I.
I read in the Wall Street Journal this week that according to the Department of Defense, “77% of American youth are disqualified from military service due to a lack of physical fitness, low test scores, criminal records including drug use or other problems.”
Combined, the branches of the military may miss their recruiting goals by as much as 25%.
When the percentages are this high it’s pretty clear that something is wrong.
Most of what we feed children today is garbage. Hence, obesity. Low test scores are evidence that our education system has failed, hijacked by ideology rather than by ideas. Crime is a perennial problem, but a permissive, hands-off approach to policing only incentivizes it.
All of these “root causes” suggest to me that the problem is “systemic.” As the saying goes, “It’s in the air we breathe” or “there’s something in the water.”
Our leaders should do something about it. In a functioning society, they would.
II.
Or would they?
Paul talks about the futility of fighting systemic evil in today’s reading from Romans 7:15-25. For Paul, evil is close at hand, inside himself and at work within him.
Speaking of the wrong he commits, he writes:
“It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.”
What Paul is saying couldn’t be more clear. He is saying two things. The first is that his very nature is corrupt, sinful. The second is that goodness is alien to him.
Paul is famous for what theologians call his “low anthropology,” meaning the dim view he takes of man and his potential for good.
He continues:
“For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
Finally, he concludes that the evil he does isn’t actually done by him, but is accomplished by sin, which lives in him.
The Greek word translated as live or dwell (“sin that dwells within me”) is derived from oikodomeo, which means to build, build up, build on, or to enclose.
Interestingly, it is used in the LXX in Gen. 2:22 when God uses Adam’s rib to build Eve.
But Paul is saying he is built out of, built up by, or even enclosed by sin.
If you think he sounds trapped, you’re right. Hold on to that image and consider what Paul says in verses 16 and 22.
In verse 16 he says:
“If I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.”
And if verse 22 he says:
“In my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”
Paul himself sees that he’s trapped, perhaps even buried in a pile of rubble that was once a very fine house.
Paul’s point is that this is how it is for all of us.
I keep thinking about that horrible Titanic tourist submarine accident a few weeks ago. I read at least one account that the crew likely got a warning of imminent danger, but that there was nothing they could do.
That knowledge, and their incapacity, must have been terrifying.
III.
But it gets worse. (You see why people say they do not like Paul.)
Paul is saying that the knowledge that we are in a sin-trapped body (and there is nothing we can do about it) still makes us culpable for all the sins that body commits.
This is what he means when he writes, “If I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.”
What Paul is saying is that every single one of us knows what is right and wrong. We are born with this knowledge and if we do what we know is wrong, we are guilty of that wrong, even if we did not want to do it, even if we can’t help but do it.
You can see why the words prisoner and trapped are accurate.
Yet something doesn’t seem right about this conundrum. Let me explain.
Have you ever had a muscle twitch? Sometimes one of my eyelids will twitch. I do not will it to happen and willing it to stop does nothing. My eyelid twitches on its own. It is involuntary. Yet the fact that I know it shouldn’t be twitching does not mean that I secretly want it to twitch.
But to me, and I suspect, to many of you, that sounds like what Paul is saying about sin and our complicity in it. You are trapped on a runaway train. You’ve pulled the emergency cord. Nothing has happened. You are hurtling towards a fate you do not choose and do not want and yet, somehow, it’s your fault.
That is what does not sound right about Paul’s example. Paul himself seems to know how awful this sounds when he exclaims:
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”
He answers his question in the next verse when he writes:
“Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
IV.
Alright, so that’s good news. That’s the gospel. The runaway train, the doomed submarine, the bodies that don’t respond to the signals that our brains are sending — there is a solution for them.
If our bodies have been highjacked by sin, then Jesus Christ will hijack them back by His own righteousness.
But I am still hung up on verses 16 (“I agree that the law is good”) and 22 (“in my inner being I delight in God’s law”).
When Paul says that he agrees that the law is good he is admitting that the law has a case against him, but if he is simply a prisoner, and his sin is involuntary (he even says, “it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it”) how can the case against him stand?
I suppose the legal analogy would be to something like involuntary manslaughter, but even that usually means there is some reckless or criminal negligence involved.
But Paul at one and the same time makes it sound both worse and better than mere negligence.
Worse in that he says, “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” — so he’s fully aware that what he is doing is wrong and he’s doing it anyway.
Better in that he says he is a “prisoner” or “slave” to the law of sin — by which he seems to be saying that he sins involuntarily.
Which is it, Paul?
