LIVING IN THE SEVENTH OF ROMANS

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Romans 7:7-25

9-26-54     7:30 p.m.

 

 

Now tonight, I am preaching on Living in the Seventh of Romans.  And I suppose that means practically nothing to everybody.  But, by the time I get through with this sermon, I hope you’ll never forget it: what it is to live in the seventh chapter of Romans.  If you will turn with me tonight to the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans, we’re going to read from the seventh verse to the end of the chapter.

Are you ready?  The seventh verse of the seventh chapter—and you follow it as I read the Book:

 

What shall we say then?  Is the law sin?  God forbid.  Nay, I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law said, Thou shalt not covet.

But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.  For without the law sin was dead.

For I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, just and good.

Was then that which is good made death unto me?  God forbid.  But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.

For we know that the law is spiritual; but I—I am carnal, sold under sin.

For that which I do I allow not; for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do.

If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.

Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

For the good that I would I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do.

Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man;

But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

O wretched man—wretched, wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. 

[Romans 7:7-25]

 

That is the seventh of Romans.  There is a whole library—I mean a whole library written about that passage.  It is the introduction to one of the great chapters of the Bible.  The eighth chapter of the Book of Romans is one of the great chapters of the Bible.  The eighth chapter of Romans is the habitat of the Christian.  It is the life in Christ raised to its sublime life.  But, before the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans is the seventh.  And the seventh is the introduction to it.  And I say that there’s a whole library written about it—a whole library.  And these men who are theologians and scholars and commentators, how vastly do they differ about this seventh chapter of the Book of Romans. 

Do you know many times he says “I—I—I” here?  All through that passage, I—“that which I do I allow not but what I would that do I not but what I hate I do.” [Romans 7:15] I—I, “for I know that in me the good which I do not but the evil which I would not I do.  If I do that I would not I,” [Romans 7:18, 19] all the way through.  Now, just to take two of the opposite extremes as they try to interpret this passage in the Book of Romans; Charles G. Finney, said that one extreme; incomparable evangelist and preacher and preached author, theologian of a century ago; Charles G. Finney says this.  He says that the seventh chapter of Romans is a picture of an unregenerated man.  It is a picture of Paul before his conversion.  It is a picture of Paul in the days when he lived under the Law.  It is a picture of an unregenerated and unconverted man.  And he says the only reason that Paul uses the “I” here is by way of illustration but it is nothing personal at all. 

And then Charles G. Finney says this, “If this seventh chapter of the Book of Romans is a picture of you,” this is his exact words, “then,” he says, “you are unregenerated and damned and going to hell.”  That’s what Charles G. Finney says about this passage.  If this is you in the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans, you are lost, you are damned, you have never been saved, you have never known the Lord, and you are going to hell.  That’s what Charles G. Finney says. 

Now, another extreme: not long ago, a wonderful theologian and a matchless interpreter of the Scriptures is A. C. Gaebelein.  A. C. Gaebelein says that this seventh chapter of Romans is a picture of every Christian as he struggles against the principle of sin in his soul and in his life.  Now those are the two extremes. 

“Well pastor, what do you think about the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans and the picture that Paul has written here?”  Well this is what I believe.  I believe the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans is a universal experience of all mankind everywhere, everywhere.  You, I, we, they, close by, abroad, yesterday, today, the generations past, the generations to come; it is a picture of humanity and it is an experience, I say, common to all mankind.  It was the experience of the Apostle Paul in the days when he lived under the Law and by struggle, and by might, and by worry he was trying to do right before God, and failed in it ingloriously and miserably and finally found salvation in Jesus Christ.  He found deliverance in the Law; in the Lord which is the glorious eighth chapter of the Book of Romans. 

Now, it is a picture of you, of us, of all of us before we were converted.  We tried.  We failed and we took our defeat to Jesus and He saved us.  And it is also a picture of all of us who have been saved.  The principle of this warfare between the flesh and the spirit still goes on and we fight and we battle and we fail.  And then we take it, wretched, defeated people as we are, we take it to the Lord Jesus Christ.  And that war goes over again and again in the day and the night, yesterday, today, tomorrow we face it anew. 

