Who will set me free from this death
Romans 7:24-26 · Roger Henderson · Jan 21, 2024
Romans (2022-25), No. 058
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261933567177

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, well, we're actually going to finish Chapter 7 today. It's been probably two months, at least two months. But in a way, Chapter 7, you know, we're going to find that it's to be indicative or not unusual in the Christian life. And you say, wow, doesn't sound too pleasant. But hopefully I can show you that this is what God has in mind. And it's not to hurt us, but it's to draw us to him, to show us that it has to be his life, not our life. So the title, I kind of took verse 24 and kind of shortened up a bit. The two main thoughts here, he comes to, in verse 24 he comes and he says, wretched man I, that's the literal Greek translation, wretched man I, who shall deliver me?

So we're going to see what that's all about. Plus we're going to kind of see, 25 is a really interesting verse because it kind of opens the door. It opens the door on Romans 8, which is a wonderful chapter about the work of the Holy Spirit and the believer. It opens that door, and actually, it's interesting. You have to kind of really look at that for a while to see that. Okay, so here we go.

So I'm gonna use the same definition chart from last week, but just to remind you, and we're gonna see here that Paul, we're gonna talk about Paul as a believer, right? He's a saved person. And, but also, That's what we call his position, that's who he is before God. But in his condition, his condition isn't matching his position. And like I said, if I came to Mike and said, Mike, I'm carnal, Mike would say, well Roger, we need to have a talk here, right? So anyway, that's where Paul's, and actually it's amazing.

If you set out to write a book, Wouldn't you want to put your best foot forward? Wouldn't you say, I'm in control here? And you say, oh, by the way, I had a few hiccups along the way. But would you really, you know, it's just, scripture is so interesting.

It shows the, you know, the struggles of man. It shows his struggle, it shows his shortcomings. It shows that in stereo, if you will. So that's what we see in Romans 7. So okay, on with the definitions. So Paul in his position as a believer, it says in 2 Corinthians, we're a new creation in Christ. And that's gonna kinda come out whenever he says I or me, that's gonna kinda designate his position. But then he's gonna come right back and say that in my condition, I'm carnal.

He says, I'm carnal in my condition in Romans 7.14. And we're gonna see, so basically this is the situation, and this can be true of any believer. Paul's condition is carnal even though he's a new creation in Christ. He's a saved person, so every believer can be in that place. That's not where he should be or want to be, but he can be in that place. And that's the struggle we see. Galatians, as was mentioned, shows that vividly. But Paul actually shows it even more vividly here.

So, as before, when you have the sin, or if it just has sin singular, it means the sin nature, also called the flesh, also called evil. And in the Old Testament it even says the heart is characterized as being the sin nature. And then a law system, or a law principle, a set of rules, either God's rules or man's rules. You can make up your own rules, you can have your own system that you're going to live by. But any law system, any way that you try to control yourself, control your sin nature by yourself, by your own rules, you're gonna fail.

And that's what Paul's telling us about. Okay, so let's look at this. This is the outline that I spoke about last week that I came across in listening to Merriman. So let's start out. So actually he sees in 14 through 24, those set of verses, he sees three reasons that Paul could not accomplish living the Christian life. He could not do it on his own. In Paul's case, he said, what came to him, and we saw it in the earlier parts of chapter seven, he said, when the commandment came, you shall not covet, what happened? He coveted even more, just like with your children.

You say, don't touch that. Nobody eat any brownies until dinner time. Well, I mean, in some households, that's an invitation to eat brownies, right? I mean, it's like, well, they're so good, Mom. And so, you know, anyway, that's probably not a super good example.

But anyway, you know, Paul struggled. When the commandment came, he covered it even more. So Paul here, I missed this last week when I went through listening to Merriman, he kind of points out, and this is a contrast, not every commentary says this, but I think it represents every single believer. This process represents, maybe not to the degree that Paul went through, but it certainly is present in every believer.

Okay, so we start off with Reason 1. Reason 1 is stated in verse 14. So these are reasons why Paul is going to fail in trying to use any law system to govern his character. He says, For we know that the law is spiritual, but as for myself, I am fleshly, I am carnal, as I mentioned, permanently sold under the sinful nature. And I like Merriman's kind of paraphrase. He said, who sold us out? Who was that person that sold us out? And with the verb tense, it was Adam. Adam sold us out by his sin in the garden. They sold us out.

