I Just Can't Do It

This morning, Jim's right. These verses are, well maybe put it this way, they can be complicated. You kind of have to slow down a little bit and take a look at what some of the key words mean. And so, Roger and I have divided it up into different segments to teach, but he found, like I find, I have to go back a couple of verses, set it up, and then, you know, and it's gonna be several weeks before you get the answer, but it's coming. So I decided I'd go back to 15, which I talked about last week, for, What I am doing, I do not understand.

For I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I'm doing the very thing I hate. So the question hit my mind, can a believer knowingly practice what he hates? Well, obviously he can, Paul, says he's doing it. So he says, for that which I do, I don't understand. He doesn't understand the experience that he's having with how he's behaving. He's saying, I don't get it. Then he adds to it, he says, for the thing that I desire to do, which is to be good, and in his case, probably good under the Mosaic law, That's not the thing I'm practicing.

Even though the desire's there, I don't understand why the practice isn't measuring up with what my desire is. But the thing which I hate, that's what I'm doing. I had a thought a month ago that if I went to one of you and said, boy, I've got a real problem, And this is what I told you the problem was. What would you say to me? He would say, well, here's the number to the shrink.

And sad to say, this environment or this experience happens to a lot of believers and a lot of believers have the right heart, but they go through this and they are sent for medication. but this is God working in a man's life. So the very thing that Paul desires to do, namely good as defined in the law, he does not do. And what he hates passionately, that's the very thing that he's doing. If that isn't a prescription for insanity, I don't know what is. And then he says, but right now I'm of the flesh, I'm carnal. I've been sold into the bondage of sin. So Paul used, and some of these first slides are from last week. Paul uses three words in his writings to describe a man.

First, there's the natural man, which is Adam, the man born. Every and any man that's born, he is natural or He's a soulish man, he's governed by his soul. The highest form of life is dominated by his reason or his mind and his emotional nature. He's a soulish man.

And then Paul uses this term carnal, which is a man who has been saved through the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has not found deliverance from the power of sin and the fullness of the spirit. This is a man who's saved, but he isn't delivered. He knows the sins are forgiven, but he's discovering as he's going along in his Christian life that there's this principle inside of him that makes him a slave to sin, and is more or less still under the control of that evil sin nature that he has inside of him. And then, of course, there's the spiritual man, and that's a man is a believer who's living his life in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And every once in a while, you get to meet one of these men. They're kind of, wow, you know, they're different.

But here, Hal Malloy said that carnal is not used to describe an unbeliever, but a believer walking in the power of the flesh, 1 Corinthians 3.14. Therefore, by the word carnal, Paul is describing the state or the condition. You know, we spend time here talking about I have a position in Christ, but I also have a condition which may or may not line up with my position being in Christ, who by carnal, he means that it's a state that he's in, out of which he can get delivered. So I hope that helps clarify, and if you've never been to one of the classes in which we taught position and condition, it's why position and condition is so important for us as believers.

And then to repeat this verse, he said there are three Greek words for the word doing or do in this verse. The first one just means produce. That what I'm doing or that what I produce, I don't understand, because it doesn't fit with what I wanna do. The second word is praso, which means practicing. I'm not practicing. the thing that I wanna produce. And the third word is poeo, which means to make a creator to perform. So here's, in essence, what he's saying. I don't understand my production. I don't understand my practice, and I certainly don't understand my performance.

This is a Christian talking like this. This is the apostle Paul talking like this. And I must say that as we go on in our Christian lives, you will talk like this. You won't understand. Gee, I go to church, I go to Sunday school, I'm in a Bible study, da-da-da-da-da-da, but my life doesn't line up with what I know, what I believe. So, and then you find out that God, just in his grace, gifted men with three, immaterial abilities. The first one is, I have the ability and you have the ability to think and understand. What is Paul saying? I can think, but I don't understand this. So it's like Jim said, I don't understand this.

And I have the ability to choose. I can pick. But Paul says, what I'm practicing, I don't like to do. I'm choosing against this, but I'm still doing it. And then I have the ability to feel, which is probably in our society today, the most important of the immaterial abilities. I'm doing the very thing I hate. Again, I would say to you, if I came to you and said, this is what's going on in my life, what do you recommend for me? You would give me the phone number to the psychiatrist you know, because what am I saying? I can't fix it. So Paul is saying, what I think in my mind is not what I do. What I choose to do is not what, what I choose is not what I do and what I hate, that's the practice. That's what I'm doing. And in a real sense, I put down here, we're all haters. Believers are haters. What do you hate? You hate that old sin nature and you should. You don't wanna be there.

