ROMANS 7
If you haven’t read my previous article, The Beast at Your Door, you should read it before this one. This one, The Beast in Your House, is a continuation.
I may have bitten off more than I can chew. As I said previously, the letter to the Romans is dense. I agree with what Peter said about Paul: “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort…” (2 Peter 3:16). This subject I’m on is proving to be hard to understand. Maybe I should say it’s hard to have confidence that I do understand it because it is different from how I have understood the concept of sin.
In his Letter to the Romans, Paul has introduced us to SIN as a dominating power that is working in humans. SIN (my all caps) is not the same as the sin (lower case) that we commit, that is, the wrong things we do, say, and think. SIN does; sin gets done. SIN is an evil force, similar to the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings, except the Ring was worn by one person at a time while SIN has invaded every person. Paul wrote, in Romans 3:9, “Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.” Using my distinguishing grammar: all under SIN. When SIN came into the world, it did not add something to our created human nature. It did not add a sin nature. It invaded what we already have.
Reading and studying in Romans, especially chapter 7, I was drawn to something else I had not understood before: specifically where SIN is working in us. If we don’t have our own sin nature that is part of our makeup, that is “who we are at the bottom of our hearts” (the way one preacher said it), then what is the “base of operations” for the SIN power to carry out its ruling, enslaving, deceiving, and killing maneuvers? What is the One Ring in our existence?
It is the word which has been translated “sinful nature” or “old nature” or “sinful self” in many English Bible versions. And even if it’s not so translated, it is almost always taught as meaning “sin nature.” As I mentioned in the previous post, it is the Greek word “sarx” which in English is “flesh.”
Romans 7:5-6: “For when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins, which came through the law, were energizing in the members [of our bodies] for producing fruit for death. Now however, we are released from the law, having died to that to which we were held, in order for us to serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of writing.”
Paul is comparing what we were before we came into a faith relationship with Christ – “we were in the flesh” – and what we are now in that relationship. What I want to draw out from this is that SIN works in our flesh, in the various parts of our bodies. In our human flesh, not in a supposed sin nature that was added to us when the first humans disobeyed the Lord.
Flesh is physical, but it is not just physical. It is not just a biologically living object. It is not just a material thing. Thinking and feeling and acting are extensively initiated and influenced by the flesh. Of course, some people say that they are only biological processes, that everything we think and feel and do are simply the result of chemicals, enzymes, proteins, and the like. That’s not what I am saying. One description of the flesh is the body and its physical needs and desires. That’s closer to what I think the Bible means by “flesh.” There are needs and desires operating in our flesh. There are human functions that are strongly impacted and shaped by our physical composition: thoughts, emotions, desires, impulses, habits, automatic beliefs. Flesh influences psychological and emotional processes. You know how it is when you are physically tired – you think and act differently than you do when you are well-rested and energetic. But no matter what condition the body is in, the physical system affects the rest.
When Paul talked about “when we were in the flesh” he was referring to living based only on the body and its needs and desires. Further on, in Romans 8:6-8, he explained: “For the mind set on the flesh is death…because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” He summed up the situation as “sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:17). SIN – the power, the force – lives in us. The beast is in the house.
SIN – the power, the beast – energizes the passions of sins in the members of our bodies (see Romans 7:5) “Passions” refers to something very strongly felt (physical, psychological, emotional). Sometimes it’s translated simply “suffering” or “affliction.” It is something that is intense. SIN galvanizes the needs and desires of the body into sin that is “producing fruit for death” (echoing Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death.”). The functions of the flesh get charged up to generate actions that contradict the will of God (the lower case sins). Some of those functions are thoughts, feelings, needs, desires, impulses, habits, intuitions, and instincts. Okay, we have to understand that not every expression of any of these functions is sinful. If that were true, the body itself would be evil. It is SIN in the flesh that uses them to disobey. The beast in the house is using the furnishings, appliances, utilities, and systems of the house to cause chaos and destruction. SIN uses our own bodies against us.
So Paul goes on in Romans 7 to graphically show what this means in real life. The highlights in verses 14 – 25:
“I am fleshly, sold to be under sin. I do not understand what I produce. For what I want – this I do not put into practice, but what I detest – this is what I do… But if I do what I do not want to do, it is not me producing it, but it is sin living in me… I see a law in the members of my body carrying out an attack on the law of my mind and leading me into captivity to the law of sin… So, I myself certainly serve the law of God with the mind, but with the flesh I serve the law of sin.”
