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In his forward to John Owen’s treaty entitled “Sin and Temptation,” J.I Packer says: “No one gets out of Roman’s 7 in this world.” Though the Eagle’s song “Hotel California” may not be of the same subject, the sentiment holds true: “We can check out any time we like, but we can never leave.” Today we consider Romans 7, which is like the tonic note in Paul’s composition to the assembly in Rome.

“…I am speaking to those who know the law…” (7:1)

Last week I shared how Paul’s definition of sin is actually an internal framework and not merely the act of doing something immoral. Thus, his lesson on freedom from sin is not necessarily the stopping of sin, but an alternative form of slavery (6:22). “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.” (v.7) Religious law has externalized sin into non-compliant behavior, but Jesus and now Paul’s ministry is subversive to religious law:

“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”

“Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” (Mark 2:18)

“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” (Matthew 9:6)

Some examples of how religious law looks in today’s Christian religion:

1. Missing church on Sunday means you are placing something as more important than God.
2. People who don’t tithe a full 10% of their gross income, have not surrendered all of their life to God.
3. Any form of sexual desire that is outside of a marriage is a sin that angers God.
4. People who cuss or use crude language are worldly and not devoted to God.
5. If a person doesn’t convert to Christianity and accept Jesus in their heart as their personal Lord and Savior, they will burn in an eternal Hell.

Paul’s thesis in Chapter 7 mirrors the song Hotel California: “We are all just prisoners here of our own device.” The religious are also enslaved, but have been released from religious law, and are no longer the slave of “obligation“. I used to argue this with my former pastor who insisted that love obligates us. I would push back that genuine love compels us, it never obligates us.

“But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” (v.6)

Paul knows first hand that the law made him more exacting, judgmental, and hateful, not more loving. While Jesus did not comply with the external application of religious law, he fulfilled it perfectly on the heart level of love, and by following in his steps, and identifying with his death, all people can now experience freedom from our obligations (slavery) to our flesh and the religious law.

Now this sounds like Paul is throwing religion under the bus. He’s not any more than I am. He’s showing that it is insufficient, and we have a new way to live…from the inside out, not outside in…through the Spirit.

“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin…” (v.7)

Paul agrees that religion serves a purpose of reflecting back to us, through its rules, what is taking place within our “inner selves” (kardia). If sin were just a behavior…we could just stop doing it, but it’s an internal framework that works in conjunction with the law. Paul’s demonstrates this with the law against coveting (10th Commandment). His word is (epithumia-lust, evil desire, over-desire, for the Hebrew word ḥāmaḏ-Exodus 20:17) gets at the subterranean aspect in the inner self.

“For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” (v.10-12)

It’s really important to see the differentiation between the sin and the sinner. Religion cannot do this, but it is an essential part of Paul’s doctrine. I invite you to really contemplate this. “Sin deceived me…and killed me.” Every sin committed is derived from “self-deception,” where we do not know our true self. We think we are our “wanter.” The law of sin at work within us (v.21) is not us doing a bad thing, it is us going after a good thing in a bad way. Sin is an inside job. Jesus explained it this way:

“There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” (Mark 7:15)

The law is good because it helps us reflect upon the inner workings of our heart and its true state of deception. That deception, however, includes those who comply with the law. So both obedience and disobedience reveal our self-deception and captivity.

“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (v.14-15)

Our freedom depends on our ability to see the difference between the sin and the sinner…the intentions within our affections and will, by contrast to our actions. Paul is revealing that the Spirit within us separates the thought from the thinker of the thought. “You can stab it with your steely knives but you just can’t kill the beast.”

“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” (v.21-23)

Why is this so vital? It all goes back to the single greatest commandment:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Loving God is easy when we realize what God has done for us in love. God is fully aware of the dynamic forces or laws that are at play within the human heart, they are perfectly designed.. Our struggle and our suffering are the necessary “fruit” of not knowing and not loving ourselves as God knows and loves us. If we won’t give ourselves a pass, it’s unlikely we’ll give others a pass. In our own self-deception and self-hatred, we hate others by judging them and condemning others to death with our self-righteous laws, when the love of God through Christ says: “Where are your accusers…neither do I condemn you.” (John 8:11)

The new way to live is not to ignore or minimize our sin of self-deception, but to recognize that our sin is not “us” (our true self found in God), but is a function of our false self or our pseudonym. It is the work of the Spirit which reveals these forces of tension within us. “Apart from the law, sin lies dead.” (v.8) As we fail, we find grace and acceptance for others who fail. Thus the design is not to get over it, but to live authentically within the tension.

Paul closes the chapter with this powerful framework:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (v.24-25).

Freedom from sin is not the stopping of all sin. Freedom from sin is realizing that sin isn’t the real us, and we are free to drop the stones we would otherwise throw at ourselves and others. When religion would have us hiding behind a facade of morality, living a double life, praying nobody discovers our deep secrets, faith in Christ would have us become authentic (telios-perfect, real), own our sin and to see it in others. It’s the “church of dropping trow” or the “church of dirty sinners.”

To paraphrase the puritan Thomas Brooks: “God will joyfully pardon us for the sins which he will not effectively remove.”

Can you imagine the immediate global shift that would take place if all of institutionalized religion, all the denominations and congregations, followed Paul’s Gospel? Everyone is a sinner, and all are justified (3:21-25), sin no longer surprises us (7:21), or offends us…we expect it in ourselves, we expect it in all others, and since it is not held against us (4:7), we won’t hold it against anyone else. This isn’t tolerance for sin, but incrementally recognizing the slavery to our pseudonym as we mature in the way of love.

It comes down to our identification. Remain in self-deception by obligation to our flesh or the law, or find our true self, revealed through our sin, hidden in Christ but found in God. The most freedom we can have in this life is living in the tension that we are all beloved sinners…no more, no less…

…we can check out any time we like, but we can never leave.