“Set Me Free” | Romans 7 and the Battle With Sin

In this sermon from Romans 7, we explore one of the most relatable struggles in the Christian life: the battle between our desire to serve God and the reality of our ongoing struggle with sin.

Paul reminds us that the Law reveals God's holiness and exposes our sin, but it cannot save us. Even the most faithful believers experience an inner conflict between the flesh and the spirit. The good news is that our hope is not found in perfect rule-keeping, but in the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

Key themes include:

•  The purpose of God's Law 
•  Why sin is "utterly sinful" 
•  Paul's personal struggle in Romans 7 
•  Freedom from legalism and self-righteousness 
•  The power of Christ to deliver us from sin 

"Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25)

Whether you're struggling with temptation, guilt, or feelings of spiritual failure, this lesson points us back to the One who truly sets us free. 

#Romans7 #SetMeFree #ChristianSermon #BibleStudy #ChurchOfChrist #Gospel #JesusChrist #Faith #Grace #FreedomInChrist #ChristianLiving #PaulTheApostle #BibleTeaching #Salvation #RomansSeries

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Good morning. If you're visiting, we're certainly glad you're here with us today. We hope that uh your time with us is one that you feel encouraged and that you have a time where you draw closer to God and you realize how important God is for you. And we just hope that you uh leave this place tonight or today, feeling encouraged, inspired, not because of me, but because of God, because of these people, because of the awesome songs we've been singing, the scriptures that we have read, and drawing close in communion with God. Thank you very much for those songs, they're awesome. And I I mean they're sermons in themselves. Uh, Nate, thank you for your uh lesson at the table. Thank you for the reading of the scripture, it was done marvelously. And uh, since most of my sermon has already been done, let's have the invitation. Turn your Bible to Romans chapter 7. Now, Romans chapter 7 is not just meant to be by itself, the book of Romans is a big treatise, treatise, or however you want to say it, that Paul writes to the Roman Christians, there's so much in it, it's packed full of powerful things. And if you're like me, you've noticed from the very beginning, and all these weeks we've been talking about Romans, you keep seeing a lot of the same things come up. One of the things we see over and over again is sin. And I I don't know about you, I get tired of hearing about sin, right? Like, Paul, can't you be done with that by now? Can't we move on to something more encouraging? But Paul is showing us from the very beginning that we have a problem, and we can minimize it, and as a Christian, we can still minimize it and get used to the fact that we have grace, and we forget how ugly and how powerful one sin is in our relationship to God. I've entitled this lesson Set Me Free. Set me free. A few years ago we had six chickens. We had I we had a little chicken coop kind of built, it had a place for the chickens to roost and lay their eggs, and we had it caged in so critters like foxes couldn't get in there. We let them out during the day, they couldn't mess around the yard. That's not the point. We put them back inside, lock them up. I might have shared the story with some of you before, but I'm gonna say it again. It's a story that is interesting to me because one day I went out to check the eggs, see if the eggs were there, the chickens are doing their job, and we'll go in there, and there's a little blue parakeet with the chickens. And I go, what? How in the world did a parakeet get in with the chickens? Parakeets in the United States, as far as I know, they're not just wild, you just don't see them flying all over the place. Parakeets are generally in a cage, they are imprisoned in a cage, and you buy these at the pet store. I don't know why you would, but you you buy these birds and you take them home. Some people let birds out and they poop on everything. I don't know if you're supposed to say that from the pulpit. But anyway, they do. But here was this little parakeet that somehow got free. Freedom! He flies out, he's on his own, yippee! A free parakeet. And then somehow he decided to crowd in the new bars of the chicken coop. He found a new place to be a prisoner, and he didn't really fit in well. He shouldn't have been there, he wasn't supposed to be in there, and and it was funny. We took some pictures. I wish I had one to show you, but one of the greatest pictures we ever took was a chicken in the roof trying to lay an egg and the parakeet right next to him. And then he looked over, and the chicken looked at him, and the parakeet did not know what in the world it meant to be a chicken, but he was trying. But anyway, eventually he got freedom again because he he got out somehow and escaped, and he probably died in the winter. I don't know. That's kind of a sad story, but anyway, it was an awesome story. I just I love that little parakeet. I went out to see the parakeet, not the chickens, while he was in there. But like the parakeet, we also are in a bondage. We have a bondage. We've been talking about that in our Bible class, we talk about that in other things in our songs. We have been bound by sin, and and then and the old covenant people were bound to the law. Prisoners. And yet, well, let's just talk about a few things. In the very beginning of Romans, Paul starts out by saying this, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. From the very beginning, Paul says there's something that sets us free, and it's the gospel, it's the message of Jesus Christ. I'm not ashamed of that message. Are you ashamed of the message? It's God's power for salvation. He goes on to talk about how we're all sinners, and we need we need Jesus. It doesn't matter who you are, if you're a Jew, if you're a Gentile, you can start thinking you're all that. And and for a time, Paul thought he was everything. He was he was spotless in keeping the law. Read Philippians chapter 3. Let's look at that real quick. Philippians 3. Chapter 1. All right, chapter 3, verse. Uh let's see. I'll start with verse 5. Verse 4. I thought I had confidence in the flesh. If anyone has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as a zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. How many of us can have a statement like that? According to the scriptures of the New Testament, I am found blameless. If you can say that, raise your hand, but don't, I don't want to see it. I'll know you're lying. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Paul says in Romans chapter 3, 23. There's none righteous, no, not one. Paul thought he was. He goes on to say, Whatever things were gained to me, I count those as lost for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. I count them but rubbish or dung or that which you flushed down the toilet. I count all that other stuff as that in comparison to Christ, that I may gain Christ, be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law. That phrase is important to our lesson today. The righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith is what Paul has now. I want to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I've already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which I was also laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize at the upper call of God in Christ Jesus. That's the way we should be. None of us have attained perfection. Those of us who are Christians have obtained eternal life. We've obtained forgiveness, we've obtained freedom. And yet we still have some problems. And that's what Romans 7 talks about. Everybody needs God's power to be saved. We read that verse already in Romans 3. So why Romans 7? We see in Romans 3 through 6, we're made righteous only through Jesus, we're justified only by Jesus, we're saved from the wrath of God through Jesus. We are baptized into Christ, into Christ Jesus, that our body of sin might be crucified, that we raise a new creature, we have new life. He says the wages of sin is death in chapter 6. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ, Jesus our Lord. Those are all important scriptures. And he's telling us we have a sin problem, but God takes care of it through Jesus. So let's look at chapter 7, verses 1 and following. Oops, I guess I'm back there. Okay. Or do you not know, brethren, I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over person as long as he lives. For the married woman is bound by her by law to her husband while he is living, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to him who is raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we are in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. So in chapter verse four and five, we see there's fruit bearing. In Christ we bear fruit for God. When we're not in Christ, when we live in sin, we bear fruit for death. Now, the uh this the example of the married woman being bound her husband. You may be wondering why is Paul talking about marriage and divorce and all that? He's not trying to have a sermon on that right here. He is using it as an example for the text that we're talking about. He's talking to people who have been, some of these Christians have been Jews in the past, or they're still Jews, but they used to be under the law. And they are bound to those laws, and they they want to keep those laws. The laws are so important to them. It was ingrained to them and in them. Remember Deuteronomy chapter 6. Let's take a quick look at that to remind ourselves how important the laws of God were to the Jews. Chapter 6 of Deuteronomy, verse 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and that and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Look at verse 13. You shall fear only the Lord your God, you shall worship him and swear by his name. Verse 17, you should diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. You shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you, that you may go in and possess the good land which the Lord swore to give your fathers. I know that's a lot of stuff we've we've read this many times, but for the Jewish people, that was kind of the core of their life. Wasn't kind of it was. Okay, and you didn't have to raise your hand. I am one of those people, I don't like to be told what to do. You can call me rebellious, you can call me ridiculous, you can call me John, whatever you want to call me, right? You can call me silly, I don't like taking orders. That can be a problem. I like my freedom, I like to do things my way. How about you? A lot of people don't like the rules of the church, the things that we find in New Testament scriptures as well. We're not even talking Old Testament, we're talking New Testament. There are things that God has written for us to obey, to do, to be right with Him, to have the right worship service that glorifies God. There are some people that don't like those rules and regulations, they