THE GOSPEL OF GOD
Meditations in St. Paul's Letter to the Romans
FACING THE LAW AS A CHRISTIAN (Part 1)

"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is not longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil that I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I that do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."
Romans 7:14-20.

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WE now begin to look at what Paul is saying in these verses in the last section of chapter 7. I have sought to lay foundation for our thinking in the previous sermon, and as we begin to look at these verses, I feel a need to make one or two more general observations.

Although we have been delivered from the law of God as far as our salvation is concerned, and we are saved and accepted by God, not on the grounds of our doing and keeping the law of God, but are accounted just in God's sight on the ground of Christ keeping and fulfilling the law for us; yet we still have the law of God as a rule of life, and as a means of knowing what pleases God and of knowing the sort of life which conforms to the will of God. So the law is impinging upon us in everything we do and think and feel, and we find the law of God is the measure by which we evaluate our living. 

Here is the problem Paul is dealing with. Whether we are young in the faith or mature in the faith; or whether we are learned in the faith or a novice; or whether our growth in holiness and love for God is beginning or has matured; still we are faced with this problem and experience. It is also true to say that this problem does not grow less when we are mature and have grown in sanctification. It is a very real experience of those who are most saintly among us that they feel this problem even to a greater degree than those who have still hardly moved in maturing in holiness. The reason is that the closer we find our fellowship with the Lord, the more sensitive we become to the evil of sin, and so sins we hardly considered before, and are too small in human eyes to be even called sins, are perceived to be foul and evil in the sight of God and of Christ whom we love and adore. Further the more we grow to know and experience the love of Christ for us, and have grown in love and adoration of Jesus, the more sensitive we become to every notion of evil.

So it is true that Paul would have been able to identify with what he is saying here at every point in the growth of his walk with the Lord, and can use the first person as he speaks in this letter, because even at the height of his apostleship, this problem, far from getting less, has even grown more acute. This is not to say that Paul was not an eminently holy man, both in the view of the church and the world, but also in the view of God. What is true is that however holy we become in this life, we still are defiled by sin, and still fall short of the glory of God.

THE WAY PAUL APPROACHES THIS PROBLEM OF THE LAW.

From all that we have considered so far, we can now begin to appreciate the way the apostle is dealing with this problem of the law of God in the life of the believer. He is not approaching it with the aim of somebody who is seeking to lay down a systematic approach to Christian doctrine. In that case he would have tabulated the various truths revealed in the Bible, and in an objective way balance them together, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of what the Christian condition and belief is.

Rather the apostle has approached this problem of the law in the life of the Christian from the point of view of our experience of the action and effect of the law on our lives. In all sorts of ways the law comes at us in our lives, and we are exposed to its searching light, and this searching light is in the context of our great desire to please the Lord we love, and show in our lives our deep thankfulness for his grace and love towards us in salvation. In such a context of experience we are not putting down the pros and cons of our behaviour and evaluating the whole of our lives from this stand point, but looking at times and experiences in our lives, and at those moments when the law has searched our being, and we have be overwhelmed by how much sin still remains within us, and how much we fall short of that which pleases our dear Saviour. This experience of the sense of our sin is heightened by the real desire to please Jesus, and our deep love for the law of God which is written in our hearts. We wonder how we can ever be good as we want to be good, and we feel how much our failure dishonours our Lord, and how little we show forth his beauty and love in our lives.

In the light of this the words of the apostle in verse 14 are not extraordinary or hard to explain.

"I AM UNSPIRITUAL, SOLD AS A SLAVE TO SIN".

This statement of the apostle here is one which has caused much of the controversy which surrounds this passage. How can the apostle speak like this of the true believer who is walking with the Lord in holiness of life. Because of this many have said that this can't be a description of a sanctified believer, and so Paul must be talking about someone who has a very low standard of Christian living and faith. But the problem then arises as to why a Christian in a low standard of spirituality would make a cry like this. If they are so worldly as to be living a life which is far below the standard of the New Testament, surely they would not be troubled about there low spiritual aspirations, and the low standard of holiness that was evident in their lives. It is part and parcel of poor Christian living that the soul is not touched by the failure, and is able to go on without concern living an unsanctified life. For this reason many feel that Paul could not be speaking from the standard of his maturity at the time of writing.