So he says, again, in verse 16, if I do the thing I don't wanna do, I agree that the law, I confess that the law is a good thing. And in 17, so now it's no longer who I'm doing it, but sin that dwells in me. Now, we've talked about this a lot, but whenever you see the word sin, What do you think about? Do you think about your sins, the things that you commit, or do you think about that sin nature that's in you that's the source of those sins? You should be thinking about, whenever you see it singular, mentioned by Paul or any of the apostle writers, if it's singular, it probably has a definite article in front of it and it will mean the sin, which is that sin nature. So it has nothing to do with, well, in some sense it has to do with what you're doing, but it has more to do with the sin nature itself.

So Hal Malloy did a great job in going through these verses that he said It is the I, is the I the unique person of Paul? Is this Paul who is a unique individual person different from every other person on the planet, an entity? Is this the one who's saying this? I don't do what I wanna do. The answer is yeah, it is. As an individual formed by God in his mother's womb, he's a man. and he's a particular unique person, like every one of you, unique in your own way.

And the second question he asks is, what kind of a nature did Paul have when he entered the world, when he was born? What was Paul's makeup? Well, you could just look at yourself and say, well, what was my makeup when I came into the planet? I had a body, I had a mind or a soul, and I had this really awful thing called the sin nature. I didn't know I had it, but that comes with the territory. And how do I know?

In Romans 5.12, it says, by one man, Adam, sin, the sin nature entered the world. And along with that sin nature, death. And death came upon all men, why? Because all men sinned in Adam. So you don't have an excuse and I don't have an excuse and we've all have this sin nature. And what Paul is finding out here that boy, this sin nature is a real problem, a real problem. Miles Stanford said, According to his eternal plan and schedule, God called or spoke the world into being. He just said it and it was there. And he created Adam to be the head or source of the human race for that world.

With the rest of humanity, which we, you, were created in Adam, he became your life and is yet unborn in your position. Had you somehow been aware, your reaction may have been something like this, and I like how Myles speculates. I'd look at God and say, hey, wait a minute, just hold on here a second. On the authority of your word, I'm a unique, eternal person.

Elect, called, and chosen in the last Adam. Oh, the last Adam. From before the foundation of the world, before the creation of the first Adam or anything else was created. So he has chosen me. He has chosen you according to Ephesians 1.4. The uncreated eternal son of God, and predestined me to be conformed to the image, to his image. He did that before he ever created the first atom. He has positionally justified, sanctified, and glorified every one of us. That's our position. But here I am, at the very outset, positioned in a life and death relationship with the wrong, the first, the created, the sinful, earthly atom. That's how I show up in the planet. So what happened to Paul when he believed?

Well, he became a new creation in Christ according to 2 Corinthians 5.17. He was taken out of Adam the first and placed in Adam the second in Christ. That's his position now.

It's immutable, it can't change. It's eternally established. But here's the problem. The old Adamic nature still abides in his body. But no longer is he tied to it. He's not a slave to it anymore. But it's there. And that's because we still have a dying body. We're still living in this body. Now Paul, as a believer, the same person, the same individual, unique person, but recreated in Christ. That's who he is. That's who you and I are. So does Romans 7, 17, and 18 make sense now, is Hal's question? He said, yeah, it makes sense. And so if you go through 17 slow, So now no longer am I, who's the I?

The new man in Christ, the one doing it, sinning, but the sin nature which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me in my old man, that is in my flesh, for the willing is present. I wanna do it, I wanna be, Obedient to the Lord, my new man is recreated to do that. But the doing of the good isn't there. It is not there. So, I've read this before here and I've always been fascinated by this. I don't know if Miles was the author to this or who was, but it's called Anterior to All.

