ROMANS 7:14-25 Motives, Part Two Last week I shared with you that I had signed the "Marriage Pledge" published by First Things. I am grateful for the support you gave me in that resolution, but I know many were not clear about what this means. I need to offer more explanation. What I tore in half last week was the certificate issued to me by the State of Ohio authorizing me to officiate at weddings recognized by the State. I sent a letter on Wednesday to the Ohio Secretary of State asking that my name be removed from the registry of officiants authorized to perform marriage ceremonies on behalf of the State of Ohio. There is no immediate pressure on me to do this. I do it because of a personal conviction that what the State calls marriage is no longer what the church calls marriage, and that what I do here as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is distinct from what takes place at the courthouse. In other words, the church, and the family, do not depend upon the State for their validation. At this point, marriage licenses will simply bind "Person A" with "Person B", until Person A and Person B tell a judge they are no longer interested in being married. Since this is not how the church understands marriage to be, there is no need for me to sign such licenses. Some have asked if I will still officiate at weddings. My answer is absolutely yes! I have always been conscientious about who I agree to marry, and I will remain so. Those who I have married in the past have always been required to go to the courthouse to obtain the marriage license. Now, they will just need to get that license authorized by an official there at the courthouse in order to make it legally recognized by the state. I think it costs about twenty or thirty dollars. (They can take it out of my honorarium.) Now back to Romans 7. Our series is on motives. Why do we do the things we do? The key words that we discovered in this passage are "sin" and "law." Not easy topics, but important ones if we are ever going to crack the code of motives. It is assumed, by most people, that people do the things they are most motivated to do. It is assumed that motives lead to actions. And if we can discern and then reform our motives, then we can reform our actions. How many of you have ever listened to a motivational speaker? They stirred you, inspired you, and motivated you to take on the world, to change the world, to take life by the horns, to finally get in shape, to get organized, to kick that bad habit, to win friends and influence people, to run for president! You were never more motivated than when you came out of that seminar! We can be motivated to do something good, but the motivation isn't enough. Motives are more complicated than we tend to think. Our society is fixated on motives, and motivations, inspiration, and desires. But we discovered last week from Romans 7:7-13 that before we can make any sense of our motives we must first see our sin. Perhaps I can clarify this a little more: Before we can make any sense out of our motives, we must know something of the effects of sin in our heart. The effects are severe.
We struggle to do the right thing, even when we think our motives are good. I don't know too many people who wake up in the morning and ask themselves, "What really evil things can I do today to tick people off and make others feel bad?" I'm sure there are some Hitler types out there who do this, but most people, Christian or secular or Buddhist or Muslim or "None" will generally assume they have decent motives for what they do. Nonetheless, despite the presence of some decent motives, we find ourselves falling short. We don't live up to the standard we hope for. We wrestle with something that pulls us down. For most people, that "something" is a mystery. Paul describes that mystery in Romans 7:14-25. And then after describing it, he breaks the code of that mystery and shows us how to be set free. This is a complicated passage. I warn you that it will take some time to explain. Put your thinking caps on! We'll walk through this together, and if you hang in there, it will be rewarding in the end. (Read) This is a puzzling passage! It has created a lot of controversy. It has been interpreted in radically different ways. Passages like this remind me of why it is so important to study theology, and why Bible study is not always as simple as some like to think. A lot of Christians today say that theology is boring and that we don't need to focus much on it. They will say the Bible is a simple book, and all we have to do is love God and love people and the rest will fall into place. I don't know what Bible these people are reading, but it clearly doesn't contain Romans 7. Our first impression upon reading these verses is that Paul must be talking about himself in his present circumstances. That is how it first appears to us when we read it, and so this is probably the most commonly held view today. Here are some reasons why we would make this assumption: 1) Paul speaks in the first person. He says, "I am" and "I do" more times than I could count. It would be easy to assume that Paul is just talking about himself. 2) Paul speaks in the present tense. Up to verse 14, Paul used the past tense, but in verse 14 he switches to the present tense. It is easy, then, to assume that Paul is talking about himself as he is at the time he writes this letter to the Romans. 3) We can all identify with the struggle Paul describes. We all know the experience of doing what we don't want to do, and not doing what we want to do. It's comforting to think that even the great Apostle Paul had that problem too. 4) There is virtue in being transparent and humble about our weaknesses. A proud sinner would not say with Paul, "What a wretched man I am." That takes at least some grace to admit. So at first glance, the idea that Paul is describing his own problem in the present tense seems most natural. And that is why we could first assume this is what Paul means. But there are problems.
