Christ Life In Us Romans 7:24-25 I Give Up

I've been working on this talk this week and the same recurring principle came back to me. So you'll notice on your handout how I titled it. We'll see if I'm right or not. So I wanna recap a little bit coming down through chapter seven and hopefully set up for Roger, next week on the beginning of chapter 8, because as I said last week, if you really took a hard look at the thought content of Romans 7 and 8, actually chapter 7 shouldn't end until Romans 8, 4. Because the answer that Jim talked about really is Romans 8, 1, 2, 3, and 4. That's the answer.

So, if you look at this whole passage, the first thing you notice is there's a struggle going on. And it starts way back with this question, is the law sin? That's where it starts, and from there, We went, for I had not known desiring if the law had not said thou shalt not desire. Notice, and Roger did a great job of pointing this out, it's like the root of all evil is the love of money. It's not the money, it's the loving it. The issue with sin is not the sin, it's the desire. The sin nature does one thing really good and only, it desires. And it desires for self-expression. That's what it wants to do. So, and like Jim was talking about in Sunday school, how would you create a system where you kept the sin nature intact? Well, you'd create a law system for sure. You'd say, Like, it's very simple.

The law would say, don't desire. My sin nature says, desire. And then I'm deceived by the flesh. Because I find out, I know the commandment is holy, righteous, and good, but the problem is, therefore the law If that's the way it goes, then the law produces death in me. Review. I'm not supposed to desire, but I can't help it. The sin nature says desire. So what has the law done? It's produced sin, if you look at it that way.

So, answer. In no sense. Paul says in no sense. In verse 13, he said, therefore, did that which was good become a cause of death for me? Question, it's a great question. And he says, may it never be. We would say in contemporary English, no way. Rather it was sin, it wasn't the law, it was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good.

That through the commandments sin might become utterly or exceedingly sinful. So the primary purpose of the law is to expose sin and to get it right out in front of you so you can't miss it, can't cover it up because the law says don't do this, don't desire, and guess what? You wake up and you're desiring, and you're saying, well, I'm violating the law, but what's the law really doing? It's exposing the desiring of the sin nature to you, okay? Now, conflict.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, I'm sold into bondage. Why is the law spiritual? The law is spiritual because it comes from God. Anything that comes from God is spiritual, because he's a spiritual being. But then Paul says, but I'm of the flesh. I come from another race. I come from the fleshy race, and I'm sold into bondage of sin. The sin nature controls the flesh. It doesn't control the spirit, it controls the flesh. So he goes on with the conflict to discuss it. And that's what I'm doing.

I don't understand, for I'm not practicing what I would really like to do, but I'm doing the very thing I hate, the very thing I hate. Now, I must admit, for a growing believer, to get to the point where you'll admit to yourself or to one of your closest friends, I just wanted to tell you, I'm practicing the very thing, the thing that I'm practicing I really do hate, That's a big confession. Usually you want to cover that up so nobody sees it. But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, what's the result? I agree with the law, confessing the law is good. There's nothing wrong with the law. I'm the problem. I'm the problem. It isn't the law. Self.

Jim calls it the eye, the me monster, I love that term, is the believer's indwelling enemy. Its degrading bondage is his deepest heartache. So every believer, I think, has some familiarity with this conflict in one way or another. If you're a brand new believer and you haven't had this conflict, stick around, it's coming your way. We know the law is spiritual, but I'm of the flesh sold into bondage.

So spiritual, like I said, always connotes the idea of invisibility of power, and as I said last week, if you look in the Old Testament, it doesn't occur in the Septuagint, nor in the Gospels, spirituality. It's in fact an after-Pentecost word, You know why it's that way? Because the Spirit didn't come until Pentecost. So to speak in spiritual terms, you have to wait for the Holy Spirit to show up. Things that have their origin with God and which are in harmony with His character, as His law is, we call those things spiritual, okay?

Now, I used this same chart last week. average walking around Christian man. He's got a position of spirituality. If he's not a believer, his position is of the flesh. Those are the only two choices you have. Now, you can be a Christian and have a position of spirituality and living out of the flesh, and then we call you carnal. Because you are one thing, but you're acting like another.

So if you're spiritual, your origin is from God, like I said, and you're in harmony with God's character, and you are under or in or understand God's spiritual law. Corinthians, which things we also speak in words that are taught, not words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit. Spiritual things cannot be taught cannot be conceived of, and you cannot teach them from human wisdom. Combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words, that's what God's Word does. It combines spiritual thoughts with spiritual words, and it appeals only to the spirit of a man who's born again.