And once upon eternity there was but infinite non-existence. You can picture that in your mind. No atom, no universe, no world, nothing, nothing, nothing but God. The eternal triune of love, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. For thus saith the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, Isaiah 57. Let your heart, dear friend, be drawn back there. There and contemplate the beloved Son eternally in the bosom of the loving Father, receiving and reciprocating the divine love in all its unutterable purity and ardor in the spirit of love, back in eternity past, before anything had been brought into being, environed in the pure essence of divine life, light and love, in the mind of the Father, in the heart of the Son, in the hands of the Spirit, by and for His love, God created you and me then. by and for his love, thought of in eternity past, brought forth in time, though, in Adam, for eternity future, forever loved. So when he said, for this saith the high and lofty one who inhabits the eternity, whose name is holy, in the secret place of the Most High, in the bosom of the Father, before anything was created, God fashioned you and me. Psalm 139 says, his eyes did see my substance, yet being unformed. And in my book, all my members were written, which in continuance and were fashioned, and when yet there was none of them. So you don't think about, you think, well, gee, I existed, started when I was born. No, way back then, way back then.

When Paul says, it's no longer I who do it, it's a really interesting statement because he said it. I thought, wow, this is an incredible discovery. For a forgiven Paul who had gone on in pride a while without any inward trouble after he was saved, this was indeed an earth-shattering awakening. to become again convicted. And I thought about that, and I said, you know, most of us, if we're saved past first grade, we're convicted of our sinfulness, the fact that we have a penalty to pay and that Christ paid it. But then there's another conviction, and this is the conviction.

The conviction is, why do I keep doing what I don't wanna do? There's some sort of power inside of me that has a problem with sin. Not now for the sins or the deeds done in the body, but the indwelling sin nature starts to raise its ugly head, and I'm wondering, you're wondering, what is this? Why can't I do what I wanna do? But of indwelling sin of a hateful power that seem like it's my very self. but it's really my old man. We're not talking about sins here, we're talking about the sin nature. Since I'm doing what I am not wishing, there must be another evil principle working within me.

This is a great discovery for a growing believer to know that this nature is inside of me. Paul is making discoveries about himself, amazing things, and he brings them out for the first time in Scripture. And he's going much further than just consenting to the law that the law is right. For now, instead of being completely overwhelmed by this holy righteous law, he arrives at and he's writing down for us A conclusion that is, I think, courageous. Since I am doing what I'm not wishing, there must be another evil principle working in me. For it's not in my new nature, my new life in Christ, that is working out this evil, but the thing seen itself, which dwells in me, and it's not welcome.

So this is the same man who wrote Philippians 3. If any man has to glory or brag in the flesh, I more. And he goes through seven things, a Jew of the Jews, a Pharisee, et cetera. And he said, you know, this man in the flesh was greater than almost any man that ever lived, maybe except for John the Baptist. He says, I yet more. But now he's saying, in me dwells one thing, not one thing that's good, not one thing. This is a man who before would say, I'm the best.

I can, will, but I can't do what I wanna do. So I think it's a great double lesson for all of us. There's no good in anything in us, in our flesh. our old selves and it's okay. Don't need to go see the shrink about that. And we cannot do good or will to not do good. Let me say that again. We cannot do the good we want or will to do.

And it's humbling. It's very humbling. So verse 18 says, for I know that nothing good dwells in me. Okay, that's all right. That is in my flesh, for willing is present with me, but doing good is not. As things are in view of the facts just explained, it's not the true new man.

So we as believers eventually begin to understand we do have two natures. We've got the old man and the resurrected life in Christ. And we get familiar with this old man that he is really responsible for my conduct when I sin. We call it the sin nature. You can call it the old self.

I don't necessarily like the word self. But Kenneth Weiss says, to be saved from sin, singular, a man must at the same time own it and disown it. Doesn't that sound like an oxymoron? It is this practical paradox which is reflected in this verse. The point is, I must own that I have a sin nature, but at the same time, I must disown it by recognizing I have been crucified with Christ. I've got it, but I've been separated from it. I don't have to put myself under it anymore. I don't have to necessarily sin. We said it's safe for a Christian like Paul, but it's not safe for everybody.

To explain his failings by the watchword, not I, but indwelling sin, a true saint may say it in a moment of passion, but a sinner had better make it a principle. Sin here is the evil sin nature, indwelling a believer, and we all have them. Like Jim said, how did the one nature people read these verses and come away saying there's only one nature? Why isn't there anything good dwelling in the flesh? It is sin, nothing but sin. And sin isn't, how do I say this? Sin is not one of those, oh, yeah, it's cataloged. That's what the sin nature does.

But you notice that when Adam disobeyed God and he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we love to think that sin is all just the evil stuff. And the other branches on the tree, the good stuff, well, they're okay. No, the whole tree is sin. You know why? Because it doesn't rise to the holiness of God. The holiness of God. So it is sin, nothing but sin, that has taken into account of its disconnection.

