Torn Between One Way and Another (The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up.)

This is one of best sermons that I have heard on Romans 7-8.

Click on this link to watch:
The Six Week Journey - Part Two | The City Church

Judah uses The Message version:

Torn Between One Way and Another (Romans 7:14-8:17 MSG)

I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

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.

God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!

So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

Rocks in a Backpack

From Steve Brown:

Recently, a friend of mine gave me an illustration by Ron Hutchcraft regarding how some young people in Alaska learn about responsibility. 

Do you know what they do? When a child does something bad, they put a rock in his or her backpack. When they do something good, they take one out. The better they are, the lighter the backpack. On the other hand, the backpack can become really heavy if a child is especially bad.

As I read that, I thought, I've been doing that for most of my life.

There was a time when I thought I could keep even by getting more of the rocks out of the bag than I put in it. That was when I was younger. Those were the days when I thought that if I could just get the rocks out of my backpack I would be a fit and pure vessel for Christ to use. All I had to do was work at it and then, once the task was accomplished, I would see "thousands saved and hundreds healed."

For years I was a rock counter. I spent most of my time checking the backpack. I didn't notice that my legs were getting bowed and my back was bending from the weight. I just kept trying to get the rocks out. I started looking like a worn out cowboy. However, I found that, if you tried really hard, you could keep your back straight so that people wouldn't notice. But, man, it does take a toll trying to hide the fact that the backpack is killing you.

That's when God said:  You know, you don't have to carry that backpack anymore.
 
What do you mean? I thought that was my purpose in life. Don't you want me to be holy and obedient and stuff? This was your idea, not mine.

Wasn't my idea.

Don't you want me to be righteous?

That would be nice, but you're going about it all wrong. I don't know if you've noticed, but the backpack is a lot heavier than it used to be. If getting the rocks out of that backpack is your purpose in life, you're not doing a very good job of it.

But I'm working hard.

I know.

Well?

You don't have to work so hard at it. In fact, you're spending half of your life working on getting those rocks out of the backpack and you're not living anymore. You're missing a lot of really good things I planned for you. I would rather you just came to me. I can take care of the rocks. That is what the cross was about.

You mean that you will take the rocks out of the backpack and make it lighter?

No, I don't want the rocks. I want the backpack.

What? You're joking, right?

No, I'm not joking. I don't joke about something this serious. I don't joke about things that destroy people I love.

But, Lord, I've had this thing a long time. In fact, I've sort of grown accustomed to it. Besides, if I gave you the backpack, how could I measure whether or not I was pleasing you?

I'm already pleased...and it has nothing to do with the rocks or lack of them in your backpack. Tell me, what would you do with your life if you didn't have to spend all of your time working with those rocks?

I'm not sure. Maybe go to a movie or take a day off or something. I might just be quiet and spend more time with you. Maybe even tell some people about your kindness and love. I guess I would even tell them about this conversation.

Then, child, do it with joy...and give the backpack to me.

And that's how I got rid of the backpack...well, almost. The fact is that I sometimes go to the throne and take it back. When I do that, I think God shakes his head and blushes a bit. But I don't keep it very long anymore. It's hard to dance with all that weight.

Paul wrote, "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" (Romans 8:1, NKJV). 

The great thing about not being under condemnation anymore is that the Spirit starts doing his work. In fact, I'll bet if I started carrying that backpack again, it would have less rocks in it than it used to have. Maybe not. But I'm not going to check. He told me I didn't have to.
 
Did you hear the story about the old man with a heavy load in his sack, walking down the road? A farmer came by in his wagon, felt sorry for the old man and gave him a ride. The man climbed up on the wagon and thanked the farmer. Then the farmer noticed that the man still carried the sack.

"Why don't you put that sack down?" asked the farmer. "It's got to be heavy."

"You are so kind," the old man said. "But I wouldn't want to impose on your kindness. You shouldn't have to carry me and the sack."

Silly? Of course it is. But it is no more silly than the way you carry that dumb backpack around with all those rocks. Why don't you just let him carry it all?

A Ticking Bomb

Romans 7:14-25; 8:1-4
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell 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 I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 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.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another 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. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  

Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

 

The Epistle to the Romans has sat around in the church since the first century like a bomb ticking away the death of religion; and every time it's been picked up, the ear-splitting freedom in it has gone off with a roar.

