“He’s dead, but he won’t lie down.” These are the
introductory words to George Orwell’s novel Coming
Up for Air. Orwell was quoting from a humorous song popular at the time, recorded
by English entertainer Gracie Fields. The first verse goes like this:
My sister’s young man is a hundred and three,
Yes, a hundred and three is he,
And he’s real cold storage meat
From his head right to his feet.
He’s dead, but he won't lie down.
Yes, a hundred and three is he,
And he’s real cold storage meat
From his head right to his feet.
He’s dead, but he won't lie down.
The words seemed an appropriate way to begin my remarks this
morning, as we look at the inner struggle that Paul has laid before us in the
seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans. In chapter 6 he has written, “We
know that our old self was crucified with [Christ] so that the body of sin
might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” Yet now in
chapter 7 it appears that the old self is not entirely dead—or at least it
won’t lie down!
Indeed, far from it. In the verses we read this morning Paul
reveals a desperate struggle. It is not unlike what we see in an
action-adventure flick. Our hero has just engaged in five minutes of
nerve-wracking hand-to-hand combat with the villain. Finally, with one last
thrust of his knife he stabs him, mortally wounding him, and and knocks him
bleeding to the ground. Then he turns to rescue the maiden in distress. As he
is busy unbinding her, his enemy, hollow-eyed and still bleeding profusely,
hoists himself to his feet. Regaining his brute-like strength, he staggers
across and murderously attacks him from behind—and the struggle begins again.
Listen again to Paul’s words.
I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good,
evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but
I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me
captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am!
Who will rescue me from this body of death?
The Identity of “I”
It is a vivid scene as Paul describes it. But the question
that people have asked again and again, practically since the ink had dried on
the parchment, has been, whom is Paul describing here? Origen was a prolific
scholar and writer who lived just a century and a half after Paul. He could not
bring himself to believe that Paul was writing about his own current
experience. Rather, he proposed that Paul was looking back on his past life, on
his former self before his conversion. And this has been the position of many
since, right down to our present day.
Surely, they insist, what Paul is depicting here is not the
experience of one who has been born again in Christ. For them Paul’s desperate
plea in verse 24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of
death?” cannot possibly be the cry of someone who is indwelt by the Holy
Spirit. Rather it is the prayer of one who has become aware of his sin for the
first time and is perhaps on the brink of conversion.
More recently there are theologians who have begun to propose
that the “I” of these verses is not any individual at all. Rather, what we have
in this passage is a personalization of the whole nation of Israel and its
repeated and dismal failure to live up to the standards set by the Old
Testament Law.
There are numerous other perspectives on whom Paul is
describing in this passage, perhaps almost as numerous as the serious scholars
who have studied it, puzzled over it and written about it down through the
centuries. For what it is worth, my own view falls into line with that of
Augustine and Luther and Calvin: that the individual Paul is describing here is
indeed himself—not his pre-conversion self, but his current experience at the
time of writing. It is a shockingly candid exposure of Paul’s own inner
spiritual struggles. Martin Luther could never be accused of dull writing. Here
is how he put it:
Paul … longed to be without sin, but to it he was chained. I
too, in common with many others, long to stand outside it, but this cannot be.
We belch forth the vapors of sin; we fall into it, rise up again, buffet and
torment ourselves night and day; but, since we are confined in this flesh,
since we have to bear about with us everywhere this stinking sack, we cannot
rid ourselves completely of it, or even knock it senseless. We make vigorous
attempts to do so, but the old Adam retains his power until he is deposited in
the grave… There is no sinless Christian… Sin stands in the midst of the
kingdom of Christ…[1]
The Reality of the Old Self
Let’s stop for a moment and think about what we are saying
here. Does this mean that, even having given our lives to Christ, we are doomed
to live a life dominated and enslaved by sin? What about those verses in the
Bible that speak about victory over sin? What about the transforming power of
the Holy Spirit?
Theologian Kenneth Berding helpfully reminisces about his puzzlement
over this apparent conflict, which led to a conversation with J.I. Packer. In
his wonderfully pastoral but profoundly rooted way, Packer told him,
Paul wasn’t struggling with sin because he was such a sinner.