So we are permanently, we have a sin nature. We can't avoid that. It's there in every single believer. And the reason two, I know positively there does not dwell in me, that is in my flesh, good. So even though I have a desire, I have a desire to do good, that good is not present in me. It has to come from God. It has to come via Christ in me. It can come no other way. No human good can satisfy God.

Then thirdly, which we're gonna kinda drill down a little bit more, the third reason is, Verse 21, I find then the law principle that evil, the sin nature is present in me, the one who wants to do good. So there's this dilemma between I want to do good, but I have a sin nature that's pulling me the other way. There's that tension in the believer's life.

Okay, so let's look at 21 again here. And what Paul does here, He shows, he states a reason and then he gives a couple of verses in between to prove that and then he has a conclusion. So we're gonna see that again, just for the third reason here. Okay, proof one is, so here's the positive side.

I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man. He concurs with it, he wants to do it, he loves it. And even though, even though the law produced in him, that commandment produced in him, covenant of every kind, he still loved it because it was holy and righteous and good.

It's God's character. When we read scripture, we're reading the mind of God. We're reading what God has to say about us and about himself. And this is in the inner man. The inner man really speaks of our new creation in Christ. That's Christ in me. And we see that like in Corinthians 4, 16, therefore, we do not lose heart, but though the outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. As we take in God's word, as we fellowship with him, we're renewed day by day. So that's proof one, verse 22. Proof two will be in 23, which expand a little bit more here. So here he sees this struggle, and verse 23 kind of explains it very well. So in contrast to this holy and righteous law of God, so what does Paul see?

I see a different law in my members. That's what the interlinear, I see a different law in my members. So this idea to see is not so much the visual part, it's more I perceive or I understand. It's a thought process here. I see what's going on. And it's continuous action, present tense, I'm continually seeing this, he's continually aware of this. This different law or different principle. And different here is this word heteros. It's the idea of a qualitative difference. He sees another of a different sort. So he sees this different sort of law principle. And the quality he's gonna explain in the rest of the verse. And the quality isn't pretty. The quality is gonna describe his sin nature. It's gonna describe what his sin nature is all about. the rest of this verse 23.

See, I see a different law principle. First of all, it resides in my members, in my body. Members, since it's our body, our members belong to the earth and inherently sinful. And we see that for while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions were aroused by the law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. So this different law principle is described back in 21, as we read earlier, that's the principle that evil is within me. The evil within me is my fallen nature from Adam. It's a sin nature. So now, here are the two attributes of that, if you will. The sin nature isn't just sitting there doing nothing. It's engaged. It's engaged. It's literally waging war in the law of my mind.

It's the idea of opposition, it opposes me, that's the whole thing about why do, what is evil, what do wrong things entice us? If we had no sin nature, it wouldn't even affect us, right? But because we have a sin nature, it inflames that. And then second and thirdly, making me a prisoner of the law of sin, my members.

So not only is it warring against me, it's also captivating me. The idea is make me a prisoner, to subjugate, to bring me under his control, literally capture me, it's continually capturing me, taking me away from the Lord, taking me away from fellowship with him. And here's some comments from our brother Hal. It can capture us and put us in bondage, It can cause us our deepest heartaches. It's our greatest enemy, and it's an enmity with God.

And you know what, and I think about this, and to make this kind of personal, if you will, the struggles that believers have, they have many of the struggles that unbelievers have. They have struggles with worry. They have struggles with anxiety, depression. Many times believers have that. And that's a personal thing, and really, They have the mind of Christ, but they also have a sin nature, and their sin nature gravitates toward that, and it makes it a very difficult situation.

So I think that's why these verses are so helpful. And then here's the verse I mentioned. This describes the sin nature from the Old Testament perspective. The heart, speaking of the fallen nature, is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked who can know it. And that's kind of a hard pill to swallow, because we think of ourselves, especially as believers, well, I'm okay.

