1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our
Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word this 4th
Sunday after Pentecost is taken from St. Paul’s words to the Church at Rome,
from Romans 7:14-25. Today we see, “The Christian’s Constant Dilemma.” St. Paul reminds us that we as Christians
want to follow God’s law (vv. 16, 22), but sin still resides within us and
opposes our new life we have in Jesus (vv. 15, 17–21, 23), because of our
constant dilemma with sin we as Christians yearn for final deliverance from sin
(vv. 24, 25a).
2. In
Romans 7 St. Paul captures the Christian’s constant dilemma. We’re both saint
and sinner. As Luther put it, simul iustus et peccator. On the one hand,
we’re saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, and in our hearts we want to do
what’s right. But on the other hand, we’re still in the body, which is full of
sinful lusts and desires. The two natures found in the Christian, the Old Man
full of sin and the New Man wanting to do what is right according to God’s
Word, is reflected in our culture in many ways. One of the most famous is the
classic story by the nineteenth-century writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Everyone
knows the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was a respected
scientist who discovered a potion that turned him into a monster. This has
become well-known among us to describe someone with a split personality:
sometimes he’s nice, sometimes he’s terrible. We’ll say, “He’s a real Jekyll and Hyde.”
But on a deeper level this is a parable about the dynamic between sin
and grace that we have in Romans 7. For the evil Mr. Hyde was a genuine part of
Dr. Jekyll trying to get out. And that’s our dilemma. Even though saved, we’re
real sinners. But our text concludes by saying, “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v 25). Though we
struggle with sin in this life, God has given us forgiveness through Christ’s
death and resurrection. And though because of sin we will die, we will rise to
eternal life by faith in Christ.
3. In this
section of Romans, the Apostle Paul is discussing the relationship between three
terms: the Christian, God’s law and sin. God’s law shows sin for what it really
is—as that which results in eternal death. Faith in in Jesus frees us as
Christians from the demands and condemnation of God’s law and assures us of
eternal life. In joyful response to God’s love we as Christians then strive to
keep God’s law but still fall into sin. So St. Paul asks the question, why do
we keep on sinning when we don’t want to sin? That’s the question which haunts
Paul, the Christian, in our text. Paul
describes for us the Christian’s constant dilemma.
4. St. Paul
says in Romans 7:15, “15I do
not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very
thing I hate.” Here Paul, the
sinner-saint, is trying to understand the conflict he feels within himself. He’s
a saint and a slave to God (Ro 6:22); he’s also a sinner and a slave to sin (Ro
7:14). “I do not understand what I do,” Paul confesses. He goes on further, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Paul’s will
according to his new man is to follow God’s law to the letter. He sees all
those actions that please God and in his heart Paul fully intends to do them.
His will says, “That’s for me!” Then he checks what he has done or has left
undone and discovers something quite perplexing; his performance doesn’t even
come close to his intentions.
5. St. Paul
continues in Romans 7:16-17 saying, “16Now
if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17So
now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” Since Paul according to his new man desires
to follow that law, he puts his stamp of approval on the law as something good.
The law tells him what God wants. Paul’s failure to live up to the specific
requirements of the law doesn’t tarnish the image of the law. The fault for
Paul’s conduct can’t be credited to God’s law.
So Paul clarifies the duality found in himself and in every Christian. Although
his real self, his new man, isn’t responsible for his constant sinning, an
unwelcome intruder, lives within him and is responsible. Paul says that this is
sin dwelling within him. He recognizes sin within himself but is powerless to control
that intruder. As a consequence sin overpowers Paul’s will and causes him to commit
numerous sins. Paul can’t duck responsibility for those sins; he commits them
when the sin within him wins out over his new man.
8. St. Paul
continues saying in Romans 7:18-25, “18For
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. 19For
I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on
doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do
it, but sin that dwells within me. 21So
I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For
I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23but 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. 24Wretched man that I
am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks 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.”
9. If
you’re anything like me, what God wants loses far too often. We’ve probably got
it easier than Paul, though, in a way: our consciences perhaps aren’t quite so
sensitive. Still, when on occasion they do bother us, we find ourselves
thinking just as Paul did: “No, it wasn’t
really me. It was the sin that lives in me. The devil made me do it. I’m in
bondage to sin and can’t free myself.” “What
a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (v 24).
10. It didn’t take Paul long to come up with his answer: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our
Lord!” (v 25). And he didn’t stop there. He went on to write ch 8. There he
spelled out what kind of deliverance he was talking about: “If the Spirit of [God] who raised Jesus from
the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give
life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (v 11). So,
if the sin living in me brings death, the Spirit living in me brings life.
After all, he is the same Spirit that raised Jesus himself from the dead, and
he is the only one powerful enough to overcome the sin that lives in me.
11. Thanks be to God that there’s an end for us as Christians
with our constant dilemma against sin. There’s a power at work in you that’s
stronger than yourself, stronger than your sin. You know there is, because
you’re a a baptized child of God, and the Spirit of God does live in you. He
came to live in you at your Baptism; he has renewed his presence within you
every time you have partaken of the Lord’s body and blood in the Sacrament of
Holy Communion. And Jesus is renewing
his presence within you right now, as in faith you listen to his Word and trust
his promise.
12. In today’s Gospel Jesus our Savior gives to us an answer to
our constant dilemma as Christians.
Jesus says, “Come to me, all you
who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). And then he
adds, “Take my yoke upon you . . . for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”
(vv 29–30). I doubt if any of you
has ever plowed with a team of oxen. I haven’t either. But I have it on good
authority that, when using a team of oxen, the fit of the yoke is crucial. If
the yoke doesn’t fit right, it rubs the ox’s shoulders raw. In order for both
oxen truly to work together, the yoke has to fit perfectly. I can’t help
remembering that our Lord may have grown up becoming an experienced woodworker.
He might very well have made many ox yokes in his day. I can almost picture the
sign over the door of his shop: “My yoke is easy.”
13. It is. Because the Gospel of Jesus tells us that our
standing before God is gift, not achievement. On the cross Christ gained for us
our standing before God. We enjoy God’s love and his favor because of Christ.
Our faith didn’t cause that. Neither did our obedience. St. Paul reminds us that
nothing in us caused anything in God! Even the pagan philosophers knew that God
was the uncaused first cause. We don’t cause God to . . . anything! Rather,
God’s grace, his undeserved love, is the cause of our faith and our obedience .
. . and the strength that enables us to continue to struggle against sin.
14. A man was on trial for murder. He bribed a juror to hold
out for the lesser verdict of manslaughter. The jury was out for a long time,
and when they finally returned to the courtroom, they found the defendant “guilty of manslaughter.” The defendant
breathed a sigh of relief. Later he looked up the juror he had bribed and asked
if he had had a hard time convincing the others. “Yes,” he said, “I had a
terrible time. They all wanted to vote ‘not guilty.’ ” Now, that was futility on the part of the
accused man. But, wretched, guilty men and women that we are, because of
Christ’s cross, our dilemma against sin isn’t just an exercise in futility.
Through Jesus we’re not only declared not guilty, but by the very power of God,
we also live before him in righteousness and purity forever. Amen.
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