Romans 7:13-25
“Law Good, Sin Bad”
July 3, 2011 - Third Sunday after Pentecost

         “It’s a perfect collar,” said the sheriff’s deputy, “are you sure you don’t want to press charges?” We called the Lake County sheriff’s office because there were a couple of strangers on the property, fishing in the lake for which Beth and I were caretakers.

         “No,” I said, “I’m not sure the owner would want me to involve him in legal action. Please just make them leave.”

         The deputy was disappointed because the fishermens’ pickup truck was parked right in front of our “No Trespassing” sign. You could see where they had broken through the brush to get around the sign and down to the water. There was absolutely no doubt our unwanted guests had seen the sign and knew they were not supposed to be where they were. It would have been an easy arrest and conviction for the law enforcement officer who came to assist us.

         That’s what Paul is saying in today’s text about the law which God gave His people. It was wrong for those two fellows to enter our property and fish without permission, but with no sign all we could have done was ask them to leave. But with the property clearly posted, the violation was obvious, obvious enough to prosecute. Likewise, the law was given, not to cause sin to happen, but “in order that sin might be shown to be sin.”

         Paul starts talking in the first person in verse 14, beginning a long “I” passage to the end of the chapter. Taking the “I” at face value, the big question about our text has usually been whether Paul is talking about himself before Christ or after Christ.

         On one hand, then, we have the view that this is Paul remembering his life before he met Christ on the road to Damascus. Read Paul’s description of himself as “under slavery to sin,” in verse 14, not knowing what he does in verse 15, nothing good living in him in verse 18, not able to do the good he wants to do in verse 19, and crying out “Wretched man that I am!” in verse 24. How can that possibly be the description of a Christian?

         Just a week ago I sat and listened to another pastor humbly talk about what his life was like “B.C.,” before Christ. He was an alcoholic with a criminal record, totally helpless to control his own actions. But now, he said, by the grace of Christ that had changed. He still struggles with sin, but he is no longer a slave to it. That’s exactly the change, by this first view, being highlighted when Paul speaks here about his own life B.C., before Christ.

         On the other hand, there is a long tradition, beginning with Augustine and going through the middle ages and including Luther and Calvin that wants to see these verses as a description of Christian experience. Luther said that this passage is a “great consolation,” a comfort, to all of us who know Jesus but find ourselves struggling and failing in the battle with sin.

         You and I probably don’t need me to talk about anyone else to illustrate this viewpoint. How many times have we as Christians felt Paul’s feeling of wanting to do the good, but failing to do it? You wake up in the morning and resolve once more to avoid that same old argument, to  speak kind and gracious words instead of anger and sarcasm. Then that irritating person crosses your path and all your resolve falls apart. Or you take a last puff or down a final drink or close down a remaining web page and declare “Never again!” Then just a week, or a day, or even an hour later, you are right back there where you were, doing what you don’t want to do. It feels like Paul is talking about Christians, about us.

         I’ve always inclined to this second point of view. Like Luther I found great comfort in thinking that an apostle of Jesus Christ could struggle like I struggle. And it seemed like the other view, that Paul was talking about his struggles only before Christ, made it out that Christians shouldn’t be struggling, that we will all can be perfect. But it’s obvious that’s not true. I know from what goes on in my own heart.

         I don’t want to take away any comfort from anyone here. If you are cut to the quick as you join in our confession of sin before Holy Communion this morning, feeling like Paul “Wretched person that I am!”, then please jump to the end of verse 24 and the beginning of 25. Hear Paul ask, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Who will save me from dying in the sin I can’t avoid? Then listen to Paul answer that question with a wonderful doxology, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” And be comforted by the grace and forgiveness of God in His Son Jesus.

         Every sinner here and anywhere else, including myself, needs to be comforted and healed by the grace of Jesus. But that’s not all this passage is about. Would you consider one more way to look at our text? What if Paul is not talking about himself at all? What if this sense of uncontrollable sin and wretchedness is neither before nor after Christ? What if Paul is still talking about the subject he began the chapter with and we began this message with, the role of the Law in Jewish history?

         What if, when Paul says “I” here at the end of chapter 7, he’s putting himself, as a Jew, in the place of all Jewish people as they received and tried to obey God’s Law when He gave it to them through Moses?

         Remember I said a couple weeks ago that chapters 6 through 8 of Romans are Paul’s account of a new Exodus. All who believe in Jesus Christ are descendants of Abraham through faith. There’s an exodus for spiritual children of Abraham like the exodus from slavery in Egypt led by Moses for the physical descendants of Abraham. It’s an exodus from the slavery of sin, highlighted by the giving of the law, and into the freedom of a promised inheritance in Christ.