Well, here’s Biblical teaching I can live up to! I do what I don’t really want to do and don’t do what I really want to do! Why does this happen? Paul says it’s because of “sin living in me.” It’s because of the beast in my house. It’s an evil power operating in my body. It’s SIN in my flesh. When he talks about “the law of sin” it means “authority” or, some say, “principle.” It might be like Murphy’s Law. God has not decreed and no government has legislated that “what can go wrong will go wrong.” It’s just seems to be the way it is. Paul is saying, “This is the way it is: with my flesh, I do what SIN wants me to.”
Sin is not only in our hearts (inner being) as a spiritual issue. It is definitely a heart issue (Matthew 15:18-19, Mark 7:19-21, Luke 6:45). It is also in our bodies. Remember Jesus telling his disciples in Gethsemane, “Keep watching and praying, so that you do not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). It seems the flesh is the weakest part of our humanity, and that’s where SIN takes control and affects all the parts of our being.
I do not know how this happens. SIN entered into the world through Adam’s rebellion (Romans 5:12, Genesis 3). After that happened, Genesis 4 tells us that Adam’s sons Cain and Abel brought offerings to God and
“the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering; but for Cain and his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his face was gloomy. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why is your face gloomy? If you do well, will your face not be cheerful? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.’ Cain talked to his brother Abel; and it happened that when they were in the field Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”
Apparently when Cain did not “do well” he gave in to his depression and anger, the lurking SIN moved in, and Cain committed murder. This incident may help to explain how SIN gets into our flesh. It may be that when a person gives in to his/her own resistance to doing well, that is, his/her own free-will oppositional defiance to God’s ways, then SIN can move into the flesh. However it happens, the Biblical teaching is that this almost irresistible force lives in us and will dominate us and lead us into evil and will result in corruption and death.
There is an alternative to being “in the flesh” (Romans 7:5). That alternative is spirit.
I have to give you a language lesson here. When you read “spirit” in the New Testament, it’s not always clear whether the meaning is a person’s spirit or the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the word “holy” is used and that makes it clear. But many times it just says “spirit” or “a spirit” or “the spirit.” Greek did not use capital letters the way modern English does (some Greek manuscripts are written with all capitals and some with none) so we can’t use that as a clue. Usually the context will be enough to tell whether it’s the human spirit or the Holy Spirit. (Other uses of “spirit” mean a spiritual entity like a demon or an attitude that a person has.) Sometimes it comes down to interpreting the meaning based on the context and the primary message that the Biblical writer was teaching. That’s what we have with Romans 7:6:
“…we serve in the new way of the Spirit…” (NIV and many others)
OR
“…serve in newness of spirit…” (KJV and many others)
I lean toward the second: Paul is referring to the human spirit. The alternative to living only in the flesh is living in the spirit. “The spirit is a realm of reality. It is not a style of life… The spiritual as a realm of being—of reality that has its own existence and its own nature and is a causal power over all of the rest of reality…” (Dallas Willard) The spirit is the real part of us that can relate to God and be leader over the rest of our human nature (thoughts, emotions, beliefs, etc). It is the deepest and most profound part of a person. This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41), and Paul writing “For who among people knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him?” (1 Corinthians 2:11). We were not intended to live with the flesh being the primary part of human nature. If that’s how we live then SIN takes control, and you get Galatians 5:19-21. The spirit – our spirit – is to be the hub of our nature, character, and lives. That can be the way we live when the Spirit of God lives in us: “You are not in the flesh but in the spirit if the Spirit of God lives in you… If Christ is in you, indeed the body is dead on account of SIN but the spirit is alive through righteousness” (Romans 8:9-10).
The beast is in the house. SIN dwells in our flesh. What people struggle with is not just our own weaknesses, faults, and limitations (we do have those). It feels like it is us; it feels like our desires, our thoughts, our intuitions, and so our failure, because it is in our flesh. We struggle against a power that operates in our bodies (not demon possession). The source of many of the things we do that are inappropriate and unjust, wrong and objectionable, toxic and damaging, is the evil power that is in us, the enemy within. Wanting to do right but then doing wrong is not always hypocrisy. It is war with this SIN power. The dark power has come in and is trying to dominate everything about us.
I’ll continue this study in one more post.