The position of the flesh, you have an issue of flesh, you're sensual, controlled by your appetites, You're governed by the sin nature. And by the way, the sin nature, whenever we use that term, sin nature, I know you think it's just the evil stuff. Well, you know, that tree in the garden had a title, was it? It was the knowledge of good and evil. So the position of flesh can be good in and of itself. Not spiritual, but good. So instead of by the Spirit of God, so the goodness of the flesh is still part of the flesh. So 1 Corinthians 2, 14 says, but the natural man, every human being born on this planet who hasn't been born again from above, every single one of them does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.

We had some folks over yesterday for lunch. And they're not believers, we've known them for decades. And we talked about the Lord off and on through three hours of lunch. But they do not understand the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness unto them. I could see it in their eyes looking at Donna and myself. These two idiots, these Christians, boy, I don't know, there's something weird about them. They can't understand them, why? Because they're spiritually discerned. spiritually discern. If the Spirit of God isn't teaching you, you don't see it because you're still thinking with your fleshly mind.

Now, Paul says as he goes down the list, but I'm a flesh, I'm sold into bondage to sin. Now you gotta think about Paul the Apostle. This is the same guy that wrote Romans 3. and four, and five, and Roman six. He wrote all of those things before he got to Roman seven. Well, you would think by the time he got to Roman seven, he'd have it figured out, but he doesn't. And it's because even though he's born anew with the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus, he's got this thing in him called the sin nature. And just because you're born anew doesn't mean the sin nature says, ah, the game's over. Not in the sin's nature's minds.

The game just began. So he says, I'm fleshly. I have a nature of flesh. So he recognizes even as a believer, he's got this thing called the sin nature inside of him. And it's sensual, it's controlled by his appetites, as I said, and it governs all human nature. And the best place to see how the human nature works is watch the news some night. Or go over on Colorado Boulevard and just sit there and watch things happen. That's sin in action.

And so he says, I'm carnal, which means I'm spiritually positioned, but I'm acting out of the flesh. That's what a carnal believer is. It's not our physical body when he talks about the physical body, but it's the nature of that body. Your sin nature controls what your body does if you're not a believer.

So how does he know and how does he recognize after Romans 4, 5, 6, now into 7, how does he recognize there's a war going on? For that which I'm doing, I don't understand it. Now for the Apostle Paul to say something like this, he's a brilliant man. Probably one of the most brilliant men that have ever lived. He says, this is going on inside of me and I don't get it.

For I'm not practicing that which I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. Again, I think one of the steps of spiritual growth for anybody is to realize that this is true of you personally. I really do want to do good, but you know what? I'm not doing it, and I hate it. I'm not going to tell anybody about it, but I'm hating it. I really don't like it. So what happens? For that's what I'm doing, I don't understand, for I'm not practicing that which I would like to do, but I'm doing the very thing I hate. A sense of spiritual poverty is necessary for spiritual growth. Until you understand you can't do it, you're not a candidate for growth. You okay with that? And long as you think you can handle it, you're not a candidate yet. So you wonder why even the Apostle Paul at this point in his life is saying things like this. This awareness of failure becomes acute to the believer during those days when he is attempting to attain holiness of heart through self-effort. We talked a lot about that in Sunday school. You know, do those spiritual pushups. Be looking good, show up. You know, write big checks. Do whatever is necessary. but it's still about self-effort. You can't live the Christian life by self-effort.

Knowing what we ought to do, ought to be and do, he proceeds to try to reach those goals he proposes, he resolves, he promises, he struggles, and guess what? He fails. He fails. That's a good thing for a believer to come after he has or she has proposed, resolved, promised, struggled, weeps, and fails, that's a great thing.

Because he's gonna learn not to rely so much on his own ability to be a Christian, to act like one. However, this is a quote from Miles Stanford, the reign of self is overthrown by its own enmity, since it creates the need that causes us to hunger for and appropriate Christ's life and liberty. That's why it's a good thing. That's why I titled the thing, this whole sermon is about failing, losing. It's a good thing to lose when the whole idea is trying to live the Christian life out of your own effort. You've got to learn to lose first.

So, what I don't want to do, I hate. In general, if you look at all these verses, verse 14 through 17, the whole emphasis is on doing stuff that he doesn't want to do, doing stuff that he hates. And these are kind of the really cool, quiet, personal, nobody ever sees them deadly sins, like envy, pride, you know, that you look at somebody and you judge them.

But put another way, it's the inability to overcome the evil in the flesh by the flesh, because that's really what you're trying to do if you're living a Christian life by your own effort. You're trying to overcome the flesh by using the flesh to do it. Now, when we get into verse 18 through 21, the emphasis is gonna be on the failure to do the good thing, the desire to do the good thing. It's an inability on the count of the flesh to do what we know, learning what is really right. I'll use an example.

