Unseen but Real. Romans 7:14-20 V.14. Reading this passage without seriously thinking about what is being written by the apostle Paul, a person may think this is a negative view of the Christian life compared to the victorious life we read about in the next chapter. Actually, it really points out the two sides of a believer’s life because part of us is living in the present, and another part is living in the kingdom of God, which focuses on the future.
Disobedience to God is a characteristic of this present age and obedience to God is what we really want as we realize we are children of God. The fact that there is a struggle in us is evidence of genuine spiritual life. We want to obey God relating to the coming age, but the pressures of this present age hold us back.
How do we deal with the desires to sin that are within us and it seems we have no control over? We should remember first that in the path of faith, the desperate struggles against indwelling sin should not be a normal Christian experience. We who God has saved by His grace alone have been crucified with Christ, yet we live because Christ lives in us. Christ is our righteousness and when we live our life through Him, the Holy Spirit within gives power to deal with the evil desires of sin. When we yield to those inward sinful desires, it is our carnal (fleshly) desires that turn us aside from the deliverance we enjoy by faith.
V.15. Paul had a high regard for the law of God and a humble opinion of himself. The growth of a child of God in holiness has a lot of opposition from within us and without. We begin to know who we really are in God’s sight and that makes us embarrassed and ashamed when we look at ourselves in His holy light. Sin uses the holy law to bring about an unholy end which is death. The law is spiritual because it comes from God and in the Christian life, there is a conflict between that which is spiritual and that which is unspiritual in us.
Our new nature pressures us to do what pleases God, but our unspiritual flesh persistently desires to be like the world around us. The moral and ethical demands of the Gospel are high, and a struggle often occurs. The tension created by the two, spiritual and unspiritual, causes confusion, uncertainty, and even serious doubts at times.
V.16. The essential goodness of the law of God, when directed by the Holy Spirit, brings benefits because it exposes sin, but sin moves us to disobey it. When a person is disobedient and resentful against the inward desire to live a holy life, the two “I’s” in me struggle, creating tension and ambivalence. The new life of the ages to come has already come into those who are children of God, but the present age in which sin is rampant is still here and we live in it.
Sin that reaches out to us and attracts us, seeks to control us. We have a moral responsibility to attempt to escape its entrapments. That is why conflicts come. The law of our mind is directed toward the age to come and delights in God, and the body of death wants to sin because it is it is still attracted to sin.
V.17. It is never the wishful desire of a Christian to sin but it is the principle of sin that challenges us. Being brought into captivity by that sin-principle that is still in the flesh, is not what a Christian wants at all. The law with its rules, as good as it is, is not the answer. Self-will or self-determination and relying on one's own strength to overcome sin is not the answer. Becoming a Christian does not eliminate all sin and temptation from a believer's life.
Our fallen nature has no good in it in any way or form because it is evil in its essence. In a technical sense, anything that does not rise to God’s holy standard of righteousness is a sin. There is a more serious aspect of sin in which an individual is inclined to commit acts of sin by tendency at first and then by choice. The scripture distinguishes between acts of sin and a sinful nature. Specific acts are usually indicated by being in the plural and the nature of sin in the singular. Examples are, “Forgive us our sins” and “I am carnal, sold under sin.”
V.19. We face a fact: being born again happens in a moment, but becoming like Christ is a life-long process. To try to please God by keeping rules and laws without the Holy Spirit's power is absolutely futile. By our nature, we still are limited by the flesh from which we have not yet been delivered. There is a difference between the “natural man who receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” and the carnal man who cannot please God in the flesh.
V.20. We can be delivered out of the state of being carnal. When first saved there was the joy of forgiveness and being justified by the blood of Christ. Soon after, we find there is still a kind of slavery that wants to keep us from the joy of being what we really want to be as a new creation in Christ Jesus. How very important to realize that it is not the one who is risen with Christ that tends to the temptations of the flesh, but it is sin that is still in us and manipulates our body.
V.20. Of course, we do not want that sinful nature to have control of our lives, but unless we see ourselves as God sees us, and we find our delight in that fact of our position in Christ, we will find ourselves in a state of unhappiness and sometimes doubt.
We cannot overcome that condition of the soul by mere willpower. It is the power of Christ that is available to us that gives us victory over sin. True, it is sin that makes us do what we know is wrong, but again we must realize this is an unnecessary battle if we recognize our position as having died to sin and are alive to God in the Risen Christ. Living by faith in the Son of God "who loved me and gave Himself for me," is normal Christian living.