Wrestling with sin
Readings: Romans 7.15 – 8.4, Matthew 11. 25-30
Christian faith involves living a new way, turning from sin and going God’s way. So how are we to battle against sin in our lives? Is what is needed more effort, more knowledge or something else?
Does that experience of Paul’s in that letter to the Romans sound familiar? You know what you should do, what is right, and yet you choose what is wrong. Does it feel familiar?
I remember as a teenager going to the Doctor Who experience in Cardiff Bay, they had lots of props and costumes from the show, it was great. But in one of the rooms, in front of the Daleks if I remember correctly, was a massive red button. And next to this button was a sign ‘do not press’ so what did I do? I pressed it didn’t I. And of course that immediately activated the Daleks and it was great fun. They’d set it up because they wanted you to press it, but they were playing on that impulse, you see a sign, are given a rule, your first thought is why? Why can’t I? Why shouldn’t I? I kind of want to do it more now than I did before.
Paul has been talking in these sorts of terms, in the earlier bit of this chapter, about God’s law given to his people. The law was given for good, it was meant to enable them to discern right and wrong and choose right, but as with all of us, it was like it gave sin more power. Sin is in some ways tempting on it’s own, being told something is off limits though, for some reason it adds an extra temptation. And so now Paul is wrestling in this part with the situation God’s people were left with, and that we can end up left with if we’re not careful. Knowing what is good, wrestling to do what is good and yet failing miserably.
And that can be deliberately or accidentally. We know it’s wrong to gossip, to talk about people behind their back, we know we shouldn’t, and we’d hate it if people were doing it about us. But when our friends start doing it, we want in, we don’t want to be left out, we want to be in the loop, so we choose to join in. And sometimes it’s not so deliberate, sometimes sin just gets the better of us, which doesn’t mean it’s not our fault, it doesn’t absolve us of responsibility, we still did it, but it’s recognising that there’s another power at work. For example we try to remain patient with that one friend who drives us up the wall, but after an hour with them complaining we just suddenly snap and yell at them and storm off. We tried but we failed.
Now the Jews had recognised this tension, they recognised the issue of knowing the good but not always choosing it, and so they talked about how people had two natures, two tendances or impulses, there was a good impulse and an evil impulse, and we can see echoes of that in what Paul is talking about here. And to overcome the evil impulse, they said, you needed wisdom and reason. That if you occupied yourself with the study of God’s word, if you immersed yourself in the knowledge of the law then you could use wisdom and reason to restrain this evil impulse when it reared its head.
And theoretically that should be true right. If we know what is right and good we should be able to choose what is right and good. That makes sense in a logical sort of way. And Paul has tried to live this way. Before he encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus, he was a Pharisee, he was immersed in the Scriptures, in God’s word, diligent in trying to keep it, and yet he now calls himself the worst of all sinners. Knowing the truth, knowing what is good should enable us to choose it right? And yet it doesn’t, when the rubber hits the road it isn’t so automatic, as Paul has discovered. For example, which is the healthier option: salad or chips? It’s salad isn’t it. And so when you’re at the restaurant and the person is taking your order and they ask you ‘would you like that with salad or chips’ you’ll say…? Chips. We recognise that salad is the good option, the right option, but chips are good right, they’re the tasty option. Simply knowing what is good, what is best and right, isn’t enough to enable us to choose it.
Which brings us to something which may surprise some of you. Knowledge of the Bible isn’t enough. You can memorise this whole book cover to cover, and it will not enable you to fight against sin. If we’re opening this book looking to learn what is right and wrong, and then for strategies and plans to enable us to live better lives we’ll find lots we can probably learn from, lots of wisdom and insight in here, but if that’s all we’re looking for we’ll find ourselves in the same situation as Paul is describing, knowing the good and yet so often not choosing it.
