(upbeat music) We end the week, Pastor John, with a topic that dawned on me recently, not long ago. I was editing a powerful sermon clip taken from your sermon series in Romans 7, verses 14 to 25. Applying what it means to be a Christian who lives with disordered desires in our hearts.

It was a sermon clip sent to us from a woman in Greece who struggled for years with an eating disorder, who chose to open up and tell others about her sin only after having heard your pastoral conclusion to sermon number five. I believe it was. It's an amazing clip and a powerful listener testimony that we published about a month ago in APJ 1751.

But when I researched that clip and set it up for the podcast, I noticed we've never entered into the debate over Romans 7 here on the podcast. Is this the struggle of Christian Paul, or is it the struggle of pre-Christian Saul? Several times here in the podcast, you've said it's a believer struggle, like in APJs 802, 1183, 1438, et cetera.

And then you built from this stated conclusion, but you've never defended that position in APJ, and I'd love to hear you do so. How would you frame the disagreement? And why do you land on the side of Romans 7 describing the believer's struggle? The disagreement about Romans 7, 14 to 25 is whether Paul is describing some dimension of his Christian experience, or whether he's describing his pre-Christian experience of defeat as he tried to keep the law, and he's describing it now from his perspective as a Christian.

Now, my view is that Romans 7, 14, 25 is a description of the kind of experiences Paul often had as a Christian, and that we often have. And I say often had, because I don't want to give the impression that those verses describe the totality of Christian experience. Now, this disagreement among really good friends, right?

Yeah, oh yeah, totally. You and I could name really good friends that just don't see eye to eye on this, and I love those brothers. I don't consider this disagreement as a ground for any kind of breaking of a relationship or a fellowship. The disagreement exists because on the one hand, Paul says, "I delight in the law of God in my inner being," my inner being, and he says, "I my very self serve the law of God "with my mind," which it is hard to imagine as a description of pre-Christian Paul.

That's my opinion. It's very hard to imagine that. On the other hand, he says, "I am of the flesh, "sold under sin," or, "I do the very thing I hate," and so on. Would a Christian, my disagreeing brother would ask, say that? Would the Christian Paul describe himself that way, sold under sin?

So there's the problem. And here are my nine, I'm gonna give nine reasons, and I unpack these in what? How many sermons did I preach on that? Six, five, I can't remember on Romans-- - At least five, yeah. - Seven. Nine reasons for thinking these are Paul's description of his present experience from time to time, though not his total Christian experience.

Number one, the most natural way to understand Paul's use of the first person I and the present tense is that he's talking about himself and part of his life now as a believer. He uses I or me or my about 40 times in this text, and he explains his situation in the present tense all the way through.

I am of flesh. What I am doing, I do not understand. I do the very thing I do not want, and so on, present tense. On the face of it then, it looks like he's describing his present Christian experience. So for the average person like me, it's gonna take a lot to say, no, that's not what is happening.

Number two, Paul speaks about the law of God in this passage in a way that sounds like the way a Christian believer would talk about it, not the way an unregenerate Jewish man would talk about it. Verse 22, I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man.

Now it's this phrase in the inner man that sounds so much like the way Paul talks as a Christian about the Christian's real inner self. I don't think Paul would have said this about his pre-Christian self. Number three, the description of Romans 7 of Paul as a divided and sometimes tormented man in relation to the law doesn't fit with the way he describes his experience before he was a Christian.

In his pre-Christian days, he is anything but a man who is torn because of any perceived failures to live up to the law of God. In Galatians 1, Philippians 3, he describes himself as undivided zeal for the law. So the Romans 7 Paul doesn't fit with the way he described his pre-Christian experience.

Number four, I think Paul talks about himself in Romans 7 in a way that only a Christian could, a person with faith and with the Holy Spirit. For example, he says in Romans 7, 18, for I know that no good thing dwells in me, and then he qualifies it, that is in my flesh.

Now, if Paul is here giving a Christian assessment of his pre-Christian experience, why? Why does he add to the statement, there's no good thing in me, the qualifier, that is in my flesh? I think in Paul's view, the pre-Christian person is only flesh. Only a Christian is more than fallen flesh.

He has the Holy Spirit, and that's why Paul has to say that qualifier, that is in my flesh, there is a good thing in me, namely the Holy Spirit. So he's not talking about the pre-Christian Paul, I think. Number five, in Galatians 5, 17, Paul uses language very close to Romans 7, but everyone agrees that in Galatians, it's a description of Christian experience.

