[0:00] If you have a Bible turn with me to Romans chapter 7, Romans chapter 7, that's on page 1133 if you're reading from one of our Bibles.
[0:18] And we're going to read from verse 7.
[0:28] This is God's word. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. Indeed, I would have not known what sin was except through the law, for I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, do not covet.
[0:45] But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead. Perhaps I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprained a life and I died.
[1:00] I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.
[1:11] So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Did that which is good then become death to me? By no means.
[1:21] But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
[1:35] I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
[1:46] As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
[1:58] For what I do is not the good I want to do, no. The evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
[2:13] Well, let's pray. Our Lord and God, we ask for help to read this passage with some type of clarity. And we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
[2:26] All right. Like I said earlier, we're in a series, the last of which is tonight called Doctrine for Life. And what we do in this is we take a little bit of different approach than our normal Sunday nights.
[2:38] And we do an extended amount of teaching time on themes in the Bible that we illuminate themes in the Bible that will help you read the Bible better. Okay? So we're doing this semester a series on Paul, on Paul's theology and all of Paul's letters.
[2:54] And we've done four of them and this is our fifth. And the question I have for us tonight is how then should we live? How then should we live? Now after reading that text with you, we should probably just say from the outset, in no way am I going to unravel everything that Paul just said in that text.
[3:13] I can unravel it. It's a really difficult text, right? And if you were reading it with me, you saw all the do's and not doings and the dozen doing some things and all these things.
[3:25] And we're not going to get all of that straight. What we're going to do tonight is introduce the theme throughout Paul's letters through Roman 7 of what Paul is doing with the law, with the law.
[3:40] And he does it all over the place through all the letters. So getting a bit of a clear 22,000, 32,000 foot overview tonight of what Paul does with the law, that's our task.
[3:53] But before we get into it, we need to review. We need to review where we've been. So first, the first thing we said about Paul's theology is this. For Paul, all of history is one story, one drama of redemption and it's about God.
[4:10] And you've seen this picture, if you've been coming, the first picture represents the creation and then the fall and then Christ redemption and then new creation.
[4:21] Paul's theology is one that all of history is redemptive history. It's a history is what Jesus is doing from creation to new creation.
[4:33] That was the first week. You could say it like this. If you thought about it like a good book. Like a good book has an introduction, a conflict, a resolution and a conclusion. The introduction is creation.
[4:44] The conflict is sin. The resolution is redemption and Christ and the conclusion is new creation. We live, according to Paul, at a time between the resolution and the conclusion, at a time between redemption in Christ and new creation.
[5:02] And so you can see that little box represented there along the timeline of history. There's a tension present in the world we live in and that's that we've already been redeemed.
[5:12] We have been born again. We are new in Christ Jesus. Yet God has not yet made all things new. We still sin.
[5:22] We still have a work in our heart, a work in our body that Paul talks about where we do the things we don't want to do. But at the same time, I am crucified with Christ. I am resurrected with Christ.
[5:34] So we live in an already and a not yet. Already redeemed, not yet redeemed in the sense of new creation.
[5:44] What is Paul's gospel then? What is this redemption? Here's what we've said. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 to 4. I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
[6:04] In other words, for Paul, the gospel is history. The gospel is something that's already been accomplished. You'll see there that all the verbs are past tense.
[6:15] What is the gospel? What is that for Paul that is of first importance? It's that Christ died, that he was buried, and that he rose again. It's history.
[6:25] So how then does this history for Paul become our history? How does what happened in the first century AD to this God man become mine and become yours?
[6:36] What does Paul say? How is this gospel for us? The gospel accomplished in history, Christ died and rose again, becomes the gospel applied today for us through the doctrine of union with Christ.
[6:53] So we spent all our time on this two times ago that when we believe by faith in Jesus Christ, we are, Paul says, united to Christ's death and resurrection.
[7:04] So Paul says all these things like, when Christ died to the law, I died to the law. When Christ was raised from the dead, I was raised from the dead.
[7:16] Literally Paul's saying that you as a believer share in everything that Christ's history was about. And what Christ will do, resurrect all people, that's you sharing in your union with Him by the Holy Spirit.
[7:28] You can see it in this passage here in Ephesians 1. Whenever Paul uses the language in Christ, he's talking about this union.
[7:38] Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world so that we should be holy.
[7:54] In other words, union with Christ is not something that just happened to you at some moment in your life when you believed on Jesus. Paul tells us that you were united to Christ by declaration of God the Father from before the foundation of the world.
[8:08] That he spoke your name from eternity if you were a believer in him to be one with Jesus Christ. The last thing we talked about was this, what then is justification and sanctification for Paul?
[8:23] How do they fit? When we talk about sin, sin has three consequences. It makes you legally guilty before God the Father. It also creates a personal and ethical brokenness in your heart that you can't do good.
[8:39] And thirdly, it also affects the whole cosmos, the material creation, the natural world. By union with Christ, by the gospel accomplished and the gospel applied, we get legal forgiveness, justification.
[8:54] We are justified. We're forgiven before the face of God legally. We get sanctification, personal renovation, that ethical nature is broken and we are then able to do good to please him.
[9:07] And lastly, we get to participate in material new creation. That the effects of sin on the whole cosmos are going to be reversed.
[9:18] And we see that especially in a place like the gospels when Jesus, this is what our next Sunday morning series is going to be on soon, that when Jesus comes to earth, the kind of thing that he brings with him is a world, a glimpse of a kingdom in which God reverses disease, natural disaster, brokenness and death.
[9:41] He heals Lazarus, right? All those miracles of Christ were pictures of a new creation, a resurrection world, a renewed cosmos.
[9:52] That's what the gospel is accomplishing. So this new creation is about Jesus' person. It's about Jesus' work.
[10:02] He's coming to descend, to resurrect, to judge, to dwell with man and it's about renewal. We just basically said that. Now we come to our topic for today.
[10:15] How then should we live? What does Paul do with the law? Now we're going to take a big view of this. We're not going to touch into the millions of things we could talk about in relation to the law.
[10:26] We're not going to read the whole book of Galatians and try to figure out what Paul's doing with the law. We're going to have a look at for a few moments at Romans 7 and try to work it out from there.
[10:37] The first thing to say is this. I've got three things to say to you tonight. The first two are quick and then we'll camp out on the third one for a while. The first thing is this. The way Paul divides up his text is always the same.
[10:50] He always gives you the facts and then he gives you the ethics. Or you could say it this way, he gives you an indicative and then he gives you an imperative.
[11:01] Now I'm going to take you back to English grammar school right now. What's an indicative statement? An indicative statement is simply a statement of fact. It's one that just uses the to be verb.
[11:12] His name is Ian. That's an indicative statement. Jesus Christ is risen. That's an indicative statement. You, by faith in Christ, are united to his death and resurrection.
[11:24] That's an indicative statement. It's just a statement of fact of what is. Now Paul uses these indicators all over the place. If you think about the book of Romans, the first eight chapters is nothing but a big magisterial comment on indicative statements.
[11:41] What Jesus has done and what that means for you. And then after that, later in the book, he turns to ethics and he says, based on the indicative, how then should you live?
[11:55] What's the imperative based on the indicative? In other words, for Paul, facts always carry values. Facts always carry values.
[12:07] Because something is true, that means it has a moral aspect to it. Because Jesus has risen from the dead, that means therefore go, therefore do.
[12:19] Those facts always come with values. We can see this really clearly in just one verse in Colossians chapter three. This is what he says, since you have been raised with Christ, right?
[12:33] That's the indicative. You have been raised with Christ. Fact, doctrine. The ethic, part two of this verse, seek the things that are above.
[12:46] So you see in part one, you have a statement of fact and then in part two of the verse, you have a command. Seek the things that are above. Because Jesus has raised you from the dead, now live like it.
[12:57] That's what Paul is saying. Seek the things that are above. We can see this in Genesis chapter one, when God creates man, humanity in his image.
[13:09] It says that in Genesis 126 and 127 that God created Adam and Eve in his image after his likeness. And then what's the very next verse?
[13:21] It's a command. So you see in verse three, you have a command. As soon as he says you're my image, the next thing he says is do this according to the image.
[13:36] Be like what you are. You see? Do what you were created to do. Since you have been recreated, raised with Christ, do this.
[13:49] Seek the things that Christ seeks. Do the things that Christ did. In other words, Paul's ethic is be who you are ethic.
[14:00] Be who you are. If you've been raised with Christ, then live according to that ethic. That's the first thing. The doctrine and ethics, indicative imperative.