1) Verse 14 says, "I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin." That would be a rather extreme confession coming from an apostle. In Romans 6:18, just a chapter earlier, Paul said, "You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." Are we to believe that the Romans are free from sin, while the Apostle remains a slave? 2) Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not mentioned as having any part in this struggle. We might believe that a Christian can struggle with sin and temptation, but we are reminded all throughout the New Testament that, as Christians, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ help us in our times of struggle. But nowhere in this description of the struggle does Paul mention the presence of the Holy Spirit or the help of Jesus Christ. 3) The passage says here, "I know that nothing good lives in me." Yet, elsewhere, Paul says he is "filled with the Holy Spirit," and a "new creation?" Could the writer of the most wonderful letter ever composed really have nothing good living in him? To get to the bottom of this we are going to have to dig a little deeper. While Paul does not say it explicitly, he appears to be explaining how the law creates a struggle for a person who does not yet know Christ, and he does this through an illustration presented in the first person. Some think Paul is speaking of his life before his conversion, others believe he is actually speaking about the nation of Israel as a whole. I think it is most likely he is giving an illustration, shared in the first person, that mirrors his past experience, as well as the experience of Israel. If that sounds complicated, ask me about it later and I would be glad to explain it further. Reading the passage in this way, we can understand that Paul is not sharing his current, personal, deep, dark secrets with the world. He isn't getting vulnerable in the way we might talk today, as much as we might be intrigued to know such juicy details. Rather, he is illustrating the problem a person encounters when they have an idea of what is right and wrong, and even a growing motivation to do what is right, instead of what is wrong, but still lack what it takes to live it out in practice. This is what happens when we start to learn the law, but still lack the work of Jesus Christ in our life. The Double Bind of Sin and Law The person who has law but not Christ is in a double bind. They struggle against both sin on one side, and law on the other. The law of righteousness pulls this way, and the law of sin pulls the other. The law of righteousness can be as simple as common sense awareness that it is best to tell the truth, or show respect to others, or take responsibility for your actions. People can understand this with or without the law given in the Bible. But there is a fuller awareness of righteousness that comes to those who are instructed in God's Word. The Ten Commandments and the other teachings of Scripture. And so this is where we come back around to motives. Because we all have a certain sense
of law and order, we all experience what seem to be good motives from time to time. There is a sense that we have of right and wrong. Taking the position that the person Paul describes here is not a Christian, that person none the less says in verse 18, "I have the desire to do what is good." Verse 21 says "I want to do good." But while most people want to do good, they encounter the fact that they cannot seem to do it in the way they know they should. Verse 15 says "what I hate, I do," and verse 16 says, "I do what I do not want to do." And verse 18 says, "I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." Verse 20 says the source of the problem is "sin living in me.".... What does that mean? How can sin "live" in a person? It sounds like sin is a creature, a thing that invades us and takes over. This is confusing, because sin is not actually a substance, or a created thing. Sin is best understood as a void, or an absence of good. In other words, sin is like a moral black hole. Do you know what a black hole is? A black hole is a collapsed star out in space that has created such a powerful gravitational pull that it even sucks up light. Astronomers say that nothing can escape its pull. So sin is a moral black hole that sucks up goodness and has an ever increasing appetite for more. Sin is a derailer of good motives. It eats up virtue. It sucks out our best efforts of faith and hope and love. This is why Isaiah 64:6 says that "All our righteous acts are like filthy rags." In summary, the law does two opposite things at the same time in the life of a person without Christ. First, the law highlights and even provokes sin. It feeds the moral black hole in our heart. Second, the law creates new desires to do good instead of evil. It motivates us in the right direction. It begins to inspire us to