Light for the Darkness

Of this passage—this remarkable, horrible, brilliant passage of Scripture—the old English Puritan pastor John Owen wrote: “One of the many enemies that fight against the welfare of our souls is indwelling sin, whose power and policy, strength and prevalence, nearness and treachery, the Scripture exceedingly sets out, and the saints daily feel.”[1]  But we don’t really like this idea or this talk of indwelling sin: not so encouraging, not so happy.  It’s not so difficult to reject much of what we read in Romans (the entire Bible, for that matter!), because Paul relentlessly insists—he seems to know, and feel!—that the problem is so dire and so deep.  We, with many others, want to say no.  The picture he paints is honest and, I believe, accurate; more, as Owen also points out, it is biblical—God gives us an unvarnished, accurate account.  God’s encouragement comes abundantly, beloved, when we are candid with ourselves, under the teaching of God’s Word.  Apart from this teaching, we only fool ourselves.  Sin is fine with that.

Every time I read these words in Romans, I’m shaken, heart and soul: how did he know?  My deepest struggle is here laid open, as with that living, active tool: “Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb 4:12).  The law is, indeed, spiritual (7:14).  It is from God; it is God’s Word; Jesus Christ is the logos, what we might call the very voice of God.  I’ve heard the voice of Jesus, many times, and always at just the right time.  The law—God’s instructions for a God-honoring life—the law is spiritual and it is good.  We don’t always like who we see in this mirror, though.

The problem is, has always been, and will always be that I am neither spiritual nor good, anymore than Paul was.  “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” (7:14).  Sold—sold myself, bought the deception—and how many times! knowing that I shouldn’t, mustn’t!  And now?  A freed slave, thank God Almighty!  But all those years . . . I didn’t spend every Sunday in church, growing up: hardly any, actually.  All those years, loving God, yes, in my feeble, casual way, caroming off the rails under the spin of sin.  A slave to sin?  That’s put strongly.  No, not me!  We’re never slaves to sin, until we’re in the act of sinning.  Who is it, sinning?  Me?  Surely not.  How could I?  How can I?  So much life that could have been better spent.  I can’t change that now; changing what was is impossible; changing what was is not the point.  Now—now and forward: this is the point, each day, each choice.  Throughout the Bible, and as late as Revelation, we are reminded that God “will give to each person according to what they have done” (Rev 22:12).  Lord, help me.

“I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (7:15).  Let’s sit with that for a minute.  Reading these words, I feel as if I’m in the ring with Mike Tyson.  From even the earliest centuries of the church, this problem—the problem—has been a point of sore contention, debate, and disagreement: Is it because we are weak-willed that we fail to do the good we want to do?  Good but weak?  Weak, though good?  Good intentions . . . always, in my heart.  (Ha.  No, not really even there.)  We pray, so often, Lord, give me strength!  Amen!  But I remember a line of dialogue I heard in a film clip—a priest giving his testimony from the witness stand in a courtroom—I guess God was on trial.  If only God would give me the strength!  The priest said: “I asked for strength . . . And God gave me difficulties to make me strong.”  Difficulties!  Oh, how many each of us endures.  And after one comes the next, piling on.  And what I hate, I do.  And I do not understand.

The law specifies what God’s people are not to do (the negative commandments), as well as what we are required to do (the positive commandments).  The law reflects God’s heart, and God is good.  The law teaches us what we are to want to do—ought, should, must do, must want to do.  But knowing I ought to do something has never been a prime motivator for doing it.

Knowing that I must not do something has rarely kept me from doing it.  Paul here is not talking about the ceremonial laws, the sacrificial laws, or even the civil, practical laws.  He is talking about the law as fundamentally teaching us righteousness, the Word of God.  To be in a covenant is to be under expectations and obligations.  The covenant we are under, God’s covenant, is a good covenant; our God is a good God; God’s teaching is true, right, and good.  I want to do what is true, right, and good.  Holiness, righteousness, and godliness are not a joke to me.  And I do what I do not want to do.  Who am I?  What is this, who is this, doing this, in me?

“[I]t is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me” (7:17)  Indwelling sin—that Puritan pastor from long ago, John Owen, goes on to say that, “Concerning its nearness to us, it is indeed in us; and that not as a thing different from us, but it cleaves to all the faculties of our souls.  It is an enemy born with us, bred up with us, carried about in our bosoms, by nature our familiar friend, our guide and counsellor, as dear to us as our right eye, as useful to us as our right hand, our wisdom, and our strength.”[2]  Sin is a deceiver; sin works by deception; deception rarely if ever begins with revealing itself: “Look, I’m a lie!”  The first psalm opens: “Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked, or stand with sinners, or lounge around with those who ridicule God.”  Who does any of that knowingly, willingly?  But what is wicked never presents itself as wickedness, quite the opposite.  And, when we walk along with sinners, we are not regarding them as sinners, any more than we regard ourselves as, at heart, sinners.  People buying the deception, eating it up, laughing at the jokes and wit, tell themselves they are walking together with the smart, enlightened people, those with the better values, doing exciting things, irritating and ridiculing all those dull, fussy people who so richly deserve it.

There is that in me alive to Christ; I have died (and risen) with Christ.  Amen!  There is also, simultaneously, death in me.  Death—sin—is loud, strident, commanding, ravenous, opportunistic.  Christ is patient, clear, consistent, bright.  Christ is the desire in me to do what is good.  Paul laments that “good itself does not dwell” in him (7:18).  He is not saying Jesus does not dwell in him.  Jesus is with every believer, beloved!  To have faith is to have Jesus!  Hold on to Jesus, for God’s sake!  Paul is saying the only good he has is Christ Jesus—given to him—and that, without Christ, apart from Christ, neither intelligence nor morals can get any of us to salvation.  Without Christ, all that is in Paul, all that is in any of us, is the “sinful nature,” elsewhere called the flesh (7:18).

