Romans 7:1-25 The Struggle with Sin

Romans 7:1-25: The Struggle with Sin

 Please turn with me in your Bible to Romans 7. If you’re using of the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 781. We’ve been working our way passage by passage through Paul’s letter to the Romans, and this morning the next passage we come to is Romans 7:1-25. You know, a lot of people think that when you become a Christian, all of your struggles with sin suddenly disappear. The alcoholic no longer desires alcohol. The drug addict no longer desires drugs. The habitual liar no longer has any inclination to lie. The victim of abuse no longer harbors any bitterness against the perpetrator. The angry person no longer struggles with outbursts of anger. And to be clear, there are times when that happens. There are times when someone is saved and God instantly removes any desire within that person for a certain sin. I know people who were addicted to pornography and were subsequently saved and immediately stopped having any desire for pornography. But sometimes people think that’s the norm. They think that’s what you should expect when you become a Christian and that something’s wrong with you if you still desire sin—especially if it’s a sin that has been a particular struggle for you. Yet as we’ll see today in Romans 7, that’s simply not the case. The main idea of this passage is that Christians may be free in Christ, but that doesn’t mean they don’t struggle with sin. Christians may be free in Christ, but that doesn’t mean they don’t struggle with sin. So let’s look at those two ideas in that order. First, the idea that Christians possess freedom in Christ. And then, second, the idea that Christians still struggle with sin. Christians Possess Freedom in Christ 

So first, Christians possess freedom in Christ. You may remember from last week that Paul’s just spent an entire chapter explaining this to us. In chapter 6, he told us all about how Christians used to be slaves of sin prior to their conversion but then were saved and became slaves of God—which in reality is the essence of true freedom. So Paul’s already been talking extensively about the freedom from sin that Christians enjoy and now continues that theme here in chapter 7. Yet beginning in verse 1, he changes up his language a little bit and introduces the concept not just of freedom from sin but what he calls freedom or release from the law. Look at verses 1-4: 1 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. 4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 

So Paul uses the illustration here of a woman being released from the law of marriage. If a woman’s husband dies, that woman is entirely free to remarry. It’s not like she’s committing adultery or being unfaithful to her first husband by marrying another man. She’s been released from the law of marriage. That law no longer has any hold over her. And in the same way, Paul says, Christians have died with Christ and therefore been released from the law as it’s recorded in the Old Testament. No longer are we under the law. No longer are we in the impossible situation of trying to earn salvation by keeping the law’s requirements. We’ve been released from that. 

How? Well, as Paul states in verse 4, we’ve “died to the law through the body of Christ.” “The body of Christ” there is a reference to the body of Jesus as he was crucified on the cross. Jesus died as our substitute. In reality, we deserved to die and face God’s wrath as the just punishment for our sin. But Jesus offered his body as a sacrifice on the cross in order to take the punishment we deserved and then victoriously rose from the dead three days later. That’s the essence of the gospel. It’s because of that and that alone that we can be saved. And as Paul teaches here in verse 4, there’s a sense in which we also died when Jesus died. He says we’ve “died to the law through the body of Christ.” In other words, we’ve been united with him in his dead in the sense that we’ve now to our old way of living and our old situation of being under the law.

Paul then elaborates some more in verses 5-6. He says, 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. So again, we’ve been released from the law. We’re no longer bound to the law as a means of obtaining merit before God and being saved. Instead, Paul says, “we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” In other words, we now approach God’s instructions in an entirely different way. Before, the only asset we had when it came to following God’s instructions was the instructions themselves. That was the old way of the written code. And the problem was that no matter how hard we tried, we could never manage to follow God’s instructions adequately. We failed time after time. Just look at Israel’s history in the Old Testament to see how inevitable that failure is. So the “written code” by itself isn’t very much help to us. It would be kind of like going to a doctor when you’re sick and having the doctor diagnose your sickness correctly but then not offering you any remedy for that sickness. Isn’t that the worst? Like you go in to see the doctor because you’re sick, but the doctor tells you that it’s a virus and that there’s no medicine for it and that you basically just have to wait it out. That’s not what I want to hear. When I go to the doctor, I want a prescription, right? I want some medicine that I can take and be feeling better within a few hours. Please, give me something more than a mere diagnosis. Yet that’s all that the law is able to give us. The law shows us our sickness, as measured by our inability to keep the law, yet it doesn’t offer any remedy. That’s what it means to serve “in the old way of the written code.” 

Thankfully, however, that’s not the way we serve God any more. Paul says we serve in what he calls “the new way of the Spirit.” So now, for those of us who are Christians, we possess the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is amazing. He gives us both the desire and the ability follow God’s instructions. For the first time, we actually can live as God calls us to live. So before, God gave us instructions to obey but not the ability to obey them. But now that we have the Holy Spirit, we have not only the instructions but also the ability to follow those instructions. That’s what it means to “serve in the new way of the Spirit.”

