MORAL CONFLICT

The Struggle with Sin
(Romans 7:7-25)

Contemporary secular societies are heir to the optimistic philosophy of Enlightenment humanism, which viewed human beings as essentially good, their corruption or enslavement being attributed to bad social influences. The Christian view of human nature, presented by Paul in a highly autobiographical section of his letter to the Romans, is the exact opposite: that we are born in sin, but offered redemption and freedom through Jesus Christ. Rob Yule examined this issue in his sermon to Greyfriars’ Classical Service on 1 July 2007.

Since the Enlightenment of the 18th century, our culture has been shaped by the assumption that human beings are essentially good. This rosy, optimistic view of human nature was summed up in the famous statement of the 18th century French philosopher Rousseau: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ According to this view, human beings are born innocent, sinless, noble and good; what corrupts them is the society or environment they grow up in. So change society, improve the environment — by changing society’s laws — and you will improve people.

Today we are witnessing the hollowness of this optimistic view of human nature. The last century has seen terrible evils — including two authoritarian systems (one Fascist, one Communist), two destructive world wars, a Holocaust that took the lives of six million Jews, and a host of more recent conflicts — all spawned by the very societies that accepted this Enlightenment philosophy. In our own New Zealand society, the more it moves away from its Christian base, the more we are seeing an escalation of family dysfunction, domestic violence, prostitution, rapes, murders, and crime.

It’s time we looked again at the Christian view of human nature. This is the view advocated by the apostle Paul: that our human nature is not innocent or good, but has been marred and corrupted by sin. The Bible’s view is that we are born in sin, but offered redemption and freedom through Jesus Christ. To paraphrase Rousseau: ‘Man is in chains, but everywhere he can be born free.’

1. The problem of sin considered theologically

Let me open up this subject by looking at sin from a theological point of view. Theologically, sin is the one thing in the universe that God hasn’t made. According to Genesis 1, God made everything in the beginning and declared it to be ‘very good’. Human beings were created in God’s image and likeness — holy and good. But according to Genesis 2 and 3, this original goodness and harmony has been marred by sin — the misuse of the freedom God gave to human beings. By giving us freedom God created the possibility for human beings to sin. God didn’t create sin; we did. God never intended sin. Sin is our invention, our innovation, our rebellious misuse of the God-given capacity to choose our own destiny.

So the nature of sin is paradoxical, absurd, irrational, unruly. It’s not logical, orderly, predictable or manageable. Sin is outside God’s purpose for human existence. Only if we grasp this point will we acknowledge the dark and unfathomable nature of sin and evil, and our utter inability as human beings to deal with sin in our own unaided strength. Human logic, human wisdom, human planning, human resources can’t overcome sin. This is the basic message Paul that is underlining in this passage.

2. The problem of sin considered legally (7:7-13)

In this passage Paul grapples first with the problem of the unintended consequences of our actions. How is it that God’s law, something good, should produce evil, have an unintended bad effect? Paul illustrates this problem with reference to the tenth commandment: ‘I would not have known what coveting really was,’ he says, ‘if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”’ (7:7, cf. Exodus 20:17).

Paul is highlighting the paradoxical nature of sin. Sin distorts God’s good intention. It takes something good and makes something bad of it. This is why the secular humanist way of trying to improve society by changing society’s laws won’t work. However good the law might be, our sinful attitudes and actions are always subverting the law and producing a bad effect. Sin distorts the law’s good intention, as we can see in the following examples:

1. A primary school teacher draws a line across the playing field and tells the children that everyone is to stand behind it. What is the result? Immediately children to try to see if they can get away with putting their toes across the line!

2. School regulations — backed up by letters to parents from the principal — say there is to be no alcohol at the Girls High School ball. What happens? The female pupils and their boyfriends try all sorts of devious means to circumvent it.

3. Tightening the enforcement of income tax laws leads large companies to employ crafty lawyers who will advise them on loopholes around the legislation. The ‘Wine-Box’ tax scam that rocked New Zealand in the 1990s exactly illustrates Paul’s observation that sin ‘seizes the opportunity afforded by the commandment’ (7:8, 11).

