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NASB | Romans 7:19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 7:19 For the good that I want to do, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. |
Subject: Paul's evil practices Pre or PostJesus |
Bible Note: Hi Tim, The following is from a sermon by John Piper. I prefer to post my personal views but Piper has said what I would have said had I his gifts. To answer this question I need to tell you where I stand on who this divided man is. Remember from last week, some say Romans 7:14-25 is Paul's description of his experience before he was a Christian; and some say that it is his description of his experience as a Christian. Well, I think the second position is right. Paul is speaking about himself here as a Christian. Let me say immediately that I do not mean we should settle in and coast with worldly living and a defeatist mentality. We should not make peace with our sin; we should make war on our sin. Defeat is not the only, or the even the main, experience of the Christian life. But it is part of it. I agree with J. I. Packer who wrote an article on this passage two years ago to defend the view that I am taking here. He said Paul is not telling us that the life of the "wretched man" is as bad as it could be, only that it is not as good as it should be, and that because the man delights in the law and longs to keep it perfectly his continued inability to do so troubles him acutely. . . . The "wretched man" is Paul himself, spontaneously voicing his distress at not being a better Christian than he is, and all we know of Paul personally fits in with this supposition. So I think what Paul is saying is not that Christians live in continual defeat, but that no Christian lives in continual victory over sin. And in those moments and times when we fail to triumph over sin, Romans 7:14-25 is the normal way a healthy Christian should respond. He should say, · I love the Law of God. Verse 22: "I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man." · I hate what I just did. Verse 15: "I am doing the very thing I hate." · Oh the wretchedness I feel in these times! I long for deliverance from this body that constantly threatens to kill me, and that I have to mortify day after day. Verse 24: "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (see Romans 6:6; 8:10, 13). Nobody should want to live this way. Or settle to live this way. That's not the point. The point is, when you do live this way, this is the Christian response. No lying. No hypocrisy. No posing. No vaunted perfectionism. Lord, deliver us from a church like that - with its pasted smiles, and chipper superficiality, and blindness to our own failures, and consequent quickness to judge others. God give us the honesty and candor and humility of the apostle Paul. So that is the view I want to defend. Romans 7:14-25 is part of Christian experience - not ideal, but real. You may read His seron in it's entirety at: http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/01/060301.html By the way, Piper does not think that regenerate Paul or unregenerate Paul affects the meessage one way or the other. I'm not as certain as he is and it is something I'll pray about. Thanks Tim, John |