Then before moving on to his next point, Paul gives an important clarification in verses 7-13. He basically tells us that he’s not saying that the law itself is sinful. Indeed, if it weren’t for the law, we wouldn’t be aware of our sin. So the law itself is good and right. The problem is that before we’re saved, sin uses the law to arouse sinful desires within us and, in Paul’s words, put us to death. We’re powerless to resist its pull in our unsaved condition. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit. 

Christians Still Struggle with Sin

However, here’s the surprising thing for some people: even after we become a Christian and receive the Holy Spirit, we still have struggles with sin. Now notice I didn’t say we’re powerless to resist sin but rather than we still have struggles with sin. And that’s precisely the next point Paul makes here in Romans 7. Having thoroughly explained the reality that Christians possess freedom in Christ, Paul now helps us understand that Christians still nevertheless struggle with sin. That’s point two: Christians still struggle with sin. Look at verse 14: For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. So notice that when Paul says this, he’s not talking about a non-Christian but about a Christian. In fact, he’s talking about himself in the present tense. He says “I am of the flesh, sold under sin.” He uses the present tense there. And to be honest, that can be a little confusing because Paul’s just argued very passionately that Christians have been freed from sin. So how can he now say that he himself is presently “sold under sin”? And that’s a very good question. In fact, that question has led many interpreters to say that, even though Paul uses the present tense, he’s actually talking about what he used to be in his unsaved condition. However, most interpreters, including myself, believe that Paul is talking about himself in his present, saved condition and that it sometimes simply feels as though he’s “sold under sin.” It’s as if Paul’s saying, “Look guys, up to this point I’ve been talking about our freedom from sin. Through Jesus, we’re free from sin and released from the law. But let me tell you something: that doesn’t mean we won’t struggle with sin. I myself struggle with sin. In fact, sometimes it even feels like I’m still enslaved to sin all over again. That’s how intense the struggle can be sometimes.”

Look at the way Paul describes his struggle in subsequent verses, verses 15-24: 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I 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 with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 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. 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? 

So again, that’s Paul’s struggle with sin. It’s intense. This is a man who struggles in hand-to-hand combat with sin every day. And the reason he struggles—and the reason we who are Christians struggle—is that we still possess what I like to call the ghost of our old sinful nature. Our sinful nature was, in a sense, put to death when we were saved. At our conversion, we received a new nature. The old nature was put to death and replaced with the new. However, as Scripture teaches here and as our daily experience confirms, the ghost of that old sinful nature still lingers over our lives. It’s an intruder, it doesn’t belong there, and yet it lingers. It would be kind of like purchasing a house only to discover that the previous homeowner has kept a copy of the keys and thinks it’s okay to just come into the house whenever he feels like it. That’s not the way it works, right? If he did that, you’d have every right to tell him to get out and then call the cops if he didn’t. He doesn’t have any right to be there. The deed’s now in your name. So he would be an intruder. And in a similar way, our old sinful nature regularly acts as an intruder and tries to reassert its dominance over our lives even as Christians. And it can cause a lot of problems. Thankfully, a day is coming when we won’t have to deal with that any more. That’ll be when we get to heaven. But for now, we do have to deal with it. Paul makes that very clear in these verses. 

And by the way, I really appreciate how honest Paul is about his struggles with sin. He doesn’t dial down the intensity of his struggles. He tells it like it is. And that should encourage us to imitate his example. I’ve never understood why so many Christians feel like they have to pretend that they have it all together. Every single one of us experiences the struggle of Romans 7, so don’t feel like you have to hide that. We’re all in the same boat. Now I’m not saying you should confess the specific details of your sins to every other Christian you encounter—I’m not sure that would be wise—but you should consider selecting one or two other Christians of the same gender and whom you trust and tell them the details of your struggles with sin so that they can be praying for you and holding you accountable. There are a couple of guys in this church that I do that with personally. And in addition to those one or two people with whom you share the details of your sins, it would probably be good to just be more open about your sin in general. If another Christian asks you about how you’ve been doing and seems genuinely interested, you might consider alluding to the general nature of your struggles and asking for their prayer in that. Resist the idea that you have to act like you have it all together. 

And also, I do want to point out that there’s a difference between struggling with sin and wholeheartedly pursuing sin. Struggling with sin is a lot different than pursuing it. For example, if a guy says that he “struggles with lust” but you find out that he goes to the strip every Friday night and then returns home and sleeps just fine afterwards, that’s not a “struggle.” There’s no struggle taking place. It’s just him freely giving himself over to his sinful desires. And the fact that he’s able to do that without much of a second thought probably indicates he’s not truly a Christian. He’s probably never received the new nature. So make sure you don’t confuse those two things. Struggling with certain sin is much different than pursuing that sin. If you’re struggling with a sin, that means, number one, that you’re grieved over the sin when you commit it and, number two, that you’re also trying to take practical steps to overcome that sin. You’re praying about it, you’re asking others to hold you accountable, you’re avoiding certain situations in which you’re likely to be tempted—things like that. That’s what struggling looks like. 

