Romans 7:13-25
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 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. 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? 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.

Have you ever been drawn so strongly to something that you wind up doing a thing that you know, in your mind, you shouldn’t do? You make up your mind that you're going to refrain from doing something, let's say, and you're going about your day when all of a sudden, you're hit with temptation, sucked in, and before long you’re doing the very thing that you had just made up your mind you weren't going to do.

I had an experience like that recently. I was about to come home from work and Melisa texted me and asked if I would mind running by Aldi on my way home to grab a few items? So I did. Now, earlier in the week I had made up my mind that I was only going to eat one dessert that week. I was minding my own business and had my little list, going to where I was needing to go, and I made the mistake of passing through the freezer section. I glanced out of the corner of my eye, and I saw that Blue Bell ice cream was on sale. So at that moment, I began to justify buying ice cream, and I thought to myself, “You know what? This is really just a good financial decision. This is on sale, which doesn’t happen all that often, and there's Rocky Road.” So, I had made up my mind to do a certain thing, but I left Aldi with 5 or 6 half gallons of Blue Bell ice cream.

Ever been there? Sometimes, we do things against our better judgment. We do something that we know in our minds we shouldn't do and that really, in our minds, we've already decided that we don't want to do. Yet we end up doing it anyway, even as Christians. Why is that? It's because of sins’ power in the Christian's life.

That's what Paul is talking about in Romans 7:13-25. He's setting forth his struggle with sin in this passage. I want us to see in this passage six characteristics of the power of sin in the Christian's life. We'll look at the first three now, and the last three in the next sermon.

First of all, Paul tells us in verses 13 and 14 that, for the Christian, sin is a remaining power. By that, I mean it is a lingering power. It is a persistent power that even after conversion, after you get saved, after you're justified and declared righteous in God's sight, and even filled with the Holy Spirit of God, even still, is a remaining power in our lives.

Notice what Paul says about that in verses 13 and 14. In verse 13, Paul says “Did that which is good, then, bring death to me?” In this verse, Paul is transitioning from Romans 7:7-12 to our current passage. In verses 7-12, he talks about how the law, something which is good and holy and righteous, can be used by sin to cause us to sin even more—that sin can corrupt even something as good and perfect as the law of God and lead us to rebel against it all the more.

So Paul says “did that which is good [meaning the law of God] bring death to me?” He says, “By no means!” Notice where he places the blame for death. He says it was “sin producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment, might become sinful beyond measure.”

Now in verses 7-12, Paul is describing his pre-Christian life, but with verses 13 and 14, he shifts to a discussion about his current Christian life. Notice how he goes on to talk about what sin does in verse 14. He says “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.” When Paul says we know that the law is spiritual, what does it mean? He means that the law is from the Holy Spirit—that it originates from God. It's the same thing Paul is saying in 2 Timothy, 3:16, when he says that all Scripture (in this case, specifically the law of God) is inspired of God or breathed out by God. It's breathed out by the Spirit of God—inspired by the Holy Spirit. So the law is spiritual. It comes from God and as such it is perfect just as God is perfect. It's righteous. It's good. It's holy, just as God is righteous and good and holy.

So the fault for our wrongdoing is not the law. It is something else. He describes what that something else is in verse 14. He says, “but I, on the other hand, am of the flesh and sold under sin.” “Of the flesh” means I am characterized by fleshliness. “Sold under sin” means I am still, even as a Christian, captive to sin and its power and its authority in my life. Now again, Paul is, I believe, describing his current Christian experience. He says that even as a saved and forgiven and sanctified person who is indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God, I can still describe myself as “of the flesh.”

What does “of the flesh” mean? When Paul refers to flesh here, he's not just talking about his bodily existence. There's more to it than that. When he uses the word “flesh” all throughout his letters, he's talking about his fallenness. He’s talking about his sinful nature—the part of him that is warped under the curse of sin, and is bent toward sin and toward rebellion against God. He's saying that I still have that. So when you get saved, you don't stop having a fallen, sinful nature. It's still there. Now you have another power that you didn't have before, and he gets into that in chapter 8, but your sinful nature is still there. The flesh is still a reality in your life. Christians who are called to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh still sometimes choose to walk by the flesh and not by the Spirit.