It is a picture of all mankind.  It is a universal picture of all the people, everywhere; a picture of the saved; a picture of the lost—for I find a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me,” and it never varies and it never leaves.  I never get so holy; I never get so good; I never get so high up; I never get so close to God; I never get so nigh unto heaven but that always evil is ever there right by my side, here in this pulpit.  I am not only referring to these close by me here; I mean the principle everywhere—and I mean it in you all, too—in you all, too.  There is nobody I have around me that is holy.  They all are sinners—every last one of them and they fall into mistake and into error.  And they fall into a lot of things.  They all do, they all do.  There is just nobody that I have ever seen that is sanctified and holy and above the principle of evil that surrounds them and is in them.  It is a universal experience; the saved and the lost. 

It is the experience of the young.  Before he goes to school he fallows against that thing of evil in his heart.  And it is the experience of the old man with a lifetime and a background, he fights it too.  It is the experience of the civilized man, with all of his culture and his education.  It is the experience of the heathen before the missionary comes to tell him the name of the true God.  It is the experience of the learned and the unlearned; of the high churchman and the low churchman and the no-church man. 

Humanity is divided by many geographical divisions and we have different creeds and different races and different colors and different kinds.  But, there is one common denominator under which all of us gather and there is one common plane upon which all of us move and that is this: “that when I would do good, evil is present with me with me;” [Romans 7:21] always in us and around us.  We touch hands with all the generations in all of the centuries in the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans. 

However things may be on the outside, and however circumstances may change, I still have to live with myself.  And on the inside of me, there is a principle of evil.  There is a flesh and however the outside may change; however cultured or learned or scholarly or dedicated I am, that thing of me is still on the inside.  Christina Rosetti one time wrote of it like this,

 

God strengthen me to bear myself;

That heaviest weight of all to bear,

Inalienable weight of care.

 

All others are outside myself;

I lock my door and bar them out

The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

 

I lock my door upon myself,

And bar them out; but who shall wall

Self from myself, most loathed of all?

 

If I could set aside myself,

And start with lightened heart upon

The road by all men overgone!

 

Myself, arch-enemy to myself ;

My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,

My clog down whatever road I go.

[Christina Rosetti, “Who Shall Deliver Me?”]

 

I shove them out, and shove them out and shove them out and lock them out but I cannot lock myself from myself.  When I lock myself in, there I am and this me is this principle of evil serving the flesh.

So Paul says in the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans there are two spirits that war on the inside of every man. ”There is a law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin.  So then with my mind,” my spiritual highest soul, “I serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin.”  [Romans 7:23, 25] And those two, Paul says, war on the inside.  And that experience is a universal experience and a continuing experience and it does not change when you become a Christian. 

“Pastor, I am going down that aisle tonight and give you my hand and my heart to God.  And I am going to settle forever this thing of the devil and he will never touch me and he will never bother me and he will never come to me again.  I’m going down that aisle and win that battle forever!” 

So you can come down that aisle and give me your hand and your heart to God and brother I want to tell you something.  You have just enrolled to fight.  That is all you have done.   You just got in the war, that’s all.

One of these preachers one time stood up and he was talking to a bunch of little children.  And he said, “Now you little children, now you little ones,” he said, “Now you listen to me.  Now you little children when you give your heart to Jesus why, God gives you a lamb’s heart.  What you’ve got now,” he said, “is a pig’s heart.  You’ve got a pig’s heart.  But you give your heart to Jesus and in place of a pig’s heart, God will give you a lamb’s heart and you will have a lamb’s heart little children.”  Oh, wouldn’t that be sweet if it were so?  Wouldn’t that be heavenly if it were true if when I gave my heart to Jesus, He gave me a lamb’s heart and that is all I had on the inside of me, was a lamb’s heart?

