Sermon Text: Romans 7:15-25a
Date: July 9, 2023
Event: The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A [Proper 9]
Romans 7:15-25a (EHV)
For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not keep doing what I want. Instead, I do what I hate. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17But now it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me. 18Indeed, I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my sinful flesh. The desire to do good is present with me, but I am not able to carry it out. 19So I fail to do the good I want to do. Instead, the evil I do not want to do, that is what I keep doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is present with me. 22I certainly delight in God’s law according to my inner self, 23but I see a different law at work in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin, which is present in my members. 24What a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
What Are You Doing?
The parent walks in on the child trying to expand her artistic talent with a large box of crayons and her bedroom wall as the canvas. “What are you doing??” The wife walks into the bathroom where her husband was going to “look at that dripping faucet” to see pipes and wrenches scattered all over the floor. “Um… what are you doing?” You see a person you don’t know skulking around your front door, just kind of hanging out there, and you feel the need to address them, “Excuse me, what are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” is a question that might come up in a lot of different contexts, with a lot of different tones, but the basic premise is the same. Whether in a happy way, a scared way, or an exasperated way, the person asking the question wants some insight to explain the other person’s actions. Why did this seem like the best thing to do at this time? What is the end goal? Or perhaps, when is this going to end?
We’re familiar with asking other people this question. We are perhaps familiar with someone else asking us this question. But how often do we ask ourselves that question? If you’re like me and talk to yourself all day every day when you’re trying to get things done, perhaps you ask yourself this regularly. Perhaps your thoughts don’t really go there during the day. But there is value in asking yourself this question, but not in the vapid way that I often ask myself throughout the course of the day, but in a probing, introspective way. “What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Is this a good idea? Does this bring glory to God?”
This is the very thought pattern that the apostle Paul is wrestling with in our Second Reading for this morning. He looks deep inside himself and tries to examine and explain his motives for his actions. We do well to follow in his footsteps to comprehend the motives behind our thoughts, words, and actions; to understand what those things mean for us and what they mean for God.
Before our reading, in the earlier part of Chapter 7, Paul had been pondering the purpose of the law. He notes that God’s law makes clear what is right and wrong. While we have some sense of that naturally, especially through the conscience, we can be wrong. We can call things that are not wrong “sin” and, much more often, call things that are wrong “good”—because we want to do them and might feel the need to rationalize them.
God’s law, then, corrects where our natural instincts are wrong, where our consciences are misguided. If I think it’s ok to steal or kill or engage in sex outside of marriage, God’s law, even as summarized in the Ten Commandments, very quickly corrects my misguided notions about what is good and bad, right and wrong. But Paul notes a curious quirk in how my natural self interacts with God's law.. Often, God’s law can actually produce the desire to sin inside of me. The fault here lies not with the law but with the way I consider what is good and bad.
We can see an example of this right here this morning. If, as you sat here listening to the sermon, I asked you all to not turn around and continue to face the front of the church, to please, please not look behind your pew for the next 10 minutes, what is the reaction that is produced inside of you? There’s probably some part of you that starts itching to look back there. “Why doesn’t he want me to look at the back of the church? What is going on back there?” Maybe you don’t think that so clearly, but maybe suddenly your neck just a little bit stiff and you know what would bring relief to that? Just a quick twist of the head—oops, I saw the back of the sanctuary.
Now, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with looking at the back of the church, other than perhaps making the ushers feel a bit uneasy with everyone looking at them. But if I was serious and you still did it, how would you feel? There’s likely to be a moment of guilt—especially if you did see something you shouldn’t have and wish you hadn’t seen. And this proves Paul’s point: For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not keep doing what I want. Instead, I do what I hate. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. Guilt signifies that I agree with the law in forbidding that action. Acknowledging that I did something I shouldn’t have—or didn’t even want to do—shows the value of the law. I need something to tell me the difference between right and wrong because, on my own, I always veer toward the wrong.