resist sin. In other words, the law causes a person to be pulled in two opposite directions at the same time. It threatens to break them in half. This is why in 7:4 Paul speaks of "dying to the law." It kills us. Nobody likes to be pulled in two. In medieval times they would put a person on the rack, tying their hands and feet to a giant contraption that slowly pulled them apart. First it would pop their joints out, making loud snapping sounds, then it would begin to tear. Under such pressure something must give. Sin will not give on its own. And the law cannot break it. We do not have the willpower to resist. And so, when left in this dilemma, we turn against the law. We do what we do not want to do and our best motives, under even the greatest willpower, cannot save us.... The new religion guiding our culture today turns from the law of God, and creates a revised law of motives. A law based in desiring what we feel is good, instead of being based in obedience to God's truth. It is a law rooted in desires, instead of the will of God. With good motives as the new law, the goalposts are rearranged, and the tension seems to be reduced, except it doesn't actually work. The tension is only reduced because a concession is made to sin. The tension between law and sin is real. It is excruciating. It leads to death. And everyone since the fall has resisted it because we cannot see any way out.
But there is a way out. Everyone look at verses 24-25: What a wretched man I am! Who can save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God- through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Only Jesus can set us free. Only Jesus can break the power of sin and death. Only Jesus can perfect the law and make us whole. The world will go on creating new religions. The world will go on re-writing the rules of love and compassion and morality. New efforts will always be made to solve the mystery of the disconnect between our motives and actions. And all such efforts will fail. Only through Jesus Christ can we be set free! The first part of verse 25 is easy to miss but it is the key to the entire chapter. This is the first time in this entire section of scripture that Jesus is mentioned. Paul has been deliberately holding back because he is presenting the tension of life without Christ. But then he breaks into praise- thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Let's conclude with some application. 1. The best motives in the world cannot save us from our sin. Good motives will never be good enough. Good motives will not please God. And good motives will not lead us to do what is right. This is because left to ourselves our motives will always bear the corruption of sin. And that even when our motives might appear good, we cannot carry them through as we should. We have all fallen short, so we all stand condemned, but for the work of Jesus Christ. Repent of your sin, and put your faith in Jesus Christ, then you will be saved. Some of you are in desperate need of hearing this! You've heard the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." An older version of that saying comes from Bernard of Clairvaux who said, "Hell is full of good wishes and desires." Your desires will not set you free. The fulfillment of your desires will not bring salvation. Even your best desires will remain corrupted until Christ breaks your bonds of sin. We remain in this body of death until we are set free by the blood of Jesus Christ. Our motives remain tangled and confused. We may want to see good things happen. We may want to help people feel better. We may want to do good deeds and stand up for justice and help those in need. But such desires remain tainted until Christ frees us from our sin. The best motives in the world cannot save us from our sin. 2. Only Jesus Christ can bring together in us pure motives, with pure action. Only Jesus can rescue us from the rack of sin and law that threatens to pull us in two. Only Jesus can begin to untangle and clarify our motives. And only Jesus can apply our motives to pure actions.
Such actions might be mistaken by the world as misguided. They may challenge what we do and say it is all wrong. But by grace, through faith, we persevere. And we pray that through the power of the Spirit the genuine love of God will shine forth. A love that breaks the powerful pull of sin. A love that presents a light more powerful than the darkness that threatens to tear us apart. Everyone here knows just what Paul is describing in Romans 7. We know what it is to do what we don't want to do. Or to not do what we want to do. If only good motives were enough. If only good desires could get us through. Then, we think, we will make it. We need the Word of God to show us a better way. Next week we will pull this all together by reaching beyond Romans 7 in considering our motives. Why do we do what we do?