apart from the Law.
(Rom. 5;13-14) So
possibly he is talking about mankind in general here. Yet some say Paul is
talking about himself as a child, before he understood the Law.
Then once coming to an age of understanding, sin mounted its attack
on him, making him extremely miserable.
Both ideas are not clearly stated here. In
verse 12 Paul further answers
his question (ch. 7:7) concerning whether the Law was sin or not.
He says here in verse 12 that the Law was holy.
Before he says this, he does state once again that sin mounted its
attack when he was introduced to the Law.
The Law did make sin increase (Rom 5:20), but was that the Laws
fault, or sin’s fault? It
was sin’s fault. Sin was
aroused by the Law. As Paul
says here in chapter seven, he would not have known what it meant to covet
except that the Law told him not to covet.
Once he understood what coveting meant, the sin of coveting within
him leaped up and made him covet even more. So the Law did cause man to
sin, but in an indirect way. It
was sin that was already in man that caused man to sin once man understood
what the Law said about sin. The
Law gave sin the opportunity to sin more.
Therefore the Law is holy. In
verse 13 Paul asks yet another question.
“Did that which is good (the Law), then, become death to me”?
Once again his answer is, “by no means”. Paul goes on to tell
us that through the Law sin might be recognized as sin.
The Law was meant to expose sin for what it was, even though it
knew sin would increase, thus making sin “utterly sinful”, or worse
than ever. (ch. 7:13) Simply
put, sin was in man when there was no Law, but man did not recognize it as
being wrong. The sin still
produced death. The Law came along, making it clear that what we were
doing was sinful and wrong. Once
sin was exposed within us, it rose up in rage, causing us to sin even
more. Now we were really in
bad shape with all this sinning going on.
Thus with this excess of sin, sin became “utterly sinful”.
When sin gets this bad, we need lots of help.
Verse
14 begins to present the challenge of the ages.
Paul says, “ the Law is spiritual but I am unspiritual, sold as a
slave to sin”. He goes on to
say that the things he should be doing, he doesn’t do, and the things he
is doing, he shouldn’t be doing. Once
again there are two camps. One
camp says that Paul is not talking about himself but mankind in general,
even though he says in verse 24, “I, myself in my mind am a slave to
God’s Law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin”.
If Paul is speaking of mankind in general why would he use the
words “I myself”, doubling the emphases on “I”.
For
those who believe Paul is talking about himself, there are usually three
different ways of looking at it, (1) Paul the non-Christian, (2) Paul the
normal Christian, (3) Paul the carnal Christian.
All three of these positions as well as the “mankind in
general” position have been
held by creditable theologians over the centuries.
I will not try to prove any point in these paragraphs, partly
because I am not one hundred percent sure myself.
I wish I knew for sure, but at the present I don’t.
Yet, even if we are unsure of these things there are still things
that we can learn from these verses. Paul
says in verse 14 that he is a slave to sin.
Let me point out in chapter 6:18 Paul says that he and other
Christians are slaves to God. We
had already concluded that we are either slaves to sin or slaves to God,
one or the other. It doesn’t
appear we can be slaves to two masters.
Yet Paul says here that he is a slave to sin.
This might mean that the “I” Paul is referring to is the
“I” before he became a Christian.
He might be referring to himself as a non-Christian
who knew the Law. As a
result he would know what is right but not have the power to live this
righteousness out. Verse
18 really distinguishes between sin and Paul. He says that “it is not I
myself who sins, but sin living within me”.
Is he suggesting that sin is some external identity that has come
to live within him? Is Paul
not owning up to his own actions here?
He repeats this thought in verse 20 as well.
However you might interpret this, Paul does say in verse 18 that
“there is nothing good that lives within me”.
Once again, this is the Depravity Of
Man that we have mentioned before.
We really do need to believe and understand this point, that there
is nothing good living within us, other than the Holy Spirit Himself who
we have as Christians. Paul
does clarify in verse 17 what he is saying. He says, “in his sinful
nature” there is nothing good.