I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. So your flesh can be great. You can be philanthropic, you can be a great person, you can do a lot of good things, but the problem is the source, the flesh, is not acceptable to God. What's acceptable to him is the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus Christ, the new man in Christ. In me, not regarded as a creature of flesh apart from any relationship or affinity for God and his spirit. So all the good guys I've ever known in my life, let's leave them all out of the corral. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh for the willing is present with me, but the doing is not there. Why isn't my will strong enough to overcome sin?

Aren't we told from the time we can think that if I just want it bad enough, I can do it. You know, I have to, every time I think of that now, I think of Nick's brother, Davis, who, when he's getting on an airplane, and he's gonna go sit in first class, and his mindset is, if you just work a little harder, you could be sitting up here. You know, if you just work a little harder, you could be in Christ. It has nothing to do with working a little harder.

So Paul, Paul has taught the terrible, lost, guilty state of all men and their inability to recover righteousness. In Romans 3, that's all we talked about. Here's man separated from God. He's not righteous. He's not godly. You know, we talked back then that if all God did was forgive you your sins and didn't do anything about you, You're now, I can carry around a banner that says I'm a forgiven sinner. The problem with that is I'm still a sinner. I'm not acceptable to God.

So then I discover that the work of Christ on the cross satisfied God through faith in his blood was the only hope that I had. The only hope I had, I couldn't arrive to be pleasing to God in any other way than trusting what he says he did. And then I find out, as we get into Romans 6, that I was identified, I was included, I was united, as connected with Adam, with the Lord Jesus in his death. When he died, so did I. What does that mean?

When you die, what happens? If somebody physically dies, they leave the planet and they're not coming back. Well, at least not soon. They've been separated. So when you and I died with Christ, we were separated from everything that was not acceptable to him, separated. And we can reckon ourselves dead to sin, the sin nature, and alive unto God.

Only believers can do that. Then we have this fact that we're not only under law, but we live under grace. Well, that brings in a whole new thing. What is grace and how does it work? All I've ever known is that if I did what I was told and I obeyed, I would be rewarded. If I didn't do it, I would be punished. And now comes this thing called grace.

But along with that, I'm beginning to find out that the sin nature is simply much stronger and more powerful than my will. I cannot will myself to do, to be, to make it simple to be good. I can't do it. Because the more I do it, the harder I try. It's like the guy said, the harder I try, the behinder I get. So I've been saved. I've been identified with Christ. I, I belong to him.

And all this before the real call to surrender for service comes. Where's the real call in the book of Romans? It doesn't come till 12, chapter 12. We're not even there yet. We're not even close. We're just finding out the principles under which when we get the call, we know it's real. Surrender for service doesn't come till the 12th chapter.

Newell was really kind of interesting. He said, our hearts are weary with the appeals to man's will, whether the will of a sinner to make a start, become a Christian, et cetera, or the appeal to the will of believers who have not yet been shown what guilt is and what indwelling sin is. For God's word in Romans 7, 18 tells us while we will, while to will may be present with us, to work that which is right isn't present. Paul told the Philippians that believers were such as had no confidence in the flesh, none, and that it is God that works in us, both to will and to work of his good pleasure. I found that to be really sort of, oh, okay, it goes right back to God and what he desires.

If you look at, I don't know if you study Newell's Romans, but he did a footnote, and I put the number down here in Romans 7, footnote 160. He says, for though our old man was crucified with Christ, which is true, put in place of certain, though not instant death, We find, though, we have put him off, we must put him away as to everything of the formal life, the old man. And to be put away, he must be discovered in us. We gotta find out that he's there. And this is what is so vividly set before us in this struggle.

Note, it is never said that the old man is dead. but that we died to it. I hear a lot of people say, well, my old man is dead. And I say, no, he's not. You're dead to him, but he didn't die. We are federally identified with Christ and passed on with him into burial and now share his risen life. The old man is not to be counted dead, but to be counted crucified, his place being There only.

So Paul repeats himself in verse 19. He says, for the good that I want, I don't do, but I practice the very evil that I don't want. Again, Paul uses two of the three words. To produce, the thing that I produce, to create or manufacture, to perform, I don't. and I execute or I'm practicing what I don't want to do. And oh, by the way, my will's engaged now, and I don't wanna be this way. So verse 19 expresses concerning Paul, and I don't know if you can read this, it might be a little small.