I know the Lord. Thank you, Lord, I know you. But we still have Adam's nature within us, and it still affects how we operate in our lives. okay so now so Paul he gets through with those two proofs he had the statement the two proofs and then he comes to verse 24 and here is the pinnacle of his despair if you will wretched man that I am who will set me free from the body of this death And then, almost like, you know, I was thinking, I kind of imagine Paul, I don't think he actually wrote his own letters many times.

He's pinning along, he's at a tremendously low state in 24. But 25, it's like, boom. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Well, Paul, where did that come from? You just, you just were down the, it's just like the Lord showed him. Okay, Paul, this is what I've done. He reminds him, he knew that. I was just coming back and rang along at 25. And that's why it's so personal. I might have said, well, I'll just erase 24. I said, I had some difficult times in my life.

I'm not going to tell you how bad they were. Paul says, no, wretched, he's at the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And then he kind of gives a summary, which I'll talk about in a bit here. I won't go through the summary right now. Okay, wretched man that I am, or literally, wretched man I. The idea is, originally it's distressed or miserable. It's actually wretched through exhaustive labor or hard labor. And I like what Hal said about this, Hal Molloy. That's who Adam is. He's wretched. Adam is a wretched man, you know? Heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. He's not a good guy, he's a bad guy.

So Paul uses, and this is interesting, this word is used one of the time in scripture, and it's used to describe the latency in church. And here's the passage, not to, this hopefully is not a description of any church, not Holly Hills, I hope, right? It's not. Okay, he says, because you say, I am rich, I have become wealthy.

I have need of nothing. Do you not know you are wretched, miserable, pitiful, poor, and blind and naked? So wretched is a pretty strong statement about where this church is at and where Paul is at. He's at the bottom of the barrel. So more thoughts here. Our father knows, this is from our brother Hal, our father knows how wretched and weak we are and that we can do nothing. as a believer without Christ. You know, we kind of think, but like what Hal said, and this is what I thought too, the trouble is we think we can.

I can figure this out. I only take the big things to God, not the small stuff. I just take, and when it really gets tough, I take those to God. Other things, not worry about those, but. So we may times think we can handle it, but God says, no, I don't want you to handle anything. I want you to handle zero. I want to handle everything. I want you to trust me and walk with me every moment of every day of your life.

So the father, so how does he do that? How does he convince us that we need to walk with him moment by moment, day by day? So the father must bring us to a place of total weakness and helplessness. And we certainly see that in chapter seven, right? So Paul, he tried to keep the law, he tried even more, he tried harder. The harder he tried, the worse it got. the more his weakness and helplessness was manifest.

So what about us? What about a believer's example? And for this one, I kind of fell back to our brother Hal again. This message is a lot, and I thank my brother Hal so much for this. This particular verse I'm gonna look is one of the ones that Hal used quite a bit in his ministry. I think it's an outstanding verse that talks about the believer's struggles. And Hal said here, The more you try and try to live the Christian life in our own strength, the more our weakness and helplessness manifest. So here's a verse that I think is helpful in that area. And we covered this actually about two, three years ago. I thought about going back to the tape almost anyway. 2 Corinthians 4, 7 through 10. I kind of have it in chunks here.

It starts off a marvelous verse. It starts off, we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. So we have this treasure. We have the Lord Jesus Christ within us. We have this incredible treasure, but It has to be him and it can't, so it has to come from him, is kind of the bottom line. So here's the deal, but what happens? We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not despairing. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are struck down, but not destroyed. So there are four statements there about the believer, what can happen to a believer. But then the summation of that, always caring about, in the body, the dying of Jesus. So here's the key part. So that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our body. So how does this work out? So here's some comments.

Our Father is to take each of us through a drastic process of self-revelation. He will allow the circumstances of our lives To happen so we can't handle them ourselves, so we cannot do it ourselves, and so I'm just gonna come expand on these four points Afflicted is the economy idea of pressing in a squeezing by circumstances pressure at the Greek word is that idea and we studied that in the past a little bit Perplex is the idea of uncertainty we don't know how to proceed and A third one is persecution, mental, family, friends, ourselves.

We persecute ourselves on ourselves for not performing the way we think we should perform. Struck down in a position of apparent helplessness. So what I try to do here, the title of this really is supposed to be Wretched Man, I, that I am. This is where God takes us sometimes. We're afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down. He does that to force us to seek him out, to go to him.

