Chapter 1: What is the radical character of sin in the church today?
The problem we face in the church today is self-denial of the radical character of sin. We don't hate sin the way we should hate it. We don't abhor the disobedience that we manifest in our lives. Paul looked at himself. Oh, what a wretch I am when I look at my sin.
The Apostle Paul did hate the remaining sin that he could see in his life, abhorring any disobedience. So what was his response? What hope is there for a Christian battling the flesh? Welcome to this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind, where each week we feature the preaching ministry of R.C. Sproul.
Over the past few weeks, you have heard Dr. Sproul preach through Romans 7, and today he'll conclude that chapter and bring us the wonderful news of the opening words of chapter 8. Today's sermon will also conclude our time in Romans, so that means that today is the final day to request R.C. Sproul's entire commentary on Romans when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org.
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Chapter 2: How does Paul express his struggle with sin in Romans 7?
So who will deliver Paul? Who will deliver us from our bodies of death? Here's Dr. Sproul.
For the good I will to do, I do not do. But the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free, from the law of sin and death.
What I really want to look at here, in these last few verses of chapter 7, is this ongoing war that the apostle describes between the spirit, or the mind in this case, and the flesh. where he says, I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, bringing me into captivity the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And then he concludes chapter 7 with these words. So then with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin. Do you see that contrast there between the mind,
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Chapter 3: What hope does Paul offer to Christians battling sin?
and the flesh well in the last verse he talks about the flesh and just immediately before that he said who will deliver me from this body of death and so he speaks about body and then in the next verse about flesh Now, if we would look closely at the text, we will see that in the Greek there are two distinct words that are used there.
One is translated by the English word body, the second one by the English word flesh. And the Greek there is the word soma, that is translated by the word body. You've heard it in the English language when we hear about people who have psychosomatic illnesses.
That is, they have bodily diseases and bodily aches and pains that are prompted not by some organic infection or disease, but are prompted by... mental issues. And then we have the word sarx in the last verse that is translated by the English word flesh.
If you look at the Latin, you will see the different words are translated in the first instance by the word corporeal or the Latin word from which we get the word corporeal. And then secondly, flesh then is translated in the Latin Bible by the word that derives from the word carnal. So you have corporal, carnal, soma, sarx, body, flesh. But this has caused no small amount of confusion.
This distinction here that we find in the language between body and flesh. And part of the confusion is linguistic, and the other part of the confusion is philosophical or theological. The term sarx is used again and again in the New Testament, particularly by the Apostle Paul, not to refer to our physical nature, but rather to describe our fallen nature.
that the sarchical nature is that nature that is controlled by original sin. The sarch describes the old man, the man who has no inclination towards the things of God, the man who is a slave to sin, who is dead in sin and trespasses. That condition of radical corruption is described by Paul with the use of this term sarchs. And when he uses the term soma, he's almost always
describing the physical aspect of our humanity. But here's the problem linguistically. Not every time that the word sarx is used in the New Testament does it refer to our fallen, corrupt nature. Sometimes it does simply refer to our physical, corporeal, earthly existence.
So therein lies the problem linguistically, because you can't just say every time the word sarx appears in the Bible, it refers to fallen sinful corruption, and every time the word soma refers to the physical, because there are times when this is simply not the case. Well, what's the theological problem here?
The theological problem is the influence of ancient Hellenistic philosophy as well as Oriental dualism into early Christian thinking. We remember Plato, who saw the highest dimension of human experience being found in the mind and that he saw the flesh, the body, as the prison house of the soul.
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Chapter 4: Who will deliver us from our bodies of death?
Now, the misuse of physical appetites indeed is an occasion for sin. But we radically oversimplify things when we think that the struggle that Paul is talking about here in Romans 7 is the struggle between the mind and the body. It's not what it's about. It's between the sarks and the pneuma. It's between the old man and the new man.