The only sad thing is that the church as an institution has spent most of its time playing bomb squad and trying to defuse it. For your comfort, though, it can't be done. Your freedom remains as close to your life as Jesus and as available to your understanding as the nearest copy. Like Augustine, therefore, tolle lege, take and read: tolle the one, lege the other-and then hold onto your hat. Compared to that explosion, the clap of doom sounds like a cap pistol.

 ----Robert Capon

The Ultimate Statute of Limitation

Saint Paul has not said to you, “Think how it would be if there were no condemnation”; he has said, “There is therefore now none.” He has made an unconditional statement, not a conditional one-a flat assertion, not a parabolic one. He has not said, “God has done this and that and the other thing; and if by dint of imagination you can manage to pull it all together, you may be able to experience a little solace in the prison of your days.” No. He has simply said, “You are free. Your services are no longer required. The salt mine has been closed. You have fallen under the ultimate statute of limitation. You are out from under everything: Shame, Guilt, Blame. It all rolls off your back like rain off a tombstone.” 

It is essential that you see this clearly. The Apostle is saying that you and I have been sprung. Right now; not next week or at the end of the world. And unconditionally, with no probation officer to report to. But that means that we have finally come face to face with the one question we have scrupulously ducked every time it got within a mile of us: You are free. What do you plan to do? One of the problems with any authentic pronouncement of the gospel is that it introduces us to freedom.

-----Robert Capon in:   Between Noon and Three

Peace

Eph. 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." 

This morning, as with every morning, a million temptations will try to derail me.  I will try not to give in to sin and I will try not to intentionally sin.  I will implore the Holy Spirit to protect and buttress me.   Yet, I will succeed some and fail some.  Today, as all days, will end with a mixed result. 

However, despite the fact that I will succeed in not sinning some of the time and fail in my desire to be obedient at other times, I am at peace.  My "successes" do not justify me and and "failures" do not condemn me.
  

Rom. 10:9-10, "that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved;  for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation." 

Rom. 11:6, "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace."

Gal. 2:16, "nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."

Romans 8:1-2
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Confession

Michael Spencer, who blogged as The Internet Monk, died about a year ago at way too early an age.  He was a brilliant and often controversial writer, teacher and pastor.  This is one of my favorites.  Romans 7 (I do the things I don't want to do and don't do the things that I want to do) and Romans 8 (Therefore there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus) in a more modern conversation with himself.  The original post is here and was called Confession.  Enjoy the GOOD NEWS at the end.  It is indeed Good News for us all!

I don’t like the fact that I can give a really good talk on prayer when I rarely pray.

I don’t like it that I can read Matthew 5:23-24 and, as far as I can recall, never take a single step toward obeying it.

I don’t like that I can sin and then condemn someone else’s sin in almost the same breath.

I don’t like it that I’m convinced people need to understand me, but I take so little time to understand others.

I regret that I’ve spent so much of my life seeking to make myself happy in ways that never led to real happiness at all.

I don’t like it that I’ve accumulated so much stuff I don’t need, and I’m so reluctant to give it away.

It causes me real sorrow that I’ve said “I love you” far to little in my life, especially to the people I love the most.

I don’t like the fact that some of my students think I’m a hero, when I’ve done nothing more than be an unprofitable servant.

I hate the difference between what I know and what I do.

I hate the fact that I can use words like “radical” describing what others should do in following Jesus when I’m the first one to want to play it safe.

I don’t like that part of me that thinks everyone should listen to what I say.

I wish I could see myself as God sees me, both in my sinfulness and in the Gospel of Jesus.

I regret using so little of my life’s time, energy and resources for worship and communion with God.

I despise that part of me that always finds fault, and uses that knowledge to put myself above others.

I am embarrassed by the words I use that come so easily from the tongue but have little root in the heart.

I regret taking so few risks in the cause of living a God-filled life.

I despise the shallowness of my repentance for sin that has caused hurt and pain for others.

I don’t like that part of me that can make up an excuse, even lie, almost endlessly in the cause of avoiding the truth and its consequences.

I don’t like that I can talk of heaven in a sermon or at a funeral, but very little of me wants to go there.