This is how Paul, for example, in 1 Corinthians 3 can refer to the Corinthian church. They are in Christ, they're Christians, but they're acting fleshly. They're acting carnal. They are carnal Christians. In 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, he says, “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people.” Notice he calls them brothers, right? So, again, they are Christians. “I could not address you as spiritual people,” he says, “but as people of the flesh.” That phrase is the same phrase Paul uses in verse 14 of Romans 7, where he says “I am of the flesh,” and he uses it 3 times in first Corinthians 3:1-3. He continues, “but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” So, according to verse 3 of 1 Corinthians 3, what does it mean to be fleshly? It means to have sin in your life, jealousy in this case, or strife among the Christians. When we sin, it is our fleshliness our sinful nature within us that is manifesting itself. Then what Paul is saying back in Romans 7 is that even as a Christian, this is a reality in my life. It's not all that I am, but it's still a part of who I am. I am of the flesh.

Then, in verse 14 he says, “sold under sin.” We are captive to sin. We are slaves to sin. Now there's something really interesting here. In Romans 6, Paul talked about several times how in Christ, we have been set free from our captivity to sin. We're no longer, he says, slaves of sin. Then in Romans 7, he can say about his Christian experience that “I am of the flesh” and I'm still “sold under sin.” So in one sense, according to Roman 6, I'm not a slave to sin, but in another sense, according to Roman 7, I am a slave to sin. You might say, “So Paul, which is it? Is it Roman 6, or Romans 7? Am I a slave to sin or not?” And the answer is, for the Christian, it's both. That's his point, isn’t it? He's saying there's a sense in which I've already been set free from sin, yet there’s also a sense in which I'm not fully set free from sin. It's the already and the not yet reality of the Christian life. I'm already, in one sense, justified and made righteous. My position with God is perfect. I'm already, in one sense, even set free from the power of sin. That’s begun, but I've not yet fully experienced release from the presence and power of sin. I won't until Jesus comes again and I am glorified and made perfect and I see him. And when we see him, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. Then every trace of fleshliness and fallenness and sinfulness will be completely eradicated from my life. But until then, this is the reality of the Christian life. Still of the flesh in a sense. Still captive to the power of sin in a sense.

It reminds me of one of the turning points in the Civil War. One of the major turning points in the Civil War was President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. When he made the Emancipation Proclamation the Confederate states had around 3.5 million slaves in captivity and were using many of them in their armies against the Union soldiers. So President Lincoln issued, by executive order, the Emancipation Proclamation, and immediately made the status of all 3.5 million slaves in the Confederate states legally free. Legally, on paper, they were free. Now in their experience, however, most of them were not free because those who held them captive did not let them go. So legally, they were declared free, but they didn't experience the full freedom that was issued until after the war was won. It was only then that they were really set free and experienced that freedom.

What Paul is saying, I think, is that the same thing is happening for the believer. When a sinner repents of their sins and believes in Christ, through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a spiritual emancipation proclamation is issued on that person's behalf. Legally, before the judge of all the earth, our status is declared free, righteous, and holy. But we will not experience the full freedom of that until the war is won—until Jesus comes again and Satan, sin, and death are taken away from the earth altogether. Paul said that's the reality for the Christian. We are in the already-not yet tension of freedom in Christ.

Before we move on to the next point, I need to say that there is a great debate about this passage. Some would say that Paul is here describing his pre-Christian experience, just as he was in verses 7-12, and that really for someone to still be of the flesh and sold under sin could only describe an unbeliever and a non-Christian. I want to give you some of the main reasons why I believe that is not what Paul is saying, and that in verses 13-25 he is speaking of his own Christian experience and struggle with sin.

Number one is that in verses 7-12, Paul consistently uses the past tense to refer to this pre-Christian life. He talks about his sin and how it used the law against him to make him even more sinful. All throughout that passage, he uses the past tense to describe his life before Christ. But there's a shift that occurs in verse 13. In verses 13-25, Paul shifts to the present tense. I believe he's doing that to indicate that he is describing for us a picture of his present Christian struggle with sin. There's isn’t really any other reason why he would shift to the present tense.

A second reason I believe Paul in this passage is describing his present Christian struggle with sin is verse 25. This passage talks about sin all throughout, and we get the sense that Paul feels defeated. Then, in verse 25, he gives us the solution. Notice what it says in verse 24. He says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Then he gives the answer at the beginning of verse 25. He says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” If Paul is talking about his experience as an unbeliever, we would expect him to stop there. He describes his sin and then in verse 25 he describes the solution, Jesus Christ the deliverer. But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on, doesn't he. Notice what he says at the end of verse 25: “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” That’s how he ends the verse. So you have this progression of Paul declaring that Jesus is the answer and that He has delivered me, yet even after that, immediately following that up with, “I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” This is, I think, one of Paul’s ways of clearly saying “as a Christian, I'm still struggling with sin.”

