The Believer and Indwelling Sin, Part 2

We continue to cry with Tennyson, oh for a new man to arise within me and subdue the man that I am. So the battle isn't going to be over until Jesus gives us immortality and incorruption. Full deliverance awaits glorification.

That's the point. Winston Churchill once said, That's a good thought to keep in mind as you battle against sin. Sometimes you will defeat it. Other times, sin will batter and bruise you. But the question is, do you still have the drive to keep fighting your sinful flesh? If you don't, what does that say about your spiritual condition? Those are questions to keep in mind today on Grace to You as John MacArthur continues his current series titled Freedom from Sin.

And now here's John. Now you need to remember that in the seventh chapter of Romans, Paul is basically talking about the place of the law. And he is pointing out that even as a believer, the law continues to have the function of demonstrating to the Christian the exceeding sinfulness of sin.

When he sees the law of God, which his heart longs to fulfill, and in comparison sees the sin in his life, he loves the law and loathes the sin. And the testimony of his own struggle spiritually with indwelling sin is given in three laments. It's a very sad passage. It's a very remorseful passage. It's a very poignant passage because it isn't often that we get this kind of deep insight into the Apostle Paul's struggle. Let's look at the third lament.

And it's just like the rest. But this is one way to get the point across, isn't it, of how sorrowful he is, so that he goes over it and over it and over it. And here come the same three things. First, the condition, verse 21. I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me.

Now here we come back to the same condition. He says, I find a law, and by that he means a principle. He's using the word law.

It's a literary device again, so he stays with that term. There's the law of God. And then I see another law, he says, another principle, another standard that makes demands on me, another inflexible law that drives me to conformity. I see another law in me, another principle operating, another source of commands, another standard that when I would do good, evil is present with me. Literally it says, evil lies close at hand.

It's right there. It's battling every good thought, every good intention, every good motive, every good word, every good deed, every good act. It isn't way away.

It isn't far off. It has never been eradicated, as some theologians would tell us, that you get to the point where your sin nature is eradicated. And then they say, from then on, you don't have sin, you just make mistakes. Paul says, it's right there. It's right at hand.

It isn't the real me, but boy, it isn't far away. And the condition is one of conflict again. And then the proof, verse 22, how can you prove this again? Well, I delight in the law of God after the inward man.

That's one side of the conflict. In His inward man, He delights in God's law. And again, I would draw you to Psalm 119, which I think is the best Old Testament parallel to Romans 7.

I don't know if anybody's ever said that before, but I'd like to suggest that. Psalm 119, 77, let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live, listen to this, for thy law is my delight. And it may well have been that Paul had in mind that very passage. And when he says I delight in the law in the inward man, he's affirming the heart of the psalmist. In Psalm 119, verses 111 and others, but just look at 111, thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever, for they are the rejoicing of my heart.

Again, His delight. In verse 20 of that same Psalm, just one other, my soul breaks for the longing that it has unto thine ordinances at all times. Oh, what a tremendous verse.

My heart actually breaks at the longing that it has to thine ordinances at all times. And what is the mark of the truly spiritual man in Psalm 1, 2? His delight is in the what?

Law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. The regenerate man is marked by a love of the word of God, a love of the law of God, a delighting in that law after the inward man. Now, I want you to notice that phrase after the inward man.

It really says from the bottom of my heart, that's the meaning, from the deepest part of me. And the deepest part of him, the bottom of his heart, the inward man, the inner man, the real inside guy hungers and longs and delights and loves the law of God. The deepest joy, the truest expression of personhood is to delight in God's law. I believe the inner man or the inward man is that renewed, redeemed nature. And even though, Paul says to the Corinthians, even though the outer man is perishing, the inward man is being what? Renewed day by day, 2 Corinthians 4.16. And we are strengthened with might by his spirit, Ephesians 3.16, and the spirit does his work in the inner man. That's the area of the new creation. That's the real self, the center of redeemed personhood. But then the proof of the conflict takes us to verse 23. But I see another law, another principle. And where is this one?

Where is it? In his what? In his members.