I regret that I have loved my arrogant self far than I’ve loved my self humbled in Christ.

I regret that so much good advice, good teaching and good example was wasted on me.

But I am glad for the endless mercies of the Lord, and the amazing fact that those mercies extend to me, today and every day.

I am glad that Christ my substitute took this sorry life, pathetic obedience and lethargic worship and exchanged it for his perfect righteousness.

I am glad that the Holy Spirit is remaking and raising dead men- even at age 52.

I am glad that one day I will look at all these failures and regrets and they will have been transformed into the very glory of Jesus Christ himself.

I am glad that God has cast the very things I most dislike about myself into the depths of the sea and has removed them as far as the east is from the west.

I am glad that when I return in shame and embarrassment, my Father meets me running, covers me with his gladness and throws me a party in the presence of the naysayers and pharisees.

I am glad that Jesus takes these things I loathe about myself and says “It is finished. Come you good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Today you will be with me in paradise.”

I am glad Jesus says “Before I have called you servant, but now I will call you friend.”

I am glad Jesus says “Who condemns you? There is now no condemnation because you are in me and I am in you. If I am for you, who can be against you? Go, and sin no more.”

Yet....the Good News!!

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through 

Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.  

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, 

God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.  

And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law 

might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

Romans 8:1

The bad news is far worse than making mistakes or failing to live up to the legalistic standards of fundamentalism. It is that the best efforts of the best Christians, on the best days, in the best frame of heart and mind, with the best motives fall short of that true righteousness and holiness that God requires.

Our best efforts cannot satisfy God’s justice. 

Yet the good news is that God has satisfied his own justice and reconciled us to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. God’s holy law can no longer condemn us because we are in Christ.

 
— Michael Horton
Christless Christianity

The Gospel and the Avett Brothers

Romans 7:15-25, 8:1-2  
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell 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 I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 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. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another 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. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

I am sick with wanting and it's evil and it's daunting
How I let everything I cherish lay to waste
I am lost in greed, this time it's definitely me
I point fingers but there's no one there to blame

I am sick of wanting and it's evil how it's got me
And every day is worse than the one before
The more I have the more I think I'm almost where I need to be
If only I could get a little more

Something has me, oh something has me
Acting like someone I don't wanna be
Something has me, oh something has me
Acting like someone I know isn't me
Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed

Temporary is my time, ain't nothing on this world that's mine
Except the will I found to carry on
Free is not your right to chose
It's answering what's asked of you
To give the love you find until it's gone

Remedies Against Accusations

 From Kevin DeYoung at The Gospel Coalition:

And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” 

(Revelation 12:10-11).

Satan is an accuser and a deceiver. In both cases his weapons are words, which is why we must overcome him with the word of our testimony.

In other words, it is through our belief in the gospel and our confidence in the power of Jesus Christ that we can stand secure in the face of Satan’s lies and accusations.  And it is by the truth of the word of God–believed on and hoped in even unto death–that we can expose and destroy the deceptions of the Deceiver.  This is how we do battle, with the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.

So when Satan whispers, “Can God really forgive you?  Can your sins be washed away?” you can answer confidently: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:1-2).

When the Devil says your situation is hopeless, when he calls you an addict and says you can’t change, you can reply: “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” (Rom. 8:8-9).

And when Satan suggests that it must not matter then how we live, that grace and freedom are an excuse for license, we must answer: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13).

And when our Enemy points to our suffering and says, “Look, God cannot be trusted. Surely, there is no use in serving this Master” we will inform him that we “consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

And if Satan should tempt us to believe that God is singling us out for pain, we will remind him that “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Rom. 8:22).

If he spreads the lie that our trials will be the end of us, that God can no longer help us, we will declare, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28).

And when he shows us our weakness, when he points to the failures of the church, when he accuses us of having let God down and makes us doubt the power of the gospel and the ultimate triumph of the saints, when he comes at us with words and all the weapons of the world, we will stand our ground with a defiant shout: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:37-39).

Satan is hell bent on destroying the church.  He breathes fiery accusations like a dragon and hisses deception like a serpent.  He is in pursuit of the woman and her children.  But the salvation and the power and the kingdom belong to God and to Christ our King.  And we shall overcome the devil, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony.