Proper 9: Epistle, Romans 7:14-25a

So we find ourselves this week at one of those places in the Bible that has caused the spilling of much ink, the voicing of many opinions and I dare say probably a raised voice or two in its discussion. But that is a good thing. Why? Because it means that those who encounter here what Paul is attempting to drive home are truly richer believers for all that was mentioned above. Romans 7, “the back half,” as I like to label it, is the focused meandering of a man who knows he’s in a fix, but in the end knows well the blessed escape. 

Let’s just look at a few statements of the Apostle Paul’s (and our) dilemma. Verse 14, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.” Yikes! Verse 18, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh.”  Deep sigh. And finally verse 21, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.” Ugh. Have you ever spilled something on yourself that is the devil to clean? Or better, that causes you to ball up your garment and just throw it away? That’s the sense I get here from Paul and this is my shorthand for our problem: “Sin is in my skin.”

Many over the centuries have made the mistake here that “the flesh” to which Paul refers is to be taken literally, i.e. the stuff of which we are made. But here Paul is pointing to the “inner stuff” of mankind before Jesus. Our sinful nature, inherited from our first parents. Our bodies are not evil in themselves, but the “driver,” the “old man” as Luther loved to call him, gives us fits. And even though in Jesus Christ we have the overwhelming solution to this dilemma, it is right for us to remember just what an immense thing it is to be lost. Without Christ Jesus. Without hope. And then to realize that the ongoing struggle for the final manifestation of what Jesus has accomplished for us is real and at times thoroughly frustrating (revisit verse 21).

But then the cold sweet waters of verse 25a. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” is the answer to Paul’s desperate question and ours in verse 24. And remember, the answer is a past and finished event. The cross and the empty tomb. That knotty dilemma  which Romans 7, “the back half,” painfully exposes, also finds its end in the glorious light of gospel truth which is more than able to untie the knot. Thanks be to God, indeed.