WHAT ONLY GOD CAN DO
Text: Romans 7:14-8:2
April 10, 2005, Dave Philips
Perhaps you’ve heard the limerick about the young lady named Lynn,
Who was deep in original sin,
When they said, “Do be good,”
She said, “Would if I could!”
And straightway went at it again.
I think Paul would have approved of this limerick as a good illustration of our human predicament. I think he also would have approved of it as an illustration of where we Christians live and what we go through.
This limerick dramatizes the dilemma that we Christians learn about very early on in our Christian experience. We may get the impression from well meaning pastors and evangelists that once we trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and invite him to be Lord of our lives, all our troubles are over.
After all, what more could we ask for? We have heard the bad news that we are sinners and deserve God’s anger and judgment.1 We have also heard the astonishing Good News that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.2 Paul tells us in Romans that we are justified by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.3 The effect of that justification is a completely clean slate. We have no more history of sin with God. We start fresh from the day we accept Christ as Lord.
But it’s the problem of what happens after that fresh start that troubles us. We find that sin is still a reality for us. We hear the great apostle Paul saying, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.”4 This rings very true to our experience as Christians. When we hear it, we can identify with it.
What do we do with it? That’s the question!
We can dismiss it cynically saying, “Ah, that’s just more God-talk. Christianity is a waste of time.” Or we can go the opposite way and beat up on ourselves saying, “I’m a failure as a Christian. I’ll never get to heaven. I’m too bad a sinner for God to want to have anything to do with me.”
Paul shows us a much better way, and we learn some wonderful and liberating lessons from reading the seventh and eighth chapters of Romans. We learn from Paul’s teaching how to deal with the problem of post-conversion sin. Let me point out three ways we can deal with it:
We can understand it, we can accept it, and we can transcend it.
WE CAN UNDERSTAND IT
First, we can understand it. Romans 7 is not the easiest passage in Paul’s letters to understand. I’m not going to attempt to explain the whole chapter in the few minutes I have. I’d recommend John Stott’s excellent commentary on Romans for those who want to explore this chapter in a little more depth.
But let me give you the Reader’s Digest version of Paul’s thinking in Romans 7. Paul shows us a stark contrast. Paul points out in the fourteenth verse that the moral law is spiritual but we are not. The moral law is holy, and just, and good, but we human beings are not. The moral law shows us how to live, but we lack the capability to obey it. We may try hard, and we may succeed in small ways from time to time, but we always relapse.
The moral Law of God, on the one hand, is lofty, idealistic, and just. We humans, on the other hand, are spiritually and morally weak, self-serving, and inclined to break the rules when they go against us.
We’re like the average hacker trying to compete with the pros in the N.B.A. playoffs. We’re out of shape, we’re short and weak, and we’re slow. We’re just out of our league.
The mistake we make is in thinking that our inability to keep the law shuts us out of heaven, on the one hand, or out of trying to live a decent and moral life on the other hand. Just because we can’t compete with the pros shouldn’t keep us from playing and enjoying basketball on a lower level. And just because we can never measure up to the goodness of Jesus doesn’t mean we should give up on growing in our ability to live decent lives.
No coach expects his bench players to be as good as Michael Jordan. He’s unique. He’s the greatest. But every coach expects even his second stringers to play to the full extent of their ability.
God does not expect perfection from us in this life! God does not expect that in this life we will match the goodness of Jesus. But God does expect that we’re going to be growing toward the perfection seen in Jesus.
There is nothing in what Paul teaches us in Romans 7 that says God expects us never to sin. The reality is that we are weak, and we will sin. Are you with me? That’s an easy concept to understand, and all of us sinners are all too happy to understand it. It’s really a relief. We can relax in the knowledge that we are not spiritual Michael Jordans and that we are not expected in every game we ever play to score forty or fifty points spiritually. That just ain’t going to happen!
WE CAN ACCEPT IT
We can understand this, and we can also accept it. Paul gives us a vivid picture of our predicament in Romans 7. Speaking autobiographically — and bless Paul for doing this and honestly admitting that even an apostle has hassles with sin — Paul says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Now, stay with me, this is not a no-brainer. Paul says first, “I don’t understand myself.” And many people would say, “Paul, we don’t understand you, either.” But hang in there -- Paul’s got a very important point to make. “I don’t understand myself, because I want to do the good and right thing, but I find myself doing the wrong thing that I don’t want to do.”
Now, does that sound like familiar territory to you? Quite aside from morality, isn’t it the human experience that we all have a tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot? We know how things are supposed to be, and we want them to be that way, but we can’t seem to get our act together to make things come out the way we want them to.
An old drunk passing by a church door heard the people inside praying, “We have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done the things we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.” And he said, as he walked through the doors of the church, “This is the place for me!”
