14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 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. 20 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.
Oh man, I think every Christian understands the frustration Paul expresses in these verses. You can almost hear it, can't you? Particularly verse 19 - can't you just sense how frustrated he was? I know I feel this way myself often. Have you ever had a night where you've gone to bed knowing something happened that day that you wish you'd handled differently? Maybe said something to someone that you feel you shouldn't have? Lost your temper and yelled at your kids even though it was really yourself you were frustrated with? I know I can say yes to all those questions.
I think it was well explained earlier this week about how we are a new creation when we accept Jesus as our Saviour and are cleansed of our sin - that is our soul is cleansed - but we still live in a sinful body with that darn sinful human nature. (Is anyone else as curious and excited as I am to find out what our new bodies will be like once we pass through to the "other side"? I'm intensely curious about this.) Anyway, that's kind of beside the point.
MacArthur says the following:
You know, when you become a Christian and you read about sin in the Bible, are you less concerned about your sin because you're now a Christian? No, you should be...what?...more concerned about it. And the law will always reveal it. When David said "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin," he was saying that the Word of God in the heart becomes the point of conviction. It isn't just information. You understand that? We don't go through life just needing information, we need conviction. And the law has that power.
So, while telling us that the law cannot save and the law cannot sanctify, he affirms that it is good and holy and just because it does convict of sin before you're saved and brings you to Christ and after you're saved, so that you'll understand God's holy standard and long with all your heart to fulfill it. The problem is not the law, the problem is us. Pogo said it, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Now any Christian could make the statement in verse 14. People have problems with this. Let me see if I can make it simple. I'm fleshy. Could you say that? I could say that. I mean, it's true. You say, "Yes, but you're certainly not talking in technical theological terms." No, no, no. I'm just saying I'm...could I say as a Christian I'm a sinner saved by grace? I'm still a sinner? God help me if I don't. If I say, "Well, since I've been saved I no longer sin," my wife will be up here to give testimony. You see, the point is I can say that, I can say I'm fleshy, or fleshly, carnal. There are things in me that represent that. I get angry. I get irritated. I don't fulfill my duty as I ought to all the time. I don't maintain the diligence that I should in the pursuit of God that I desire. I see my humanness, my fleshliness getting in the way of the accomplishment of all of the things that I ought to do. I'm insensitive to people when they need my gentleness and I'm not gentle...when they need my kindness and I'm not kind, and so forth. I see myself as human. I see myself as sinful. I don't always speak godly to everyone who speaks to me in the way that I should. We can all say this. It's a general statement.
You are not less evil now than you used to be in your unredeemed mortality and humanness, you're evil. And there aren't a whole lot of degrees to it, it only takes one sin to be evil. There is in you a new nature that is holy, but that sinful presence of the flesh is still there.
Sin is so sinful, sin is so wretched, it is so vile that even when a person has been redeemed, sin hangs on with its clinging wretchedness. That's his condition, and yours and mine as Christians.
His will is frustrated. It isn't that evil wins all the time. It's just that he has such a high standard because the law is so holy, so just, so good, so spiritual that when he sees the high standard of the law, he wants to win all the time on God's side and any victory for evil looks to him like horrendous defeat. And that's why I say and so often to I say it, that the road to spirituality is paved with a sense of your own wretchedness, always...not your own self-glory. Here is a truly spiritual man. This is a broken contrite heart. This is a man crying out, "O God, I can't be all you want me to be, I can't fulfill all Your holy and just and good law."
May I suggest to you that there's a big difference between surviving sin and reigning sin? Sin no longer reigns, but it does survive in us. We're like an unskilled artist who has a picture to be painted, clear view. Maybe he's out and he sees the mountains and trees and rivers and he's got his easel, got all of his little paints. And he's ready to paint this glorious landscape. The thing is, he's a real klutz and he can't paint stick figures, let alone landscapes. He has the scene to be painted in all its wondrous majesty. He has the paints to paint it, but he doesn't have the skill. He's debilitated by his physical incapacity. It isn't that he can't perceive it, it isn't that he doesn't have available tools, it's just that his clumsiness is in the way. The fault is not with the scene, is it? Nothing wrong with the scene. The fault isn't even with the paint. The fault is with the artist's inability. And that's really where the Christian finds his frustration.
I believe that's where we come to the point where we ask the master artist to put his hand on our hand, to hold our hand as we hold the brush and paint the strokes that we independent of him could never paint. And that's why we have to realize that the victory we do experience comes only when we yield ourselves to the one who can overcome the flesh.
Amen.
1 comment:
I love that!
I also really appreciated the point MacArthur made in a different sermon once - as we grow in our faith and mature in our walk and become more like Christ, yes we will technically sin less often, but it won't even seem like it to us because our sins will seem so much worse to us because we understand His holiness and our sinfulness more fully.
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