We live in a flesh-saturated culture, as any culture consumer can attest.  Feed the need.  Each door advertises itself as a gateway to more: amplification, magnification, glorification.  Some of you may just remember that scene in Jesus Christ: Superstar as Jesus is about to enter the Temple—the Temple, mind you.  All manner of temptations on full, open display, available, there: “I got things you won’t believe, / Name your pleasure I will sell. / I can fix your wildest needs, / I got heaven and I got hell.”  There in the Temple, beloved: worshiping the world’s way, as if what other way was there?

Anyone who has the desire to do what is good—and only God can tell us what is good; only God can show us what is truly good—whoever has this desire has it from God.  God is present.  God is at work.  God does not compel.  He commands but does not compel.  But He ought to compel!  Force me to do what is right; then I would please Him!  Then, I wouldn’t need Jesus or even the Spirit.  Why doesn’t God just make sin impossible for me?!  That would require making freedom impossible.  Choices are consequential; remember Revelation: to each according to what they have done?  No one is free without responsibility.

Responsibility is freedom.  How shall we, now, use it?  Make daily choices for holiness, for godliness, for righteousness.  At first, the choices will feel costly, each one—just can’t, too hard!  Sin will tell us they’re impossible.  May I suggest that foolishness is having the desire to do good and not do it?  The desire, the prompt, comes from God, and, as Scripture and experience have shown us, we hear but do not act.  As in so much of life, more follow through would be blessed.

We hear but do not act.  Worse, we hear and do the opposite.  Or is it only Apostle Paul, back there two thousand years ago, who does not do the good he wants to do but instead the evil he does not want to do (7:19)?  And not only does it but keeps doing it (7:19)—a habit, a default.  But who really does anything evil?  Do we know any evil people?  Sad people, confused people, fearful people, broken people . . . yes, even a few mean, hurtful people.  I want to refrain from calling them evil—I don’t know any Charles Mansons or Adolf Hitlers.  I do know myself, though.  Brothers, sisters—there’s much evil, in there, and I can’t account for it, because I’m not evil . . . am I.  It’s curious how the villains we like best in the movies are so sympathetic; others just know how to make us laugh—they always have the best, most memorable lines.  “Evil” is . . . you know, funny.

And what is evil?  Disregarding God, ignoring, denying God; evil is doing whatever without regard for God, God’s will, God’s Word, sharper than any two-edged blade.  Is it any wonder that the tool most of us immediately associate with a surgeon is the scalpel?  We are opened up, under the light: healing cannot happen until the disorder, the disease, is addressed.

“Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (7:20).  In me?  No!  Never!  Still, now, even with Christ alive in me?  The old saying is that knowledge is power.  We often wonder how to name, diagnose, our aches and pains—is it an actual medical condition?  More to the point, is it treatable?  That tightness across the jaw—warning of a heart attack?

Or that odd, thick sensation in the chest—maybe just indigestion?  That ache in the instep, is it just soreness or a hairline fracture?  Those sore shoulders—overworked muscle or torn connective tissue?  Knowing how to name it . . . well, it provides some comfort, maybe even some small hope.  Maybe something can be done, if we could only give it its proper name.  If we never know what it is that ails us, nothing can be done—or all manner of unhelpful things can be done!  Sin has been a snake oil salesman from the start.

“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me” (7:21).  We want to do good—what God expects of us.  I want to live to please God.  This is me; this is who I am.  And sin is also there, with me; this is also who I am, as I have watched and witnessed to my vertiginous nausea on too many occasions in my life.  Do you understand?  “My God, what have I done?!”  Do you know who I’m talking about?

One of the usual ways in which Calvinism gets mocked—we Presbyterians are Calvinist Christians—is on account of total depravity: sounds terrible!  Who could subscribe to such teaching?  How pessimistic!  How gloomy!  Calvin uses the term to describe human nature entirely apart from God, without the intervention of Christ: our natural, fallen state.  Life without God is not an optimistic matter, for Calvin.  Can mud clean mud?

It’s not as if Calvin is getting this from nowhere—he was an astute, surgical observer of the human heart, beginning with his own.  He also knew his Bible: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). “[D]eath came to all people, because all sinned” (Rom 5:12).  “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9).  “Can mankind be just before God?  Can a man be pure before his Maker? (Job 4:17).  “[F]or there is no one who does not sin” (2 Chron 6:36).  “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins” (Eccl 7:20).  “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).  Also, those words from the mouth of Jesus himself, walking alongside his followers: “‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered.  ‘No one is good—except God alone’” (Mk 10:18).  Let me here bring in that healer and folk philosopher from Star Trek, Dr. McCoy (a Georgia boy), who observes that “evil usually triumphs—unless good is very, very careful.”  Another word for careful is vigilant—keep watch and pray.  Semper Paratus—always ready, but we wake to sleep and take our waking slow.

It’s when I don’t see, don’t recognize that other law at work in me, “waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me” (7:23) that I deceive myself and throw wide the door to trouble.  Beloved, sin is also always there.  We don’t have to be its prisoners, anymore.  Jesus empowers us to see the attack coming and repel it.  Remember the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the belt of truth, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God—keep these with you, ready to hand; use them.

With Paul, we all of us also have every reason to cry out, “How wretched I am!” (7:24).  “Who will deliver me from this daily dying?” (7:24).  Who will save a wretch like me?  Why save a wretch like me?

“Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:25).  God comes for us, to save.  Only God can.  Hallelujah, what a savior.

[1] John Owen.  John Owen: Daily Readings.  April 10.  Christian Heritage.  Lee Gatiss, ed.  Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus Pub, 2022.

[2] Same as above.