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This is indeed a pleasure to
be here, having known some of you before now, to be able to
share with you today. I realise that after lunch on
a Friday, and the last Friday of semester, that is about the
most graveyard of graveyardships I can imagine, so let me share
with you anyway. I want to encourage you so that
as you leave here today, you go out with your heart full of
the reality of what Christ has done, with a passion to tell
others. I'm not trying to stir you up
or anything, I just want to tell you what the scriptures say. David read to us from Romans
7.14-8.2. Let me presume for the moment
that you are familiar with the passage, and no doubt if you've
done all sorts of studies you'll be aware that there's many alleged
difficulties with the passage. I don't know where they've managed
to find all these difficulties at times, but they do. But I
want to draw your attention to what I think is a strong theme
in Romans, one I've not seen dealt with very much, and that's
the theme of hope. You realize that when Paul writes,
he writes to people who are real people, he's not writing a theological
treatise in the final analysis, they're just people. and he writes
them and he says in chapter 5 for instance, being therefore justified
by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ
by whom we've obtained access to the grace in which we stand
and we rejoice in our hope of the glory of God. So from the
very beginning there when he deals with the matter of what
it is to stand there as a justified person you're launched into hope
and our hope doesn't make us ashamed because the love of God
has been flooded into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Again, the
fact that you know where you're going, you've got a goal in mind,
and then in 5.9, if I may read this, much more surely then,
now that we've been justified by His blood, will we be saved
through Him from the wrath? So again, something looking forward,
which dominates the way he writes, And then, of course, there are
hints elsewhere, but in chapter 8, verse 11. Yes, if the spirit of him who
raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ
from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through
his spirit that dwells within you. And then, of course, you
go down to verse 17. If children then heirs, heirs of God and
fellow heirs with Christ, if in fact we suffer with him, so
that we may also be glorified with him. And then this next
paragraph, as you know, 8.18 through to 25, finishes by saying,
for in hope we were saved. And the hope is not merely, I'm
going to go to heaven when I die. It is specifically the hope of
the redemption of the body. One day, the body will be resurrected. There's only been one resurrection
in all of history, and that's Jesus. But one day, the life
of the risen Christ which is in us now, will be evidence when
my body is resurrected. Right now it's going the way
of the rest of all flesh, or as I put it mildly, gravity kicks
in. But I know that on that day,
Christ will be there with his resurrected bride in our resurrected
bodies. So there's the hope. And you
can go on into chapters 9, 10 and 11 and there's more hope
there as well and so on. I just want to draw your attention
to that as a theme which helps us approach this passage in Romans
chapter 7. And I suspect that many of the
problems people have had over the years with Romans 7 somehow
could be assisted if we would only see the way this works out.
I'm not trying to give you just a Bible study or a lecture, but
if it sounds like that initially, hang in there. In chapter 7 verse
24, I'm going to go back to here for a moment. In chapter 7 verse 24, you know
this great cry of Paul, Wretched man that I am, who will rescue
me from this body of death? Paul's great burden in this chapter,
and I take it in the traditional way, or almost in the traditional
way, that it is Paul, the redeemed man, who is complaining that
he wants to be godly, but can't. And he cries out, who will deliver
me from this body of death? It's a plea for deliverance,
but it is based on his hope. That's why I said in chapter
8, as you know, his great longing is for the redemption of his
body. This body of death is a pain in the neck and just about everywhere
else. But he says, I'm longing for the time when my body is
redeemed. Because my body is my problem.
I cannot get my body to cooperate with what I want to do. Every
time I long to be godly, the good that I would, that I do
not, and all of those phrases which tends to muddle up people
who read. But that's a real problem he faces. I'll get on to why
I believe that and why I'm not I'm not just trying to be a smarty-pants
insane. But he's praying that he will
be delivered from this body of death, and it's based on his
hope. Romans 8.11, as I read a moment ago, If the spirit of
him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who
raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies
also through his spirit who dwells within you. Now there's your
hope. That you came to Christ, you received the spirit. And
the Spirit is the guarantee, and you can read this in Ephesians
as well, He's the guarantee that all that God began, He will bring
to completion. He created in Genesis 1 and 2,
you've got the whole thing spelled out, and He didn't just drop
His bundle when sin came in, He's got to see creation through
to its goal. That means the body of Adam,
which was subject to death, has been dealt with in Christ, and
there'll be the last Adam and his bride in the new creation.
Goes from go to woe. So if the spirit dwells in you,
he's the guarantee that your body will be raised from the
dead. Now, I can see you're just on the edge of your seat of excitement.