Confusing as this is I suspect we don’t lose patience with Paul because he’s describing situations we’ve all been in. This is one of the most human, dare I say, psychological, passages in the Bible.
Everyone can relate to this struggle.
But more is going on here. I said before that Paul knows that goodness and righteousness are alien to him. That doesn’t mean Paul didn’t know what goodness was and it doesn’t mean that he never did a good deed. It just means that goodness wasn’t part of his nature. Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 7:11, “you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.”1
What I think Paul is writing about here is the experience of being invaded by this alien righteousness. We are familiar with demonic possession, if only from the movies. Paul is experiencing the opposite. A Spirit, the Holy Spirit, has entered and possessed him.
Suddenly, he finds the controls are responding again. The runaway train is slowing down. The submarine is ascending to safety. Paul understands that he will be delivered.
But deliverance from sin only means the struggle can begin in earnest.
V.
It is the struggle of the “two ways.”
One of the oldest Christians texts outside of the New Testament, the Didache, starts out describing this struggle with exactly these words:
“There are two Ways: a Way of Life and a Way of Death, and the difference between these two Ways is great.”
The Christian’s hope comes from knowing that you are now on the first way, the path of Life.
For Paul, the struggle is a sign that Christ’s medicine is having its desired effect. The full effects of the moral paralysis caused by sin haven’t entirely worn off yet, but it’s working.
Paul can tell it’s working: “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.”
Compare Paul’s state to the “universal man” Paul addresses in Romans 1. Writing of the general condition of mankind after the fall, Paul writes:
“They did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.”2
Paul inherited that depraved mind, but now he knows what is right and wrong, and, moreover, he cares.
All of us, Christian and non-Christian, know the difference between right and wrong, and all of us have experienced the futility of not being able to do the good we want to do.
But the Christian alone can say, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
The Christian knows that two laws vie for victory in his heart: the law of God and the law of sin.
The unbeliever remains governed by only one law, and never understands that Jesus would fight for his unbelieving heart too, if only the unbeliever asked Him to.
The Christian knows that the law of God has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ and so he has hope. The unbeliever knows that he remains chained to the law’s penalties.
This knowledge makes all the difference. The big difference is that the believer has learned to hate the sinful nature within him and is now cooperating with God to destroy it and restore the damage it has done.
So, the problem I’m left with is not why does God condemn those who seem to be involuntarily bound to sin. I know that Christ died to ransom everyone from the bonds of sin.
The problem I’m left with is why more people do not avail themselves of Christ’s free gift. Becoming a Christian believer won’t immediately solve all of your problems or deliver you from all of the consequences of your past mistakes, but Christ does promise to walk with you on the path of life, and never to let you wander far from it again. Amen.
Preached on July 9, 2023 at St. Peter’s Lithgow, Millbrook, New York.
Proper 9 - Year A
Romans 7:15-25
Questions for reflection and discussion:
1. Paul talks about the futility of fighting ____________ evil.
2. According to Paul, his very nature is ____________.
3. Goodness is ____________ to him.
4. Paul sees himself as a ____________ to sin.
5. According to Paul, we are ____________ of the wrong we do, even if we did not want to do it, even if we can’t help but do it.
6. What doesn’t seem right about Paul’s example?
7. Explain how verses 16 (“I agree that the law is good”) and 22 (“in my inner being I delight in God’s law”) prove Paul’s guilt.
8. Explain how one might accuse Paul of not taking responsibility for his misdeeds.
9. One of the oldest non-biblical Christian texts is called the ____________.
10. Name the “Two Ways” found in the Didache.
11. The Christian believer has learned to hate the ____________ within him.
12. Christ died to ransom ____________ from the bonds of sin.
Parents and Grandparents, you are responsible to apply God’s Word to your children’s lives. Here is some help. Young Children – draw a picture about something you hear during the sermon. Explain your picture(s) to your parents or the minister after church. Older Children – Do one or more of the following: 1) Count how many times “trap/trapped” or “prisoner” is mentioned. 2) Discuss with your parents why it can be hard to make the right choice.
(1) systemic; (2) corrupt, sinful; (3) alien; (4) prisoner; (5) guilty; (6) Paul says we are guilty/complicit for something (sin) over which we have no choice or control; (7) by saying that the law is good Paul acknowledges that the law has a case against him; (8) by saying he is a prisoner/slave to the law of sin, Paul seems to shirk responsibility for his own misdeeds; (9) Didache; (10) the Way of Life and the Way of Death; (11) sinful nature; (12) everyone