I personally feel that such questions really come from a believer who is not being searched by the light of the law of God, and comes from a life which is not living too closely to the Lord in the Spirit. For the closer I walk to the Lord, the greater and more wonderful is my appreciation of Christ's love and beauty, and the more real my joy and peace is and is increased; yet at the same time, I have a deeper awareness of the failure and sin within me. At this point I am reminded of an experience when I was a curate. I had gone with the young people of the congregation to a secular youth club in order to see what we could do to share Christ with them. In my conversation with one of the members of this club I must have been speaking about the struggle for holy living which I had, and how I struggled against evil thoughts which I found constantly springing up in my mind. At this point the young person I was speaking to said, "Well you must have a very filthy mind". I was horrified by what this person had said and wondered how he could have said such a thing to me. It was only after I had thought about what he said sometime after that it suddenly dawned on me where this evaluation of what I had been saying came from. This person was looking at what I was saying about my struggle against sinful thoughts from the point of view of the way the world evaluates things. From this point of view sin is not adultery, and it is not sinful to have lustful thoughts towards a member of the opposite sex, which is felt to be quite acceptable. It is only gross perversions that are considered as sinful, and as I spoke of my struggle that young person only saw the struggle in terms of this worldly evaluation.

The truth of the matter is that I can empathise with the words of the apostle here. I find for example that thoughts rise in my mind from the hurt I have received from another person, and I find in my heart resentment, and judgement, and anger rising within me, and before I know where my thoughts are leading me, I am launched in to critical thoughts and on ways I would like to confront this person. This is bad enough, but then I find within myself a liking for these thoughts, and even feel they are therapeutic. Then the new creation within me brings me up short, and I am horrified with what I have been thinking and feeling. It horrifies me that I can think these thoughts, and forget that in all relationships there are two involved and that the other person could find as much to justifiably criticise in me as I in them. So the horrid cycle goes on. At these times I feel how much I have hurt the Lord who has loved me in all my sin and failure, and still loves me, and I feel what a wretch I am. I wonder whether I have grown in grace at all.

This is only one example. There are others like pride raising its ugly head after a time of spiritual uplift when God has shown in evident way that he has used and blest the preaching I have been enabled to do in his name, and I find thoughts of self praise rising within me, and hoping others may see this blessing and that I may be more esteemed because of this. This is dreadful, ugly and disgusting. All that I am able to do that is of value in ministry, and all the blessing that results, is from the power and grace of God alone, and absolutely nothing to do with me. How could I have such evil pride within me, and how could I seek to take to myself glory that belongs to God alone. Oh, wretched person that I am.

On the other hand I thank God every day for the growth in love for him and in holiness that I see, and praise him for what he is doing in me, and hopefully I do reflect something of the beauty of Christ in my life. I also glory in the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for always the Spirit of God reminds me as my penitent heart cries to the Lord in grief, that Christ in great love has borne all my sin in his body on the cross, and carried them right away. I am lifted up with the assurance that God has loved me with an everlasting love, and not because of any good he saw in me, but simply from his sovereign choice, even when I was lost in sin and death. The Spirit gives me the faith to rest in Christ as my sacrifice and priest, and find in him that I am beloved of the Lord for all eternity, because Christ has won for me eternal salvation.

CONCLUSION.

So let us return to verse 14. The first sentence of this verse is the expression of the new creation within us as believers. We do not simply say that the law is spiritual because of evaluation with our minds, but because in our hearts we see the beauty of God and the beauty of holiness and love in the law which comes from God, and for this reason all that the apostle has taught so far in the chapter concerning the law we approve. We say the law is spiritual from our hearts, not only because it brought us to see our sin so that we ran to Christ in our need for mercy, but now because we love the law as an expression of the beauty of the Lord we want to attain to.

But then as the law is beautiful in our eyes, and we want to conform to it, we feel ourselves to be unspiritual, and fleshly, because we find to much sin within us that prevents us from being the sort of persons we want to be.

The strength of the language which Paul uses here comes from this deep spiritual life and light we have received from God, which has begun to see sin and holiness with the eyes of God. Sin which never seemed to be particularly sinful before, we now see as totally horrid, and holiness we never appreciated before, we find ravishing our souls with the glory of God, and the desire to be filled with it engulfs our hearts.

It is within this experience that we react to the law as the Holy Spirit dwelling within us as he opens up to us all the glory of the heavenlies we have been raised to in Christ. Having tasted of this joy in God, everything that tarnishes this glory within us, and darkens our vision and experience of it, is hated and causes us to feel deeply wretched.

We return to these verses 14-20 again next time, and look at how this expression of the Christian heart is worked out by Paul.