In a text which struggles with the law, the Jesus you preach this week must be the law fulfiller.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41). This is Jesus to Peter and the lads at Gethsemane, and also the Apostle Paul’s diagnosis in the last half of Romans 7. It is also autobiographical Paul and autobiographical you. Preaching Romans 7 is an exercise in getting your hearers to identify with the “I” of simul struggle, being flesh and spirit, sinner and saint, slave and free, dead and alive.
“Laws” are at work in the last half of Romans 7. Nomos (law) shows up in this pericope at 7:14 (“the law is spiritual”), 7:16 (“I agree with the law, that it is good”), 7:21 (“I find it to be a law, that when I want...”), 7:22 (“I delight in the law of God according to the inner man”), and 7:23 (“I am looking at another law, in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members”). Sorting out what law means variously in context here is going to be important for your preparation, especially because you want to deliver the goods without confusion. That is not only with clarity of thought (such that your hearer does not leave baffled), but also accurately identifying and properly distinguishing and applying law and gospel (such that your hearer does not end up in doubt of their salvation). Resist the temptation to make metaphors out of any of the law talk here (rendering it as “principle” or “standard”), as if Paul is being deliberately ambiguous with his nomos vocabulary. There are different functions of the law, this is sure. He outlines them here; what we traditionally call a third function or use of the law (in which the new man delights), as well as that second function, the accusing function, synonymous here with “law of sin” (see 7:21, 7:23; and also refer to Romans 8:2). These are not different laws per se, but the same law functioning in two different ways in the same person who is at the same time both sinner and saint.
Imagine applying this text in a contemporary context where we hear Christians appealing: Victory now! Your best life now! God rewards those who try hard! Beware the backsliding! As you grow older you should sin less! This is the basic claptrap of western, American, success-oriented, therapeutic deism, putting the control into the hands of the practitioner. Truly a law way of going about things. I cannot help but think this sort of Christian cultural expectation is born from the competition ethos that runs both our modern world’s sports fanaticism and commodity fetishism, among other ills. But this text reminds me that the problem with success-oriented, victory-expectant Christianity is not necessarily its “Americanishness.” It may be that more triumphalist and mercenary attitude is not corollary to American individualism, but, rather, simply an exponent of sinful human nature.
Do good, do the law, love the law. Lots to affirm in that, and the Apostle does, of course. The law is spiritual (Romans 7:14)! It is good (Romans 7:16). Who would not agree with that? Why would we not find our delight in it (Romans 7:22)? But the rest of what Paul fills out in these verses militates against taking these verses out of context as “goals for the genuine (or real or authentic) Christian to aim for.” Instead, what the Apostle offers is a description of struggle. It is the seeming split between flesh and spirit, intention and action, the discomfort and despair wrought by being the same person who is at the same time both saint, delighting in God’s law, and yet stuck in sin. This struggle can only be aggravated by the too-prevalent attitude among contemporary Christians that one is only a genuine (or real or authentic) Christian if she or he is “progressing” in sanctification, sinning less and less the older they get.
This struggle can only be aggravated by the too-prevalent attitude among contemporary Christians that one is only a genuine (or real or authentic) Christian if she or he is “progressing” in sanctification, sinning less and less the older they get.
That is why one of the best uses of this text is to comfort the sinner who is stricken with the guilt of defeat. Sinners who are sold the bill of goods about victory in this life, and made to feel as if their sanctified life is a failure if they are not progressing morally, will (usually sooner rather than later, but in any case inevitably) come up against the wall of the weakness of the flesh, the reality of the brokenness of their sinful nature, and the present-tense struggle Paul describes in the gap between the conscience’s agreement with the law of God and sin reigning in the flesh. Honesty and experience insist on the concluding plea, “Who will save me from this body of death?” That is a prayer of desperation. A prayer of a person who has no straws left to grasp, no threads left to cling to. In other words, it is a prayer of faith. Indeed, this is what faith is, utter despair in oneself and trust in the one who saves from sin and death, the desperate last resort. This is what we mean when we talk about “salvation by faith.” It is not the reification of some theological virtue or religious practice, but a negative, an emptiness, an inability, the absolute recognition of one’s powerlessness, and reliance instead on promise, one proffered and accomplished in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is why the prayer of faith, “Who will save me from this body of death” (Romans 7:24)? has its answer only and ever in the concluding thought of the Apostle: “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25).
I have actually experienced this in my pastoral ministry. One fifty-something came to my office in great psychological turmoil, convinced he had a faith problem, because he was not getting better. “Getting better?” I asked, thinking he was ailing from a medical condition of which I was unaware. What he meant was getting better at being a Christian, saying no to sin, changing his behavior(s) in an ever-upward trajectory of constant improvement (as seems to be the expectation of program assessments in corporate America and higher education), measuring, quantifying his sanctification. Helping him through this struggle subtly changed the course of my own practical teaching and preaching, as I came to realize this is the sort of message he (and many other church members!) had been receiving for the last couple of decades. Theologically, the root of this in the modern west is Wesleyan, producing threads in American Methodism, holiness bodies like the Nazarenes, Pentecostal strains like the Four-Square gospel, and others. I am not attacking specific people here. But I am saying it is good for a preacher to be able to sniff this out and course correct, as necessary. Because, if anything in scripture argues against the viability of such a theology, it is this Romans 7 text! Paul does not encourage his hearers to save themselves from this body of death (by striving, doing good works, and the like). He lays out the object of salvation as the answer to that prayer of faith: Jesus Christ our Lord.
Among the many ways I have attempted to comfort troubled consciences in this vein, I have gone as far as to say the scripture does not claim that “as we grow older, we should sin less.” In fact, the scripture is pretty blatant and matter of fact about the question of sin. It says we should not sin at all. Rather than imagining, though, that “as we grow older we should sin less,” I have found it provides a level of comfort to hear that, as we grow older, our eyes can indeed grow larger, our vision clearer to the gravity, the size, the weight of our sin, and as our desperation grows, so also does our savior. What is this, other than a reinscription of Paul’s where sin did abound, there did grace abound all the more (Romans 5:20)?
Grace: God’s attitude towards sinners in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus must, as always, be the goal of your preaching. In a text which struggles with the law, the Jesus you preach this week must be the law fulfiller. In His passive obedience, the Lord Jesus fulfills the law through His sacrificial death, becoming sin that we might become the righteousness of God. In what ways does the active obedience of Christ, fulfilling the law in what He is and says and does, match the text your hearer encounters this week? My suggestion is you consider the Jesus who delights in the law that the old Adam cannot, the Jesus who inspires Psalm 119, the Jesus who seeks to do His father’s will. Study the verses in context that point this out (John 6:38, John 4:34, John 5:30, and Luke 22:42). Connect this to His sharing with His disciples (and your hearers!) another prayer of faith, the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10). Affirm for your hearers that they too are part of His family (Matthew 12:50). Also, underscore how the Father’s will has everything to do with the Son, with Jesus, the one who fulfills the Father’s will on their behalf (John 6:39-40, Matthew 7:21).
Your counsel, your teaching, and this week your preaching, all are means to move your hearers not to trust themselves, their own piety, their own struggle and strife to fulfill God’s law, but to trust, instead, the one who has: The Jesus who saves us from this body of death. Thanks be to God, indeed!
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Romans 7:14-25a.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Romans 7:14-25a.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