And what are we saying the members are? They are the human factors, the bodily factors, the flesh, humanness, unredeemed mortality. And his use of terms is completely consistent. So he sees in verse 23 another law. And this law isn't in his real self, his deeper self, his inner man. It's in his outer man, isn't it? It's in his members.

It's in his humanness. And it is warring against the law of my mind. And the law of his mind is the same as that which is the law of God, that which is the inner man. So the mind is equated with the inner man. And he sees the war. And sometimes he confesses the law in my members, wins against the law of my mind, and thus brings me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

And he makes a very clear distinction. Listen, beloved, if this were an unbeliever here, the law of his mind would be just as rotten as the law of his members. For the carnal mind is enmity against God. But his mind, which is his inner man, his truest self, his redeemed creation, longs for the law of God and is warring against the law of his members which, of course, as we said, is his humanness. And notice again, verse 23, sometimes the battle goes in favor of the law of his members and, watch this, brings him into captivity. Listen, Dad, it would have to be a redeemed person because unredeemed people can't be brought into captivity. Why?

They're already there. But when sin wins the victory in the spiritual struggle, then the believer is brought into captivity to that sin and becomes captive to that sin. And so he demonstrates again the condition, verse 21, and then proves it. The conflict between the law of his mind, which is his inner man longing for the things of God and the law in his members.

And keep in mind that consistently through chapter 6, verses 12, 13, 19, chapter 7, verse 5, and all through this part of it, in all those places he always puts sin in the members. The bodily parts is what it refers to. That does not just mean the flesh.

That means the mind, the thoughts, the emotions, all that goes with our humanness. And there is a war going on. Now, I want you to go back to Psalm 119, and I don't know if you've ever noticed this about Psalm 119, but I see the psalmist having the same war, and I want to show you that. Let's go back to where we left off, Psalm 119, verse 20, and I want to pick up that great verse, and then I want to take you right through this Psalm, maybe 10 or 12 verses, and they're very brief, but follow closely. My soul breaketh... it's a very, very intense language. My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thine ordinances at all times.

Oh, that's a... you say, that's a spiritual person with that kind of heartbreaking longing for the things of God. Then look at verse 70. It talks about the proud, their heart is as fat as grease.

Pretty vivid. But I delight in thy law. Go to verse 81. My soul fainteth for thy salvation, but I hope in thy word. Mine eyes fail for thy word, saying, When wilt thou comfort me? For I am become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet do I not forget thy statutes.

I'm drying out. I need your law so desperately I feel so cut off from it. And here is this heart panting after God's law. Verse 92, Unless thy law had been my delight, I should then have perished in mine affliction. Verse 97 sums it up. Oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day. Verse 113, I hate vain thoughts, but thy law do I love.

So vivid. Verse 131, I opened my mouth and panted. You say, you've been running a long ways? No, I longed for thy commandments.

Do you experience that? That's a profound hunger for the commandment. You have a little question about the spirituality of this man. Verse 143, trouble and anguish have taken hold of me, yet thy commandments are my delight. Verse 163, I hate and abhor lying, but thy law do I love. Verse 165, great peace have they who love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. Verse 174, I have longed for thy salvation, O Lord, and thy law is my delight. Now, by the time you get to 174, you say to yourself, this guy is so spiritual, it's, you know, intimidating. And then you're literally knocked over by the last verse in the psalm.

What does it say? I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments. You say, wait a minute, this guy's really riding the crest.

What are you doing ending the thing like that? You know what he says? I love thy law.

At the very end, he says, but I've gone astray. See, he was right where Paul was, wasn't he? Same conflict.

It's no different. Now, let's go back to Romans 7. What's the source? The proof is in first part of verse 23, where he says, I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into the captivity of the law of sin which is in my members.

What is the source? Well, it's right there in that same verse. Bringing me captivity in captivity to the law of what? Sin which is in my members. Why do you sin? Why do you sin? Because God didn't do a good job when he saved you.

Because your new nature isn't complete. Because you're not prepared for heaven yet, and you still got to earn your way in. Now, why do you sin?

Because what? Sin is still there in your humaneness. And this has to be a believer because unbelievers aren't brought into the captivity of sin.