Ephesians 5 says to men who are married, Love your husbands as Christ loved the church. And I love to say that to men and say, well, how you doing with that one? And if they're honest, they're saying, that's a tough one. And you understand the criteria, that I'm to love my wife with the same intensity that the Lord Jesus loves the church.

It's not the best you can do, and we'll call it good, It's that's the standard is the life of Christ. Well, that alone, that one standard should say something to you about, wait a minute, maybe I can't live this life of love the way the Lord Jesus has called me to live it without him. So here's the discovery.

I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. And he means nothing. And he doesn't mean you gotta put, it's too bad Bob Eccles isn't here, doesn't mean put holy water on it. It isn't gonna make it any better. And blessed, it's not gonna make it any better. In your flesh, in my flesh, nothing is good there.

Yet it's the vehicle which controls us most of the time, or a lot of the time. But if I'm doing the very thing that I don't wish, I'm no longer doing it, but sin which dwells in me." Now, interesting. He's discovered that there is this nature in him that that's all it does is sin. So if it's given the opportunity to express itself, it's going to sin every time. It's never going to be in neutral. It's never going to be at rest. It's going to be constantly sinning.

You know why? Because Back to what JD said in class this morning, it's the I. It focuses on me, I. I hope you've noticed how many times the word I, me, are in Romans 7. 47 times, 47 times. That's how you know. And sometimes I'll have a conversation with somebody, and I'll leave, and I'm thinking, boy, I talked about me a lot, that sin that dwells in me, and I know what the source is.

And that's what Paul's discovering. So he finds that this is a principle. It's not just an event. It's a principle that operates the same way every time, that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. So here I am a believer, I know all about, I wrote Romans 4, 5, 6, yet I've discovered that in me, present with me, is the desire to do good, but there's this other principle that evil's there, it's not going anywhere, and it'll be there until you go home. And then he says, I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man. Who's this inner man? It's the new man in Christ.

You concur with the law of God. You agree with it. You know it's good. Performing it's another thing. But I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, which says good, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members.

So my question here has always been, when you go through these verses like this, every Christian have to go through this? What do you think? In my studies over the last couple of weeks, there are some really solid theologians that say, no, you don't have to. If you get the doctrine down, you don't have to go through this.

The problem is that I don't agree with them. I think to one extent or another, this issue has to be faced in a Christian life if you're going to grow. You have to realize that this sin nature is very powerful, actually way, way more powerful than your desire to be good. Because your desire isn't enough. Double failure here of a believer either to overcome evil or to accomplish good. There must come in help from outside of him or in the believer inside of him. But it's gotta be beyond himself. It's gotta be somebody else.

This is the job of the Holy Spirit. And next week, for the next couple weeks, that's what the discussion is gonna be, the work of the Spirit. in chapter eight that describes who this outside person is and what his job is. So today's verse, two verse, Paul cries out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me or who shall set me free from the body of this death? Now, I keep referring back, this is the guy that wrote the six chapters coming up to this one, and he's saying this, I need deliverance. I need deliverance.

And by the way, I'm a pretty smart guy, and I have, I can say thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then, On the one hand, I myself serve my mind. On the one hand, I myself, with my mind, I'm serving the law of God, but on the other hand, with my flesh, the law of sin.

Now, watch this. Wretched is an interesting word. I don't think Paul is emotionally stressed and needs therapy. I think he's looked inside and he sees this sin nature And he's exhausted because the fight with sin is exhausting. It's not an easy task. But the words in the Septuagint, if you look at Isaiah 33 or Jeremiah 4, they translate the word desolate, bound for destruction. That's even more severe. Oh, wretched, wretched man.

Revelation 3.17, when Paul is writing to the church of Laodicea, watch how he describes them. I'm rich, I've become wealthy, I have need of nothing, and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, and blind and naked. That's what Paul was realizing. He's a believer, he understands better than any human being on the planet what it means to be in Christ.

But every day walking around living his life, he comes up with, I'm a wretched man. I need to be delivered. The hopelessness of Paul's condition, unless he's delivered, is here dreadfully revealed. If he doesn't get some delivery or be delivered by someone other than himself, he's in a hopeless situation. Then he says, a wail of anguish and a cry for help.

This was Paul's cry during the spiritual experience he described of himself. in this chapter, and one more comment about this. Every Christian need to go through this? Well, I think if the Apostle Paul went through it, you can get ready for it. Now, he went through it so that he could write about it, but I think this fight with sin goes on in every believer all the time. Why this experience then in Christian growth? You know, our father knows that we're weakness incarnate. He already knew it. He's known it from ever. He knows that we can't do anything. The trouble is, we don't know it. We don't know that we're weak.

