You'll turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 7, which in the Pew Bible, I did look it up this week, is I think on page 1200, if the ones in the Consistory Room are the same as the ones in the Pew Racks. Page 1200, Romans chapter 7, and I want to start with verse 7, read through the end of the chapter. Romans chapter 7, beginning with verse 7, through the end of the chapter. God's holy, inspired, inerrant, infallible word. What shall we say then? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet, had it not been for the law, I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet, had the law not said, you shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin. and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do right, evil lies close in hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so that I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Congregation of the Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul, wrote this marvelous epistle to the Christian congregation. As Dr. Bergsma always says, the Christ-confessing covenant community. What a wonderful way of describing the visible institutional church. That's what we are, the Christ-confessing covenant community. And he wrote it to them to explain to them, and to us, and to all Christians, and to all the church in all times and in all places, the fundamentals of the Christian faith, but he does so in a particular context. And the summary of the book of Romans is, as I suggested earlier this morning, guilt, grace, and gratitude. The first part of the book, through most of chapter 3, is our guilt, where Paul preaches the law to teach them and us, and anyone who will listen, our need for a Savior. And then the middle part, is the gospel, the good news that not only has Jesus obeyed in our place as he says in chapter 5 and all that he did is credited to us and he was crucified for us and our sins were crucified with him. We were put to death with him and he was raised and we were raised with him and then out of that is our new life. And so chapter 6, he lays out what the new life should look like. But as you come to the end of chapter 6, you, or one, begins to think, well, that would be nice, wouldn't it, if that were what my life really were? Like, sin shall no longer have dominion over you. Really? Well, yes, it's in the Bible. But does that accurately describe the experience of the believer? It's a little bit like this. We say, and rightly so, that assurance is of the essence of faith, and yet we also recognize that because of our sin and our remaining unbelief, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief, we don't always experience the assurance that we should. But that doesn't mean that assurance is not of the essence of faith. It just means that our experience doesn't always match up with what is true of us and true for us. And so it is in the Christian life. So you say with me, we are not in experience perfect. After all, did we not just confess our sins? And was it not completely true? And could I not have gone on at much greater length about how great our sins are, even for those of us who believe. Well, yes, I could. But people get restless when the church service goes six or seven or eight hours. Hard to sit still that long. And then we'd only be making a beginning, wouldn't we? If there really were a video camera of your life, you know, hidden away in the house, one of those elf things or something, I don't know if they were there watching you, all the time, would you like to have that? That followed you around and then played that video back for everyone to see? No? No, I don't think you would. So that's the reality. And of course we recognize that reality. In Heidelberg 60, we tend to focus on the glorious truth of justification, but there is this wonderful little concessive clause in the middle of Heidelberg 60 that says, although my conscience accused me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God and have never kept any of them and am still prone always to all evil. That's the confession of the Christian, loved ones. That's not the confession of those evil reprobates out there who are not in here with us, holy and good people. This is the confession of the Christian in the middle of Heidelberg, although it is the case that we have grievously sinned against all of the commandments and have never kept any of them and are still prone always to all evil. And then in case that part of the Heidelberg, the catechism, doesn't drive that home, how about question 114? Can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly? No, but even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience, yet so that with earnest purpose they begin to live not only according to some, but according to all the commandments of God. This is our confession against those who, in the history of the church, and even today, have confessed the doctrine of entire sanctification. When Mrs. Clark was a Christian school teacher in another town, she had a student who confessed that she had reached entire sanctification. And that was the first time that either of us had ever encountered such a thing. And we were puzzled and not sure what to make of this. We were confident it wasn't true. But how is it that a 17-year-old could possibly, or anyone possibly think, and maybe even more, how a more mature person could think that they had reached entire sanctification in this life is almost impossible to imagine, except if you do two things, and that is if you redefine the law of God so that you have done it, And if you