Between a fallen, corrupt nature and the renewed inner person that is created by the supernatural intervention of God. the Holy Spirit. And one key linguistically that helps us over this hurdle is that almost any time that you see the apostle or anybody else in the New Testament contrasting spirit and flesh or mind and flesh,
then the term sarx is used not to describe the physical body, but the corrupt nature of the whole person. Because the corruption of sarx is not just a sinful corruption of physical appetites. Sarx refers to the body, it refers to the soul, it refers to the spirit, it refers to the mind. All of the person who is unregenerate is in a state of flesh.
By nature, we have a mind of flesh, a soul of flesh, a spirit of flesh. But anytime you see Paul contrasting flesh with spirit or flesh with mind, now he's talking about the distinction between the old man, the flesh, and the new man, the inner man that has been made alive by the Holy Ghost. Well, let me just back up. He cries out,
O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And we have in the first place an exclamation that declares a condition of misery, where Paul cries out in anguish after just relating to us this ongoing struggle, this death struggle, with the weighty burden of sin pressing against the inclinations that he has. toward obedience.
In the midst of that struggle, he cries out, oh wretched man that I am. What's wrong with this picture? Paul is using the very language here in this text that is as politically incorrect as as language can be in the contemporary church.
In our contemporary church, we have become so narcissistic, so preoccupied with self-esteem and self-worth, that the last thing we should ever do in preaching is to engender feelings of guilt or worthlessness among our people. We are not to discourage you from experiencing everything that God has made you to be. That's the mentality that we have in the church today.
Yet we still like to sing Amazing Grace, don't we? Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. Who saved such a creature of self-esteem as I am? Who saved... A wretch like me. The saints of the Old Testament, catching one glimpse of the radiant glory of God, the manifold holiness of God, would cry out in the loathing of themselves, saying, I am a worm and not a man. Woe is me. I am undone.
Now, there is a sense, ladies and gentlemen, which we can so wallow in our guilt and be so preoccupied with our failure that we almost take delight in some form of masochism, self-flagellation. But that's not the problem we face in the church today. The problem we face in the church today is self-denial of the radical character of sin. We don't hate sin the way we should hate it.
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Chapter 5: What does Paul mean by 'the law of sin'?
There is therefore now. There is therefore when. There is therefore now. No condemnation. Let me just stop there for a second. Therefore, does that mean just in light of the last few verses? I don't think so.
I think Paul, when he says the therefore now, is referring to everything that he's laid out before them, to the whole doctrine of the grace of justification that preceded his charge to sanctification and the struggle that he recounts in chapter 7.
I think that therefore calls attention to everything that he set forth to the Romans about the redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ so that the conclusion of the matter of justification is that now no condemnation. I'm stopping in the middle of a sentence here for just a second. There's no condemnation. It doesn't mean that now God has promised never to judge the world.
It doesn't mean that there is no condemnation left in the justice of God for a fallen humanity, no. But there is the end of condemnation specifically and particularly to a designated group. And let's look at that designated group. There's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
If you're a Christian, you have moved already beyond the condemnation of God. Not only have you moved beyond the condemnation you deserve from God by the sins that you have stored up against the day of wrath, and that you've escaped that wrath, which is surely to come, But there's no condemnation for what you're going to do tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or the day after that.
This is one of the most beautiful texts in all of Scripture for the assurance of salvation. The threat of condemnation is removed forever from you. If it is so... that you are in Christ Jesus.
Is it thinkable, beloved, after what God did to his son on the cross, where it pleased the Lord to bruise him, when Christ became a curse for his sheep on the cross, receiving the full measure of God's condemnation for the sin of those people? Can you imagine after that?
After Christ pays the perfect price of satisfaction for the righteousness and justice of God, that six years later He will visit more wrath upon His Son? Or do you think now, in this day and age, that the Father will say to the Son, go back to Gethsemane, let's do it again? I have another cup for you to drink. No, he drank the cup of the condemnation of the father for his sheep forever.
There is no condemnation left anymore for his son. And if you are in the son, you are in the cleft of the rock. You're in the shelter of the rock of ages. You're covered. You're hidden. You're safe now and forevermore. Remember the story that John tells of the woman caught in adultery, dragged in her shame by the Pharisees to the feet of Jesus.
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