We think with a little more prayer and a little more study and a little more this and a little more less that we're gonna be these really great looking Christians. But he must bring us all to the place where we see that we are utterly weak and helpless. I'm convinced of that. You have to come to that place.

The more we try to keep the law, the more our weakness is manifested, and the deeper we get into the Roman 7 experience, until it is clearly demonstrated to us that we are hopelessly weak. You are not stronger with your will and your work and your desires against sin. You don't have the strength. The father knew it all the time. The problem was we didn't know it. And so he's got to bring us through these painful experiences to a recognition of the fact.

So if you're in this struggle or you start to go into this struggle, thank God for it. Because there's really some cool stuff coming. You're going to realize that, oh, I can learn to be dependent. I can learn that God has already taken care of this now. So what would be the effect by the law if all its commands and precepts were carried out and maintained? Let's say you could do it. It would form man in the flesh. It would make Adam what he ought to be for God in the world. The law would form Adam in us Charles Coates, the path of faith is the most hateful path possible for the flesh.

The flesh will fight your faith over and over again, because why? Once you start to live by faith, there's no space for the old man. He has no reason to be there. Faith gives the flesh no place. It leaves no part for the man's will or his energy. The flesh will go to any degree of religious self-denial or self-inflicted sufferings. It will do anything but die. So God knew that. Now, this is one of the greatest words in the New Testament.

Who shall deliver me? out of the body of death. I want you to notice, not once that all self-hope is ceased. It's not how shall I be delivered? How can I deliver myself? What do I need to do to get delivered from this? It's not even how shall I be delivered?

It's not a program. It's not a system. It's not a seminary. It's not a theology system. It's a who. Who shall deliver me? Finally, at the end of chapter seven, Paul asks the right question. Who? Every one of us should always ask who? Because your Christian life, Christianity is a person, it's not a system. The who is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the deliverer. Instinctively, as a believer, definitely Paul knows that no process will deliver him. It's gotta be a who, it's gotta be the Lord Jesus. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? What a fearful description of the body, unredeemed, unchanged, under the law of sin and all its members. Wonderful looking bodies I see out here. I think most of you took showers this morning.

You got new jeans on, you look really cool. But you know, you're living inside an unredeemed, unchanged body of death. You all have it. And you know what, you can't park it at the door. It goes with you wherever you go. No matter what the delight of the quickened human spirit in the things of God may be to dwell undelivered in such a body is to find that your body is really a body of death. You know, sometimes in the Roman Empire, if you were convicted of manslaughter, one of the punishments is they would take the body of the dead person and strap it to you and you had to wear it around until it fell off of you. Well, that's kind of what your body's like.

Paul's not crying for departure from his body, but for deliverance from the condition of defeat, which his residence in his physical body makes possible. It'd be a cool thing if when we all became Christians that we parked our body in the closet and we got a new one that didn't have all this, but that's not the way the Lord does it. So the body of this death, This death refers to the miserable condition of the Christian who is yet dominated by the evil sin nature, which all the while he's desiring to gain victory over. He can't defeat it.

A lot of you were athletes in your life. You trained for whatever sport you were in, and you reached a point in your life, though, where your body started to go this way, no matter what you did. It's dying. It spiritually started out dead, so what kind of hope does it have? That's why we get a new one. It is the death Paul speaks of in verse nine. The body here is the physical body.

It's that body in which the sinful nature dwells, and through which, when it predominates, it operates. You know, you gotta have a body to commit sin. You ever think about that? Would you sin if you didn't have the body? You gotta have this vehicle in order to manifest the sin. Mayer says, who shall deliver me out of bondage under the law of sin into moral freedom? Oh boy, would I love to be in a moral freedom in which my body shall no longer serve as a seat of this shameful death.

Thank God we all get resurrected bodies. Now, Paul says, I thank God for what? For deliverance through Jesus Christ. Now, interesting point here. The answer to Paul's desperate question was, who shall deliver me? It's a new revelation, even identification with Christ and his death. One of the things that Romans 6 tells you is that you were included, united to the Lord Jesus Christ when he died.

So from a spiritual standpoint, you've been separated from all of this. Problem is, is as long as you got this body, you got a sin nature floating around in you. And you really do would like to be free of it, but I'd rather have victory over it. So just as a sinner struggles in vain to find forgiveness and peace until he looks outside himself for Christ as his savior, which is made possible by the blood of his cross. He does the same thing. The quickened soul, struggling unto despair to find victory over sin by self-effort, looks outside of himself to Christ in whom he is, and he died to sin. Christ was made sin for us, and he died to sin, and he died to the law.