And that's where That's where Paul went, he says, wretched man that I am, and then the rest of the verse is, who will set me free from the body of this death? So after that low point, that I'm a wretched man, I'm at the bottom of my barrel, who will set me free from this body of death? Weest has, who will deliver me?

So the who, interrogative pronoun, I'm not sure I know exactly what that means, but it has the idea of it's masculine gender, indicates a person. So Paul cries out for help. It's to a who, right? It's to a person. He's crying out to God himself. He's not crying out to a what or a how. He's not crying out for a formula or a prescription so that he can release himself He said well if I do X Y & Z if I do if I do all this list of good thing I read my Bible I do this I pray that's all gonna happen. No, he's calling out to God and say God help me. I need to understand what's happening here He's crying out to God So Paul realizes, and here's kind of the turning point.

Boy, this verse is kind of cut in half. It seems like at this point, there's some conviction by the Holy Spirit. Realizes, by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, that the self life can never make him free. He can't do it. He can't accomplish it. So right in this verse, he starts to change.

Who shall deliver me? shall deliver is the idea to rescue, preserve, set free, and his future tense, he's looking that to happen very soon, right now, as soon as possible. So Paul will tell us next how he wants to be, what he wants to be free from. And he sees himself in this, from the body of this death. out from the body, and the body here is, our body contains all who we are. We have the life of Christ, we have a sin nature. Our body can be either for good or for evil. So this is a physical body, and he's in this carnal state, or he was in this carnal state, being captivated by his sin nature, until it seems to be the turning point.

So we see from Romans 7.23 we saw that he saw this different law in the members of his body making me a prisoner. So he saw that carnal state. He saw where he was at of this death. And death here, you know, death is typically, we teach it as separation and that's a good way to think of it.

But this case with the this in front of it kind of means a separation between So in the context, it's a separation between the law of God and the law of the sin nature. So once again, we see this antithesis between the law of God and the law of the sin nature of that battle.

And then he says, and then right after, who will deliver me? The next verse is, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So at this point, he hasn't, understood the total thing that's happening to him. He hasn't spoken about the Holy Spirit, which he will in chapter 8, but he's starting to understand. He knows that Jesus Christ is the answer to his problem. So this is the answer for deliverance. This is the answer. So the who is now identified as God the Father, because he's thanking God the Father or praising God the Father. And it's through Christ's work on the cross, what Christ did, And we're going to learn more about that in chapter 8.

So Paul is thanking the Father for deliverance from the power of the indwelling sin nature. So this is all about, remember the, and I actually talked about this in Sunday School a little bit, the Christian life, you can think of it, there are three aspects.

I was saved from the penalty of sin. I'm being saved from the power of sin. And I will be saved from the presence of sin. So this is focused in on his struggle, Paul's struggle, with the power of sin in his life. And God has provided salvation for that. And Jesus Christ, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is the answer. So now, a little rabbit trail here. So if someone were to ask you, how do I get victory over my sin nature? How does that happen? How am I delivered from the power of my sin nature? What would you say?

Now good Holly Hillers have no problem with answering that question. Because you say it's in Romans 6, Roger. Everybody knows it's in Romans 6. Okay, you're right. So the answer, the short answer is, We've been identified with Christ and his death under the sin nature.

But I'd like a little more detail. That's just not enough detail. I'm a detail guy. So you could say, thanks be to God for deliverance through Jesus Christ, who died under the sin nature. who took me up to the cross. I love that picture. He took me up to the cross with him. I've been crucified with Christ. That has such a feeling of tenderness. He took me up to the cross with him because he loved me. So that I would die unto the sin nature too. So I've died to it. I'm free from it. Now I can count it, I can count upon it, I can reckon myself to be dead indeed unto the sin nature but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So those four statements, you know they're all in Romans 6 and the two verses You guys know all this. You got this. Jim has this memorized. He goes over it every couple weeks, I don't know. Anyway, Romans 6, 6. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, or better, taken offline, put in idle, rendered inoperative, so that you would no longer be slaves to the sin, the sin nature.