[14:11] That's a classic paradigm for reading Paul. And so when you're reading Paul, you look for it all over the place. It's all over the place. Now the second thing is this, and this is where we get into Romans chapter seven.
[14:25] How does all this relate to the law? What do we mean by the law? That's the first question. What's the law? What does Paul mean when he uses the word law? He's all over the place, especially in Romans and Galatians and in 1 Corinthians.
[14:39] What does he mean by the law? What he means by the law is this. He's actually talking very specifically about what's called the Torah. The Torah is just the first five books of the Old Testament.
[14:51] Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. That's the law of God. Every little Jew when they were growing up, every Hebrew boy, every Hebrew girl, knew exactly what the law was in the first century.
[15:08] Their whole life was built around it. You're taught the law from the earliest stage. And when Paul uses the law, he's talking about the very thing he grew up with, the Torah. Genesis, Deuteronomy.
[15:19] What God has commanded of Israel. How then should we live? We can think of the law in a number of ways. Historically, in our tradition, we've thought about it in these three ways.
[15:32] The law has three contexts in which it operates. The first context is a ceremonial context. What does that mean? It simply means something like sacrifices, right?
[15:45] Ceremonies. The ceremonial context is what went on at the tabernacle, like on the day of atonement. It also has the context of civil or judicial order, right?
[15:58] The laws of how you camp out at night. I mean, in Numbers chapter five of one or two, I can't remember. But it talks about how Israel is supposed to set up their camp.
[16:09] That's a civil guideline. Or more importantly, what it means to be unclean and clean. So if you're unclean and Leviticus, you get outside the camp, right?
[16:21] If you touch a dead body outside of the camp, if you got a disease outside of the camp, right? Those are all civil laws, judicial laws for governing how Israel should function.
[16:33] The third way we've thought about it is there's also an ethical or a moral aspect to the law. Very simple. The Ten Commandments. Do not commit adultery.
[16:44] Love the Lord your God. Don't bear false witness. Don't have idols. Love God and love neighbor. That's the moral aspect of the law. Now, if you're searching for this three-fold division in Paul, you're not going to find it like this, okay?
[17:00] What you're going to find is Paul saying things like this in the letter to the Colossians. He says to them, don't let anyone take away your freedom in Christ on account of those who insist to maintain the festivals and the new moons and the Sabbaths.
[17:15] In other words, he's saying, don't let anybody stifle your freedom because they want to uphold aspects of ceremonial and civil law that no longer apply. Okay? So Paul talks about these aspects of the law, but not exactly in the simplified ways that we're presenting them.
[17:33] Now, what we have to say is this, Christ embodied all of the law and he fulfilled it. He embodied it and fulfilled it.
[17:45] So when we think about the ceremonial law, Christ became himself the sacrifice that the blood of bulls and goats was always about. Right? When we get to the New Covenant, the New Testament, when we get to Jesus, death and resurrection, what we realize is the blood and bulls of goats was never about bulls and goats.
[18:04] It was always pointing to something much greater than itself. The blood of bulls and goats could never atone for your sin. Nobody thought that. No Israelite thought that a dead bull was ever going to make up for the sins they had committed.
[18:20] It was never about that. When we get to the New Covenant, we see that the ceremonial laws were always about Jesus himself getting us to Christ and in Christ the ceremonial aspect of the laws are completely fulfilled.
[18:34] He covers them for us. He becomes both temple and sacrifice. He is both the location of God on earth and the sacrifice to God on earth himself at one and the same time.
[18:47] You see, he fulfills that ceremonial law. He also fulfills the civil law. One way we can think about this is just in the Gospels when, like in Luke 8 or 9, I think it is.
[19:00] I've used this illustration before, but Jesus is in a crowd, a man, a leper touches him and asked to be touched.
[19:11] He says, God, if you will touch me, I will become clean. Please make me clean. What do the disciples say? Don't touch him. Why?
[19:22] Because of the civil law, Jesus, if you touch him, you will be under the damnation of the civil law. You will have to be taken outside of the camp. Any man who touches a leper is unclean.
[19:35] He's got to go outside of the camp. But in Christ, by Christ, what does he do? He touches the man and he says, I will be clean.
[19:45] When Jesus comes, the civil law no longer means that people have to go outside of the camp. It's Jesus himself that on the cross goes outside of the camp, taking on himself the whole of the civil law so that you would never have to again.
