How do we respond to indwelling sin? (Rom. 7:14-25)
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This is a very controversial passage, and as a result it is easy for us to get wrapped up in the debates about its interpretation. However, when we do that, we can end up missing the point of the passage and the benefit it is meant to give us. Scripture is not meant to be a ball batted back and forth between opposing viewpoints. It is meant to be medicine for our souls that heals our spiritual diseases and causes us to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And God does not throw inconsequential truths at us. Romans 7 is not filler, nor is it here merely as something for the intellectually curious. It’s meant to teach us some very important stuff. So what is that stuff? Having established the fact that Paul is speaking in these verses as a regenerate man, as a believer, and that he is speaking here about the inner conflict that is the result of indwelling sin, what lessons can we learn from this passage?
As we think about this, let’s begin by looking at the structure of the apostle’s argument in verses 14-25. It has been noted that in verses 14-20, the apostle basically says the same thing twice in two cycles. He says it in verses 14-17 and then again in verses 18-20. Verse 14 is paralleled in verse 18, verse 15 mirrored in verse 19, and verses 16-17 in verse 20.
In each of these two cycles, there are three phases to this argument. First, Paul teaches us about the nature of indwelling sin. He does this in verses 14 and 18. What does it mean to have the remnants of the sin nature within, even as a believer? Paul describes it in terms of the presence of the flesh and being sold under sin (14) which he then describes in verse 18 in terms of the native inability to do what is right even when the desire is there. There is nothing good in the flesh! Then, the apostle teaches us about the experience of indwelling sin, which he does in verses 15 and 19. He talks about not doing what he wants to do and doing what he hates instead. He says that he doesn’t understand this, but there it is. Third, he draws a conclusion from this conflict which is that the law is good (16), and that his frustration with not being always able to obey God’s law shows that he agrees that the law is good (17, 20), which answers once again the original charge in verses 7 and 13 that Paul’s teaching somehow means that the law is sin. No, it’s not the law that does any of this, Paul argues; it’s the sin within.
Then in verses 21-23, we have Paul summarizing his whole argument. He says that he wants to do right (21a) because he delights in the law of God in his inner being (22), but evil lies close at hand (21b) because there is a law in his members waging war and bringing him into captivity to it (23).
This is followed by the desperate cry, “O wretched man that I am!” By the way, this is how we are supposed to respond to this dark reality. How do you react to the sin within? We should not say, “Oh, the devil made me do it,” or “I just can’t help it, so what?” The response we ought to have is just the way Paul responds. And, by the way, you’re probably not going to do this if you don’t agree that this passage is about the experience of a believer. May the Lord give us such a love for his law and a hatred for sin and the sin within (and not just the sin that makes its way into our actions) that it would cause us to revolt in utter disgust, and to say with the apostle Paul, “O wretched man that I am!”
This cry of the apostle is then followed by the desperate question: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” This is an honest acknowledgement that any such deliverance is going to have to come outside of ourselves, outside our native ability. But the apostle does not leave us hopeless. He reminds us that there is help and there is hope: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We are not left in hopeless captivity. The sin is there, and we are going to have to fight it to the very end. But there is help. There is deliverance. It doesn’t come through the resources of free will but from the power and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Finally, the apostle finishes with one more summary statement: “So then with the mind I myself serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Now, here’s the question once again: what can we learn from this? I want to suggest to you that there are at least four important lessons that we need to take away from these verses and apply to our lives. Let me frame it by the question: How should we respond to the reality of indwelling sin? There are four ways we should respond.
Don’t ignore it.
We cannot ignore the reality or danger of indwelling sin. I don’t care how far you have progressed in holiness; you cannot pretend that the danger has passed. Even the saintly apostle Paul had to say, “I am carnal, sold under sin” (14). Even he had to say, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not” (18). Even he had to admit, “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me” (21). “Evil lies close at hand” (21, ESV). You cannot ignore it, any more than a soldier can ignore a grenade rolling over in his direction.
In other words, this chapter is a call to spiritual vigilance. Our enemy is the devil, yes, who goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. We don’t wrestle with flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. All that is true. But this is also true: “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed” (Jam. 1:14). There is a powder keg within, brethren. I remember reading a story about a young store clerk in Scotland in the 1800’s who went down into the basement with a candle in his hand, and one of the sparks lit off some barrels of gun powder. It blew the store to kingdom come. Just a spark, brethren! The apostle James will go on to say in the fourth chapter of his letter, “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” (4:1). Didn’t the apostle Peter say, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:11)?