And I wish I could say that, eventually, once you struggle with sin long enough, you’re able to get to a point where you’ve defeated all the sin in your life and there’s no more need to struggle. Of course, like I mentioned, that will be the case in heaven, but it sure would be nice if it were also the case here on earth. Unfortunately, though, that’s not the way it works. Even after you’ve been a Christian for many and have perhaps attained a high level of spiritual maturity, you’ll still struggle with sin. Just look at Paul here in Romans 7. I’m sure we’d all agree that Paul was a very mature Christian and had made extensive progress in his growth in holiness, yet even he had this intense struggle with sin. How could that be? Well, the more you progress as a Christian, the more sensitive you become to sin in your life. You become conscious of sins that you weren’t conscience of before. Kind of like when you walk into a room that’s dark, you probably won’t see very much clutter in the room. You may see a few major things like a piece of furniture out of place, but you’re not going to notice the dust on the shelf. That’s kind of the way it is at the beginning of the Christian life. But then as you grow, it’s as if the room becomes brighter and brighter and your eyes are therefore opened to more and more of the clutter in the room. You see more of the sin in your life and especially in your heart. So your struggle with sin remains just as intense as it ever was and perhaps even more intense. You might be able to make the case that your struggle with sin increases as you attain greater and greater holiness. Perhaps that’s why the struggle Paul describes here in Romans 7 is so intense. So if you’ve been a Christian for a number of years and you think you can just coast your way through the rest of your Christian life, then be advised that even though you may like to consider yourself spiritually mature because you’ve attained a decent amount of biblical knowledge over the years, you actually may not be as mature as you think you are. And not only do you lack spiritual maturity, but you also lack even basic spiritual health if that’s your attitude. Because you know what spiritual health and maturity look like? They look like Paul here in Romans 7. 

Conclusion

Yet thankfully, as we see at the end of Romans 7, it’s possible, generally speaking, to live in victory over sin and to enjoy that victory even in this life. Now as we’ve just discussed that doesn’t mean we won’t struggle with sin and struggle with great intensity. Yet even in the mist of that struggle, it’s still possible to live in victory over sin.  Look at verses 24-25: 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? [In other words, who will deliver me from the sin that plagues me?] 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So victory over sin in a general sense is possible through Jesus. Through Jesus, God has provided all the resources you need to enjoy that victory. What resources might I be talking about? Well, if you remember back to verse 6, Paul’s actually already told us. We have the Holy Spirit. Remember? “We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” We as Christians have the Holy Spirit. And, if you look ahead to chapter 8, which we’ll do next week, you can see that chapter 8 is all about the Holy Spirit. So just be aware of how chapter 7 naturally flows into chapter 8. In chapter 7, Paul describes our struggle with sin and says that we have victory through Jesus, and then spends the majority of chapter 8 talking about the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit enables us to actually experience that victory on a daily basis. So the key to experiencing victory in our struggle with sin is the Holy Spirit. He’s absolutely central. Trying to overcome sin apart from the Spirit would be like me trying to speak to you today without vocal cords. We need him. As we read earlier in the service in Galatians 5:16, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” It’s only as we “walk by the Spirit” and allow ourselves to be filled with the Spirit every day that we experience victory over our sinful desires. 

And as we conclude, here’s how the Spirit helps us overcome sin. There are a lot of facets to the Spirit’s ministry in our lives, but here’s what I believe is the very core of it. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to biblical truth and thereby awakens our affections for God. We could spend an entire sermon talking about that as the main idea if we wanted to. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to biblical truth and thereby awakens our affections for God. You see, at the end of the day, we always pursue whatever it is that we most desire. We ultimately do exactly what we want to do, even if we often have to prioritize one want above another. We live according to our wants and our desires. So the only way to truly overcome sin is for our desire for sin to be overshadowed and effectively replaced with a desire for God. We’ll only be able to live for God when we begin to desire him more than we desire sin. And the Spirit helps us with that. He opens our eyes to biblical truth and thereby awakens our affections and our longings for God. The Spirit helps us see God more so we can love him more and desire him more and delight in him more. 

So whenever you find yourself choosing to sin, make sure you understand why you’re doing that. You’re doing that because you’ve been starving yourself of spiritual nourishment, because of that, and the fires of your delight in God have died down. That’s the deeper issue. You’re sinning because you’re empty. You might compare it to desiring food. If you’ve just had a huge steak, you’re not going to desire Ramen noodles. Now if you got stranded somewhere out in the wilderness and had gone days without eating, I’m sure Ramen noodles would sound delicious to you. But if you’ve just eaten a steak that was so big that you almost weren’t able to finish it, you’re not gonna desire Ramen noodles anytime soon. And it works the same way with sin. You only desire sin when you’re empty of delight in God. So the answer to overcoming sin isn’t to grit your teeth and try harder but rather to delight yourself in God. Remind yourself of the truth David expresses in Psalm 16:11, where he says to God, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” So remind yourself of how true that is—that only in God’s presence is there “fullness of joy” and only at his right hand are “pleasures forevermore.” And the Spirit helps us see that and believe that and experience that…through biblical truth.