Now what that preacher should have said is this.  “My little children, my little children, when you come to Jesus, you’ve got a pig’s heart and when you come to Jesus He is going to give you a lamb’s heart.  But my little children you have still got the pig’s heart!  And the pig’s heart and the lamb’s heart, they are just going to war on the inside and from then on it is civil battle.”  That’s what it is.  That is the way it is.  That is the way it is.  When you come to the Lord, you have just enrolled in the army, you are just getting ready to fight.

Now, I know that there are a whole lot of people, there are a whole lot of people who say, “I’m removed above that.  I am sanctified, I am.  I’ve gotten above sin and I have come to that holiest state where I live without defilement, transgression.  I’ve had the blessing.  I’ve been set aside and I live in that holiest state far and removed.”  Well that is great.  That is great.

Some of the greatest teachers of all time, like John Wesley, like John Wesley, like all of those old Methodist preachers—every one of them was a holiness preacher, every one of them the old Methodist was a holiness preacher.  John Wesley was a holiness preacher.  They said they lived above sin.  They had gotten above the place where they ever sinned. 

Now I say that’s wonderful thing.  That’s a marvelous thing and I would glory in a man who could stand up here before this congregation and say, “I have come to the place in my Christian life where I no longer ever sin.”  Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

There’s only one thing about that that scares me and frightens me and that is this: you know, the great sin above all sin is the sin of the Pharisees; is the sin of the self-righteous, it is the sin of the self-proud.  It is the sin that, “I have achieved.”  It is the sin that, “Thank God, I am not like other men.  They do this, they do that, they do everything!  But, I don’t do this and I don’t do that, and I don’t do the other thing.”   And it isn’t long until the sense of pride and self-righteousness comes into our lives.  And we gather our arms around ourselves and we wouldn’t be brushed, we wouldn’t be touched by those ungodly and defiled people on the outside.  And so we build our walls around ourselves and we have little circles of friends around ourselves and we look on all others as being vile transgressors while we in our self-righteousness, that’s up there to see, we live separate and apart and look down upon all others.

My Brother, I am persuaded that, as long as we live in this flesh and as long as we live in this body of death that we have the fight going on in the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans.  And I came across a godly, godly man wrote here a thing that I think is the heart of all of us who have given our lives to the Lord Jesus and who pride ourselves on the fact that we don’t go out here and live like the world lives.  We pulled away from it.  They couldn’t invite us to a shindig on Sunday night, take a bottle of liquor with us, and go out with an old something and spending the night in revelry and in drunkenness and in debauchery and iniquity like thousands are doing on Sunday night and Saturday night.  We don’t live that way.  We are not like that; but that doesn’t mean that the principle of evil and sin is not also in us too. 

And I say one of these godly men; a great Christian and good man wrote these lines.  You listen to him; a godly Christian man.  What he is talking about is that even though he doesn’t go out here and do these abominable and indescribable things, yet on the inside of his heart…well, let him speak for himself.  Listen to him.

 

It is not what my hands have done

That weighs my spirit down

That casts a shadow on the sun

And over earth a frown

It is not any heinous guilt

Or vice by men abhorred

For fair the fame that I have built

A fair life's just reward

 

And men would wonder if they knew

How sad I feel with sins so few

Alas they only read in part

When thus they judge the whole

They cannot look upon the heart

They cannot read the soul

 

But I survey myself within

And mournfully I feel

How deep the principle of sin

Its root may there conceal

And spread its poison through the frame

Without a deed that men may blame

[Henry Ware, Jr, “What The Year Has Left Undone”]

 

A righteous man above the tentacles of the Law, living like a fine and good citizen and a member of the church but when you get close to God on the inside of your soul, there is that shortcoming again.  Don’t measure up.  O God, O God, how far short; I’ve always felt the nearer you get to God, the more that way you feel.  “Master, I am not worthy to stand in Thy sight.  Depart from me.  I am a sinful man.”