I was once told by a preacher who fell into ministry-crippling sin that he had felt very spiritual and strong heading into the season in which he would find himself in sin. King David’s armies were being victorious when he allowed himself to be put in a place of temptation leading to terrible sin with tragic consequences. Oh friends, let us beware. Samson was unaware when his hair was cut off by the Philistines, and we are told that “he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him” (Judges 16:20). Just because you feel like you can shake the world with your spiritual strength doesn’t mean that the sin within hasn’t lulled to sleep and shorn you of your power.
To be sold under sin doesn’t mean that we have to obey the dictates of sin in our lives. It doesn’t mean that you can’t say no to sin. We can resist the devil, and he will flee from us. We can refuse to let sin reign in our mortal bodies so that we do not yield to its desires. But we cannot free ourselves from its presence, not this side of heaven. Indwelling sin is there. It is something we are going to have to fight to the end of our days. We cannot rest even a moment from the battle. You cannot pretend that the bullets have stopped flying or that the shells have stopped falling. As the hymn by George Heath puts it:
Brethren, please, please don’t ignore it. Be vigilant. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. What armor is the word of God against sin when we embrace with faith and love and humility and understanding! Pray without ceasing. Be open to accountability. Come to church. Sing the hymns and hear the preaching. Participate in the Lord’s Supper. If you haven’t, turn from your sin and rebellion, repent of your sin, and embrace Jesus Christ by faith for the salvation from sin that only comes from him. You can’t even begin to fight this fight apart from his grace. And be baptized, take up your cross and follow him.
Don’t underestimate it.
We cannot underestimate the power of sin or the weakness of the flesh. Listen to the way the apostle describes it: “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not” (18). You know, the apostle is speaking here as a believer. But even as such, he still had to say that in his flesh dwelt no good thing. He still had to say that he had no ability in himself to obey the law that he wanted to keep or refuse the sin that he hated. What we have here is a consistent pattern of weakness in ourselves because of indwelling sin: “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me” (21). He says, “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (23).
Note the word “law” in verses 21 and 23. What does Paul mean by that? He doesn’t mean God’s law because after saying, in verse 22, that he delights in God’s law, in verse 23 he says, “I see another law in my members.” So this is not the law of God – it is a different law. But the question is, what law is it? What is Paul talking about here?
The word “law” here has the meaning of a force or a power, “in the sense of rule or principle of action.” The sin within, the law of sin (25), is a power or force within us. It is not a benign tumor but a cancer that will eat away at the soul. Left unchecked, it will destroy you. It will take away your peace, cripple your effectiveness, undermine your faith, dim your light for Christ. Don’t ever underestimate indwelling sin. Don’t just recognize that it is there. Don’t put up with it. Don’t come to terms with it. Don’t just corner it and leave it there. Fight it, go on the offensive against it!
By the way, I can’t help but pointing out that if this is the way the apostle speaks as a believer, where then is the power of free will? If “in my flesh dwelleth no good thing” so that “to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not,” how in the world can those who know nothing of the grace of God in Christ, who are not born again, take even one step to faith and repentance apart from the effectual work of the Spirit of God in regeneration? This passage is a testament, not only to the power of remaining sin, but in secondary sense, to the even greater power that sin has in the unsaved. It is not for no reason that the Bible describes the person who is not born again as being dead in trespasses and in sins (Eph. 2:1-3). This is not an idle description. There is a lot of vain talk about the ability of the will. My friend, our wills are ineffective against sin apart from the grace of God. Indeed, if we are saved at all, if we are sanctified at all, it is not owing to the power of our wills but to the power of God. As Paul put it to the Corinthians, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:30-31).
How powerful is sin? It is powerful enough to fell a Samson, a David, a Solomon, the apostle Peter. My friend, you are not playing with fireworks here. You are playing with a nuclear bomb in your soul. We’re talking about long term fall-out and spiritual radiation.
Think of the power of sin in terms of its consequences. God forgave David, but reads the chapters in 2 Samuel after David’s sin. It’s not pretty. In fact, it’s awful. Don’t think that God will give you a pass because you’ve done some great things for him. Moses was forbidden to enter the Promised Land because he didn’t honor God at the waters of Meribah. Do you think you’re greater than Moses? Think again, my friend.
Now I’m not saying this simply to play on your fears, though I think we ought to have a healthy fear of sin. When Paul says, “Flee fornication,” that implies that the sin of fornication is something you should fear, something that should disgust you, something that you should hate. I am saying this so that you will take it seriously. Don’t underestimate its power to drag you into deep, dark corners.
Don’t blame God for it.
“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (Jam. 1:13). The sin that tempts us is not God’s sin; it’s our sin. The flesh is our flesh. We need to remind ourselves of this fact because we are so adept at the blame game. We are so much like our faither Adam, who when he was caught having eaten the Forbidden Fruit, had the cheekiness to tell God, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (Gen. 3:12). In other words: “God, it’s your fault!” It is so easy for us, especially when we feel our weakness and our inability, to go from, “I can’t do what I ought to do” to “God you made me this way.” No, my friends, God did not make you this way. The Bible makes it very clear that God made man upright. It is man that has chosen to sin against God. God doesn’t force sin down our throats; we freely choose it. We serve the law of God, but we also serve the law of sin (Rom. 7:25).