redefine sin so that you aren't doing it. But that's cheating. That's like taking the basketball hoop, which is supposed to be 10 feet, and the free throw line, which is 15 feet away, moving the free throw line forward and lowering the hoop to 5 feet and then saying, I shoot 100%. Well, yes, if you cheat, but not if you're following the rules. if you're following the rules, you're probably shooting a much lower percentage. And that's how the doctrine of entire perfection works. But we are not perfectionists. And if there's one thing that I want to communicate this morning, it's that. Because there are forces, both within and without the evangelical world, that seek to inculcate within us this doctrine, or some version of it, of entire sanctification, and to make you think that if you haven't reached entire sanctification, that there's something wrong with you, that there are two kinds of Christians, those who have and those who haven't, and of course you and I, we here, lowly, humble, Reformed Christians, are among those who, of course, have not reached entire sanctification. Well, the Word of God doesn't teach any such thing. So the question really is, before us this morning, to paraphrase Francis Schaeffer, how then should we live? Maybe that's a direct quotation. I never get that thing entirely right. Well, to answer the question, Paul explains in three points. No surprise, I guess. Verses 7 through 14, he says, the first thing that we need to know is the greatness of our sin and misery. And we'll come back to that dividing point. It's sort of arbitrary, and I'll explain why that is. What then shall we say? First thing he wants to address and clear up is that the problem is not with God's holy law. The temptation is to blame the law of God. Well, there's no fault in the law of God. There's no sin in the law of God. By definition, sin is the transgression of the law of God. The law is the standard, and we know what sin is by looking at the law. Should we conclude that the law is sin because there is sin within me? No, by no means, he says. He uses that very strong expression. The King James, I think, translated it, God forbid, may it never be, is a good translation. Yet, he goes on to say, had it not been for the law, I would not have known sin. We talk about three uses of the law, and rightly so. This is a very good distinction, the three uses of the law. And people number them differently, but this use we usually call the pedagogical use. And I don't remember if I've said this, I probably have said this here before, but in the old days, teachers used to be able, and principals, vice principals, used to be able to apply what was politely called corporal punishment. One of my vice principals was a very dapper fellow named Mr. English. He was a petite fellow, but he had, I think, a very strong right arm, because he had a paddle in which he had drilled holes for aerodynamics, and he could swing that with some considerable speed. And before that, I had Mrs. Corcoran, with whom I had a daily appointment. This is a true story. I had a desk in the principal's office in second grade. Mrs. Connor needed a break from little Mr. Clark. So up I would go on my little baton death march, up the steps, my leather shoes. And there was a big opening at the top of the steps, and it was all wood, and you could hear me coming. She could hear me coming. I could hear me coming. The footfalls were reverberating, the tall ceiling. It was an old school. It looked like a prison. We had concrete walls and fences around. And it kind of was. When you went out in the yard, it was very much like a prison yard. You had to keep your back against the wall. Pay attention. And Mrs. Corcoran would say, is that you, Mr. Clark? Yes, ma'am, here I am. So that's the idea that Paul has here. It's hard to imagine, but that's the way it was in that time, in the world that then was, in which if you did not do your lessons, or if you disobeyed, you were met with certain and swift punishment. And that's the image that Paul uses in Galatians chapter 3, when he says that the law is our pedagogue. That's why we talk about the pedagogical use of the law. it's like the vice principal. It's like Mrs. Corcoran. It teaches you your sin. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not commit idolatry. You shall not make any images. You shall rest on the Sabbath and attend worship on the Christian Sabbath. That's the moral law of God. and we transgress that, and the law comes to us and says, you've broken. That's why God gave, as the rabbis used to count, I'm not saying I get in trouble with my Old Testament colleagues when I say this, the rabbis used to count 613 commandments. There may have been more or less, I don't really care. Just the rabbis counted 613 commandments. And the purpose of all those laws was to poke the Israelites in the chest. Don't you hate that? Did your mom ever do that to you? Poke you right in the sternum? You can feel it right when I do that. You can feel it right in your sternum, can't you? I knew if I ever hit my mother, as I said last time, that would be it. Here lies little Scott Clark. He hit his mom and he was killed immediately. She didn't even need dad to do it. She could do it herself. And she would poke me in the sternum. Oh, I hated that. That's what the law does. But the difference between the law and my mother is the law is utterly holy and righteous, and every time the law pokes you in the sternum, it's right and you're wrong. That's what Paul's saying here in the first part of this passage. The law is right and we are