That's cool information. But understand, Paul wasn't delivered by Christ. He was delivered through Christ. What's the difference? Not by anything Christ then or at that time did for him. A lot of times we pray, oh, Jesus, come and fix what my problem is right now. And he always says back to us, well, I already took care of that. But through the revelation of the fact that he died with Christ at the cross 2,000 years ago, this hated dwelling sin and the law of sin and to God's law, which gave sin its power, Romans 7, 4, and 6, the Lord Jesus doesn't come to you and say, okay, I'm gonna fix it so you're delivered. He starts out with delivery. So your rescue is through him and what he did. and it happened, it's already done.

It seems that God's spirit has to take every growing believer through a drastic process of self-exposure. That fleshy principle lurking within must be looked in the face and its presumptuous claims to be a sufficient source of wisdom and ability must be exposed and it's a big lie. The save yourself attitude must be recognized and rejected. As servants of the Lord Jesus Christ or willing bond slaves, there's no such thing as save yourself.

You work, live, have your very being in Christ. And such knowledge only can come through failure, humiliation, and despair. Now, I'm not gonna leave you with failure, humiliation, and despair. I thank God through Jesus Christ. Now, what a delightful day it is for a growing believer when he realizes that in him that is in his flesh dwells no good thing. Only then does he in his failure cry out, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? When you see that, Thank God, comes back the reply. You begin to recognize that God expects only failure from the flesh, never success, but that in Christ is his sanctification, in him, his growth, and thus it is that freedom comes through bondage and life through death.

That's why Romans 6 is so important. We were crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ. The sinner is not forgiven by what Christ does now, but by faith in what he did at the cross. The believer is not delivered by what Christ does for him now, but in the revelation to his soul of identification with Christ's death at the cross for again.

The word of the cross is the power of God. The word of the cross is the power of God. So let's sum up Paul's great discoveries in this struggle. Chapter seven, one, that sin dwelt in him, though he delighted in God's law, that his will was powerless against it, that the sinful self was not his real self, I don't like the word self necessarily as man.

The sinful man, sinful old man was not the real man that he is in Christ. That there is deliverance through our Lord Jesus Christ. I thank God for deliverance through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's where it is. And then he says at the end, I myself with the mind. This is the real renewed mind. of the Lord Jesus, which Paul has over and over said, the sin that dwells in me was not that mind.

With the mind and all the spiritual faculties, including the soul faculties of your intellect, your will, and your emotions, which even are being renewed by the Holy Spirit day by day. Your soul was infected by this sin nature. And one of the works of the Spirit of God is to renew your soul so that your intellect, your will, and your emotions become spiritual, controlled by your spirit in which the Holy Spirit dwells. And with that happening, you begin to grow in the likeness of the Lord Jesus. I am subject to God's law. All new creatures can say this. But with the flesh, I'm subject to the law of sin. That's a given.

He saw it last and he bowed to it, that all he was in the flesh by nature was irrevocably committed to sin. So he gave up. That's the reason I titled this sermon, He Gave Up or He Lost, because he saw himself holy in Christ. When you see yourself in Christ, you'll give up on self-effort, you'll stop trying to be holy, and you'll let Christ be your life. There's no joy like that of realizing our nothingness while at the same time reposing upon the Father's all-sufficiency.

Miles Stanford. Now, last week I read That letter from Hudson Taylor, where he was really being exercised. Paul Harvey used to have the rest of the story. Well, this is the rest of the story. So we'll close with this. This is from the same letter. When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from we don't know who was used to remove the scales from my eyes.

And the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. How to get faith strengthened, not by striving after faith, but by resting in the faithful one. As I read, I saw it. If we believe not, he abides faithful. I looked to Jesus and saw, and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed, that he had said, I will never leave you.

Ah, there's the rest. I thought I have striven in vain to rest in him. I'll strive no more. For has he not promised to abide with me? never to leave me, never to, excuse me, never to fail me. The sweetest part, if one may speak of one's part being sweeter than another is the rest. I am no longer anxious about anything. It makes no matter where he places me or how.

That's close. Father, we thank you. We thank you for what you've done and what you are doing every minute. That we continue because of you and thankfully for you to conform us to this new man, the glorified Lord Jesus. In him, there is no struggle. There's only rest because he has completed his task. on the cross and you have risen him and taken him to glory and glorified him and he's come to live in us. Father, we desire to behold him, to be conformed to his image every minute of every day. We're so thankful, Father. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.