would just rather tweak them. We like freedoms. And on the other hand, we have people who want to keep every everything. Got to do this, you gotta do that, gotta do this. And we add rules even today, just like they did back then. I'm gonna throw this out there if people may not like the statement, but sometimes we say if you don't go to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and every time the doors are open, you're a sinner. Those are added rules. What's what the Bible says is love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. God didn't say every time the doors open, you gotta be there, or you're you're wrong. And I'm not advocating you don't come to Bible class. Let me get that strict. Our Bible classes are for edification, our strengthening, for the encouragement of the church. They're good things. What I am saying is if you trust that to save you, you are just like the Pharisees. If your system of being right with God is making sure you do all the right things and all the stuff the church expects you to do, and that's your system of righteousness, you are wrong. We don't do those for righteousness to be right with God. We do it because we love God and we want to know Him better. We want to love the people, we want to love on God's people better. We want to help each other make this journey to heaven the best way we can. I don't even know what I got up here on the screen, but the Old Testament law had authority over a person as long as that person lived, and the and the marriage relationship was that same way. And so Paul is using that example, and I'm not going to go into that more about the marriage thing, but it's saying if there's a law and you die, you don't have to keep it. I told my wife as I was studying for this. I mean, it's like, you know, we have speed limit rules. How many of you knew that? Right? And so there are some places the speed limit says 65. And you put your crews at 68. Because we're pressed, we're pushing the police have a certain amount of grace, and we're banking on the grace. Well, anyway, whatever it is with your speed limit, when I die, I am not bound to drive 65 anymore. Woohoo! I can drive as fast as I want. If I can drive, I doubt that God has cars, but what I'm saying is when you're alive, there are laws to be obeyed. When you die, you're not underbound to that. And that's what he's saying. Christ died to get rid of that bondage to the law, and so you're thinking, well, why do we have the law in the first place? And that's what he goes on to talk about. In verse 6, we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the spirit, not in the oldness of the letter. New and old, a lot of times that have a connotation to us. We think new is better. And sometimes it is, and in this case it is. The new covenant, the new arrangement that God has for us is much better than the old one. We've talked about it many times here. I mean, I'm so glad I don't have to have a sheep that I've raised, and then I got to take it to the priest and watch him cut his throat. I'm glad I don't have to do that. But what we do need to do is look at the cross and see how Jesus was bled out as a sacrifice for your sins and my sins. It's a much better arrangement, but it is so serious. We have to be careful that we don't place our righteousness on doing all the rules and the right regulations. We place our faith and our salvation on the blood of Jesus. Paul goes on to say, What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. For I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, You shall not covet. But sin taking opportunity through the commandment produced in me coveting of every kind, coveting of every kind, for apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. And this commandment which was to result in life proved to be result in death for me. For sin, taking an opportunity, deceived me and through it killed me. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be. Rather, it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. That last phrase I want you to look at again. To God, sin is not just sin. It is excessively sinful in light of the holiness of God. We can make light of those of sin. We can we we if it's not if it's ours, we kind of say it's not that bad. If somebody else is, oh man, they're in trouble. So Paul is saying, the old law, the covenant of God, the laws that God has prescribed, they are good, they are holy, they are righteous because they tell us of the character of God. That's what it boils down to is the holy God who gave these things. He wants us to know the standard of excellence it takes to be in his presence. How many of us can keep all those laws? Goose egg. Only Jesus. Us? Nobody. And if you just send one, somewhere in the scripture says if you if you just sin, do one of those Ten Commandments wrong, you you're as good as doing them all wrong. See, that's where we get it wrong. Well, I just lie a little bit, I don't kill too many people. Well, I didn't kill anybody last week, so I'm pretty good, but I did lie to somebody, so I'm I'm okay. No, one lie is equal to killing somebody according to the scriptures, because Jesus or God says through Paul. Through inspiration of the Holy Spirit, sin needs to be seen as utterly sinful. Don't take it lightly. Speaking of, don't take it lightly, look at Romans chapter 2. I'm going to backtrack a little bit on our study of Romans, but in chapter 2, verse 1, you have no excuse, every one of you who passes judgment, for in that you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. See, that's