Devotion—Romans by Pastor Kevin Skogen
Romans 7:14-25
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh,sold under sin.15 For I do not understand my own actions. ForI do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree withthe law, that it is good.17 So nowit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.18 For I know that nothing good dwellsin me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.20 Now if I do what I do not want,it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 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. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 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.
The Psalm writers give us deep emotional confessions of sin as do the godly prophets as they poured out their hearts to the Lord. And what about Jesus? He taught us that we should be a people who mourn our sin…that we are poor in spirit because we reckon with our abiding unworthiness. He warns us that we must always watch and pray so that we do not fall into temptation…so that sin would not be our master.
Then think of all that Paul says elsewhere: his teaching about pressing on because we haven’t yet arrived; beating his body to bring it into submission; and our obligation to forgive one another all the sins they are constantly committing against us as we should ask forgiveness for the sins we commit against them.
Paul is only saying here in Romans 7 what the Bible says everywhere; that as God’s true children we must battle the sin that remains and that battle often is particularly personal and intense and sometimes we fare well and at other times we fare quite poorly.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.”
The puritan John Owen admonishes us: Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you. Or as we read in Galatians: For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. Gal 5:17
Pascal said that “There are only two kinds of men: the righteous, who believe themselves sinners, and the rest, sinners who believe themselves righteous.” [Pensees]
The Christian who is most conscious of his sins is the very one who is likely to be most eager to put them to death and the Christian who has grown complacent about his sin is very likely the one who is doing nothing about them whatsoever.
Let me put this candidly: The Bible addresses Christians assuming that we are genuine, that we love the Lord with no qualifications and so the Lord continues to expose the sinfulness of our lives…He continues to shame us for indulging the many sins that we, that you and I, do in fact indulge…
…And the Lord continues to warn us of the consequences of indulging those sins and He continues through His Word to exhort us to never, ever relax in our effort to put them to death. And if I might once again, pull no punches: This is what so many who sit in Christian churches will not tolerate…will not stand for…it is too much for them to see their sin the way the Bible does and the way Paul explains it here.
They want to say they are Christians, but they do not want warnings about sin’s danger…they do not want the shame the Spirit brings by exposing them…shaming them for indulging these many sins…but, and here is the key, they also refuse to give up the sins…
So, what to do? Go somewhere else…go to a church that will let you set the terms, find a communion of friends who would never call you on your sin, never confront your indulging…and the only thing they ask, is that you repay the favor?
We never get past the need to notice, to acknowledge, and to reckon with the evil and the consequences of our sin, never. It is why we, every minute of every day, need Jesus, because we have an active recognition of how much wrong there remains in us.
As Christians we can say, we want to say, we hurry to say such things as: The Lord is my Shepherd…God is my Father…Christ is my Savior…My home is in heaven where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. But you must be just as willingly to say, tohurry to say, “O wretched man that I am!”. There is a certainty, a joy that comes with knowing the love of God and in rejoicing in the favor of the Lord that is ours because we know what the Lord has done for us…
…But this must exist alongside seeing your wretchedness, your shame, and the disappointment that your sin, often, too often, has its way with you. All of us would be very happy to be rid of this burden of sin…we wish that it did not have the power in our lives that it has and that is what makes it such a powerful temptation for Christians to grow comfortable with their sins and no longer to struggle against them…it just wears us out.
I am sure you have felt that way. You have thought, oh what’s the use, I have failed and tried and tried and failed over and over again, I am confessing the same sin, so what’s the point of it all! And there are plenty of voices who will tell you that the best way to get rid of temptation is either to give into it…at least it will leave you alone for a time…or to pretend it isn’t there.
You have only two choices, you can either stop caring that you are displeasing the Lord over and over again, make peace with your sin, cheapen grace to the point you convince yourself that since it is all about Jesus and what He has done, your sinning doesn’t really mean all that much…You can do that, and believe me many have done exactly that…or….you can engage in the life-long struggle and fight against sin, seeking to put it to death, little by little…day by day…as the Bible says you must.
Here again is the counter-intuitive way the Bible teaches us to think namely; that it is your view of your own sin, and your own sinning, your estimation of it, your understanding of the measure of it, your disgust over it, your hatred of it that will determine to a very great degree what kind of Christian you will be and what kind of Christian life you will live. Do you understand what I am saying? I admit that it is not the Norman Vincent Peale Gospel, but it is the Jesus Gospel:
More than you know, the sense of your own sin and the wretchedness you feel on account of it will determine the depth of your love for God… it will determine the purity of your life, the degree of your devotion, the way you love or fail to love those sitting next to you and even your usefulness to the kingdom of God.
Show me a man or woman who feels the sin within to be the heaviest of burdens as Paul did and I will show you a Christian who is going down deep and up high in the things of God. On the other hand, show me a Christian who does not think about his or her own sin as Paul thought about his and described his in Rom 7 and I will show you a Christian who, in what really matters, is a shadow of what a Christian man or woman ought to be!
Prayer: Father, while I am deeply aware of my sinfulness and I am thankful for Your grace that alarmed and continues to alarm me, I am also keenly aware of the forgiveness and mercy that is found only in Jesus Christ. Having been cleansed, I continue to seek cleansing: Having been made holy, I continue to ask You for the power to live in holiness. These are Your gifts and I give you thanks for them, In Jesus name, Amen.
Hymn: There is a Fountain Filled With Blood