This is a lightly edited transcript of what I actually said when I delivered this message on Romans 7:14–25, during a summer internship. It differs from what I planned to say; for the prepared text, see the manuscript.
Thank you, Pastor, for the opportunity to speak tonight, and thank you, church, for letting me do my internship here this summer—it’s been a great blessing. If I say the words “Columbine” or “Conyers, Georgia,” most of you know immediately what I mean: violence, school shootings, kids killing themselves and each other. About a month and a half ago yet another shooting took place in Conyers, only a month after Columbine in Littleton, Colorado. And Christians aren’t the only ones seeing there’s a problem. I read in Time recently people asking, “What’s wrong with our kids, our culture, our schools, our hearts?” They’re asking questions but often reaching wrong answers—blaming rock music and TV (real problems, but not the root), or calling for better schools, tighter gun laws, and more money (perhaps problems, but not the real issue). The last question, though, gets at the heart: “What is wrong with our hearts?”—the right question, even if the answers offered are wrong. The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart. These people don’t primarily need moral reform; they need a changed heart—the gospel of transforming grace, regeneration, a new heart.
But what does that have to do with us? We have new hearts, if we’ve trusted Christ—so why bring it up? Tonight, as we look at Scripture, I believe our problem lies in the very same place as theirs. Our text is Romans 7:14–25, where Paul cries, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing….Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Father, give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to understand your truth; by your Spirit convict us and help us change. In Christ’s name, amen. This is a hotly debated passage—commentators divide over whether Paul describes a saved man’s experience or a lost man’s struggle for salvation. I take it as Paul’s own experience as a saved man, his struggle between flesh and Spirit—a struggle not unique to Paul but one every born-again believer goes through. So the question in our title is: Can we be victorious? Let me offer four foundational truths necessary if we’re to have victory.
Life Is War
First, we must realize that life is war. Before victory is even possible, we must know we’re in a war—you can’t win a battle you don’t know you’re fighting. (Have you ever played a game just having fun, not keeping score, while the other person was keeping track the whole time—and suddenly he says, “I won”?) Even now, as you sit in the pew, a struggle is going on—whether you’ll pay attention and hear what God has for you, or drift to your week ahead. Every moment of every day, there is a battle. Notice Paul’s language in verse 23: “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin.” The word for “warring” means to make a military expedition, to fight against; “captivity” carries the idea of taking someone captive with a spear—plainly military terms. Paul knew life is war, as his writings show: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7); “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). The word for “fight” there is the Greek agōn—from which we get “agony”—so Paul is literally saying, “I have agonized a good agony,” an intense struggle. Anyone who thinks life gets easy at salvation, a downhill coast, hasn’t read Paul.
No battle can be approached with a carefree, laid-back attitude. My cousin Jeremy, a Marine, told me of all the running, training, and rigor of boot camp—because a soldier needs discipline of body and mind, and the same is true spiritually. Paul says, “I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1 Corinthians 9:26–27)—the word for “discipline” carries the idea of beating black and blue; not that Paul literally did so, but that’s the rigor he had. Yet the attitude of most Christians today (mine included) is a peacetime attitude: “Life is good, we have prosperity, let’s relax and go with the flow.” That was not Paul’s attitude, and it can’t be ours. Think how life changes in wartime—how people spend money and live differently. And our battle is greater than any world war; the stakes are higher. In our war, men don’t merely lose an arm or a leg or their physical life—the stakes are their souls. There is no peace until Jesus comes. We must realize we are in a war.
Identify the Enemy
Second, we must identify the enemy—you can’t fight well if you don’t know whom you’re fighting (at Monday-night basketball, someone was guarding his own teammate). Ephesians 6:12 tells us our enemies aren’t people: “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers….” So who are they? Scripture points to three. First, the world—not people, but the world as a system, with its philosophies, values, and beliefs. “Love not the world….For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is…of the world” (1 John 2:15–17)—the world wants our love, and we must keep it fixed on God. “Be not conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2)—the world tries to mold us into its image. “The friendship of the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4)—to be buddy-buddy with the world is to make ourselves God’s enemy. And true religion is “to keep oneself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). Everywhere—newspapers, the internet, TV, the mall, music, magazines—pressure presses on us to be a little more like the world. There’s a principle of exposure in Scripture: the Israelites “mingled among the heathen, and learned their works” (Psalm 106:35); “he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20). What we expose ourselves to shapes us. Jesus said we are in the world but not of it (John 17)—yet many Christians lose their impact because there’s virtually no difference between their lives and the world’s. We must stay separate and different.