wrong. Children, you know what I'm talking about, don't you? You know when you've done something wrong, and you know when mom says and when dad says and what teacher says, and even your catechism teacher, your Sunday school teacher, your gems, your cadets, all those folks that God has put over you, you know they're right, you know that you were wrong, because they represent, in a sense, the law, that prosecuting word of God. I, he says, would not have known what it means to covet had the law not said, you shall not covet. And of course, the law said, you shall not covet, when God said, the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die, which was a shorthand way of saying, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor, Eve, as yourself. And Paul cites here the Tenth Commandment, quite rightly, because it's the summary of the whole law. He's not just talking about covetousness, he's using this as an example, but it summarizes the whole law. But look at the dynamics between the law and sin. So the law exposes sin. But look at verse 8. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. There's a chemistry here, a terrible chemistry between the law and sin. Now, the problem is not the law. The problem is my sin. And when the law comes into contact with me because I'm a sinner, there is this sort of chemical reaction. So you're in school. And the chemistry teacher says, you put this with this, you pour them together, make sure you have your safety goggles on, and then boom, this reaction happens. Well, that's the kind of thing that Paul has in mind here. Look at, as he continues, For, whenever you see that, you know he's about to explain something, and so he explains, for, apart from the law, sin lies dead. What is he doing here? Just as the Holy Spirit makes us alive and gives life, the law relative to sinner produces death. Look at what he says, and he explains. I was once alive, and you have to put that in quotation marks. You have to put the word alive here in quotation marks, if not literally, in your mind. He wasn't actually alive, but experientially he was alive in as much as he thought that he was doing all right, that he didn't have this consciousness of sin. He thought he had mastered the law. He thought he was obeying the law. He thought he had conquered the law. He thought he was in charge of the law. And you might be struggling to understand that. How can that be? Well, when you're outside of Christ, when the Holy Spirit has it illumined your eyes and your heart and your mind, you might think that it's possible to have these things all in hand. Again, children, it's like this. You thought you had all your homework done. You really did. And then mom picked up a piece of paper and you looked underneath it. Oh my, there's three more pages. You thought you had it all in hand until the law came and showed you what you really were. Showed what the true state of things is. That's what the law does. But it only has that powerful effect when the Holy Spirit is at work through that law word of God. Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He thought he had done it. He was just like the rich young man who said, or the young man who said, I have kept all of these from my youth. I've done it. He really believed. When that fellow said that to our Lord, he really believed that he had done, in Luke chapter 10, that he had done everything the law required because he really had no idea what the law actually requires. And that is why our Lord Jesus said, do this and live, because that was the word that he had spoken before the incarnation, you understand, God the Son came to Adam and Eve and was walking in the garden with them and uttered the law. The day you eat thereof, you shall surely die, which is a negative way of saying, do this and live. That's what the law says. The law does offer life on condition of perfect and personal obedience to it. And so Jesus put that young man back under the law and said, do this and live. You think you've done all this? Go sell all you have and give it to the poor. Do this and live. You haven't done it. You just don't realize that you haven't done it. You don't realize that you can't do it. That you aren't doing it. And that's what Paul, Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He thought he had done it. He thought he had the law all in hand. Have you ever noticed how people who think they have the law in hand don't actually obey the law? That was the Pharisees. They thought they had the law in hand. They thought they were masters of the law. But they didn't actually obey the law. What's the first thing the Pharisees did when they decided that they'd had enough of Jesus? They plotted murder. I think that's against the law. And while they were plotting murder, they thought of themselves as masters of the law. When the Apostle Paul persecuted Christians, he, before he was the Apostle Paul, he thought of himself as master of the law while he consented and quite possibly triggered the martyrdom of Stephen, master of the law, with blood on his hands. For sin, he says, Verse 10, this 10 is very important. The very commandment that promised life, do this and live, the day you eat thereof, proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. It's sin that kills through the law because the law is what it is. It's utterly righteous, but sin is death. The wages of sin is death. The wages of perfect obedience is eternal life. But the wages of sin is death. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. And did that which is good bring death to me? No, the law didn't bring death by no means. It was sin. It was the chemistry, the relationship between the holy law and unrighteous me. It produced death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. It's not that it wasn't sinful, but that I might be conscious of how desperately wicked I really am. What does this mean? It means if you're outside of Christ, you are in serious, serious jeopardy. Because the holy law of God is what God is. He's holy. He's righteous. He's not your grandfather. He doesn't wink. He doesn't look the other way. he punishes sin, he will punish sin, he shall punish sin, he must punish sin, how do we know? He sent his only begotten son, and he sent him to the cross. That's how we know. Children, God doesn't play when it comes to sin. You might get away with stuff with mom and dad. You won't get away with anything relative to God. Mom and dad, that's true for you, and grandma and grandpa, that's true for you, and great-grandma and great-grandpa, that's true for you. We're not getting away with anything. All right, second. And here it gets complicated because where do we put verse 14? We know, we can tell pretty obviously that 7 through 13, he's talking about himself before he was a believer, but what about verse 14? For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. Wow. I. Does he say that as a Christian? Does he say that reflecting his pre-Christian experience? I think the best way to understand this is to say that this is what I am by nature, not what I am by grace. This is what I am by fallen nature. This is how desperately wicked and sinful we are. This is the truth about what we are in Adam, apart from grace. And this is what is true of us in as much as the old Adam, the old I, the old me, is still this way. In other words, this was true completely of Paul before he was a believer, and it continues to be true of believers even now, relative to the old me. So if you are a believer, the Holy Spirit has made you alive, given you true faith, new life, united you to Christ, and has given you, in a sense, a new self. And so there's the old self and the new self. Paul speaks of the flesh, talking about your sinful nature, and the new self, which he calls here in the next section, Verses 15 and following, that's the I. Look at verse 15. Notice the subject of the verb. This is why, aren't you glad you went to school? The subject of the verb. What's the verb? The verb is understand. We'll diagram the sentence here. What's the subject of the verb? I am the subject of the verb. For I do not understand what? My own actions. For I do not what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. That's I, right? So we started with I in verse 14. We see I in 15. And so the second thing we have to know, right? First thing is we have to know the greatness of our sin and misery. The second thing that we have to know, we answer the question, what then? is that we have to confess our ongoing struggle with sin. Paul here makes the most remarkable confession of sin. For I do not understand my own actions. I don't do what I want. These are not the words of an unbeliever. These are the words of a believer, of a Christian. Is this not your prayer, your cry? Have you not said to the Lord, I do not do what I want, but what I don't want to do, that's what I do? Verse 16. And when I say that, I agree with the law. The law is good. The problem is not the law. The problem is with me. So now he says in verse 17, it is no longer, and this is key, it is no longer I. We established I in verse 14. Saw I in 15. I in 16. But look at 17. He redefines I, or he clarifies I. So it is no longer I who do it. I'm not doing it. Not I, I as I am in Christ, I as I have a new life, true faith, a new self. I don't do it, look at this, watch very carefully, but sin that dwells within me. I'm not the new self, the new I, I'm not doing it, sin is doing it. And sin is still in me. So that's why verse 14 probably is of us. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, of the sinful nature, sold, or maybe even more literally, having been sold under sin. We cut a deal with the evil one, and we sold ourselves under sin. It's that that dwells within me. It's that that's doing it. Look at verse 18. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, and here he means by nature, after the fall. Nothing good dwells in me by nature after the fall. That is in my flesh or my sinful nature. For I have, I, the new I, I have the desire to do what is right. But I don't have the ability to carry it out. That's why we're not perfectionists. We will be perfect, but we're not perfect yet. Look at verse 19. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want to do, I keep on doing. Now if I do what I don't want, it's no longer I, it's not the new I doing it. It's sin that dwells in me. This is the very real struggle. The struggle, as they say today, is real. Let me encourage you a little bit. The struggle is not bad news, it's good news. Because unbelievers don't struggle. Unbelievers don't struggle. So verse 21, I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. Now look at verse 22, we know he's a Christian. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. Paul didn't used to delight in the law of God in his inner being. He delighted in other people thinking that he was righteous. Look at me. I'm Saul. I've obeyed all the commandments today. I'm pretty good. And Paul, the Christian, says, that which I deeply want to do in my new self, in my inner man, I'm not doing. And that which I don't want to do, I keep doing. Evil is close at hand, it's right at my feet. Indeed, he goes on to say in verse 23, In my members there's another law waging war against the law of my mind. There's a war inside of you. A war between the new you and the old you. A war between fallen nature and saving grace. And it's such a terrible law. Look at what he says. It makes me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members because any time we sin, we are enslaved to sin. It makes us a captive of sin when we sin. This is the Apostle Paul who had seen the risen Christ saying, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Loved ones, is that the cry of your heart this morning? If it's not the cry of your heart, it's perhaps because the struggle isn't real. If you look at this, if you hear this language and you say, boy, that's just bizarre, it makes no sense to me, I can't resonate with that at all, then go back and start over with point one. You don't know the greatness of your sin and misery. You don't know how much God hates your sin and how at the final judgment he's not going to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. He's going to punish all of it and all of you for all time. But if you're in Jesus Christ, if you've fled to Jesus and you've said, Savior, help me. The Egyptians are coming. I'm hopeless. I'm lost. The Red Sea is behind me. Pharaoh is in front of me. Death is surrounding me. It has me by the legs. My God, help me. That's the cry of your heart. That's the fruit of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's given you new life. Don't despair. Praise God for the struggle. Praise God for the struggle. And when you lose and when you sin and when you fail, confess your sins. You don't have to lie. You don't have to hide. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to cover up. I wish, there's a lot not to like about Alcoholics Anonymous, but there's something that we can learn from Alcoholics Anonymous. When you go to an AA meeting, and I have a lot of experience with this, first thing you do, don't worry, I'm not an alcoholic, but I know a lot of them, and I'm related to a lot of them. I know what cigarette smoke smells like, I've seen that blue cloud, I know what all the coffee smells like, and the first thing a drunk says at an AA meeting is, Hi, my name is so-and-so, and I am an alcoholic. Why can't we say that? I'm not talking about booze. I'm talking about sin. Why can't we walk into church and say, Hi, my name is Scott, and I'm a sinner. And why can't we all say back, Hi, Scott. Welcome. Why do we have to pretend? Why do we have to act like we don't have this struggle? Like it's not real? Like we have it all? Because we don't have it all together. You don't have it all together. I don't have it all together. I know because I've made pastoral visits and I know what goes on inside those finely manicured lawns and houses and polish. It's all beautiful on the outside and it's chaos and whatnot on the inside. Paul just lays all that bare, wretched man that I am. We can learn something from the drunks. There's a lot we shouldn't learn, but we can learn that kind of honesty. couldn't we well then what's the third way we respond very briefly thankfully just one verse verse 25 we respond with doxology this is the christian response to the struggle thanks be to god through jesus christ our lord even though it's the case he says that that i myself serve the law of god with my mind but with my sinful nature i serve the i serve the law of sin that's the Christian response is to praise God for Jesus Christ who saves sinners when Jesus was lugging that cross up the hill he wasn't doing it for nice people he wasn't doing it for good people he wasn't doing it for people who have the law of God under control he came for the sick and not for the healthy. So let's finish with these thoughts. Pretending is a tool of the devil. When we pretend, we give the devil a foothold. The devil does not want you to say, I am a sinner, helpless and hopeless, apart from the grace of God. Those are some of the most powerful words a Christian can ever say. Because the minute you say that, the devil has lost his opportunity to make you cover up and hide and pretend. Perfectionism is a cruel illusion. It defines sin out of existence and it dumbs down perfection. Sin is worse and perfection is more than our perfectionist friends say. Two more thoughts. Your sanctification is just as mysterious as the struggle with sin. Your sanctification, the struggle with sin is a great mystery. Didn't you hear Paul saying? How can this be? It's hard to explain, wretched man that I am. But so is your sanctification a mystery, and that's why he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Because your sanctification is happening now. You can't see it, you can't feel it, you can't measure it, but it's happening. And your sanctification is an article of faith. It is an absolute certainty. It is going to happen. It is happening. And there isn't anything you can do about it. God is going to sanctify you by the powerful work of His Holy Spirit. Let's get back. Almighty God, we praise you and bless you this morning for the grace that you have shown us in Jesus Christ. Even though we do not do what we ought and what we want and what we know to be the right thing to do, so often, even though sin clings to us, even though that we are still in this body of death, you have not abandoned us to Pharaoh and to his hosts, nor to the Red Sea, but you have saved us. Indeed, Lord Jesus, we confess that you are our red seed. Thank you. Hear our prayer, for we ask in your name. Amen.