And if we’re basing our relationship with God on our performance of keeping his law, we’ll just become racked with guilt, we’ll start to wonder if he really loves us, if he still wants us. We’ll start to think he should just give up on us because quite frankly we’re ready to give up on ourselves. We’ll find ourselves crying out that we’re wretched, miserable, pitiful. How are we meant to escape this cycle, when will it end. ‘Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?’ as Paul says here. And yet no sooner has Paul said that than immediately he cries out ‘Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!’
The solution to this cycle isn’t in more effort. It isn’t in more knowledge. It isn’t even in coming up with bigger punishments to put ourselves or others off doing wrong. It’s in Jesus. And as Paul continues into chapter 8, an important moment to remind ourselves that we put in the verse and chapter divisions much later to make it easier to find stuff, there are no chapters in the original and actually they can artificially obscure things accidentally. As he continues ‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’. God’s law diagnoses the problem, it helps us all to see how we aren’t living as we should, it helps us to better see what’s wrong in our world and what’s wrong in us, but it was never meant to finish there. God doesn’t just want to give us knowledge of his rules, of what is right and good, he wants us know him, the source of all that is right and good.
He wants us to know him as the one who came in the person of Jesus to break the cycle. To bear all our sin and guilt and shame on his shoulders on the cross and to plunge it all down into death to leave it there. There is now no condemnation for us who are trusting in him, our sin has already been condemned in him. It’s gone, dealt with, forgiven. And he was then raised to new life, so that we can be raised with him into new life, life that is marked not by this endless cycle of knowing the good but choosing the bad, but marked by knowing him. As he himself says in our Gospel reading today ‘Come to me…and I will give you rest’.
And it’s knowing him that starts to change us. We can know what he wants, that’s good, but it’s even better to know him. I can know that Katy wants me to put the bins out, or do the clothes washing, but that in and of itself doesn’t mean I will do it. Now before I get something thrown at me, I can choose to do it out of duty, Katy wants me to do it so I’ll do it, but a far better reason to do it, a far better reason is because I love her. I want her to be happy, and one of us is going to have to do it, so I’ll choose to so that she doesn’t have to. In the same way we can know what God wants us to do, but it’s far better to know God too, for then we have a deeper reason to do it, a more joyous motivation. And we’ll also now have knowledge of the one who asks, knowing that he is for our good.
And as we get to know him more he more greatly delights us, and choosing what is good becomes easier when it delights us. Sweets and chocolate are great aren’t they, they delight us even though they’re bad for us. But have you ever eaten too many, you start to feel rubbish don’t you, sluggish and bleh. And actually in those moments, provided you haven’t gone really overboard and are feeling sick, a few grapes or the bite of an apple is quite refreshing, it’s so much nicer. The good is now better than what we thought we wanted.
The more we get to know God the less appealing our sins become, the better spending time with him or doing what is good starts to feel. Because in coming into relationship with him, having been restored to that relationship through the cross, we are given the Holy Spirit, the Spirit to dwell within us. And his Spirit empowers us to live for him, as we read the Bible and discover more of what is good and right and what is wrong, the Spirit empowers us to better choose the right. Empowers us to use those strategies and wisdom to battle sin in his power. And the Spirit also enables us day by day to truly delight in what is good and be less interested in what is bad for us.
My brothers and sisters, knowing the good is one thing, it’s a good thing, but if that’s all we have then we end up in that cycle of misery, knowing the good but unable to consistently do it. But in knowing Jesus, in knowing God, we can know the forgiveness that he brings when we do sin, the mercy and love and new life that he offers. And we can know him, the one who delivers us, who loves us and rejoices over us, who longs for our good and whom in relationship with will strengthen us to do what is right through the power of the Holy Spirit. With just knowledge of the good we are fighting sin with wooden swords and cap guns, but in coming to Jesus who delivers us, in whom there is no condemnation, we are given forgiveness, new life, new relationship and new power in the fight. ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened’ says Jesus ‘and I will give you rest’. As we go out into the week ahead, as we battle with sin, we go out not in our strength, but in the power of the one who strengthens us.
Amen.