All of us at the time are utter powerlessness in ourselves though Christians against the evil of the flesh. whether we are consciously under the Mosaic Law, or any law system or code or ethic as was Paul, or convinced or convicted by the power of an awakened conscience that we ought to have deliverance from our sinful, selfish selves and walk in victory in Christ. We're all convinced that that's what we should be doing. But what we're gonna find out, which Roger, over the next two or three weeks, will introduce the power to be free from sin, which is the combination. We've been working towards that.

For if I'm doing the very thing I don't want, it's no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me. Paul restates the fact, which is unfortunately no comfort to him as yet. It is no longer the real I, the new man in Christ, but indwelling sin that's working out his hated life.

I probably failed to mention, did Paul take responsibility for his sin nature or is he trying to slough it off here? Is he trying to say, well, it's not, you know, How many of you remember Flip Wilson? One of his favorite lines was, the devil made me do it. This sin nature, Paul always says, it's my sin nature, I'm responsible for it. It's the source of the sin in me. It's not the new man I am in Christ, but it's the source of my sinfulness and I'm responsible for it.

And what does it show? That the believer, that they have no strength in themselves to overcome the power of indwelling, of the indwelling sin nature. When the demand arises in our hearts that we must be what we find written in the epistles, The effect is the same as in Paul's case as regards the discovery of powerlessness. Two weeks ago, we were talking about what does law do to the sin nature? It wakes it up and it gets it going. So when I wake up in the morning and think, boy, I've gotta be good today, that's the kiss of death. because here comes the sin nature big time. Oh, really? Well, we'll just see how that works out. Like Paul said, I would have not have known desiring or lusting if the law hadn't said, you shall not desire. So the very thing that the sin nature wants to do, which is desire, The law says you can't do that. And what's the sin nature say? Oh yeah, watch me. All sorts of.

So if we have seen that we died with Christ and we've been properly instructed, we shall upon such realize a couple of things. One, we'll know that there's deliverance in Christ for us. Whether we're able or not in living faith to reckon and we are dead unto sin and alive unto God. Great bit of information.

We shall be or become willing to have God show us how and wherein we should still holding fast to any sin or any indulgence of the flesh. Okay, Lord, show me. Show me what I'm hanging on to that's in place of you. I'm willing to be instructed. I'll be brought by God's grace to agree with the sentence of death that has already been pronounced on this sinful desire. I will.

Our sinful desire when our old man and all our old sin nature was crucified with Christ. There comes a day that every believer will say to God, you know, Father, you did the right thing to me. You crucified me. That was the best thing you could have done. And then we shall enter the place of reckoning ourselves dead to sin. And to this, I love this, the darling sin, to all sin. We all have this. I'm not telling you about this sin, but I really like it. As God commands the saints who have died with Christ, We may have, if necessary, a struggle here, as James shows.

He says, you adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God. That is a huge pill to swallow. God resists the proud and he gives grace to the humble. Be subject, therefore, to God, but resist the devil and he'll free from you. Here's the key, draw near to God and he'll draw near to you. He'll become the desire of your heart.

So in closing today, I would say there's deliverance and it's coming. The information about the deliverance is coming over the next couple of Sundays, but we're just a walk really in simple, hearted faith, even though we live in a realm that doesn't buy anything that God's word tells us.

The struggle of Romans 7, every believer, I think, is going to have an experience with it. Now, some of the theologians I read say, you don't have to go through Romans 7. Some people are, well, what are they, just smarter than other people? I think to hate sin, you have to go through the process. some more than others.

Not to say that Romans 7 is the normal Christian life, because it's not. It leads to the normal Christian life. It leads to rest and a walk of faith and a dependence on the Holy Spirit to just keep us in Christ, walking by faith all the time. So God has the answer, but he's not gonna let us slip by some lesser understanding by saying, well, you don't get to go through Romans 7. Romans 7 is really a plus. It makes you knowledgeable and it makes you savvy about sin. So let's close.

Father, how thankful we are you have been so careful using your servant, Paul, to teach us about sin and its strength and all the nuances and all of the pitfalls and all of the maneuvers, I guess, that would lead us to sitting. And you have supplied us by your grace, not only with the understanding and the answers, but also with the person, the Holy Spirit, who will keep us focused on you and resting in your provision. We thank you, Father. We pray in your Son's precious name, amen.