However, the issue runs deeper than mere mistakes or poor decisions. There's something inherent in each of us that actively seeks the wrong. We have a lot of names for this part of us—the sinful nature, the sinful flesh, the old Adam, the fallen human nature—but they all name the same problem: each of us is born into this world with a propensity and even a desire to do wrong. We are naturally inclined against God; we are feuding, at war, with God from our very conception.
However, Paul has an interesting way of describing this nature within each of us as he examines himself: But now it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me. Indeed, I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my sinful flesh. The desire to do good is present with me, but I am not able to carry it out. So I fail to do the good I want to do. Instead, the evil I do not want to do, that is what I keep doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me. Notice how Paul attributes his doing of what he knows is wrong—what he doesn’t want to do—to sin living in him, to his sinful flesh, his sinful nature. Paul's description almost portrays sin as a parasite dwelling within him. He doesn’t identify with his sinful nature, he doesn’t embrace it, but he does acknowledge that it is real.
Paul does not do this to avoid accountability—after all, he calls himself a miserable wretch and says that needs to be saved from his body of death—but he’s doing it to show where his identity is. He doesn’t identify or see his true will embodied in his sinful nature. The things that are evil are not what he truly wants to do. Why?
This is the reality of every believer. You have a war going on inside of you right now. Your sinful nature yearns to fight with God. Everything God loves, your sinful nature hates; everything God hates, your sinful nature loves. But this is only part of you. When God worked faith in your heart to trust him as Savior, he created something new within you—a new man or a new self—that yearns for the direct opposite of what the sinful nature desires. The new self is the beginning of the restoration of the image of God, the perfect harmony with God mankind had when he first made us. That new self only wants to do what God wants, not to earn his favor, but to thank him. For what?
The new self knows the answer to Paul’s rhetorical question: Who will rescue me from this body of death? Jesus has done it. Jesus lived a life without this conflict, without sin. Never once did he catch himself in the middle of doing something wrong; never once did Jesus have to ask himself “What are you doing?” to course-correct his life. No, he did everything he should have all the time, perfectly obeying God’s law. But he didn’t do that to show us how or to shame us for our failures. He did it as part of the rescue we so desperately needed.
Jesus gives us his perfection. And he paid hell on the cross for every sin you and I have ever committed—whether it’s something we’ve done once in our lives or those sins that continually rear their ugly heads daily. Jesus rescued us from this body of death so that, like Paul, we don’t have to find our identity in sin. Sin doesn’t define us; Jesus does. We are not sinners doomed to death; we are the redeemed children of God, baptized into his name and rescued by his blood.
Paul concludes our reading, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” What a fitting and simple way to describe our goal for our lives moving forward. We don’t avoid sin because we don’t want to feel bad. We don’t avoid sin even because it is objectively wrong. We avoid sin to thank God for rescuing us from that sin, from death and hell. This is the easy yoke and light burden that Jesus described in our Gospel. It is easy and light because we are not earning anything by our work, nor do we have the responsibility to fix the things we have broken. No, it is light and easy because our work is simply thanking God for doing all the difficult—impossible for us—work. We thank him because he has already rescued us and given us everything that we need for eternal safety with him.
But on this side of eternity, you and I will be in the same boat as Paul. We will know and rejoice that God loves us and rescued us. And then we’ll look at our lives and ask ourselves, “What are you doing?” With Paul, we will see that we fail to do the good [we] want to do. Instead, the evil [we] do not want to do, that is what [we] keep doing. In those moments, we will come to the same conclusion that Paul did: Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me.
We do well to not embrace or love sin, but this realization should not lead to despair. Rather, when we see that we keep doing what we don’t want to be doing, we come back again to Jesus with Paul’s realistic observation and plea on our hearts: What a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Jesus’ answer is always, “My dear daughter, my dear son, I lived for you and died for you. I rose from the dead to prove that I have forgiven you. You are mine; your sins are gone.” And the result of our time of repentance in Jesus is the same as Paul’s was as well: I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.
