"Therefore, did that that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be. Rather, it was sin in order that it might to shown to be sin by affecting my death through that which is good, that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of flesh sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but, I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So then, on the one hand, I myself with my mind and serving with the law of God. but on the other, with my flesh, the law of sin."

Amen, and thus ends this reading of God’s Holy and Inspired Word. May He add His blessing to it. Let’s pray.

Oh Lord, we acknowledge our need of the illumination of Your Spirit to understand Your word. More than this, however, we pray that by the Spirit, You would apply the word to us. Perhaps holding up before our eyes, our own sin that we would realize it for the first time and flee to Christ for grace. Or perhaps reminding us of a truth that we have long since known but neglected and need now to have raised again to our interests in order to grow in grace in the Christian life. Whatever the purposes You will use for Your Word, we ask that You would use it, indeed, and that You would be glorified in our study of it. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Now as I was numbering some of the things that Paul teaches us in this passage, my latest numbering came to about twenty particular truths that are taught in Romans, chapter 7, verses 13 through 25. Don’t get nervous. It’s not a twenty-point sermon. Although as I was studying to prepare the first Wednesday evening series on Southern Presbyterianism, I came across a sermon that was preached by a Presbyterian minister in Virginia, and it was said in the account that was given that he preached all day. Now I wondered how would you do that? Well, I discovered that the sermon had fifty-five points. Don’t worry, there are only five in this one today. All we’re going to do today is do the application from the Bible study work that we did last week in Romans, chapter 7, verses 13 through 25.

And I want to bring out five practical implications of what Paul has said. Now you will need to keep your Bibles handy, because we’re going to rub out nose right back in the text of scripture so that you will be certain that what I am saying actually is what Paul is saying. But our concern is going to be drive home these practical truths. And the first practical truth is this.

Over and over again, Paul, the mature, godly, the believing apostle Paul indicates that he still struggles with sin. Now he tells you this not because that is just an interesting biographical highlight or side note in his own experience. He tells you this because this is the experience of every mature believer. Paul is not describing for us here someone who is talking about what they were like before they were converted. He’s not describing someone who is under the conviction of sin and almost ready to be converted. He’s not describing a believer who has neglected the means of grace for years and is in a deep trough of back sliddeness. He is describing the experience of a godly, growing, mature Christian. We saw that last week. He speaks in present-tense verbs. He says things about the law of God that only a believer could say, and indeed, he indicates that the law of God has a certain role and relationship to his heart that can only be said to be that of a believer. He says, for instance, "I rejoice in the law of God, in the inner man, in the inmost being, in my heart of hearts, I love God’s law. I want to do it, I want to be conformed to it." That’s the kind of person who is speaking in Romans 7, and yet in every verse, but 22, he stresses that believers still sin.

That is vitally important for us to hear. And my friends, in an ironic way, it’s so encouraging. One of the first things that believers struggle with, upon reflection on the transforming work of God’s grace that has been done in them when they’ve been born again, when they’ve received the new work, is how in the world could God have done that work in me, and I still sin? How can it be that I can be a new creation, and yet I find myself sometimes trapped, sometimes feeling as if I will never be able to break out of the patterns and habits of sin. And I wonder whether I’m a Christian, since I’m struggling against this particular sin. How many times ministers have had people come into their offices and says, "I’m struggle with this sin, I wonder if I’m a Christian?" And here’s the apostle Paul over and over again slamming home this truth. Believers still sin. They still struggle with sin. It is part and parcel of our ongoing Christian experience. Continuing sin is not a sign that you are not a Christian. Now, of course, there can be moral states which would indeed give us a hint that a person had never experienced grace. But Paul here is indicating something very important for us, and that is this: The battle between the Spirit and sin does not cease at conversion, it begins at conversion. The first time a believer begins to battle against sin is when the Holy Spirit has united him to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith. And so we should expect this to be an ongoing aspect of reality, because the problem you see in this fallen world is us. We are the problem. The problem is not out there. It’s not something that somebody did to us, it’s not the circumstances in which we find ourselves, the family situation in which we find ourselves. Our hearts are the problems. You remember Pogo’s favorite comic strip, in which he utters those immoral words, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Well, that is precisely what the apostle Paul is saying. We have met the enemy, and he is us. And, therefore, there is a colossal struggle between the force of the spirit of life in our heart, and the remaining sin which is us. And this is so important for us to grasp.