Paul was struggling because he was such a saint. Sin makes you numb. People who sin over and over
again become desensitized to sin. The reason Paul’s “struggle” was so intense
was not because he was caught in a web of sin, or because he thought of himself
as hopelessly doomed to giving into the temptations that he faced. Rather, it
was because Paul lived a life so sensitive to the Holy Spirit and passionate
about the glory of God that he intensely felt his sins whenever he became aware
that he had committed a sin.[2]
Elsewhere in the New Testament John describes living in
relationship with God as walking in the light. One of the effects of that light
is to reveal the imperfections and the sins, not to mention the glaring
inconsistencies, in our lives. To claim that we have rid ourselves entirely of
sin, John states, is not to live in the light at all, but in darkness and
self-deception. The closer we draw to the light, the more we become aware of
our need for the Father’s forgiveness, for Jesus’ cleansing and for the Holy
Spirit’s power to renew us.
We can see this biographically unfolding in Paul’s own life.
In one of the earliest of his letters, he describes himself humbly as “the
least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle”. Later in his ministry he
writes of himself as “the very least of the saints”. Then, finally, as he
anticipates martyrdom and his life is nearing its close, he confesses that he
is “the foremost of sinners” (1 Corinthians 15:9; Ephesians 3:8; 1 Timothy
1:15).
Thus New Testament scholar C.E.B. Cranfield can write,
[These verses] depict vividly the inner conflict
characteristic of the true Christian, a conflict such as is possible only in
the man, in whom the Holy Spirit is active and whose mind is being renewed
under the discipline of the gospel… The more he is renewed by God’s Spirit, the
more sensitive he becomes to the continuing power of sin over his life and the
fact that even his very best activities are marred by the egotism still
entrenched within him.
“In fact,” he concludes, “a struggle as serious as that
which is here described, can only take place where the Spirit of God is present
and active.”[3]
For this reason we find Paul depicting the life of discipleship in Romans and
elsewhere in terms of a fierce mortal combat.
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of
the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the
Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to
prevent you from doing what you desire. (Galatians 5:16,17)
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly:
fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)… You
must get rid of all such things… (Colossians 3:5,8a)
The Path of Continuous Repentance
So where does all this lead us in terms of our daily living?
Two things. The first is that an essential component of our walk with Christ is
continuous repentance. “Repent and be baptized,” the apostle Peter proclaimed
on the Day of Pentecost, “so that your sins may be forgiven.” What Peter was
declaring was not only a first step into the kingdom of God but also a way of
life. That is why our Anglican worship regularly includes a confession of sin. That
is why confession also needs to be a daily component of our personal life of
prayer.
Now I am not advocating what someone has called “worm
theology”, the notion that we should think of ourselves as worthless, that to
have any shred of self-esteem or pride in our work is sinful and arrogant. That
may seem like a characterization, but there are people who think about
themselves that way—or even worse feel guilty that they don’t. Such
self-lacerating attitudes do not come from Scripture or from the God of
Scripture, who created us good and whose image we bear. No, they come from the
father of lies, the accuser, whose only desire is to bring us down and cause us
to wallow in self-loathing and defeat.
And that brings me to my second point. For those who are
tempted to see themselves that way (and occasionally I find myself sliding into
those feelings), there is a wonderful pair of verses in Scripture. They are
1 John 3:19,20: “And by this we will know that we are from the truth and
will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is
greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” In those times when we do
slip and fall into sin we do not need to sink into despair, for we have a God
who is infinitely more ready to forgive us than we are to forgive ourselves. And
in Jesus we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses,
one who in every respect has been tempted as we are (Hebrews 4:15,16). What is
more, in the words of Peter, who well knew the pain of failure, he is able to “restore,
establish and strengthen us” (1 Peter 5:10).
So it is that even as he struggles with the power of sin Paul
can exclaim, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” And we can echo his
cry. For we know that by his death and resurrection Jesus has won the victory. And
while much of the time we trip and stumble through this life, it is Jesus and
not sin that will have the final word. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ
our Lord!
[3]
Romans,
A Shorter Commentary, 155,158