They're already there. And your members, your humanness includes your mind and your emotion, your feeling, your body, and all those things. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 3, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

I love that. He says, you know, though we have to walk around in this flesh, when you get to the real us, it's really not flesh at all, is it? The weapons with which we fight are not fleshly. They're spiritual. Three laments, and they emphasize the condition of the believer.

It's a condition of conflict. They emphasize the proof of that, inability to do God's will to the extent we know we ought to. And they emphasize the source of that in dwelling sin. The true believer, the spiritual believer, the godly believer cries out for deliverance from this. And as if three laments aren't enough, he lets out a wail in verse 24. A wail that exceeds the other laments.

A wail that goes beyond anything he said. He just cries out in the distress and the frustration and says, oh, wretched man that I am. And you say to yourself, can this be the Apostle Paul? Can this be a Christian? And the wonderful and God blessed commentator of years and years ago, Haldane says, men perceive themselves to be sinners in direct proportion as they have previously discovered the holiness of God and His law.

And he's right. This is a believer who says, oh, wretched man that I am. He wants to be all that God wants him to be. In Psalm 38, oh Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure, says David, for thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand press me greatly. There's no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. And David says, for mine iniquities are gone over mine head like a heavy burden.

They're too heavy for me. My wounds are repulsive and corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled. I am bowed down greatly. I go mourning all the day long and my loins are filled with a loathsome disease and there's no soundness in my flesh.

I am feeble and very broken. I have roared by reason of the disquieting of my heart, Lord, all my desire is before thee. They say, if all your desire is before him, how could you be in that mess?

That's the battle, isn't it? And David is saying little else than what Paul is saying, oh, wretched man that I am. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me.

He wanted to be more than he was, and he found himself debilitated by his humanness. In Psalm 130, out of the depths of I cried unto thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there's forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. I wait for the Lord. My soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. Here again, crying out of sin by one who is godly. This is the way of the redeemed, O wretched man that I am. And then he asks a question in verse 24. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Would you keep in mind again? Where is his problem? It is in his what? His body. And it is a body of what? Death. The word delivered is the word rescue.

It's used to denote the act of a soldier who runs to his comrade in the midst of a battle, and he rescues him from the enemy. And the body of death is very interesting. It literally refers to the body, which is subject to sin and death. It is the unredeemed mortality again.

And again, the terms are consistent. It's the body, the members, the flesh. Is there any hope? There's hope. Verse 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. That sounds like triumph to me, doesn't it to you? That is assurance. What are you saying, Paul?

Is this some mystical kind of thing? How do you get deliverance from the conflict? Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

What would he have in mind? I believe what he has in mind is expressed in the eighth chapter of Romans. Let's start at verse 18. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. And then he talks about the creation waiting for the full manifestation.

Drop down to verse 23. And not only they, that is not only the creation groans and travails waiting for its glory, but ourselves also who have the first fruits of the Spirit. In other words, we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, we have the new creation, we have the eternal seed, we have the divine nature and it's there in us. But we also groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption that is the redemption of our what?

Of our body. You see, we're waiting for the final phase of salvation. For we are saved in hope. We're still hoping for that day when we fully are freed and redeemed in body as well as soul. And I believe that's what Paul's looking forward to in verse 25 of chapter 7. I thank God, he says, that the end of the conflict is going to come through the Lord Jesus Christ and it's going to come when he appears and when we are glorified or when we enter into his presence and are glorified. That's when the end comes, the end of the battle. You want to hear it in the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15?

Here it is. When this corruptible shall have put on what? Incorruption. And when this mortal shall have put on what?

Immortality. That's when he says in verse 57, thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Almost the same phrase that he uses in Romans 7 25. And here he says, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And it's the same day that he sees when this mortal shall put on immortality and this corruption shall put on incorruption. So he's looking ahead at the time of redemption and he says, I see it and it's coming and I'm living in hope that indeed it will come. It's the same thing he had in mind in 2 Corinthians 5 4 when he says, we that are in this tabernacle do groan.