This is one reason why all forms of perfectionism are so harmfully wrong. Perhaps some of you have read in the past works by Watchman Lee. Or perhaps, you have read works or heard sermons by Major Ian Thomas, or leaders of the Keswick Movement or the Higher Life Movement or the victorious Christian living movement in which they tell you this: That if you will only have faith and let go and let God, you can achieve an entire sanctification, perfect love, a cessation of spiritual warfare and total victory over sin. And then you go and you say, "Well, exactly how do you do this? Well, you just have to have faith. You just have to let go and let God. Well, how do I do that?" Well, you just have to do it. And the instructions are incomprehensible and worse than that, they don’t work. And even worse than that, they’re not biblical, because Paul never tells a believer to expect that in this life they will ever experience a condition in which there is no remaining sin.

J.I. Packer himself struggled with this as a young man. He grew up under perfectionist teaching, and he couldn’t make it work. And he was a consternated young man. And then suddenly, a wiser Christian came to him, and said, "Son, you need to read the sixth and the seventh volumes of John Owen’ work, and you need to read a little book by J.C. Ryle called Holiness. And in that book on holiness, Ryle opens the book with a sentence that goes something like this: "He who would advance very far in holiness must first study the vast and solemn subject of sin." Now friends, there is no editor in the Christian book world today who would let that sentence get by as the first sentence of a book. But that’s the first sentence of Ryle’s book, and he points you right back to the issue of sin before you can advance in holiness.

And that is precisely what Paul is doing in this great passage. And my friends, the very fact of continuing sin also reminds us that Christian experience is an ongoing process of repentance. Repentance isn’t something that we do once at the beginning of Christian life, and then we’re kind of done with that, and we move on. One of the things that I regularly hear from husbands and wives is this. Either the wife saying about the husband, or the husband saying this about the wife. I have never heard him, I have never heard her say, "I’m sorry." I’ve never heard him, I’ve never heard her say, "Forgive me, I was wrong." Now, my friends, if that is the case, then it is an utter contradiction of the reality that Paul is speaking about here in Romans 7, because Christian relationships will be characterized from time to time by repentance when we realize that we have done something wrong. If we continue to sin, then asking forgiveness of one another is going to be a part of our relationship. And so also it’s going to be a part of ongoing Christian experience, because we’re not sinlessly perfected at conversion. We’re beginning a journey. Christian growth in grace is not characterized by perfection, but it is characterized by a steady growth in holiness. Augustine said, "The church is not a place where the perfect dwell, but rather, a hospital where sick sinners get well." And that is precisely what Paul is pointing us to here when he reminds us that believers still sin. That’s the first practical implication in this great passage that I’d like you to see.

First of all, he makes it clear in verse 15. Look at the second half of verse 15. Believers still sin. Sure, but they hate it. Believers can never be complacent in sin. And the very fact that God is doing a work of growth in grace in us makes it impossible for us to be complacent and sort of shrug off sin. "Oh well, that’s no big deal, it’s a sin." Anselm once said, "If you placed sin before me, and hell before me, I would plunge myself into hell rather than to sin against my God." That’s the believer’s attitude about sin. He never shrugs off sin and says, "Aah, no big deal." The believer is serious about sin and hates it. And that’s a mark of the change that God has worked in our lives.

Furthermore, Paul makes it clear that certain things characterize his heart and life that can only be wrought by the Holy Spirit. Look at verses 22 and 25. "I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, and … I myself with my mind am serving the law of God." Paul here characterizes his heart and life as love to God, love for the law, and a desire to serve the law of God. And so in all those ways he indicates that the fact that he is a sinner is not the only truth which is true about him.

Furthermore, over and over in this passage and elsewhere, Paul indicates that there are victories in the Christian life. We can think from personal experience perhaps or from the experience of friends in Christ of some of these victories of people that have been brought out of darkness into light and there has been a tremendous maul transformation. You may be talking with Ronnie Crudup of New Horizon Ministries in Jackson, and talking about those who have been on crack cocaine. And he says, "I’ve never seen someone brought out of that addiction without the changing work of Jesus Christ in their life." And yet, there’s this tremendous transformation that brings about a breaking of that addiction. On the other hand, it may be somebody like Charles Colson. We see a man who is brilliant, but he is corrupted by the pursuit of self and power and ambition, and even his thinking is warped. Suddenly he is brought to his knees, under conviction, in prison, and changed by grace, comes out a servant of the Lord. Now those are examples of the changes that do in fact occur in the Christian life. So along side of the continuing struggle against sin, there are victories.