He says in verse 17, the flesh sets its desire against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh, for these are in opposition to one another, so that, and now comes the phrase that sounds just like Romans 7, almost the same language, so that you may not do the things that you please.

This is a description of the inner conflict of the Christian, and the language is so similar to Romans 7, I do what I don't want to do, I don't do what I want to do, that I conclude Romans 7 is also Christian experience like Galatians 5. My sixth argument is an answer to the strongest argument against my view, at least that's what some say it is.

In Romans 7, 14, Paul says, I am of flesh sold under sin. And my friends would say, would Paul really say, Piper, of a Christian that he's sold under sin? The imagery is of being sold as a slave. Can a Christian ever say, I am sold under the slave master of sin?

After all, Romans 6, 18 says, having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Now my response is, I don't think Paul is saying the Christian lives under sin as a normal way of life, continually dominated and defeated by sin, but that in the moment of failure, sin gets the upper hand like a slave master temporarily getting control of a person who's not really his, and I think this because both in Romans 6, 12 and Galatians 5, 1, Paul warns Christians, warns Christians precisely not to submit again to the reign or to the yoke of slavery.

It's a real possibility that Christians can see themselves as temporarily sold under sins. I don't think that is a decisive counter argument. Number seven, a response to the objection from Romans 7, 24. Can a real Christian cry out, who will set me free from the body of this death?

To which my response is, can a real Christian not cry out, who will set me free from this body of death? The body is not only diseased and dying and groaning, according to Romans 8, it is also the staging ground for many evil desires, Paul says. It is regularly the base of operations for sin.

The unbeliever does not cry out for release from this. He doesn't. He is at home in it. This is a Christian cry. My eighth argument is the way others use Romans 8, 2. This is, I think, very powerful. It says, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

Now, some say that this is a clear declaration that the warfare of Romans 7 is over because of the phrase law of sin in 8, 2 is used in 7, 23. The person in verse 23 is made, quote, "a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members." But now in Romans 8, 2, we are free from the law of sin and death.

So people conclude the person in 7, 23 cannot be a Christian because the Christian is Romans 8, 2, and he's free from that. But I think, in view of all we've seen, and in view of the exhortations in Romans 6, that to say we are now in Christ set free from the law of sin does not at all preclude the reality that from time to time, the law of sin does indeed get the upper hand and must be repented of and renounced.

There is a freedom from it, but not an absolute freedom from its influence that we can defeat with warfare in the spirit. And finally, number nine, Romans 7 seems to reach its climax in verse 25. The first half of the verse goes like this. Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In other words, who's gonna deliver me from this horrible situation that I've been in in describing in these verses in Romans 7? Answer, thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is often taken to mean that after all the failure of verses 14 to 25, Paul now arrives at a point of triumph and transition.

He is moving from the defeated pre-Christian experience of Romans 7 to the triumphant Christian experience of Romans 8. But if that's the way Paul is thinking, the second half of verse 25 is a colossal embarrassment and a stumbling block. Verse 25 closes like this, which doesn't at all fit this understanding of big transition from 7 to 8, with the fulcrum being the first half of verse 25.

Just when this view expects a triumphant statement about how the divided man is finally united in victory and beyond conflict and entirely under the sway of the spirit, what do you get in verse 25b, the second half of the verse? You get just what you would expect to get if Romans 7 is really about the frequent Christian experience of conflict and struggle.

You get a summary statement of the struggling and divided life. It goes like this. So then, on the one hand, I myself, with my mind, am serving the law of God, but on the other hand, with my flesh, the law of sin. What an anticlimax, if the intention is to say that there's this decisive break between 7 and 8.

So for these nine reasons, I think we should read Romans 7, 14 to 25, as the description, not of the totality of Christian experience, but the kind of discouragements and conflicts and defeats we often encounter as we do battle with sin. - Yeah, very good. Thank you, Pastor John, for explaining it.

Again, this episode was inspired by a sermon clip sent to us by a listener, a woman in Greece who struggled for years with an eating disorder who only chose up to open up and tell others about the sin after having heard the sermon clip we published a month ago.

See APJ 1751 in the archive for the clip and for her story. You can find episode 1751 online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, we break for the weekend and return next week to talk about embryo adoption. It's a topic you have all asked about a lot over the years, and it's one we have not addressed much on the podcast in our first decade.

We need to get back to it, embryo adoption. That's up next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinhke, and we'll see you back here on Monday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)