Let me explain. I want to mention a couple of
Greek words, not to be smarty-pants, but I think because Paul knows
what he's saying. He talks about a body of death,
a body of thanatos, And he says that the body which is dead is
the body which is thanatos. It's a dead body. It's subject
to thanatos. The words keep coming through.
Death is a reality for the body. But he's going to give life.
So who will rescue me from this body of death? You wait and see. Now, there is a problem in Romans
7. Again, just assume the traditional
attitude towards this chapter. It's this, that whenever you
appeal to law of whatever sort, you'll have a problem. By law, I don't merely mean the
law of Moses, that was an issue. Where you had Jewish believers
in the church, and particularly in the first century, that was
an issue. You've only got to read the great battles of Acts
15 and all of the other places to know that, and certainly the
letter to the Galatians. And so people who would appeal
to law and it divided the church and did all sorts of things.
But quite apart from the law of Moses,
wherever you appeal to law as some sort of evaluation of where
you are in life, you're going to have a problem. The law will
always do one of two things, I presume. It will make you a
frightful Pharisee, if you think you've measured up, or it will
drive you to despair, because you say, I can't measure up.
Now, we don't have the problem of Jewish law in our churches
the way they did. I presume not too many people
come to your church and demand that your male children be circumcised,
that you keep the Sabbath, and that you observe all the dietary
restrictions that they have to go through, if you were a Jewish
believer. But we do have other problems
of law. You can work it out in any number
of ways, I guess. When I was a boy, it used to
be, how many people have you witnessed to this week? Which
was always a bit of a killer for me. or the law of the old quiet time,
those sort of things. But we can do it in many other
ways. How do you prove to other people that you're in Christ?
Well, sometimes you've got a great battle proving it to yourself,
haven't you? I look into my own heart and when Satan tempts me
to despair and tells me of the guilt within, I say, God, I've
been wrong mate. I'm wrong, but that's what you
tend to say. I'm more conscious sometimes of my failure than
I am of my salvation. And so the moment you start to
measure yourself against law, then you'll have a battle. Now,
within this letter, the law was the Jewish Torah. I think most
of the New Testament, when it uses the word law, has to take
into account the fact that there was a Jew-Gentile battle going
on within the church as people tried to impose those, basically
those three elements of the Torah all addition to the Torah really,
circumcision, dietary laws and Sabbath observance. Right the
way through the New Testament there are issues which are raised,
are they not? So Paul wouldn't circumcise one person even though
he should have been and warns against those who would tell
you to keep this observance and that observance. It just goes
on, a big split between Paul and Peter when Peter withdrew
because he wouldn't eat with Gentiles. So here they are, they're
big issues. and the Jewish law was there
but the Jewish law as I understand it and you can correct me if
I'm wrong but the Jewish law which was given through Moses
was not the beginning of law and certainly it wasn't the end
of law behind all of the Jewish law, all those regulations which
we understand in the Old Testament there stands the great law of
God himself, the law by which God himself subsists, one man
put it, so that I understand God's righteousness to be his
total consistency with his own nature, which he both expresses
and expects and which he works for us in Christ. Put another
way, God never acts inconsistently. At every point you could say,
God, you are a righteous God, You will always act consistently,
and you expect the whole creation to act consistently. Now, when
God created Adam, Adam was in the image of God. So, if God
is righteous, you would expect Adam to live righteously. Would
that make sense? When you read Adam, therefore
read you, me. And whilst the scriptures don't
put it explicitly, I think in Romans 2, Paul has already suggested
this to us. In Romans 2, some people have
it in brackets, verses 14 and 15. When Gentiles who do not
possess the law, I understand the law of Moses, do instinctively
what the law requires, these though not having the law are
a law to themselves, they show that what the law requires is
written on their hearts. to which their own conscience
also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse
or perhaps excuse them." I take it that what Paul is saying there
is that if you see a Gentile who doesn't understand the law
of Moses, may never have heard of it, because he may not have
been meeting with Jewish people. Nonetheless, instinctively they
seem to do some of the things the law requires. They gravitate
towards those things so that murder in a country that has
never heard of Moses is still murder. Instinctively people
know that, and Paul is saying here, I understand, that it's
because the law is written on their hearts at creation. The
very fact that you're in the image of God means the eternal
law of God is there within you. Now I'm not suggesting that that
means that unconverted people keep the law as it is intended.