the righteousness of God. He's perfect. He has the right to say what sin is. We don't have the right. But God loves us enough to let us know what's right and wrong. Verse 3. But do you suppose this, O man, that when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same thing yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Look at verse 4. Or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God who will render to each person according to his deeds, to those who are in per to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life. But to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil. The Jew first, and also of the Greek. A glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. There is no partiality with God. So sometimes Christians, I'm just gonna throw this out here. We can become light thinkers of the amazing grace of God. That's why I think Paul is writing this section of part of the reason why in chapter 7 he wants people to understand you can't trust your soul on keeping all the rules. God's not gonna make sure you keep them all the rules, because he already knows you can't. That's why before we were created, God had a plan for Jesus to go to the cross. He knew we can't keep rules. We're a bunch of rebels. Even when we want to do what's right, we still mess up. That's what Paul's gonna get into next. Well, what do we got up here? Without the law, sin is dead. The law exposes what truly we are. So sin's power is exposed to the law. The law is good, holy, spiritual. The flesh is utterly sinful, and it puts us into bondage. We've talked about that in our Bible class. By the way, if you didn't listen to the Bible class this morning, perhaps you can watch it online. Uh, George did an excellent job. So let's look briefly at this part here. And this part here is one of the most debated scriptures in Romans by people who study it. There are some people who think there's no way Paul's talking about himself. I mean, look at Paul. If you pick your greatest Bible hero in the New Testament besides Jesus, who would it be? Maybe Peter, maybe Paul. Right? There's a lot of good heroes of faith in the New Testament. But Paul was one of those guys you just look at him and you say, Man, that guy's awesome. He's got zeal, he's got knowledge, he's got wisdom, he's got power, he's got faith. How can he write this and mean it was talking about himself? Some people believe he's talking about other people or sinners before they became Christians. That does not fit. It does fit for us as Christians, and it fit Paul because I want you to think about something. We already read all the scripture, so I'm not going to read it all again. But there's this conflict of two natures here. He says, No longer am I the one doing it. I say, verse 16. If I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the law, confessing the law is good. No longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I know that nothing good dwells in me. He doesn't mean that literally, because all of us can do good things. But he's saying, in in contrast, he says, in my flesh, in my worldly thinking, that's not good. The willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. What I want to do, I don't do. I practice the very thing I don't want to do. And I would imagine, no, I would say this is a fact. Everybody here who is a Christian has at times had those very same thoughts. And I'm going to say to you, according to Paul, Paul is probably the most spiritual man I can see in the New Testament, or one of them. He's so powerful, so in tune to God. And I believe that the more he knew God, the more sin hurt him. The more in tune he was to his own sin, that when he wrestled with sin in his life, it was just a struggle. Paul is not saying that I just go on, I'm just doing whatever I want to do as a sinner, and it hurts. You know. That can happen if we sin a lot, we get used to it, we get callous to it. That's not this text. Paul is not teaching this from a calloused heart. He's teaching it from one that sees the glory of God and he knows he does not measure up. How many times in the scriptures do he say, I'm the chiefest of sinners? For what I used to do, he had a hard time forgiving himself, even though God forgave himself. But it wasn't just that. Anytime he would have a sin in his life, these were the things that were in his mind. What Christian amongst us or in the world does not have an evil thought sometimes? What Christian does not wish he could kill somebody, but he doesn't, so he keeps the law. How many of us actually have said a lie since we've become a Christian? How many of us have gone over the spin limit? Break some rules, and we justify them. How many of us do this, that, and we all do? What Paul is saying is it hurts me when I do this. I don't know why I did it. I was trying to figure it out, but I think it's at least 50 years ago I was watching television. Yeah, I watched it back then. And there was a show, it was called the Flip Wilson Show. How many know the Flip Wilson show? Just the old people. Three of us. And in the old Flip Wilson show, it was a comedy. He was a comedian. Flip Wilson was a comedian. And one of his things that he did was he dressed up like a woman back when you could do that on TV and get away with it. And he dressed like a woman, and he was kind of heavy, and he was kind of this religious woman, but he would his name was Gerald Dean. And he had this whole gig about that. And people would laugh. He'd talk about stuff, and he and she'd do stuff that was wrong, and