[20:01] So that you wouldn't have to be cast outside of the camp for your uncleanliness. So Jesus completely fulfills those aspects of the Torah, the law, when he comes.
[20:13] Now that's the second thing. The third thing now is this, the meat of what we're coming to. What then does the role does the law have in the New Covenant community?
[20:26] If the ceremony in civil has been fulfilled in Christ and the ethical has been as well, he completely upheld the law. Does Paul have a place for ongoing use of the law in his theology?
[20:39] Does he? That's what we're coming to. Okay. Let me go back. I don't want you to look at that yet. Let me illustrate it this way.
[20:54] What's going on in Romans chapter 7? Hopefully everybody in here, hopefully most people in here will have read or seen the Lord of the Rings. You can think of one character in the Lord of the Rings in a lot of the same way that perhaps of what's going on in Romans chapter 7, Smeagol or Gollum.
[21:14] So here's one of the scenes from Gollum. If you don't know, if you're not familiar with the Lord of the Rings, Gollum is this character that has completely morphed. So in his earlier days, he was kind of like Froda.
[21:27] He was kind of like a hobbit. His name was Smeagol, and he obtained this ring of power. By wearing the ring of power for so many years and becoming so addicted to it, this ring that represents all that is evil, sin, selfishness, wrong desires, he's become a different person.
[21:46] He's become like the beasts. He's hunched over. He eats raw animals. He's got this war within himself, this dichotomy that is Gollum and Smeagol all at the same time all wrapped up together.
[22:01] Here's one of the scenes that we get from Tolkien. Smeagol, go away Gollum. Go away. I hate you.
[22:11] I hate you. Where would you be without me? I saved us. It was me. We survived because of me. Not anymore. What did you say?
[22:22] Master looks after us now. That's Froda. We don't need you anymore. What? Leave now and never come back. No. Leave now and never come back.
[22:34] Leave now and never come back. And then Smeagol, we told him to go away. And away he goes. Precious. Gone, gone, gone.
[22:46] Smeagol is free. Now that's one person talking to himself. He's got two natures warring within himself. Or an illustration that might hit closer to home, a very Scottish illustration, is Robert Lewis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the 1869 novella.
[23:05] A lot of literature scholars will say that this book is about split personality disorder. And I don't think that's what's going on at all in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Because if you know anything about Robert Lewis Stevenson's life, you know that he was raised as a good Calvinistic Presbyterian, a very Scottish upbringing.
[23:24] And I think what he's actually writing his novella about is about the war within the self that he sees happening in places like Romans chapter seven, which he actually quotes in the novel.
[23:37] And this is, you know, if you don't know the story, this is basically what happened. You have good Dr. Jekyll, but he's unhappy. Why? Because what he figured out about his life was that he was two people.
[23:52] He was two people. He was what he called a primitive duality. He had two natures warring in his conscious. One was a just man, Dr. Jekyll.
[24:03] But he always tended in this other side towards selfishness. And so what he decided was is that if he could create two people out of his one person, one that could embody total justice and one that could embody total selfishness, then both would be happy.
[24:19] You see? They could both be who they were instead of two different persons within him. So he creates this chemical compound. It turns him into a virtuous self and a selfish self.
[24:31] Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, right? And if you know the story, you know that what happens is, it comes by surprise. At first he's able to switch back and forth between the two.
[24:41] But then as the story goes along, eventually there comes to a point where Mr. Hyde is so surprisingly evil that he completely takes over, right?
[24:52] He completely takes over that there's no going back. This is what he says. Hyde is the only unmixed human being.
[25:04] Nothing but pure selfishness. He did not understand that the evil in him was much greater than he thought it would ever be. Quote, I knew myself then to be tenfold more wicked than I thought I was.
[25:19] A sold slave to original sin. I think there we get hints that he's writing a novel commenting on his theological upbringing. A sold slave to original sin.
[25:32] What is Paul's view of human nature? Is it like this? Jekyll and Hyde, Smeagol and Gollum? The answer is a sort of a yes and no, okay?
[25:44] And we're going to work that out. All right. How does Paul conceive then of the law? How does Paul conceive them of the law? Three ways. Three uses of the law that we're going to see in this passage for just ten more minutes.
[25:59] The first is that the law leads self-righteous people to Jesus. Okay? The second is that the law leads lawless people to Jesus.
[26:09] And the third is that by the law we can know, delight in and please God. All right. So come down with me to verses seven, chapter seven verses seven to thirteen and we'll read it one more time just these few verses.