Paul is admitting to this inability to make things come out right in his own morality. He loves God’s law, he wants to obey it perfectly, but he knows he can’t.
Now, get this: Paul says, When I do the very thing I hate “it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.” That sounds at the outset like the Flip Wilson type of copout: “The devil made me do it.” That sounds like Paul is saying, “When I do bad things, I’m not to blame, because it’s really not me doing it but somebody else.”
No! That’s not it. Paul is not saying that we’re not responsible for what we do. He is saying that the impulse in us to do what we know is wrong is an impulse that we will one day be free from. He is saying that the impulse in us to do what we know to be wrong is not the real us, not the essential us. The unreal me is that part of me that is proud and arrogant, that would love to murder the guy who cuts in on me in traffic, that wants his own way in all circumstances no matter what the needs of the other person are. The unreal me is the guy who’s always shooting himself in the foot. That’s the part of me that I do not like. And that’s the part of me that was struck a mortal blow by Jesus Christ at the cross. That’s the part of me that is dying because of what the Spirit of Christ is doing in me. Thank God!
But the real me, the essential me, is that part of me that Christ has touched and is healing, that part of me that is growing up into Christ, that part of me that delights in God, that part of me that is kind and compassionate and just. That’s the part of me that I like, and that’s the part of me that is now growing in Christ. That’s the part of me that will survive to eternal life.
A terminally ill child was interviewed on the Phil Donahue show several years back. Phil was asking this kid about the effect of the terminal disease on his life. And the kid said something that really made me prick up my ears. He said, “I have this disease, but the disease does not have me!”
Wow! What wisdom! That’s what Paul is saying: “I have this sin, I have these impulses to do what I know to be wrong. But sin does not have me! Jesus Christ has me, and I have Jesus Christ.”
The kid on the Donahue show had accepted the reality of his terminal illness. Paul in Romans 7 has accepted the reality of his sin. But neither the kid nor Paul are letting their condition run their lives.
WE CAN TRANSCEND IT
No, what they are doing is transcending their condition. They understand that they have been given a death sentence. They accept it. But they do not let their condition call the tune that they dance to. And we don’t need to do that, either!
Listen again to the first couple of verses in Romans chapter eight from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase:
“With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.”5
Do you hear these words? A new power is in operation! Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me? I can’t save myself, only God has the power do that. But God has the power! And by God’s grace and with God’s power we can transcend our inclination to sin. We can actually grow more Christlike. We can have Christian lives that are not always living in defeat. You and I through God’s grace and by God’s power can do these things! That’s what’s promised in the New Testament.
It is the judgment of the late Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, who knew a thing or two about American Christianity, that most American Christians are not experiencing the abundant life in Christ. American Christians live with very low expectations of the gospel and of themselves.
A pastor lived next door to a very feisty little guy named Johnny. One day as the pastor was preparing his sermon, he looked out the window and saw Johnny playing with his little red wagon. A wheel dropped off the wagon. Johnny got red in the face, drew a deep breath, and, very loudly, said a string of bad words. Something like, “Gosh-a-mickle-dickle-pickle, gee-willie-wobbles, dog-my-cats, and rowr-bazzle!”
The pastor went to the door and confronted the boy. “Johnny,” he said, “I’m ashamed of you using such language. When such a thing happens, you should say, ‘Praise the Lord!’ Who knows, the Lord might even perform a miracle the next time something bad happens to you.”
Johnny was none too sure that he agreed, but he said nothing. Then the pastor helped him get the wheel back on his wagon, and Johnny started playing with the wagon again while the pastor went back to his study and resumed his sermon. Suddenly the pastor heard a horrendous crash. He ran to the window. Johnny had steered his wagon into a tree and all four wheels had fallen off.
Johnny got red in the face, drew a deep breath, but then remembered himself and shouted out, “Praise the Lord.” No sooner had he said this than all four wheels rolled back to the wagon and hopped on the axles. And the pastor said “Gosh-a-mickle-dickle-pickle, gee-willie-wobbles, dog-my-cats, and rowr-bazzle!”
What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing much happens in our Christian lives because we don’t expect anything to happen! And when something happens, we’re shocked.
But when we begin to trust the Lord, when we begin to take him at his word, when we begin to act on our Christianity, we not only transcend our problems with sin, we begin to see the power of God working in our lives.
Because God’s plan for us is not the mere transcendence of sin but victorious living. God’s plan for us is not merely to grit our teeth and grin and bear life. God’s plan is for us to enjoy life. God’s plan is not that we be Christlike only in the life to come, but that we become more Christlike in this life. God’s plan for us is not to that we be losers in our war against sin, but that we be winners!
In chapter eight we meet the Holy Spirit who helps us do all these things. Stay tuned, next week we’ll learn how the Holy Spirit enables us to do things we never imagined we could do.