A third reason I believe Paul is describing a Christian experience here is the way he speaks of his desire to keep the law. In this passage, Paul talks about how he delights in the law. He desires, verse 18, to do what is right. His delight is in the law of God. He wants to do what is right. I believe Paul is describing a Christian desire here. The non-Christian doesn't delight in the law of God. In fact, Romans 8:7 says this about the non-believer: “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.” The unbeliever cannot be described with the language of Psalm 1: “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Yet that’s how Paul describes himself in Romans 7:13-25. I desire to do the law. I delight in the law of God. This is a way of describing a Christian.

A fourth reason I believe Paul is giving us a description of a Christian’s struggle with sin is a similar passage in Galatians 5:16-17. Much of the same language Paul uses to describe his struggle with sin as a Christian in Romans 7 he also uses in Galatians 5. And it’s clear in Galatians 5 that he's talking about Christians and their struggle with sin. Paul says in Galatians 5:16-17, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” There is so much in that passage that is similar to what Paul is saying in Romans 7:13-25, and I believe that supports to the interpretation of Romans 7:12-25 as a description of Christians.

The fifth, and last, reason I'll mention for why I believe Paul is describing a Christian’s struggle with sin in this passage is not in the text, but is rather an appeal to our own Christian experience. Our own Christian experience tells us that what Paul is describing here is not uncommon for the believer. When we read Paul talking about how he wants to do what is right, but sometimes, he just can’t, we know what that's like. Our own Christian experience, I think, would indicate that Paul is describing something that is all too well understood by us. So, for all those reasons, I believe Paul is saying that sin is a remaining power in the Christian life, even after conversion.

Then there's a second attribute of sins' power that Paul gives us in this passage, and that is that sin is not only a remaining power, but, Paul says, sin is also an irrational power. It causes you to do things against your own better judgment. Sometimes it causes you, as Paul describes here, to do things that you've already made up your mind you're not going to do, or to not do things that you've made up your mind you're going to do. It's irrational.

Notice what he says about that in verse 15. He says “for, I do not understand my own actions.” Have you ever had a child that did something they shouldn't do, and you asked them, “Why did you do that?” And they say, “I don't know.” They don't understand why they did it. If we're honest, even as adults, if we were to ask ourselves the question “why did I just do that?”, we would often have to answer it the same way—“I don't know. I don't know why it is I did that. I knew I shouldn’t, and I did it anyway.” That's exactly what Paul is saying. There is a mystery here for the believer because of the two dynamics at work within us. Sometimes we, with Paul, just have to say, “I do not understand some of my own actions.”

Then Paul describes why he doesn't understand his own actions at the end of verse 15. He says, “I do not do what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate.” It's a mystery to Paul how he can will one thing with his mind, but then wind up doing the opposite thing. The evil in our hearts really is a mystery to Paul. This is what the prophet Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 17:9, when he says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” The heart, and the mind, these are the seats of our consciousness for the biblical authors. He's saying that I make up in my heart and in my mind what I know I need to do, what I know I want to do, what I know is according to God's Word, and I just wind up not doing it. He goes on further to describe that in verses 21-23. He says, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.” Evil is just around the corner. It's always there lurking. “For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, 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.”

So Paul is saying in my heart, in my mind, I know what I need to do. I'm trying to understand God's law in my heart and in my mind. I'm trying to make a commitment that I will live by that law. I've made that commitment in my heart and in my mind, but, verse 23, there is a war raging within me. There is another law, a law of sin that also dwells in me, that is warring against the law of my mind. There is a battle that is raging within me.

James, the brother of Jesus, describes that war this way in James 2:1: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” It's almost like you've got two springs bubbling up within you, two sources of desires bubbling up within you. On the one hand, you have the source of the law of God, which is perfect and holy and good, and the Holy Spirit of God, which is conforming you to the law of God. It's causing you to desire some good things. So with your mind, you say, “that's what I want to do.” Then you've got this other spring within you that is bubbling up, causing all of these other desires. It's from your flesh, your fallenness, and your sinfulness, and it's causing you to want to do things that the Spirit doesn't want you to do. There's this war within you. What happens is you've made up your mind, Paul says, to do a certain thing and to live a certain way, but your body winds up doing something else. And when your mind is saying, “do this,” but your body is doing something else, that’s irrational. It doesn't make sense. I don't understand it. My body's not doing what my mind is telling it to do.

When I was a senior in high school, my family went on a vacation. We saw a movie in a theater and when we came out of the theater my dad came over to us and one of his eyes was shut. He said, “Guys, I can’t open this eyelid.” We all thought he was joking around, but he was serious. One of his eyelids had closed and he could not open it. When we finished our vacation and got home, he went to the doctor and found out that he has a disease called Myasthenia Gravis. It's a neurological disease that attacks the receptors on your muscle so that the muscle receptors can't receive the signals from your brain and nervous system. Essentially it means that his brain sends signals like “open your eyes,” but his body doesn’t receive those signals. His brain is sending all the right signals. It's just that his muscles aren't receiving them because the receptors are weakened. So his brain says to do one thing, but his body does something else.