4. Perhaps the most famous historical example of sin’s perversity is Augustine’s description of his teenage escapades, in his Confessions (2.4-6). One night, when he was sixteen, he and a gang of adolescent friends shook a pear tree and stole a large quantity of fruit. Augustine tells us they didn’t steal the pears because they were hungry — in fact, they just threw them to the pigs. ‘Our real pleasure’, he says, ‘consisted in doing something that was forbidden.’ Then he asks, in a reflection that has a very modern ring, ‘Surely no one…would commit murder for no reason but the sheer delight of killing?’… Could I enjoy doing wrong for no other reason than that it was wrong?’

The moral law is meant to lead us to live in God’s way. Instead, sin distorts the law and provokes us to live contrary to God’s way.

3. The problem of sin considered psychologically (7:14-23)

Paul has been looking at the phenomenon of sin objectively, from outside. Next he examines it subjectively, from inside.

All of us have good intentions, noble aspirations. Why then don’t we realise our aspirations, live up to our intentions? The answer is: because of the absurd, irrational, disorderly nature of sin. There is an evil power within us that frustrates our good intentions, that thwarts our noble aspirations. Good intentions don’t make people good. Noble aspirations don’t make people noble.

‘I do not understand what I do,’ says Paul. ‘For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do’ (7:15). ‘For what I do is not is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing’ (7:19).

Have you noticed that the very time we most want to do good — for example, at times of special spiritual experience or closeness to God — evil is close at hand to prevent or obstruct us from doing it, or to distort what we do?

Paul in verse 21 describes this as being almost like a psychological law — a law which he calls in 8:2 ‘the law of sin and death.’ It acts like the law of gravity — pulling us down into passion, sin, greater and greater iniquity, finally leading to death and separation from God. Like gravity, this gravitational pull of sin is pervasive and universal. It acts counter to the upward call of God’s voice and the upward leading of God’s Spirit.

4. The problem of sin considered personally (7:24-25)

Whose experience is Paul describing here in this passage? Is this ‘wretched man’ (7:24) a regenerate or an unregenerate person? Biblical commentators come up with all sorts of answers to this question. They see it as referring (1) to Paul’s present experience as a Christian, (2) to Paul’s experience before he became a Christian, (3) to the experience of an unconverted Jew, (4) to the experience of a Christian trying to live the Christian life in his or her own strength, or (5) to the experience of all Christians generally, including the best and most mature.

Who is this ‘wretched man’? It’s you and me. I believe Paul is holding up a mirror. This is what we are all like. We long to live a good and fulfilling life. But we find that we’re in the grip of something stronger than our good intentions, that stuffs up our lives, that prevents us doing the good things we want to do and makes us do the bad things we want to avoid.

What man is there who would be ashamed to admit to looking at pornographic websites or magazines, yet does the very thing he doesn’t want to do and knows he oughtn’t do? What woman is there who doesn’t want to be known as generous and caring, yet wouldn’t admit to mean or spiteful criticisms of a perceived rival?

Sin is pervasive and very powerful. Paul, who wrote these words, once thought he was doing God a favour yet ended up committing religiously-sanctioned murder. Good intentions are not enough. Don’t kid yourself. We all mess up, we all can make a hash of the project of our life. You and I need a true self-knowledge. But more than self-knowledge, you and I above all need a Saviour — a Saviour who will save us, not only from sin’s guilt, but from sin’s power to control our lives.

My wife and I recently heard, an outstanding American Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy-Jill Levine. No ivory tower academic, she regularly visits a local prison to care for those incarcerated. With remarkable honesty, she recounted a conversation with a prisoner during a prison visit. He said to her. ‘You have no idea what sin is, and you have no idea what forgiveness is.’

If you have not sinned, you have no idea what sin is, or how urgent it is to find forgiveness.

But if you have transgressed God’s law, if you have sinned, you know that this is indeed a grievous state to be in. You need more than good advice or good intentions. You need forgiveness from sin’s guilt, and redemption from sin’s power — which only Jesus Christ can bring.

So if this is your situation, turn to the only one who through his death on the cross can offer you forgiveness from sin’s guilt, and through his risen life can offer you redemption from sin’s power. ‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?’ cries Paul in anguish. ‘Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (7:24-25).

Rob Yule, 1 July 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church