Second, Satan is our enemy—obvious enough that a five-year-old could tell you. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He desired to sift Peter as wheat; Revelation 12:9 calls him the one “which deceiveth the whole world”; John 8:44 calls him the father of lies. Just as he tempted Eve, he and his demons—as real as you and I, though unseen—are out to tempt us. But third, and the one Paul wrestles with here, is a greater enemy than the world or even Satan: our own flesh, our old nature, the indwelling sin principle. Inside every one of us is this nature opposed to God, and it is our greatest enemy. “But,” you say, “at salvation the old man died; we were freed from sin” (Romans 6:22). Yes—at salvation God saved us from the penalty of sin; the chains were broken and we’re no longer in bondage to sin as our master. But indwelling sin still remains a powerful force. In sanctification God begins to save us from the power of sin, but that sin still remains. Paul says, “I am carnal” (fleshly, v. 14); “it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me” (v. 17); “in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing” (v. 18). Our flesh is no different—wicked, corrupt, in direct opposition to God. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit…so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Galatians 5:17); fleshly lusts “war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11); “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9)—more deceitful even than Satan.
That’s why Paul “put no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3)—he knew his own heart and couldn’t trust himself. Just before I came home, I learned of two godly men—a pastor and a missionary—who had to leave the ministry over immorality; and about a week later my pastor mentioned three men in a week and a half’s time who’d fallen the same way. Why? Part of it, I suspect, is that Satan whispers, “You’re a pastor now, you’re spiritual—you don’t need so many guards; give yourself a little slack.” That’s the lie: that the more spiritual we become, the fewer guards we need. Scripture teaches the opposite: “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14). When we see a weakness in a certain area, we must erect guards there rather than give the flesh any opportunity. “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation: the spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38).
Acknowledge Our Inability
Third, we must acknowledge our inability—we cannot win this war on our own. Having seen the war and its enemies—the conforming power of the world, the deceitfulness of Satan, and our own deceitful flesh—we look at the enemy and realize we don’t stand a chance alone. Paul says, “to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not” (v. 18); “the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do” (v. 19). Paul’s desires weren’t the problem—he wanted to please the Lord and obey—but he couldn’t find the ability, because of the flesh within him: every time he chose to please the Lord, his flesh rose in revolt. Is this your experience? If it is, take hope—you’re in the company of Paul, Samuel Rutherford, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd, John Newton, Charles Spurgeon, and many others who testified to the same struggle. So what did Paul do? He realized the answer wasn’t inside himself—his greatest problem was inside himself, so he had to look outside, to a force greater than he: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (v. 24). He knew he could not deliver himself. How often do we live a day or two in our own strength, thinking, “I’m a Christian; I can make it on my own”—and fall flat on our faces. Every time we think we can live the Christian life on our own, that’s the result.
Depend Upon God
Fourth, then, we must depend upon God. Paul concludes, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 25)—victory and deliverance are found in God. Now, Paul is partly speaking of future deliverance, when we’ll be saved completely from the very presence of sin in God’s presence; this battle won’t be fully won until then, which is a great hope. But is there hope for daily victory now? Yes. Galatians 5:16–17 holds the key: “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” But how do we walk in the Spirit? Ephesians 6 sheds light: “Take…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (6:17–18). Notice—God’s Word is the sword of the Spirit, and we are to pray in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, comes back to these two simple things the pastor preaches week after week: God’s Word and prayer. And Ephesians 5:18 says, “Be filled with the Spirit” (rather than drunk with wine)—since God’s Word is the sword of the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit is, in large part, to be filled with this book, to saturate our souls with it.
No one would go into battle without a weapon—that would be foolish (imagine playing paintball where I get a gun and you just dodge). Yet we Christians often step out into the battlefields of the world unarmed, without the Word in our hearts and minds. So, first, depend upon God through the Word—it is the only weapon we’re given, and if we want daily victory we must run to this book: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11). Read it, meditate on it, study it, love it, obey it. And second, depend upon God through prayer. Notice there’s no real break between Ephesians 6:17 and 18—“take the sword of the Spirit…praying.” Verse 18 tells the manner of verse 17: we take the sword prayerfully. We can’t separate the two—prayer is the power that wields the sword. With prayer but no sword we’re weaponless; with the sword but no prayer we’re powerless to use it. “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” Every morning we should get before the Lord: “God, I acknowledge that I have a sinful flesh, that the world is a powerful force, and that Satan is out to get me. Keep me from temptation today; guard me from the lusts of my own flesh.” And daily we should saturate our hearts with God’s Word.
So, can we be victorious? Yes—victory is possible, but only as we depend on God through his Word and prayer, walking in the Spirit. To close: life is war, and there is no peace until Jesus comes; the enemy is great—the world, Satan, and our own flesh; we cannot win this battle on our own, and how foolish we are to try; and we must depend on God if we’re to have daily victory—going to him daily, begging, “God, give me victory; keep me from sin; help me to know your Word.” Do you desire victory as a Christian? Are you, like Paul in Romans 7, struggling? Come to God and cast your dependence on him, realizing that only through God is victory possible. Let’s pray.