Because Paul's already made that clear in chapter 3 where he says,
no, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But
nonetheless they're fighting against the law of God within
them. They're fighting against being the image of God. And because human beings have
been created to be righteous, what will the new heavens and
the earth be like? In which righteousness dwells, 1 Peter 3, 2 Peter 3. We're waiting for new heavens
and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. So that the ultimate
goal will be everything being utterly consistent with the character
of God, expressed by God and by all creation. But how can
that be? If men and women created in the
law of God are rebels, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
Romans 1.18, with all that's spelled out there. How can that
possibly be? God says, first of all, that
I'm going to give, I'm going to place within history a people,
I'm going to use it through Abraham and then through the people of
Israel, But I'm going to set them so that they are a testimony
to me. They will be my holy people,
my royal priesthood. God's special possession, because
all the earth is His. That's Exodus 19. God has chosen
Israel, and you know that in Romans 9, Paul laments that Israel
doesn't even know these things. But look what God has given them.
You know that list in Romans 9-4? It says here, They are Israelites, and to them
belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, and notice the
next one, the giving of the law. So God has given Israel, I take
it, it's the law of God expressed in particular covenantal form. So that when you see Israel,
there's a lot of things in the law of Israel that you don't
have to keep, aren't there? We would say, well there's the
ceremonial law and there's the moral law, but ultimately When
you read the Old Testament, they all get mixed up together, don't
they? So, it's not because they are confused, but because this
is specifically for Israel. This is the way you, Israel,
are to be a testimony to the great truth of God. And did Israel do it? He's given
them the law, and how, incidentally, read through the Old Testament,
Psalm 1, Psalm 19, Psalm 119, what was their impression of
the law? If you're a godly person. Sweeter than honey on the honeycomb.
It wasn't just give me another commandment, I like it. But I
love God, and the law is a great testament into your character.
So your law is a revelation of who you are, and I want to be
like you. Now, that law is given to them,
but basically the people don't keep it. They are rebellious.
God has given the law in the form of his covenant with them
at Sinai. But under Jeremiah, for example, what does he promise?
The days are coming when I'll make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and the house of Judah. Won't be like the covenant
that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
But he's going to make a new covenant, and when he does, what's
he going to do? They're going to write the law on their hearts.
They've had it on tablets of stone, but it's meant absolutely
nothing to them. They're a rebellious people.
They're going to write it on their hearts. Now, if I'm right
in thinking Romans 2 is talking in the same language, it means
that what was there at the creation, which has been fouled and polluted
by the rebellion of human beings, has got to be redone in such
a way that you'll have everybody know that I teach their brother
and each their neighbor saying know the Lord because they'll
all know him from the least of them to the greatest. Because
he's going to do something quite extraordinary. You know what
it is? He says I will forgive their iniquity and remember their
sin no more. So when he comes with this new
covenant he's going to write the law on their hearts and wash
them clean from all their guilt. You read the same thing in other
prophets Ezekiel 36 and so on. But here are men and women created
in the image of God, the law in their hearts, and it's going
to do it again. I think that this is a very significant
thing when you look at the Paul's issue here in Romans. As I said,
if you appeal to law quite apart from the character of God, just
the law as points A, B, C and D of what you should do, then
You'll either become frightfully pharisaic, and you see all that
in the New Testament, or you'll see it in Paul's despair here. But the issue to my mind is that
what you're seeing in Paul in Romans 7 is that he's saying,
my problem is I have received that forgiveness of sins, I've
received the law rewritten on my heart. My problem is, I'm saved in hope.
I'm walking by faith, not by sight. Because I look into myself,
that's in my flesh, and what do I see? No good thing. But I know that I've been justified
by the work of Christ. And that's why I rejoice in my
hope of the glory of God. You could trace that, there's
another one, trace that through. Because how was man created?
According to Psalm 8, crowned with glory and honour. Romans
3.23, you've fallen short of the glory. What's the bride of
Christ look like in Revelation 21? She's radiant, having the
glory of God. So, Paul is aware that in his
flesh dwells no good thing. He's longing to be released from
that. And I want to suggest to you,
that's exactly what has happened. That Paul says, I'm a man who
has received the forgiveness of sins. You've got that all
through the New Testament, haven't you? I've received the forgiveness
of sins, and the law has been rewritten on my heart. Believe
me, I was a Pharisee, I knew what it meant. I could tell you
laws, and I could tell you how many laws everybody else had
broken. One thing about evangelicals, and I include myself in this
particular criticism particularly, is that we are very good at telling
you how wrong other people are. We want to measure them against
Our little standards all the time. Paul says, I was terrific
at that. But the moment I look within
myself, I see that I can't do it. I want to do it, but I can't
do it. I groaned inwardly. Now the only reason he says that
he wants to be godly is because a great miracle of regeneration
has taken place. The prophet Ezekiel. Sorry if
I'm going too fast. I'll give you a copy of this
later if you want it. The prophet Ezekiel said, or God said through
him to the people in captivity in chapter 36, even in their
captivity they are ungodly. He says God will sprinkle clean
water upon you and you will be clean from all your uncleannesses.