Why? Because we're burdened with our humanness and we would like to be not unclothed but clothed upon when mortality is swallowed up by life. Great truth. We look for that day. It's the same day that he had in mind in writing to the Philippians. When we look for the Savior the Lord Jesus Christ who shall change our lowly body. That it may be fashioned like his glorious body. That's a triumphant hope isn't it? Meanwhile verse 25 until then with my mind I serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin.

You know what he's saying? Until that day the battle what? Goes on and it goes on as long as we remain in the flesh. And we continue to cry with Tennyson oh for a new man to arise within me and subdue the man that I am. So the battle isn't going to be over till Jesus gives us immortality and incorruption. Full deliverance awaits glorification.

That's the point. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. John's current study from the book of Romans is titled Freedom from Sin. Well John I'm reflecting on what we've heard today and over the past three weeks. When we began this series you mentioned that when you were early in your ministry you found Romans 6 and 7 one of the most difficult passages of Scripture to understand and I get that.

It's the same struggle with me. Read Romans 6 and Paul says we're dead to sin. We're triumphant over sin. We're no longer slaves of sin. And yet when you get to Romans 7 he talks about his own inability to do what he wants to do.

He even calls himself a wretched man. Now while it's difficult to reconcile those two chapters at first glance they are reconcilable and for me Paul's confession that he struggled with sin is kind of an encouraging thing to know that he wrestled with sin the same way I do right up to the end of his life and he regarded himself as a wretch just like I do. You know that Paul is my favorite person of all people apart from our Lord and I think what drew me to Paul was Romans 6 and 7. There's much about Paul that if you took Romans 6 and 7 out of the New Testament and I didn't know that about him, I didn't know that he had that kind of struggle, I didn't know that he said the things I want to do I don't do, the things I don't want to do I do, a wretched man that is in me who shall deliver me from the body of this death.

If I didn't know that he felt like a guy who had a corpse tied to himself, if I didn't know that about him I don't know that he would be such a hero to me. It's because I know he had the same struggle that everything else in his life seems to me to be attainable. I mean I may never be anywhere near where he is intellectually, I may never be anywhere near where he is as a preacher, I may never be anywhere near where he is as a writer, obviously he's inspired by the Spirit of God, but I am where he is as a struggling Christian. And that's what's so exhilarating about it because Paul is in everybody's mind who reads the New Testament. We all love the other apostles, the 11 we love, but Paul just catapults beyond all of them because we don't know about them what we know about him, and he becomes the model for us. So I think it was Romans 6 and 7 that made me love Paul so much and say I can follow that guy.

I can track with him because he struggled the same way I struggle in my life. And Romans 6 and 7 should be a portion of Scripture that is owned by every believer, because as we've been saying all along, this is the revelation from heaven about how we as Christians deal with sin in our lives until we get to glory and there is no sin. This is a massively important portion of Scripture, and I want to encourage you to get the book Freedom from Sin, the study guide that goes with the series, and even download the whole preaching series from the Grace To You website if you want.

Nothing is more important than this in your Christian life. You can download the series on mp3 files on our website. You can order CDs, and you can even get the study guide.

Get all the resources you need on this. Master Romans 6 and 7. That's right, and friend, there was a lot of material we didn't have time to get into in our radio study, so I encourage you to review the full audio series and pick up the study guide, the title again, Freedom from Sin. Contact us today. Call us toll-free, 800-55-GRACE, or go to gty.org. The Freedom from Sin study guide is reasonably priced and shipping is free. You can purchase a copy or maybe get several for your Bible study group. Call us at 800-55-GRACE, or go to gty.org. Also, as John said, you can download all ten messages from Freedom from Sin free of charge in mp3 and transcript format at our website, gty.org.

If you prefer the 10-CD album, we also have that available. And now as we close, a reminder that if you are regularly finding encouragement from this broadcast, let us know when you contact us. Your notes are more important than you know. They help us measure the impact of our program in your area, so send your email to letters at gty.org. Once more, that's letters at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace to You television on Sundays, and then tune in next week when John helps you prepare for a worshipful Christmas season as John launches five days of classic messages on the birth of Christ. Join us for another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.