         Chapter 7 of Romans remembers that time when the children of Israel gathered at the base of Mt. Sinai and received God’s commandments through Moses. As we saw in verse 13, the result of God giving the law was that sin was made clear and sin increased—sin became “sinful beyond measure.” That’s the experience Paul is describing here, the experience of Israel, of his own people, under the Law.

         That experience under the written law of Moses is not so different from human experience in general. The Greek thinker Epictetus, living about the same time as Paul, wrote, “ since he who errs does not wish to err, but to do the right, it is plain that he does not do what he wishes.” Aristotle devoted ten chapters of his Nicomachean Ethics to explaining “incontinence.” He wasn’t talking about the problem older people have on long airplane rides, but about why we do what we know is wrong, what we don’t want to do.

         What Paul wants to show here is that the Law, whether it’s the Torah in Scripture or the natural law written on our hearts which he talks about in chapter 2, is not going to fix the problem for us. When Israel received the Law, which was a good thing, it only made their sin, which is the bad thing, that much more obvious.

         Law is not the answer. That’s Paul’s point here. Law by itself will only make human life that much more clearly sinful and wretched. Once we know absolutely clearly what is right, it will only be that much more clear that we don’t do it. That was Israel’s condition under the Law of Moses. It’s everyone’s condition who tries to live merely by law.

         Paul’s real point in this text is good to remember as we celebrate Independence Day and the founding of our country. Law won’t save us. Getting back to the real meaning of the Constitution and some pristine understanding of the mind of our Founders won’t make America any better, anymore than getting back to the Law of Moses would have made the Jewish people any better.

         Law is good. Paul made that clear just before our text in verse 12, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” In verse 22, he talks about delighting in the law of God, like the writer of Psalm 119. But then in verse 23 he says that there is another law at work in us. Law is good, but in the end it only makes sin show up as more sinful.

         We could have posted “No Trespassing” signs on every tree that grew on that property we were guarding north of Chicago. We could have made sure nobody who came on the grounds would fail to know they weren’t supposed to be there. But in the end all of it would not have stopped those who do what they know to be wrong. More law and more law enforcement helps identify and arrest lawbreakers, but it does not stop lawbreaking.

         Law is like adult diapers. It’s a treatment for the symptoms of moral incontinence, not for the problem. And like a diaper it probably only makes you that much more aware of what you can’t control. Like a diaper it only makes you carry around your sin with you that much more closely. What’s needed is a cure for sin, not a better diaper to hold it in.

         No, it is not the primary mission of Christian people, of the Church of Jesus Christ, to get whatever country we live in to adopt and enforce good laws. Law is good, but it doesn’t change people. It doesn’t help people do what is right just to know what is right. No, the mission of the Church is to proclaim the Good News of a Savior who changes people, who can set us free from the power of sin.

         As I said, in verse 23 Paul asks for a rescue, for freedom from the “body of death.” As anyone with physical incontinence knows—and I don’t mean at all to make light of an embarrassing and frustrating condition—the only answer may be a new body. We’re promised just that for the future in the resurrection of Jesus. But for right now, we are promised and given an escape from our bigger problem. The last verse of the previous chapter, 6:23, says “the wages of sin is death.” That verse then says, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord,” and verse 25 of our text gives the same answer, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

         Freedom through democratic government and just law is a good thing. God bless the United States of America. But freedom from sin in Jesus Christ is the best thing, the most important thing. It’s available even where there is no just law. Freedom in Christ can be had when no other freedom is offered. Freedom from the law of sin is the gift of God in Jesus Christ to all of us who fail to keep the law of God.

         It’s Jesus who delivers us from the slavery Paul pictures at the end of our text. No matter how much we celebrate independence, we are spiritual slaves to both the good law of God and the bad law of sin. But faith in Jesus Christ calls us out of both slaveries, not into independence, but into dependence on Him.

         You will probably never hear me offer a sermon entitled something like “5 Keys to a Happy Marriage,” or “6 Principles for Dealing with Temptation.” Messages like that are basically offerings of law, rules for how to be happy and at peace with God. They can be good, but they aren’t going to fix the problem. What changes us, what keeps us from trespassing, what heals our incontinence, what delivers us from sin is the grace of Jesus Christ. It’s that grace that I want to invite you to receive today.

         That’s not to say, as Paul has already denied, that should just keep on sinning as we please. No, Jesus really changes us. He changed my fellow pastor so he could honestly talk about the difference in his life before Christ. He changed me. Place your faith in Him and He will change you, not through law, but through love and grace. Please accept that grace today and experience the gift of the best and greatest freedom.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011” by Stephen S. Bilynskyj