By
adding the words “sinful nature” he may be saying that he has a sinful
nature as well as a spiritual nature, and in the sinful side of him there
is nothing good. He has to say
this because the Holy Spirit lives within him. He can’t say everything
within him is bad because the Spirit isn’t bad. In
verse 21 to 23 Paul presents this battle that seems to be taking place
within him. In his mind and
inner self Paul wants to serve God, yet there are parts of him that want
to serve sin. These two are in
constant conflict. He feels
like a prisoner. He cries out
in verse 24, “what a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this
body of death”. Here it is
again, the Depravity Of Man”. Of
course he doesn’t leave us without the answer.
It is Jesus who will rescue Paul. (ch. 7:25)
This might suggest that the “I” Paul is talking about, is the
”I” who is a non-Christian. The only way to change his status of
wretchedness would be for Jesus to come and rescue him, and if Jesus
hadn’t done that yet, Paul would not be a Christian. So maybe this is
not Paul the normal Christian, or Paul the
carnal Christian, but Paul the non-Christian. Paul
concludes that in his mind he will serve God, but in sinful nature he is a
slave to sin and death. This
verse might suggest that this is Paul, the normal Christian as he is
presently living because he is serving God.
There
are a few thoughts I would like to add at this point. Paul speaks of us as
having two natures which is evident in verses 14 and 21.
One nature is unspiritual, carnal, and sinful. The other nature is
spiritual, seeking the things of God.
There is a great battle that rages between these two natures.
So here is the question. If
Paul is speaking about himself here in chapter 7, is it Paul the
non-Christian, the normal Christian, or the carnal Christian.
By non-Christian I mean, before
Paul’s conversion when he was trying to find salvation by the Law.
Normal Christian would mean that what Paul is describing here is
normal Christian experience for all of us.
We all should expect these hard struggles with sin.
A carnal Christian would be one who is a Christian but not really
living for Jesus, but living by his own fleshly desires. I
tend to think at the present moment that Paul is either speaking of Paul
the non-Christian or the normal Christian.
I can see both. In
chapter 8 verse 2 Paul says that the Spirit has set us free from this law
of sin, which is the sinful nature, as noted in earlier verses.
This might suggest that we can overcome the sinful nature, and if
this is correct, then chapter 7 is not the normal Christian experience,
but the pre-Christian experience.
Paul suggests in chapter 8 that if we are true Christians, we will
live by the Spirit and not the flesh. It could not be Paul as a carnal
Christian either, because a carnal Christian wouldn’t be worried about
such things. It could be
Paul the non-Christian, before he knew the Lord, when he was a slave to
the Law, when he was trying hard to do good but couldn’t.
Still, I believe, that even Paul, the man of God that he was, still
struggled with his sinful nature, but because of the Holy Spirit, each
time the struggle presented itself, by the Spirit he won the battle.
At present, I'm still not one hundred percent sure how to view
this, but if I had to take a guess, I'd guess this is Paul the normal
Christian, as he was presently living when he wrote these words. In
verses 14 and 24 Paul views himself as a prisoner, or a slave to sin.
That does not sound like the Paul in earlier chapters who told us
he was a slave to God. Rom.
6:18 says, “you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to
righteousness”. This is
another reason for this being possibly Paul the non-Christian.
This does present a question though.
Where does the sinful nature fit into the scheme of things as a
Christian? It
would appear, even though we are no longer slaves to our sinful nature, we
still have it. Chapter 8 verse
12 says, “we have an obligation, but not to our sinful nature…”
Here Paul is speaking to people who have the Spirit of God (ch.
8:9). The conclusion then is
this. Those of us who have
God’s Spirit living within us are slaves to God, and not to our sinful
nature, even though our sinful nature is still a part of us.
Though we still have our sinful nature, it doesn’t rule us as it
once did. That is why
Paul exhorts us not to be obligated to our sinful nature.
It is still within us but we have been set free from its power.
Therefore, if this is the case, we should not be expected to live
as the person described in chapter 7.
This is only one way to look at chapter 7.
I am not saying that I am completely right.
Whatever the case about chapter 7, chapter 8 is important, no
matter how you view chapter 7.
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