Paul's Epistle to the Romans — page 29

Vs. 15-18 – Paul describes the conflict: “For what I do, I do not approve, for what I want, that I do not do, but what I hate, that I do. And if I do what I do not want, I consent to the Law, that it is good. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, no good dwells: and indeed the willing is in me, but I cannot carry out the good”. (Before proceeding, let us keep in mind that this is not a conflict to be forgiven, justified, or saved from the penalty of our sins. On the contrary, it is a conflict for deliverance from the inward activity of the sinful nature. Therefore, he is not seeking deliverance from the eternal penalty of sin, but from the present power of sin.) There are good things he wants to do, but he ends up not doing them. And there are evil things he does not want to do; those he ends up doing! Through repeated failures, he becomes frustrated and extremely unhappy with himself because he keeps doing the things he hates and cannot find the power to stop!

1. B. Hole said: “Let us remember what we learned in chapter

6, for there we were shown the way. Perceiving by faith that we are identified with Christ in His death, we understand that we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, and consequently, we must present ourselves and our members to God for His will and pleasure. Our souls fully agree with this as correct and proper, and we say to ourselves, perhaps with considerable enthusiasm: ‘Exactly! That is what I am going to do.’ We try to do it, and then we get a very unpleasant shock. Our intentions are the best, but somehow we are without power to put these things into practice. We see the good and approve it in our minds, but we fail to do it. We recognize the evil which we disapprove, and yet we are deceived by it. It is a very distressing and humbling state of things” (Paul’s Epistles, vol. 1, p. 28).

We see from this that desiring to do the good things commanded in the Law is not enough to give a person power to do them. His desire is correct, but power is lacking. His problem is that he is trying with his own strength to keep the Law and do what is correct and good. This is seen by the repeated use of first-person pronouns – I, me, my, myself – which occur more than 40 times in this parenthesis! Someone said: “He had an overdose of vitamin I”. His mistake is that he is expecting something from himself to bring about this deliverance – or at least to help him in it. Essentially, he is trying to do it in his natural flesh, but he does not realize that well-intentioned flesh is still flesh. He is trying to accomplish something that God has declared to be an absolute impossibility – namely, to make the flesh “subject to the Law of God” (chap. 8:7). This shows us that a person can have quite a clear understanding that deliverance from the penalty of our sins cannot be secured by his own efforts, but somehow think that deliverance from the power of indwelling sin is something he can bring about through his own effort. The truth is that all aspects of God’s salvation – past, present, and future – are by His grace and by that alone.

As mentioned, the problem is that the person portrayed here is looking for the power of deliverance in the wrong place. He needs to learn that the remedy is not in himself, but in another. It is sad to say that this error is at the bottom of much of today’s Christian psychology and counseling. It focuses on the person and his problem, which does not resolve the issue and, in some cases, intensifies it. There will be no victory through introspection. What the person needs is to take his eyes off himself. However, he will not give up on himself nor stop seeking the solution until he understands his true wickedness. He needs to understand that not only has he done evil things (sins), but that he himself (sin) is completely evil. This is an important lesson to learn and often painful. J. N. Darby said: “This lesson of lack of strength is much more humbling to learn than admitting the fact that certain sins were committed at some past time in my life”. H. Smith said: “The fact that we have no strength is, perhaps, the hardest and most humbling truth to learn”. But we must learn it.

We may ask: “How does a person discover his complete wickedness?” The answer is: “By trying to live a good and holy life”. This is actually the reason why God allows the person, in seeking deliverance, to go through this conflict. In the process, the person is allowed to try everything humanly possible (in his own strength) to obtain victory over the flesh. In doing so, he will discover that there is nothing in himself that can do this, and only then will he begin to seek help elsewhere. The more diligently he in his natural flesh does what is right and good, the better the lesson learned – for the sooner he will discover the truth about himself and give up looking inward. In connection with this, J. N. Darby said: “Study well these words: ‘the flesh profits nothing’” (John 6:63). When we have learned this to some degree, we will say with conviction: “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, no good dwells” (v. 18) and we will stop looking inwardly for the solution. Note that he does not say: “I do not do anything good”, but “in me... no good dwells”. This, once again, shows that it is not a question of what we have done (sins), but of what we are (sin). Knowing this great fact about ourselves is an important place to reach in our souls, because there can be no real progress in holiness until we have learned it. This knowledge itself is not what brings deliverance, but it is necessary in the process.

This truth – that there is no good in man in the flesh – is something that distinguishes Christianity from all the other religions of the world. The religions of the world teach that there is something good in all men. They think that, although man does bad things, he is inherently good. "The gospel of God" (ch. 1:1), on the other hand, announces that man in the flesh is so incurably bad that God does not attempt to fix or rehabilitate man's fallen nature. Instead, He starts over, communicating a new life and nature through a new birth, and then works that in the believers to bring them into blessing. In fact, both natures (the old and the new) cannot be improved! The old nature is so bad that it cannot be improved; God condemns it (ch. 8:3), and the new nature, which is the very life of Christ, is so good and perfect that it also cannot be improved! The false religions of the world operate on the wrong premise that man is inherently good and teach that religion and religious practice are what man in the flesh needs – and that (they think) will bring out the good in man, and as a result, the world will be a better place. However, the Bible teaches that it is not religion that fallen man needs; it is a new life with a new nature!

Thus, the man portrayed here learns that not only is there nothing good in him – that he is completely sinful – but also that he has no strength to control the flesh – that he is completely lost. The whole problem with the man described in this parenthesis is that he is looking for something good in what God has condemned as not being good (ch. 8:3). Although he has mentally agreed with the truth that "There is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins" (ch. 3:12; Eccl. 7:20), he evidently has not learned that "in me, that is, in my flesh, no good dwells" (v. 18). This shows that acknowledging certain truths (and even expressing them clearly) is not necessarily the same as knowing them. The word "know" in this verse is "oida" in Greek, which denotes an inward conscious knowledge, rather than mere superficial knowledge. Therefore, there is a difference between understanding this truth about ourselves intellectually, and knowing it by a practical perception of it. A case in point is illustrated by a group of students at a Bible school who were studying the fall of man. When the teacher arrived, they said to him: "We found original sin in the Bible!" He replied: "But have you found it in your hearts?" This is the lesson being learned by the man in this chapter.

1. HE DISCOVERS THAT HE HAS TWO NATURES(ch. 7:20-23)

In the process of this conflict, he makes another discovery – that he has two conflicting natures. He says: "Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So I find this law in me: that when I want to do good, evil is with me. For in the inner man I delight in the law of God. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and taking me captive under the law of sin that is in my members". So, he identifies two opposing principles at work in his soul, and he is able to distinguish them clearly: there is the "I" that delights in doing good, and the "I" that does evil. People call this a dual personality, but the Bible indicates that it is because those born of God have two natures. This makes them the most singular of God's creatures. Angels, fallen men and all the animals of the lower creation have only one nature, but Christians have two! One of their natures is lower than that of an animal, and the other is higher than that of an angel!