Romans 7:15-25a Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul simply can’t understand what he does. He repeatedly asserts that he knows what’s right and holy. Yet the apostle also just as persistently insists that he doesn’t do what he knows is right and holy.

Throughout approximately the first quarter of his letter to the Romans, Paul talks a lot about sin’s universal scope. He grieves that all people sin and fall short of the glory of God. On top of that, he notes that we naturally neither want to be rescued nor have the power to rescue ourselves from that mess.

Yet in Romans 3 Paul abruptly turns from talking about sin to talking about salvation. Right after insisting in verse 20 that “no one will be declared righteous in [God’s] sight by observing the law,” in verse 21 he abruptly pivots to, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been revealed.”

The apostle then goes on to talk about how God graciously views and treats God’s adopted children as righteous. As a result, we have peace with God and eternal life through the amazing work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. God also gives Jesus’ friends the ability to obey the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Why, then, does the apostle spend so much time in Romans 7 in a sense returning to grieving sin’s power in his life? Perhaps he’s being little more than candid about his sins. The apostle may even realize that there’s little point in church leaders being anything less than honest about our persistent sinfulness.

Preachers can admit that we’re no more perfect than any of the people who listen to us. For example, members of my church who have ever watched a close Michigan football game with me know that I’m deeply flawed. I know what I should have done not just yesterday and last week but also already today. But I haven’t always done it. I have all too often done what I hated rather than what I wanted to do.

Preachers can also confess even when we want to do what’s good, evil is right there stubbornly bugging us to do it rather than good. Preachers who even imply otherwise undermine not only our but also, far, far more importantly, the gospel’s credibility.

Yet as my colleague Will Willimon, from whom I borrowed some of this commentary’s themes, notes, there seems to be more than just honesty in Paul’s expressions of his frustration with his sinfulness in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. After all, while in verse 16 he refers to the law as “good,” throughout the rest of our text, he also points out that good law’s limitations.

A few years ago an Alabama judge named Roy Moore commissioned a monument of the Ten Commandments to be placed in the front of Alabama’s Supreme Court building. He claimed it marked “the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people.” Yet the reminders of the commandments didn’t make Alabama or its citizens any more moral than Maryland, Michigan or Ontario’s.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s commands help shape what God’s dearly beloved people want to do in thankful response to God’s amazing grace. But those commands don’t and, in fact, can’t change our actions. They have no power to make us do what they tell us to do. In fact, Paul later says those commands even somehow tempt us to disobey them.

So, for example, the Bible calls us to feed the hungry and care for society’s vulnerable members. Yet God’s dearly beloved people sometimes get either so busy or distracted that we neglect those central tasks. It’s vital that Christians continue to learn God’s will for our lives as well as pass on that knowledge the next generations. But it’s perhaps equally important to remember that such knowledge doesn’t guarantee obedience.

Some of Jesus’ friends are what Willimon calls “recovering perfectionists.” We long to do good by obeying the Lord. We try to do things like care for creation and love people unconditionally. Yet recovering perfectionists may especially easily become frustrated and even angry with our stubbornly sinful selves. What’s more, when Christians disobey God, it’s tempting to quit trying to respond to God’s grace with our faithful obedience.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson at least implies that even recovering perfectionists can be patient with ourselves. In fact, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper demonstrates God’s amazing patience with us. A form for its celebration that the denomination to which I belong calls us “not to be deterred [from taking the Lord’s Supper] by any sin lingering within against our will.” God, in fact, we go on to profess, invites those who “find faith, hope and love within us” to “gladly obey our Lord’s command and come with full expectation to God’s open house of mercy” that is the Lord’s Supper.

The truth of that invitation and Romans 7 also affects the way we view other people. It is, after all, very tempting for Christians to criticize Christians who publicly struggle to be obedient. We’re even tempted to exclude them from the church and its sacraments until they’ve completely cleaned up their actions.

Yet preachers might invite their hearers to imagine what it would be like to have Paul be a member our own particular churches. He’d know more than any of us about God, as well as God’s ways and purposes. Paul would also probably often tell us what God both wants and equips us to do.

Yet he’d also repeatedly do the kinds of things he hates. The apostle wouldn’t always carry out the good things he desired to do. Preachers might wonder aloud if the churches we serve would elect Romans 7’s Paul to be our pastor, or even an elder or deacon. I’m not even sure we’d want to contract him to clean our building or trim our trees.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson text frees Jesus’ friends to be honest about our struggles to respond to God’s amazing grace with our obedience. Yet it also graciously frees us to be patient with our own as well as each other’s sins and shortcomings. Of course, no follower of Jesus has any good excuses for disobeying God. God, after all, through Jesus Christ, has both rescued us “from this body of death” and fully equips us to do what’s good. Yet when we don’t do that for which God rescues and equips us, there’s good news. “There is,” Paul insists in Romans 8:1, “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

So God’s dearly beloved adopted children’s consciences and the evil one may condemn us for disobeying the Lord. Yet God doesn’t join that sometimes-shrill chorus. God, instead, not only calls but also treats us as God’s beloved and accepted children. God also, in turn, summons us to view and treat each other in the same way.

Illustration

Will Willimon tells a story about his father-in-law’s retirement from the ministry. Rev. Parker told his church’s worship planners that he wanted “some sweet soprano voices to sing his favorite, ‘The Ninety-and-Nine’” at his retirement service.

Parker’s farewell sermon tried to plumb the depth, the height and width of God’s love. In it he talked about a man who was scheduled to die in his church’s state of South Carolina’s electric chair the following day.

People had recently held a service of remembrance for that man’s victims and their families.  During it the preacher had said he wished authorities would let him throw the switch on what he called “this worthless piece of refuse that destroyed those innocent lives.”

After describing some of the man’s crimes, Parker noted that the songs the soloists had sung and the Scriptures point to God’s love for the man on death row. He reminded his increasingly silent congregation that God loved that man and valued his soul just as much as God’s valued his church members’.

“According to Jesus’ story of the Lost Sheep,” Parker continued, “God will gladly leave us ninety-and-nine gathered here in the fold this morning and go to Columbia to death row to get hold of that one lost sheep. And when God finds him, God’s more happy to have him than to have all the safe ones here in church.”

Willimon concludes his reflections on that story by drolly noting, “At the end of that service, the congregation seemed a lot more willing to let Pastor Parker go and retire.”