Unwelcome Resurrection Romans 7:18-19, For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. A few weeks ago, Justine and I and her sister and brother-in-law went out on a double date of sorts. We were going to do a bit of shopping, play some games at Forrest Park, and finally get around to using a gift card we d been given to the Bone Fish Grill. None of us had ever been there before, but it wasn t exactly what we were expecting. Apparently it s kind of a nice place. So when we walked in dressed in shorts and T-shirts, we quickly saw our mistake. Our server was curt with us and quickly escorted us to our own special booth, all the way at the back and far away from any windows where we might give potential customers the wrong impression about their typical clientele. All other tables were surrounded by nicely dressed, cologned and perfumed patrons. And then there was our table. We were completely out of place. Chapter seven seems totally out of place in the flow of Paul s letter to the Romans. It s sandwiched right in the middle of two of the most beloved passages in the Bible Romans 6 and Romans 8. In those passages, there is only triumph. There is victory upon victory! In chapter six, Paul tells you that you are a baptized child of God. He claimed you at the font. He made you His child. He forgave all your sins and promised you life forever. Paul says you were buried with Jesus in those waters. You died to sin in them. And 1
then, when you were pulled out, you were raised as a brand new creature, raised to walk in newness of life! In chapter 8, Paul tells you that nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword. No. God s Word tells you that none of them win! None of them defeat you. No, in all these things, you know that you overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loves you! Victory upon victory! But then there s chapter seven. It s the chapter you wish weren t in the Bible at all. There s no triumph here. There s no victory here. It doesn t sound optimistic. It doesn t sound hopeful! No you don t like chapter seven. And maybe that s because it sounds a bit too much like real life. Maybe because it reminds you who you truly are. It reminds you that you are still a sinner, through and through. It reminds you that in spite of your very best efforts, you don t look very much like the person Paul describes in chapters six and eight. And here s the worst part about it. You want to be. You know who God wants you to be. You know what a new creature in Christ ought to look like. You see it with blinding clarity! In almost every situation you face, you know exactly what you should do. Not only do you know it, you want to do it! You 2
want to be pure. You want to be perfect and righteous. You want to do God s will, to be that new creature. You yearn for it. You ache to be what God s Word declares you to be! But you can t. No matter how hard you try, you cannot be what you want to be. You know who you should be for your family. You can see it so clearly in your head the ever patient, ever nurturing, ever loving, ever providing, ever protecting, ever guiding, ever leading parent. But you re not that. In all honesty, your selfishness gets the best of you. You tell yourself you re too tired, or that your mind is on other things. You know how to be a truly loving spouse. You know what a truly self-sacrificing love looks like. But you don t do what you know you should do. You claim you re too busy. You know you should resist temptations to sin, but your efforts are half-hearted at best. You know the type of witness you should be to strangers. Day in, day out you re surrounded by people who need to hear about the love of Jesus. You see them wandering around in the dark, hurt, despairing, directionless. But you can t stop and talk to them. Not right now, anyway. You re on your way to do other things. You ve got other appointments to keep. But more often than not, you just don t feel like doing it. It makes you a bit nervous. The Holy Spirit tugs at your heart, but you brush Him off, because it s uncomfortable to witness to people. 3
But the most frustrating, the most infuriating thing about it all is this: you hate it! You hate sinning! You hate your own actions and your own inaction. You hate that you re not always the parent your children need you to be. You hate that you re not always the person your spouse needs you to be. You hate that often your fear of appearing foolish is stronger than the love you have for your neighbor who needs to know about Jesus. You hate that you keep slipping into Satan s traps over and over again. It s not that you don t try. You do try to make progress. You do try to live into the new identity Jesus has given you. That s your prayer every morning and every night that you would be the person Jesus has called you to be. That you would see Satan s temptations coming and resist them. And you may make some progress! Maybe you break an old habit. Maybe you finally clean up your language. Perhaps you finally start coming to church on a regular basis like you know you should. Finally, at last, you think you ve got sin licked! But every time you think you ve just about reached the summit of discipleship, you fall. Every time you think you ve got sin beat, it pops right back up again. It keeps on rising up out of that grave where you were so sure you d buried it. And it is a most unwelcome resurrection. You may win here or there. You might bury your sin on that battlefield. But like the villain in a cheesy horror movie, it keeps coming back! It crouches in a darkened 4
corner. It s poised to spring on you when you least expect it, when you re completely unprepared. And it will overpower you again. No victory here! What will you do?! What can you do to get out of this?! Sin has its arms wrapped around you and it won t let go! No matter what you do, you can t shake it off! You are condemned to live in this conflict for the rest of your life. Don t be fooled. This battle will never, ever stop. You are condemned to live the rest of your life wanting to do what God commands you to do, without being able to do it. You re condemned to live the rest of your life hating your sin, but not being able to stop! Well, then the solution seems pretty simple. Maybe, you should just give up. Maybe you should just give in to sin, because it s inevitable anyway. You are going to sin again... there s no question about that. So why even try to resist? Why bother guarding your eyes from sinful images? Why bother with the discipline of prayer and devotions? Why bother trying to restore that broken relationship? You know you re just going to sin some other way, so you might as well just save yourself the effort. But Paul doesn t let us off that easily. Just one chapter before Paul upbraids anyone so shameless as that: How can we who died to sin still live in it?! For Paul, a lazy disciple is no disciple at all. Jesus didn t give you an easy chair. He gave you a cross. We dare not fall into sinful complacency. 5
You cannot read Romans 7 honestly and come away thinking you have an excuse to sin. It s a passage dripping with anguish, isn t it? It is so clear that Paul did not write this as some elaborate attempt at self-justification. It s not his defense for being a less-than-perfect apostle. No, Romans 7 is the torturous self-disclosure of a Christian striving with all his might to live a God-pleasing life and failing again and again. It s the story of a man who truly is a new man in Christ but who is always shadowed by the old man, and often overshadowed by it. This is Paul s story. This is my story. And this is your story too. And it s a sad, a tragic story. One of the things I ve noticed about the churches in MO is that pastors tend to refer to their members as saints, elect ones, holy ones in Jesus. I m going to preach to the saints at so and so. I m going to visit the saints of so and so. And that s completely right. They and you are saints new creatures in Christ through baptism who overwhelmingly conquer in Him. That s exactly who you are. That s what chapters six and eight of Romans declare. But it s not the whole story. It leaves out today s reading. It leaves out chapter seven. It would, actually, be just as accurate to tell my pastor friends, I m going to preach to the sinners at Salem today. Both are true. You see, you are a new creature in Christ. And yet the new creature is never alone. It is ever stalked by the old creature. You are always both all the time. Your sinful nature has a hold on you and it won t let go. So the 6
question you have to ask is this: who will rescue you from this body of death?! Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! Just like the chapter of Romans seven itself, you are surrounded by victory upon victory. As our Old Testament reading said, you are a prisoner of hope. It s true. Sin won t let go of you in this life. But neither will Jesus. Sin holds you close. And Jesus holds you closer still. He grabbed you in baptism. He grasps you with His Word. He holds you in absolution. He embraces you in His supper. And there will come a day when this body will wear out. It will die and the fingers of sin will lose their grip. But not Jesus. No. Jesus holds you tight through life, through sin, through death, through resurrection. Jesus holds you the saint, the sinner Jesus holds you to Himself forever. Amen. 7