And a new heart I will put within you, and a new spirit I will
put within you, I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh. and I'll put my spirit within
you and cause you to walk in my statutes and to be careful
to obey all my ordinances. I will cause you to be different
so that your whole being is set to be obedient. Then, he goes
on later in the chapter and says, then you'll repent. It won't
be a case of, if you repent, God will. No, because God has,
then you'll change the whole way you see things. and you'll
loathe yourself because of your wicked works. What's Paul doing
in Romans 7 but loathing himself because of what he sees? He says,
the only reason I want to be godly, and I do, is because God
has done a work in me. Do you ever feel that way? That's one of the reasons why
the traditional view came up, because we were able to identify
with this. But I do identify with it, thank
you kindly. Have you ever lain in bed at
night and thought, I have botched the day 100%? Now what will you be tempted to despair,
and reminded of the guilt within? Now Paul says in verse 14 of
Romans 7, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the
flesh. The old version had carnal. The
problem with that is it's got a perfectly good translation,
it's just got a different meaning in our day and age. Is that what
you've got in yours then? Good old New King James. Sorry,
I'm not having a go at you. But he says, the law is spiritual,
but I am of the flesh sold into slavery unto sin. I am of the
flesh, I am fleshly. I'm going to pull a Swifty on
you at this point and just play some more Greek words if I may.
There are two Greek words which Paul is fully aware of and uses,
and they both relate to the word flesh, which is sarx. You've
heard of that word? There are two adjectives, however.
The first is sarkinos, which, if you're writing it down, S-A-R-K-I-N-O-S,
and sarkinos really means subject to the weaknesses of the flesh,
so that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. There
is another word, however, which is psychikos, instead of NOS
it's KOS. And psychikos means someone who
is given over to the flesh in his choices and his desires and
things that he does, so that it's a person who says, I ultimately
have to feed my flesh, so that it's desires are satisfied. Paul
doesn't always use that word when he describes it. Let me
show you what I mean, and I'm going to do this very quickly.
In 1 Corinthians 3, and the first three verses, Paul uses these
words, and if nothing else, it tells
us that he knows the difference. And so, brothers and sisters,
I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people
of the flesh. People who are weak because of
their flesh. That's the word Sarkinos. He says, you are infants
in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid
food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now, you're
still not ready, for you are still, you've still got the,
in my Bible, of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy
and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving
according to human inclinations. Those two words in verse 3, of
the flesh, are sakikos. In the first verse he says, you're
weak, you can't do it because of the weakness of your flesh,
and think of Romans 8.3, God has done what the law, weak and
by the flesh, could not do. So without using the word he
makes the same point, you are weak. But he says, the problem
with you Corinthians is that your psychic costs, you are bent
on satisfying your own fleshly lusts and desires. And that's
what's killing it all. Yes, you're weak, but you're
actually feeding that weakness and indulging that weakness.
That's why I say I'm not really giving you a lecture, I want
to encourage you. But how many Christians do you know who deep
down have not been dealing with the sin in their own lives? It's
common as anything, isn't it? And it is perfectly possible
for you to be sitting here now, just in this final chapel of
the year, and to be feeding your own flesh, and ruining the ministry
that lies ahead of you. Don't do it. Don't be psychikos. You may be psychinos, you may
be subject to all sorts of weaknesses, so that you'll cry out, O wretched
man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death, but
that's because you hate the weakness and long for the revelation of
the Saviour when your body is redeemed. But if you're psychikos,
you'll be deep down putting that all to one side, and you'll just
be feeding your own lusts and desires and passions and all
those other words. That is deadly for the church and it's deadly
for your ministry. I don't know if any of you are
actually finishing your course today, but if you are you've
got to get out and the Lord has given you the opportunity for
training. How tragic, how tragic if you were to waste it all because
deep down you're not living as a man or a woman of the Spirit.
