Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the 7th chapter:
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 I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good… 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 at 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!
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
When I was younger, I used to call this the do-do passage, because Paul just keeps throwing out the dos. I don’t do what I want, I do do what I don’t want to do. There are so many dos in this passage, it’s hard to keep them all straight. But Paul, all he’s really talking about is the New Adam versus the Old Adam. He’s talking about our sinful flesh and our sinless life.
Now, maybe that’s hard to pick out. Maybe that’s even hard to make sense of. I had a professor once tell me that it was nearly impossible to read anything of Paul unless you actually bring out the whiteboard and start diagramming each sentence, each paragraph, each thought. But, instead of doing that with you this morning, I’m going to work to try to get you through this whole thing as easily as I can.
First, let us understand the Old Adam. Our old Adam is what we call our sinful flesh, that part inside of us that is rotten with sin and cannot be gotten rid of because he just keeps coming back. Paul calls this the flesh. Now, this doesn’t mean that all physical things, like our bodies are evil. Rather, Paul is making clear that our flesh is corrupted by sin.
We can see that. We can see that on the outside. With each new wrinkle, with each gray hair, with each new pain in the joint, with each new birthday, I can see myself getting older and I know that my body is, even already, beginning to fail as a result of sin. Young as I am, I’m not as young as I was.
Our flesh is visible, it’s tangible, and that’s why Paul uses it as a synonym for the Old Adam, that old sinner inside of us that is drowned daily in our baptisms, that keeps leading us into the pit of hell, that keeps trying to take us back to its father, Satan himself. This Old Adam must die, for it cannot inherit eternal life.
Yet, the New Adam, this Paul equates with the mind, which is intangible, you can’t touch it. You cannot see your mind. I’m not talking about just your brain, but your mind, the things that you think, feel, etc. Your mind is intangible, some might even say it’s more like your soul. But this New Adam, he also is intangible, because he is what rises in you in your baptisms. This New Adam is the thing that is declared righteous, does righteous things, works in cooperation with God, works to serve one’s neighbor, believes God’s promises, and correctly does everything under the Law.
This New Adam is an image of Christ, for indeed we are raised into His life, His glorious life which He won for us upon the cross of Calvary. And because we are raised in His life, it is HIS LIFE. We are raised because of Him, in Him, for Him, and with Him. This New Adam we have is an image, an icon, a picture, a mirror, of Christ Himself. This New Adam only does things that Christ does. He is holy, righteous, good, and saved.
Yet, in our flesh, we are constantly struggling with the New Adam. The Old Adam and New Adam often come to blows. Sometimes, the Old Adam takes control. As Paul says, he takes us captive into sin. We are sold into slavery. We are gone and done. But the New Adam ultimately will prevail, for if not even death could hold our Christ in the grave, how can such a weak thing as sin hold us in death? It cannot.
This is why we must remember our baptisms every day. What does this mean? It doesn’t mean that you are to remember the experience of your baptism. Good luck with that one. I have a hard enough time remembering what I did last weekend, much less something that happened to me when I was three weeks old. What remembering your baptism means is to remember the promises of your baptism, and to tie those promises to the very physical means of water that your God gave to you. Those promises are everything: the promise that God’s name is upon you, the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The promise that you are God’s child. The promise that you are forgiven. The promise that you are washed. The promise that you are saved. The promise that God is no longer wrathful toward you. The promise that God will make all things new, including yourself. And you can remember these promises all the time, when you wake, when you go to sleep, when you bathe in the morning, or the evening, when you look across the lake. You can remember with water, or without.
But the promises are there, and you know this, because the water was there. God’s promises to you are tied into the very water and Word that washed over you.
And when we remember these promises, what can the Old Adam do but shrivel up and die? After all, he was drowned in our baptisms. How can such a thing stand before the promises of God and prevail? God is the strong one, all others are under His authority. When this happens, the New Man rises up and claims his inheritance, eternal life in the Kingdom of God.
But, Paul tells us that this struggle isn’t always so clear-cut for us. In fact, it’s a losing battle for him, it seems. Now, I don’t know about you, but this gives me great hope, for if Paul, the paragon of faith, the Apostle of Apostles, if he struggles in his faith, then when I struggle, I know it’s not because God has forsaken me, but because I am God’s. My New Adam IS struggling against my Old Adam, my desire to be righteous struggles against my sin, and that means I have a New Adam, I have that which God promised me in my baptism.
But that doesn’t make the struggle any easier. Paul says that he hates to sin but he can’t stop doing it. I know that feeling. And Paul wants to do good, he loves to do good, but when he does, even his own body begins to betray him, urging him, pressing him into the slavery of evil. You see, according to our flesh, the Old Adam, our sin, there is no good that we will do. If we were depending upon ourselves, we’re out of luck. No one can stand up to God and defend his own works, because our flesh only does that which is evil.
Yet, in the New Adam, and you have the New Adam and the Old Adam both at the same time, there is also nothing evil that you can do and you cannot help but do that which is righteous. But this is why we do not depend upon ourselves. If we look to our own selves, if we look to the works that we produce, all we shall see are the think, sticky fingerprints of sin all over our works. When we look to our works for solace, for comfort, then we won’t ever see anything good, for all we will see is how we could have been better, how we should have done better, how we need to do better.
But, when we look to Christ and His works on our behalf, when we look to the baptism that He washed us in, all of the sudden, the focus is off our works and is on Christ. All of the sudden, we don’t look down, but we look up to the cross. All of the sudden, we realize that God isn’t looking at our works as damning, but He looks at them through the lens of His Son, Jesus Christ, and through Christ, all our works are redeemed, they are perfect. It doesn’t seem like it to us, but that’s because we still see our sin, and we should in this life. We should, and we should then repent.
But, in our repentance, God doesn’t see our sins for He absolves us, He forgives us. God doesn’t see our sin; He sees His Son literally inside us in Jesus’ body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. God doesn’t see our sin; He sees the blood of His Son upon our foreheads and upon our breasts, that was placed there during our baptisms. God doesn’t see our sin; He sees you completely covered, just as this alb covers my clothing. God sees the New Adam, you raised in Christ, the image of Christ in you.
And because of that, thanks be to God, because of that, He counts us righteous for Christ’s sake.
This is what Paul is getting to. He knows the depravity of his sinful flesh. He knows that he cannot do that which is good and pleasing to God. But God doesn’t see that, and God counts all things done by the Christian in service to their neighbor as good. The Law of God is holy and righteous, and it condemns our sins. Yet, the Law of God is holy and righteous, and it guides our actions in Christ. But, if we fail and fall as a Christian, if we look to our Jesus and not to how good we are but how good Christ is, we see the cross. And there, now and forever, we shall see our Jesus who has worked all things to redeem all things, even this, our body of death.
Take hope, my friends. This life is not over, but you have already been given the prize of eternal life, for you have Christ’s life, the life that can never die, never be taken, never hold Him down, and it will never hold you down. You are in Christ. He has won all for you, all righteousness, all goodness, all eternity. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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