And, of course, if you sneak ahead and look at Romans, chapter 8, verses 1 through 4, you will see an example of these victories that are yet to come. For the law of the spirit of life, verse 2, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. In fact, that victory is so great that in verse 37 of Romans, chapter 8, Paul can say, "You are hyper conquerors. You are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ." So there are victories in the Christian life. The continuation of sin in our experience is not the whole story.

And, my friends, modern teaching on grace and modern teaching on Christian spirituality often misses this point. Many times if you say, "Well, I love the law of God, and I desire to be conformed to it." Immediately you are accused of work righteousness. "Oh, you’ve got to get done with the law, and you’ve got to move on to grace. Oh, no, no, no." Paul says, "I love the law." That is the normal attitude of the believer for the law. How I love your law, O Lord. And so teaching which says that the believer, in order to mature, must not care about the law has absolutely nothing to do with what Paul is saying in Romans 7. Now, you may believe that, but don’t think that that is what Paul is saying in Romans, chapter 7. He is not saying that the believer is lackadaisical about the law. The believer, in fact, loves the law and desires to be conformed to it. The believer doesn’t look to the law to bring about his transformation in accordance to the law; he looks to Jesus Christ; he looks to grace; he looks to the work of the Holy Spirit. But what does he desire to be conformed to? God in His image and what does the law reflect? God in His image. And so the believer longs to be conformed to the law and to keep it.

And so over and over Paul indicates that the Christian life is characterized by a struggle. And again, my friends, that is so encouraging because ministers have people who show up in their offices week after week who say, "You know I’ve got this struggle with sin in my life, and I wonder if that means that I’m not a Christian." Now usually the response of the minister to that is this, "The sign that you are struggling, the fact that you are struggling, is not a sign of spiritual deadness. It’s a sign of spiritual life. If you were spiritually dead, do you think that sin or Satan would be prompting you to be miserable in sin and to war against it? But if you were spiritually alive, don’t you think the Holy Spirit would be conducting an aggressive, offensive campaign against that sin? And that sin would be counter-attacking all along the way? The very fact that you’re struggling is a sign of grace. The fact that you’re struggling is a sign of life. Only a live man can struggle. Dead men just lie there, there’s no struggle. When you have peace in sin, and peace with sin, you’ve got death. But the Holy Spirit won’t let you have peace in sin and with sin. He wars against sin, and, therefore, the normal state of the Christian life is one of struggle."

There’s a great story that illustrates this particular problem in believing experience. There was a farmer, I don’t know whether he lived in the United States or somewhere else. But, the story goes that he was a hard man, he was hard on his employees. He was abusive of his domestic animals. He had a foul mouth, and used that foul mouth all the time in his conversation, and at some point in his experience, he was converted. And after his conversion, there was a fairly dramatic change. His language cleaned up, his behavior cleaned up, he became loving toward his wife, and family; he became fair and equitable with his employees. He even treated his animals differently. And then one day several months after his conversion, he became angry and frustrated about something while working. And he began to fall back into his old patterns. He was cursing, and he was dealing harshly with some of his employees, and was, in fact, even abusing even the animals. He caught himself in the midst of this, and he was absolutely crushed, and he ran from the barnyard. He made his way into the farmhouse kitchen, he threw himself onto the kitchen table, and he began to convulse in tears. His wife was at the kitchen sink, and she said, "What’s the matter?" And he responded, "I’m no different than I used to be." And she kind of smiled to herself and said, "Oh hon, there is all the difference between you now and then. Then, you never would have been sorry for what you had done. Then, you would never have even thought that you had done anything wrong. And you certainly wouldn’t be contrite about what you had done. Oh, I see every sign that the Holy Spirit is working in you." It’s not that he was perfect. It’s that he couldn’t be happy in a state of rebellion against God. He longed to be right with God, and when he wasn’t, he was miserable, he was wretched in it. And that is a sign of grace.

All of these, my friends, are but some of the implications and applications of this great passage. Perhaps you will think through the I Corinthians text that the choir sang just a few moments ago, and you will use that to ask yourself, "Are the marks of grace evidence in my life?" Perhaps you’ll come back on Sunday nights and think through these "Keys to Spiritual Maturity," these marks of grace that Dr. Thomas is going to walk us through, and pray and ask, "Lord, is this what I desire, is this what I desire to be?" Because those holy desires are a sure indication of a gracious work of the Holy Spirit in your hearts. Let’s pray.