Although you are, you've been born again. But Paul says, look, when he
writes this section in Romans, and particularly here from Romans
8 verse 5 onwards, he talks about those who walk according to the
flesh. He's not using the word psychikos,
but I think he's describing it. Those who've got a mindset that's
on the flesh all the time. The flesh says, feed me, and
we say, yes, yes. But he says you can't please
God. And to set the mind on the flesh is in fact death, but to
set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Now when you see that it's possible
for you and for me, and for me, I'm not preaching at you, I'm
preaching at me if anyone. I'm saying, Ian Pennycook, you
are a man who's been born again by the Spirit of God, even if
it was in your mother's womb. But you've been born again by
the Spirit, you've been reset To glorify him and to keep his
law, where there is weakness you might hate it, but for goodness
sake don't indulge the weakness. Get on with being godly. Not
because you're trying to prove anything, but because the work
has been done. It's not in order to get God's
blessing, but because you have it. So, don't choose to be psychicos. Choose to be godly. Choose to
be a mature man and woman in Christ. The real reason is this
in Romans 8, 9. You're not in the flesh. You've
been reset so that you're not to be psychikos. You're in the
Spirit. And it's the Spirit who gives
you your hope of the redemption of your body. Am I going too
quickly or are you with me? Because I think once we see this
you'll be able to say, not that I'm going to say, oh I'm too
weak to be godly, I'm sorry, I'm just carnal. Oh no, no, no. Recognize the weakness of your
flesh, but indulge your passion for holiness. Indulge your passion
to be like God and just have His word burning in your mouth
and in your heart. And believe on that level. You
see, It's possible to talk about sin in such a way that all you
do is communicate your own sense of failure and other people's
guilt. You can really make people feel guilty if you know how to
do it. And of course, if you can make
people feel guilty, you can get a response in some way, can't
you? But supposing I told you that the only sin we have to
proclaim is forgiven sin. How would that be? that he bore
our sins in his own body on the tree. Is he the propitiation
for our sins? Is he? 1 John 2.1? We'll finish that verse. And
he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only,
but for the sins of the whole world. So, in a way that we may
not even comprehend, Christ has taken all the guilt of all humanity
and has dealt with it by bearing the judgment of God on it, and
he says, At the end of this great lament, that with my mind I'm
a slave to the law of God, with my mind something has happened,
but with my flesh I'm a slave to the law of sin, he says, but
there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. That's my
boast. I lament my sin, but I don't
go around saying I'm guilty, because I know I'm not. I'm ashamed
of my sin, Romans 6, But I'm not guilty of my sin, because
that guilt has been removed. When Satan tempts me to despair
and tells me of the guilt within, what's the next part of that?
You've just sung it. Upward I look and see Him there who made an
end of all my sin. Because the sinless Saviour died,
my guilty soul is counted free. That's it. So here we've got
a picture, I take it in Romans 7 and 8, of a man who has known
what the great promise of the New Covenant means. That God
has come and washed him clean from his guilt and he will remember
his sin no more, and he's written his law afresh on the human heart,
and he's written it on yours and on mine, so that my desire
and your desire and Paul's desire was to be godly, not to prove
anything. because that's measuring yourself
against the law but because you are one with his son and you're
passionate to be like the Saviour and when you can't do it, you
loathe it but you say, I will tell you though, there is no
condemnation my guilty soul is counted free and therefore if
I can correct Ms. Bancroft my not guilty soul the
guilt is gone and you're going to go out of here and I will
bet I only bet on short things. I will bet that the evil one
will come and try and grab you today. The temptations will come
and some of you will blow it. And you'll say, not a wasted
day, won't you? Well, if you do, you're wrong.
Because whilst he may come and tempt, he cannot come and re-impose
the guilt. It is God who justifies Who is to condemn? Let me pray
for you. Gracious Father, when strangers
get together there is a beautiful bond when the bond is in Christ.
And thank you Father that it's your word which speaks to our
hearts and so demonstrates the extraordinary miracle that has
taken place in each one of us. So I just want to thank you now
for the opportunity of sharing this great truth again. Encourage
me in my own heart and I hope that of my brothers and sisters.
And then Father, as we've done that, we just praise you for
the glorious truth that Christ has borne our sin in his own
body on the tree and that's the end of it. And that great work
of grace has come to us so that we might rise up and be men and
women of faith, men and women of the Spirit. and that all the
glory will go to the one who loved us and gave himself for
us. In his name we pray. Amen.
Romans 7: Our Hope
Lecture given at Trinity Theological College, Leederville WA. Understanding Romans 7 in the light of the promise of Jeremiah 31:31-34.
| Sermon ID | 111307198130 |
| Duration | 33:54 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Bible Text | Romans 7:14 |
| Language | English |
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