What Paul is saying is that often, that's the Christian's experience. In our minds, we know what is right. The problem is not that our brain is sending the wrong signals. The problem is that our flesh is not doing what we know, in our minds, we need to do—it is irrational behavior. It's hypocritical behavior. It's not consistent with what we know to be true and how we know we should live. Paul is saying that's often the Christian experience. So second, we see that sin is an irrational power. It can cause us to do things against our better judgment.

Then notice a third characteristic of the power of sin in the Christian's life. Paul tells us that sin is an indwelling power. Even in the Christian life, it’s within us and inside of us. Now, the Christian also has the Holy Spirit inside of us, but we have sin inside of us too. Notice how he describes it again in verse 13. Paul says it wasn't the law that was causing death in me, it was sin producing death in me through what was good. Sin was at work in me. Sin was at work inside of me producing death.

Paul further describes his indwelling sin in verses 16-17. He says, “Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

He uses the exact same language in verse 20. He says “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” Now when Paul twice here, verse 17 and verse 20, says it's no longer I who do it, it’s sin, he’s not trying to shift blame. He accepts full responsibility for his sin. That's why he can say in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death.” He's just describing why it is that he can know in his mind that one thing is right, but then wind up doing something else. He’s saying it's not me doing it in the sense that I'm not willing, or it’s not my plan, to do this. I don’t, in my mind, want to do it but I wind up doing it anyway.

But notice here in verses 17 and 20 again, that twice he says that sin "dwells within me.” To “dwell” means to take up residence. Sin inhabits me. It sets up camp inside of me. This implies implies that at one point, sin did not dwell within him. At one point, sin was merely an external reality. The only time that was true for humans was way back in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were the only ones, other than Jesus, who did not have sin dwelling within them originally. Adam and Eve were created perfect. No sin was dwelling within them. Sin at that point was simply an outside force that existed outside of them. But sin came from the outside and penetrated their hearts. When they chose to disobey and rebel against God, sin invaded them and came inside of them. Now it is an indwelling reality. Now it sets up residence within us. As Paul says in Romans 5, now everyone that is born from Adam and Eve, all of their descendants, inherit sin. Now we’re born with this alien, outside, intruding force taking up residence within us and dwelling within us.

It sort of reminds me of how certain viruses work. One of the vaccines I take my dog to get every year is the rabies shot. Rabies is a really serious disease. When rabies penetrates the skin, which how it usually infects you, it gets into the bloodstream and quickly starts to take over cells and begins to multiply. The rabies virus specifically attacks the nervous system and heads for the brain. When it gets there, it begins to eat away at certain parts of the brain, specifically the parts that play central roles in memory, fear, and emotion. If this virus is left untreated for too long, the result is that an animal, or even a human, will fall deeper into confusion and hallucination, lashing out at imagined threats—often at people that might not even be trying to harm them. And it’s all a result of their brain chemistry being changed by a virus that has intruded their bodies from the outside.

What Paul is saying is that sin has infected us in the exact same way. It has come in and it has headed toward our spiritual central nervous system. It has put within us a different set of desires—ways of thinking that are now at war with what we know to be right and true. Now we have this infection that eats away at our better judgment. That's what Paul is saying that sin ultimately is. It’s a power that indwells us, that infects us, and that causes us to desire and to do things that are contrary to what we know to be right, true, and good.

This is the power of remaining sin. All of this talk of sin’s power can be a bit depressing. It may cause you to ask, “Is there any way out?” Actually, if that's your thought, then you're thinking the same way Paul is thinking as well, because he asked the very same question in verse 24: “wretched man, that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” Is there any hope for a sinners like us who have not only sinned before we got saved, but even after we’ve tasted salvation and God's grace still choose to sin? Paul’s answer is, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Notice that Paul is rejoicing in the gospel not as an unbeliever who has discovered it for the first time, but as a believer who has treasured it time and time again. Not only does the non-Christian need deliverance from Christ, salvation from Christ, forgiveness from Christ, and grace from Christ; the believer does too. If Paul needed to rediscover the gospel over and over and over again, then you and I do as well.

So the takeaway for the Christian is this: You’re going to struggle with sin until the day you see Jesus face to face. What is the answer for that in your life? It's Jesus. Just as the answer for non-believers is Jesus. It's always Jesus. 1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins [even if we're committing them as a Christian] and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”