F. B. Meyer said he was out calling on his parishioners.  One of the members of his church was a washer woman.  She had out there on the line a beautiful, beautiful white string of laundry that she had done, a washing that she put out there on the line.  And he complimented her on it; said how fine it looked and how she had done a wonderful thing; that pure white wash.  And it pleased the old washer woman.  And she asked the pastor inside for a cup of tea.  So they went inside for a cup of tea. 

And while they talked and visited together drinking the cup of tea, while they were there, the heavens frowned and it crowded and there came a sudden snowstorm.  And when the pastor left, the ground was white with snow and he looked at the clothesline.  And looking at it he said, “Well, it looks as if your laundry is not so white now, is it?”  And the old washer woman replied and said, “Pastor, there’s nothing wrong with that laundry.  It’s just that there is nothing can stand against God’s almighty white.”  And that is right.  Now that is right. 

You compare yourself with another man, you may be pretty good.  Yes sir, you are all right.  But you compare yourself against God Almighty’s white, you will fall to your knees, “Lord, this with me as I thought it was.  Master have mercy upon me too; me too; me too.

And I say this battle goes all through our lives; all through our lives.  In youth; the sins of passion, the drives of a hot heart; the fire that is in the stream; the sins of youth; the sins of manhood and of womanhood; the sins of pride, self-righteousness and achievement; and the sins of age, the most despicable sins of all, the sins of age; the sins of littleness and cynicism and criticism; the sins of looking askance; the sins of failing to encourage; the sin of trying to hang on to a yesteryear and to destroy the present and the now; the sins of old age.  And you never get beyond it.  You never get beyond it.  There are some things you fight when you are young.  There are some things you fight when you are in manhood.  There are some things you fight in age.  And as long as you live in this body of death, you have this cry of the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans, “O wretched man, O wretched man that I am, what shall I do and where shall I turn.  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”  [Romans 7:24]

Thank God there is another chapter and I haven’t got time to preach about it tonight.  All I can do is just show it to you then next Sunday we start again.  Thanks God there is another chapter. “O wretched man that I am—wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”  Long as I live in it—this house of clay,  this flesh, this principle of sin, always there and always with me; “O wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

And there is an answer, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Deliverance and victory, consummating salvation never comes from ourselves.  We are never equal to it.  But it comes a victory, a triumph, a glorious deliverance; it comes through Jesus our Lord.  It is a gift of God.  It is in Christ.  It is in Him.  Not by any superficial means would a man win this thing on the inside of his soul.  Not by culture, not by training, not by education, not by his own strength or his own power but a man wins it, a man wins it in the power and in the strength and in the righteousness and in the presence and in the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord. 

“I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” that He, He who could touch the eyes of the blind and they could see; touch the ears of the deaf and they could hear; touch the foulest loathsome leper and was clean again; touch the fevered brow and they were well again; touch the dead and they could live again; He that could do that can touch a man’s soul and a man’s life and deliver him forever and forever, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,”  That is the gospel.  That is the Book.  This is the real thing.

That is what we invite you to come to tonight.  Not to a system, not to an organization, not to a culture, not to a development but an invitation to come to the Lord and take to enthrone that in a man’s soul and in the center of a man’s heart and in the very depths of a man’s life, He never lets us down.  He will see us through.  Now will you take Him?  Will you do it?  Will you do it?

 “Lord I am not equal and I don’t say I am but I believe God is equal and I trust my souls and my destiny and my life in God’s hands.  Here I am preacher and here I come.  It’s for God.  It’s to God.  It’s God’s.”  Would you?  Would you come?  Any other way the Lord would put it to your heart to come put your life in the church with us; any way the Spirit shall say the words, point the way, would you make it now?  Would you make it now?

In the balcony around, in the great press of people on this lower floor, “Pastor, here I come.  Here is my family.”  Or just one somebody you, “Here I am preacher and this is my friend.”  However God shall press onto your heart the appeal while we sing will you come while we stand and while we sing?