Even though the apostle says, “It is no longer I that I do it” (17, 20), the point he is making is not that he’s not responsible for his sin. The point is that in his inmost being, his inner man, he agrees with the law of God about his sin: “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (22). He agrees that it’s wrong. And that is actually the way we ought to respond to sin. We ought to agree with God about it. And in particular, we ought to agree with his law, with his word about it. We don’t get to blame God for our sin, and we don’t get to define it, either.
Not only must we not blame God for it, neither must we excuse it for any reason. One of the ways we can falsely apply this passage is to say, “Oh, this is about the Christian; the Christian is a person who struggles with sin. I’m struggling with sin, so it’s not that big of a problem.” And then we do nothing about it. We end up tolerating it in our lives. My friends, we must never, ever do that. The fact of the matter is that this is not meant to be a total description of Paul’s experience. Paul is simply making the point that this side of heaven we are yet fleshly. But that’s not all we are. We’ve already seen in chapter 6 that every believer is united to Christ and is no longer under the dominion of sin. We are able to defeat sin, to say no to it, to not let it reign over us. Beware of using a passage like this to justify a kind of “carnal Christianity” which is little more than worldliness with a thin veneer of Jesus spread on top.
We must never forget that the man who wrote this about himself also wrote this about himself: “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:7-14). This is not a lazy or worldly Christian. Those who live in sin and call themselves Christian are fake. They are hypocrites. You can’t be a good tree, our Lord said, and bear bad fruit. The Christian struggles with sin, yes, but that means that he fights it, and isn’t satisfied until he gets victory over it. in fact, this text is not means to give us any excuse for spiritual defeat. It’s meant to show us why we are defeated and to cause us to turn to Jesus, which is our last point.
Don’t go to the law for relief from it.
We cannot go to the law to get relief from indwelling sin. We must not miss the point that the apostle is making. The law cannot of itself sanctify us. It can talk to us, it can command us, but it can’t change us. And what that ultimately means is that we can’t change ourselves. This is why Paul cries out the way he does: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (24). He is wretched and unable to save himself. He cannot justify himself and he cannot sanctify himself.
Have you felt this way? Have you felt weary and heavy laden? Have you come to the end of yourself? The reality is that this is the way we really are. We are wretched. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me,” as Newton put it. Apart from the grace of God, we are not that great. In fact, we are not great as all.
One of our main problems is the delusion that we can save ourselves. But we cannot saved ourselves. We cannot deal with the guilt of our sins; only the death of Christ for us can do that. Nor can we deal with the grip that sin has on us; only the power of Christ in us can do that. But it is not our power. It is only the grace of God that can free us.
But we must not stay at the “O wretched man that I am.” We must not allow the problem of sin, of indwelling sin, to bring us to despair. First of all, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you must not think that the presence of this struggle is evidence that you are not saved. Sometimes I have spoken to people who have thought that because they have sinned that therefore they are not saved at all. Or because they have had an ongoing sin they have had to fight with, that this means they are not saved. But though we must not act like salvation makes no difference in the life – it makes a massive difference – neither must we think that being saved means being perfect. The saint is not someone who has mastered all sins, but someone who repents on a daily basis and who is growing in grace.
But second, neither must we despair in thinking that we cannot overcome sin. We can overcome sin, no matter what the sin is. Not because we have the resources in ourselves but because we are united to Christ.
Which is why Paul goes on to say: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (25). We are wretched and helpless and lost and justly under the wrath of God for our sin. But here’s the thing: no matter how far into sin we have fallen, no matter how great its grip on us, no matter how defiled we are by it, no matter how much of a wreck we have made of our lives – Jesus Christ the Son of God and Savior of the world is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him. All that the Father give to him will come to him and those who come to him he will never, ever cast out. Jesus Christ is the inexpressible gift of God.
And don’t miss the “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” There is no other way to God, to the Father. You don’t get to God around him, only through him. There is no other name under heaven given among me whereby we must be saved. Those who seek salvation through another religion or through good works are on the broad road that leads to destruction. But all who come to God by him may come and be welcome. As Paul put it to the Ephesians, we have access to the Father through Christ by the Spirit.
So how do we respond to the problem of indwelling sin? We don’t ignore it, we don’t underestimate it, we don’t blame God for it, and we don’t go to the law for relief from it. We go to Christ. Because in Christ Jesus we have all the resources we need: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (8:3-4).
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