[26:23] What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. Indeed, I would not have known what sin was except through the law, for I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said do not covet.
[26:36] But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead. Once I was alive, apart from the law.
[26:46] But when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I'm going to stop there. Verse nine. Paul says this. Once I was alive, apart from the law, but when the commandment came, when the law came, I died.
[27:00] Now, that's a really confusing verse. Why? Because Paul's known the law his whole life. Okay. Paul never grew up a day from what he could use as mental capacity of reason not to know the law.
[27:15] It was infused in him from day one. He tells us that in Galatians and Corinthians. He always knew the law. So this verse nine, once I was alive, apart from the law, but when the commandment came in, sin sprang to life and I died.
[27:30] What does he mean by that? If he's always known the law, then how was it that he was once alive, apart from the law, but when the law came to him, he died? What does he mean? I think this is what he means.
[27:41] He's talking very simply about something that happens to all of us. It's when you think you know something, but then like you're sitting in a class or like in a sermon or something and finally it clicks for the first time.
[27:53] You know, you've had those experiences. In other words, what he's talking about is once I didn't understand the law and now the law has come to life for me.
[28:03] I got it. It's come home to me. I get it. And what he says he got particularly in this passage is the 10th commandment.
[28:14] Did you see that? Did you see that? Do not covet verse seven. What he really got was the 10th commandment. Do not covet.
[28:24] Now, what does it mean to covet? What does it mean to covet? To covet simply means to desire something in an idolatrous way.
[28:36] So the 10th commandment then, which we think about as the second book of the law from verse six to 10 of the 10 commandments is the mirror of the first commandment.
[28:49] You shall have no other gods before me. So God says to you first, you shall have no other gods before me. He says to you last, do not covet. In other words, don't desire in an idolatrous way.
[29:04] And so Paul says by the 10th commandment of the law is when I woke up and realized that the whole law did something to me. In other words, condemned me.
[29:15] When I realized what it meant to covet, I realized how dead I was. What does he mean by that? Well, think about it like this. This is exactly what's going on in the Sermon on the Mount.
[29:28] This is exactly what Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew five to seven. Remember what Jesus says? He's preaching and he says, you've heard it said to those of old, you shall know.
[29:39] Do not commit adultery. But I say to you, if you've ever desired, lusted after a man or a woman, you've committed adultery in your heart.
[29:52] What is Jesus saying? He's saying, look, if you think, oh, I'm okay because I've never committed adultery, then you don't understand the 10 commandments. He's saying that the 10th commandment to covet makes you guilty of all of them.
[30:08] If you say in your heart, well, I've never committed adultery, then you don't understand that you have coveted. And to covet, to desire in an idolatrous way is to commit adultery.
[30:19] Or to be angry with your brother or sister is to kill them because you've coveted. You've been desirous in an idolatrous way.
[30:30] And so Paul's saying here is that when he realized that, when Jesus revealed that to him that by covetousness, he was guilty of the whole law, that it completely destroyed his whole facade of self-righteousness, the whole premise of his previous life, obedience unto the law, completely destroyed.
[30:50] The law then points self-righteous people to the fact that they don't really get the law at all. Because if you got the law, if we got the law, we would know that we aren't righteous.
[31:01] You can't be self-righteous when you realize that you aren't righteous at all. And that's what Paul's talking about here. When we finally understand the law, it does something very peculiar.
[31:12] It condemns us. And in condemning us, it also has this strange tendency to make us worse, to make us worse.
[31:23] It's when realizing the law, Paul begins to do the things that he doesn't want to do all over the place. You can think about it like this.
[31:33] This is fundamental to sin. When Eve was in the Garden of Eden and Satan comes to her, what is the question he asked her? How does he tempt her?
[31:44] What does he do? He says, do you want to be like God, knowing good and evil? In other words, it's a temptation of covetousness.
[31:57] Do you want to have idolatrous desire toward God? Do you have it? Do you desire covet God himself? Do you want to take his place?
[32:08] It's covetousness. And I've said this before, probably every time that we've had one of these. But what should she have said? No, I already am like God.
[32:18] I was created as his image. I already am like him. I can't get any more like God. I just need to be who I am, continue to obey, not eat of the tree.
[32:30] But instead, she covets and she takes and she eats. Or in Augusta, if any of you have read St. Augustine's Confessions, the famous autobiography of Augustine, there's this one really peculiar place where he talks about a pear tree.