And then Romans 6.10, for the death that he died, speaking of Christ, he died to the sin nature once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. So that's the seedbed for all those wonderful statements that we made about that. So that's the short answer and the long answer for how am I freed from the power of sin. So Paul kind of, it seems like he kind of, when he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, it's like he's recalling this in his mind.

So I just wrote about that. I don't know how long it took him to write chapter six and chapter seven. Anyway, I just wrote about that. Well, thank you, Lord, I have the answer. But he's not quite there yet. So, and then he has a so then. So he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then, it's like he kind of steps back and says, well now, what does that mean about what's happening with me? I've been writing about all, what does that mean about that? So he kind of does some concluding remarks about that. And in these remarks, he kind of hints about what he's gonna tell us in Romans 7.

And actually, it's in this style, mende. If you're not a Greek geek, that doesn't mean a whole lot to you. But it's the idea of point and counterpoint. And whenever you see in scripture, when you see the idea on the one hand, and then on the other hand, that's that mende structure. And not every translation always brings it across completely.

This one does. It has, on the one hand, I, myself, and it has, on the other, there should be hand in there if I were translating it, but I'm not translating it, so good. It's a good thing. So the point is, on the one hand, I, Paul, myself, So he's gonna tell us about two contrasting things that are happening within his life. I mean, he's already told us about these contrasting things in the past, but he's gonna have a slightly different verbiage here, which I think is really cool.

With my mind, I serve the law of God. We saw that before. I'm serving the law of God. My mind wants to follow God. I want to serve the law of God. And this idea of services here, it's the idea of doulos, a bondservant. And kind of key here, it's present tense, continuous action. And so this is a key verb tense. So think about this. Didn't he just say, several verses in the past, I'm carnal? That was continuous tense too. So he says, I was carnal over here.

Now, after the Lord kind of, the light bulb went on, I'm serving the law of God with my mind, continuous action. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, who's in control here? It sounds like to me the Holy Spirit's in control here. Whoa, present tense, I'm serving the law of God with my mind. Whoa, that's a change. I was serving, I was carnal, I was just all wrapped up and keeping this law. Now, I'm serving the law of God with my mind, present tense. Boy, that's a change. With the mind, I'm starting to continue.

So Molloy kind of summarizes that. So Paul's saying, I can be continually captivated in my mind by the law, or you could say God's will. And that's where chapter eight's gonna take off. We're gonna run with that. We're gonna say, the Holy Spirit is the one that's gonna focus you on Christ, show you the things of Christ.

Now here's the counterpoint, we haven't lost Adam, Adam hasn't gone away, sin nature hasn't gone away. On the other hand, point counterpoint, on the other hand, with my flesh, I'm serving the law of sin. Right back to the same battle, but the difference here is, he sees where he should be walking with the Lord, that's the difference. Before he was in the carnal mode, he just, he's trying to solve that himself. Now he says, Boy, this point and counterpoint is between serving the law of God, walking with the Lord, so to speak, and I see my sin nature.

But I'm also can be continually captivated in my flesh by, I left a word out here, by the, the law principle of the sin nature. So actually, Merriman says here, which I think is right, this could be the experience of a believer at any time in his Christian life. We can have, for whatever reason, any number of things, we can be in that position, but the answer is always Christ's death on the cross for us and counting upon that and walking with him, that's the answer. Okay, so summary thoughts here. This is from Hal again.

Paul showed us in chapter 7 there's absolutely no power in any law system to enable a believer to live the Christian life. In fact showed us that it was impossible for any believer in and of himself by the will of the mind to do anything that was good That's God's good, that's divine good. We can do lots of human good, but not divine good. So here in chapter 8, Paul will show us the dynamics for living the Christian life, performing divine good as a result of the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit through a Spirit-controlled believer. And then lastly, In chapter 8, Paul will set forth the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit as opposed to the lack of power in any law system.

So that ends chapter seven. Hope that was exciting for you. It was fun, fun, but challenging, exhausting, anyway. So let's close in prayer. We thank you, Lord, so much for your word. We thank you for just the honesty and the humanness of Paul as he lays out his struggle in his Christian life. It's hard to believe that Paul would struggle, but he did. And it tells us that we may struggle too, and that there's an answer, and it's through Jesus Christ our Lord, and the power of the Holy Spirit. We thank you for that. We ask it in his name. Amen.