she'd laugh about it. She'd say, Well, the devil made me do it. The devil made me do it. And we would laugh. We kind of see that here as like we have two natures. It's kind of like the angel here, and the good angel and the bad angel. You've seen those pictures, or the devil and God, whatever. We have part of us, we want to do what's right, and one of us says, I don't know. It's kind of fun. Or this is what I'm thinking, and it's not right, but God forgive me, and God will forgive us. But we don't want to be like the comedy where we laugh at the fact that, well, you know, the devil made me do it. Paul's not saying the devil made him do it, even though it kind of sounds that way. Sin gets in our minds because the law has been written. God tells us what's right, and we seem to be like a child. When you tell a child, don't touch it, it's hot. What does a child do? Touches it. My niece Kendra, who is now a mom of kids in their teens, when she was young, we went to play games with my brother and sister-in-law. And that day, my sister-in-law had baked cookies, and she told Kendra, don't touch the cookies. We opened up the cookie jars, we're playing carts. Took a cookie out and there was a bite out of it. Took another cookie out, there's a bite out of it. We took every cookie out of it, has a bite out of it. You tell a child not to do something, what do they do? They do it. And I'm here to tell you, it's human nature. When we see the Bible says don't do it, our mind flips over there and thinks about it a bit. It's possible that we can struggle with sin, and we do struggle with sin. All of us are sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God. Well, I'm not looking at my notes very good. The inner war. I do what I don't want to do. The dire desires there, the power to carry it out sometimes, is it? In Psalm 119, verse 176. This is the last verse of Psalm 119, which is about the holy word of God and the righteous precepts of God. And it's just, I love the word of God, I love it, I love it. And the writer still says at the very end, I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments. You see, even the most holy people, people who write the Psalms, people who write New Testament scriptures, have times in their life where sin crops up. You can discard it and act like it's no big deal. Or you can be like Isaiah when he saw the holy, holy, holy God, the throne room scene, and the angel said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. That Isaiah just melted in a spot, and he said, Woe is the unruin. I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst the people of unclean lips. Isaiah, when he saw how holy God was, said, I deserve to die. And he was a prophet of God. Here we have a prophet, a preacher, Paul. And he's saying that when you know who God is, sin needs to hurt your heart this much. Let's not get callous to the sin in our lives. It's so hard for us to do what's right. We try, but God says to the scriptures, your best efforts will not save you. You will not be rescued by going to church three times a week and restuding your Bible every day for an hour. That will not rescue you. You will not be rescued for helping so many people across the street and praying for everybody in this congregation. That will not save you. Jesus' blood's sake. Paul goes on to say, verse 23, I see a different law in the members of my body, waging a war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of the sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death? And the church could say, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He's the answer. He always will be in your life. So as you struggle with your life, just praise God for salvation in Jesus. Praise God for forgiveness. If you think you're not a sinner, read 1 John chapter 1 again, and it's going to tell you you're lying to yourself. But the message in 1 John 1 also is when you confess your sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive you of all your sins. Not just the ones that you can let go of, even those you have a hard time letting go of, God will forgive them through the blood of his son Jesus. So walking in freedom, what does that mean? We've got to stop relying on our own strength. Your flesh will always fail. It doesn't mean stop trying. Not a bit. But acknowledge the war honestly that you have with sin or evil thoughts or whatever it is. We're not here to talk about what things were going on with Paul, and it's not our place to wonder what's going on with somebody else. It's your place to examine your heart before God and say even one sin is utterly sinful annexed to the holiness of the holy, holy, holy God. Surrender every day to Jesus. He alone is our deliverer. So here's three things as we close. The law is good, it reveals sin, but the law cannot save us. The flesh is where we live, we wage war, we want to do right. We can't always do right, even though we want to do right. Keep reading your Bibles, keep praying, keep seeking the kingdom of God first. Be like Paul. And remember, your victory is only through Jesus Christ our Lord. This morning, if you have need for forgiveness, you need encouragement of the church, we're here to encourage you if we can. There may be somebody here who has not yet had their sins washed away, they have not obeyed the gospel. Perhaps you know now your sin is exceedingly great, and it's going to kill you literally and spiritually for all eternity, unless Jesus saved you and sets you free. If you're ready to obey the gospel, we're here to help you through all.