[32:48] And he says that his neighbor had a pear tree in orchard. And that as soon as he found out that he was not supposed to eat from the orchard, he and his friends go straight to the orchard and they eat of it.
[33:01] Well, no, no, no, wait, even worse. They pick the fruit, but they don't eat it. They're not even hungry. It was the law that, while condemning him, pushed him to do more sin.
[33:14] You see, the point is that the law is not the problem. It's us. It's us. Here are the rebellious ones. They're in the dark, a more contemporary example, when in the dark night, if you've seen the dark night films of Batman, when Alfred's talking to Batman, Bruce Wayne in one scene, he tells a story of some children of a thief in Africa that steals jewels and diamonds.
[33:40] And he says that they couldn't catch the guy, but they noticed that after a while, all these children would come out of the woods into the villages and have these like rare precious jewels.
[33:50] And what they figured out was this. He was throwing them away. He didn't want the jewels. He just wanted to steal them, right? It wasn't about the jewels. It was about the end of game was not to get rich.
[34:02] The end game was just to break the law. You see, that's the kind of people that Paul's talking about. That's the kind of people we are by nature, by the nature of sin.
[34:13] So this is the first thing. Life-righteous people, lawless people, when they actually get God's law, it both condemns and pushes them to do more sin.
[34:25] That's what the first thing Paul says. The second and final thing is this. Come with me to verse 14. And we'll read verse just a few verses. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am un-spiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
[34:39] I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
[34:49] As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living within me. I know that nothing good lives in me, my sinful nature, that is.
[34:59] For I have the desire to do it, it is good. But I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. Know that evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, listen to this verse especially.
[35:10] Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that lives in me. All right, now I know that that series of verses is just like getting tangled in a web.
[35:22] But if you just pay attention to verse 20, it is no longer I who do it, or in verse 15, sorry, verse 16, no, 17.
[35:32] And it is no longer I who do it, right? He says it twice. When I sin now, it's no longer me who does it. So in the first set of verses that we read, we had a very clear, it was Paul.
[35:46] He stood condemned before the law. It was his fault completely, right? He was two natures battling it out, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
[35:56] But when we come to this portion of the text, he says it is no longer I that does it. It is no longer I that does it. And then if you go down to verse 24, what a wretched man that I am who will rescue me from this body of death.
[36:13] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. What's the difference? How come all of a sudden now Paul is saying it is no longer me who does this? It's not me. I'm not doing it anymore.
[36:24] Why does he say that? Notice the change. The difference between the two is Christ. The difference between the two is the doctrine of union with Christ.
[36:36] The difference between the two is the difference between the first two uses of the law and the third use of the law. In other words, what's happening is this. In the first part of this passage, Paul is telling you what the law does to people who don't have Jesus.
[36:52] It condemns. In the second part of this passage, Paul is telling you what the life is in relation to the law of those who do have Jesus, who do have union with Christ. He no longer condemns.
[37:04] He's no longer condemned. He still got a battle going on in his flesh, but he says that's not the real me.
[37:14] It's no longer the real me. The real me is Christ's brother. The real me is the person that is united to Christ's death and resurrection.
[37:26] What I have left in me is this outdated, dying old man. He's dead and he's dying and he's the one who keeps on sinning.
[37:38] But it's not the real me. The real me is the united with Christ me. The me who died with Christ, who's been resurrected with Christ and who will experience life with Christ forever and ever.
[37:52] That's me. It's no longer condemned, broken, unable to do good nature. It's regenerate, saved, able to do good, but still struggling with sin.
[38:08] The fundamental difference here is union with Christ. Paul talks about this in so many ways. He is the vine. We become his branches.
[38:19] He is our husband. We become his wife. He is the head. We become his body. He's saying I am the body of Christ. I am Jesus's.
[38:29] It's no longer me who sins because I am his. What's left in me that keeps on sinning is this old, dead and dying self. But it's going to come to an end.
[38:41] All right. We'll close with this. Paul's ethic, then, we could say in relation to the law, is that if you have Jesus Christ as the object of your faith, then you are united to him.
[39:00] And if you are united to him, then you are a new person. The old man has fallen away. It's dead and it's dying. You're no longer like Jekyll and Hyde.
[39:12] You don't have two equally opposing forces going at it each other because you're Jesus's. The old man, the Hyde, can never completely take you over.
[39:25] You can never completely turn. You're Christ if he is the object of your faith. Enrollment's eight, Paul says, if God is for you, who can be against you?
[39:36] No one can separate you from him. All right. So then Paul is telling us that the third use of the law is that now, because of that fact, you can delight and please God by obedience.
[39:50] He doesn't throw the law out like the ceremonial and civil aspects. He says, now all the more the law is for you.
[40:01] You can obey the Ten Commandments if you have Christ. You are able now to do good. You are able not to covet. Beforehand, you were nothing but covetousness.
[40:12] Now you can actually please him. Look, in the first case, when you fail the law, the law will always fail you.
[40:23] The law will never save you from the failings that you commit against it. When you die because of the law, the law can't bring you back to life.
[40:35] It will leave you dead. And I keep family on the clothes, but this is truly my last thing. An illustration, so it's more fun.
[40:49] Obedience is never an end unto itself. That's the point of the third use of the law. Let me illustrate it like this. If you're married, you'll especially understand this, but it works for anything.
[41:03] You wake up in the morning, if you have kids, especially you'll understand this. The baby's been crying all night, and your wife or your husband didn't do their job and get up and pacify them.
[41:18] Or they laid in the bed for 30 minutes or whatever, and you could not sleep. Or pick your scenario, whatever it is, whatever makes you mad. You wake up in the morning, the first thing you turn and you look at her, you look at him and you say, why didn't you pick her up last night?
[41:34] I couldn't sleep. I've got a meeting at 8 o'clock. Whatever it is, you're selfish. Then you go into the kitchen, and she goes in the kitchen, and she's got her back turned to you washing the dishes.
[41:52] That back being turned to you isn't just because of the dishes. She's doing the dishes because she wants to turn her back to you. There's ice in the air. You've been in these situations with family, with friends, with your spouse.
[42:05] There's ice in the air. Now what should you do if you're the one that committed to sin? There's a right answer and a wrong answer to this.
[42:16] We all know that you should say you're sorry. You should apologize. But why? The wrong answer is because it's the law.
[42:28] Why should you ask forgiveness? Well, because that's what you're supposed to do. It's the law. It's God's law. It's the way of the world. It's the way God's created things. That's the way it works.
[42:39] It's the law. That's what you should do. That's the wrong answer. Why should you ask forgiveness? Because you want her back. You see? It's not about the law.
[42:49] The law is just a means to an end. It's about her or him. You want them. You want to ask forgiveness because you want the ice to be broken.
[42:59] You want the tension to be gone. It's the person that you want. Not the law, not the mere obedience. Look, obedience is nothing but a means into a bigger end, like we've been talking about in Paul's theology.
[43:13] And that bigger end is Jesus himself. It's a person. The law is for a person. Last two sentences.
[43:23] If you only do the law, obey the Ten Commandments because it's the law, then you'll never love it. You'll never delight in doing the law.
[43:34] The only way you can learn to delight in doing the law is to do the law because you want somebody. You want Christ himself. You obey the Ten Commandments because you want him.
[43:47] You want to love him. You want to please him. You want to delight in him. It's not until delighting in Christ that we can learn to delight in obeying Christ.
[44:00] That's what we're doing tonight when we go to the Lord's Supper. When we eat his body and we drink his blood, that's a command from the New Testament.
[44:11] Jesus told you to do it. But if you only do it because it's a command, it's a sacrament and you have to do it, then it's a useless exercise.
[44:21] The right answer to taking the Lord's Supper is that we get a momentary glimpse into what it is to get Jesus himself, a pictorial image to taste his body and drink his blood in a symbolic manner, to share in his presence by the Spirit, to remember his death and to celebrate his resurrection, to know for a moment in this broken world what it is to eat breakfast with him like Peter did in John 21 after the resurrection, and what it is to celebrate dinner with him in Revelation 19, the first task of the New Creation.
[44:55] If you only take the Lord's Supper tonight because it's God's law and not because you want to taste a piece of what is Christ's relationship, then you won't truly love it.
[45:10] When it is him that you want, then the activity, the ritual, or the law becomes your delight. Let's pray. Father, we ask tonight that you would make Jesus our delight.
[45:24] And in him becoming our delight, our love, our first love, that we would love obedience. We would love the Ten Commandments. And we ask for that in Jesus' name. Amen.