Paul is an example of the pursuit of holiness and also our inability. Dr. Sproul discusses movements that create two tier Christians such as deeper life and Spirit filled life movements that promise perfection rather than a much greater level of sanctification. An introduction into how the will works is started.

We continue now our study of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, and we are still in the seventh chapter. Today, I will repeat verse 14, which I looked at briefly last week. I will read through the end of the chapter, so I will read Romans 7:14–25. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word:

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Dear friends, this is the Word of God for you, for your comfort, for your instruction, and for your edification. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Lord, as we come to this severely difficult portion of this epistle, again we beg for Your assistance by the illuminating power of the Holy Ghost, who indeed is the Spirit of truth, without whose assistance our hearts and minds would be shut out against that truth. But now, let us hear it in its purity. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Paul’s Struggle in Sanctification

When we began our study of chapter 7, I mentioned that apart from Romans 9, which is perennially controversial because of its clear teaching on the doctrine of God’s sovereign grace in election, chapter 7 has historically been the focal point of very serious theological controversy. That controversy has not ended even in our own time, and the focus of that controversy has to do with whether it is possible and important for the Christian to achieve a state of moral perfection in this life, prior to entering into glory.

Several movements in church history have taught the idea that in addition to the singular moment of regeneration, by which we are brought to faith, and the consequent justification, there is also a second work of grace that is as equally instantaneous and equally wrought by the power of the Holy Ghost as that first work of grace in regeneration. This second work of grace, it is postulated, effects instant, complete sanctification in the life of the Christian.

The most important biblical text that militates against such a doctrine of a second work of grace, which produces instant sanctification, is the text I have just read to you in Romans 7. In this chapter, the Apostle Paul writes in the present tense about this painful, ongoing struggle in his life and the conflict between walking according to the Spirit and still surrendering to elements of the vestigial remnants of the flesh. Obviously, at least at the time Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, he had not yet accomplished or reached this second work of grace.

The advocates of perfectionism of one kind or another have argued that though Paul writes in the present tense, he, despite that use of the Greek language, is simply writing presently in recollection of the former state in which he found himself prior to his regeneration unto faith. This passage has been worked over again and again by the best Greek interpreters of history. I can simply say dogmatically that I find absolutely no justification whatsoever for finding in this text anything other than the contemporary struggle the Apostle was having with respect to his own progress in sanctification.

More Sanctified than Paul

In the nineteenth century, several churches, particularly in America, following some of the ideas first set forth by John Wesley that I will mention in a few moments, developed special churches called “Holiness Churches.” These Holiness Churches are so called because included in part of their doctrine is the idea that there is a second work of grace available to every Christian by which they can experience instantaneous sanctification or holiness.

The beginnings of modern Pentecostalism were also tied in with this perfectionist idea, where the second work of grace, which was made manifest and evidenced by speaking in tongues, gave people instantaneous holiness. It is only in recent times, in the advent of neo-Pentecostalism, that adjustments have been made to say that, no, what the baptism of the Holy Spirit really does is empower Christians for ministry rather than necessarily producing in them an immediate victory over all sin.

Having said that, in my experience as a teacher and preacher, I have only encountered two people in my entire life who have told me frankly that they believe they had this second work of grace to the extent that they are now without sin of any sort. The first person I met who made this claim was a woman that you would probably not want to spend much time with. Indeed, she was nasty. She was so filled with the conviction of her perfection that she did not want to hear anything to the contrary, and my discussions with her from the Bible were to no avail. Regarding this text in Romans 7, she strongly asserted that Paul was talking about his former condition.

The second person, with whom I had more lengthy discussion, was a young student of seventeen years of age. I met him when I was doing my graduate work in the Netherlands, and he was an American exchange student from Texas living in Holland. I was involved coaching baseball there, and he was playing baseball, and I had the opportunity to speak with him about this at length. He came from one of the Holiness Churches, and he told me that he had arrived at perfection.

When I began to discuss with him the teaching of Romans 7, he was quick to use the standard response that Paul was not speaking in the present tense. I brought out the Greek New Testament, working through the Greek grammar and pointing out passage upon passage to him where Paul was clearly speaking in the present tense about his present condition. I even went on to say that the sentiments the Apostle expresses here in the seventh chapter are sentiments that you do not find in unregenerate people, such as his love for the law, his great desire to please God in the Spirit, and so on.

After some lengthy discussion with this young man, I was finally able to convince him that Paul is talking about his present condition in Romans 7. I thought, of course, that all debate was now over. When I then applied this conclusion of which he was now convinced, I said: “You see that the Apostle is describing his ongoing struggle in the Christian life. What do you think now about your assessment that you’ve reached a level of perfection?” He said, “Well, I’m sad to hear that the Apostle hadn’t made it.”

I said to the young man, “Do you really believe that you’ve achieved a higher level of sanctification at age seventeen than the Apostle Paul had reached at the time he wrote his magnum opus to the church at Rome?” He did not even blink. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yes, I am more sanctified at my age than Paul was when he wrote to Rome.” What do you do with someone like that? How do you try to explain to them what the Word is teaching?

Here is where you run into what we call “love lines” that all of us have. We hear a doctrine from our home church, our pastor, or a Christian mentor for whom we have great affection and admiration, and we accept their teaching. Later on, if it is challenged, no argument in the world will cause us to leave our dedication to those love lines. We all struggle with that sort of thing. But I would hope that when we look at the clear biblical teaching in matters of this nature, we would be able to snip those lines wherever necessary.

I tried to explain to the young man, “Do you realize how far you must discount the law of God and how much you must exaggerate your own achievement to come to the conclusion that you live now without sin?” I pray that by now this man has abandoned that idea. The conviction of the Holy Ghost is usually powerful enough to destroy such illusions and visions of grandeur about our own achievements.

As I mentioned recently in this series, the testimony of the greatest saints in history is that the longer they are Christians and the more deeply immersed they become in the Word of God, the more acutely conscious they become of their own shortcomings. As we grow in grace, we grow in our understanding of our ongoing need for the grace of God.

It is important that we not be deceived into thinking that there are shortcuts to Christian maturity, to growing up into the fullness of conformity to the image of Christ. That is a lifelong pursuit for the godly. None of us will achieve perfection until we enter into glory, where all the remnants of sin and the flesh are removed from us.

No Shortcuts to Sanctification

In one sense, it is comforting to me to know that even Paul had to struggle against the temptations of the flesh, because there has probably never been a person more dedicated to the pursuit of holiness and the pursuit of obedience to his Lord than the Apostle Paul. If the Apostle Paul had struggles like this, I take comfort in it, not because I want to rejoice in evil or in somebody else’s weakness, but because it is just human nature that when I see weaknesses manifesting themselves in the greatest of the saints, mine do not seem to be totally without redeemable hope.

In the early days of my conversion, I longed for that second work of the Spirit. I had some close friends who were from Holiness churches. Even though they did not think they had reached a level of total perfection, they still believed in the second work of grace as sanctification. Martin Luther said that if there ever was a monk who sought his way into heaven through monkery, it was he. I have to say to you if ever there was a Christian who more earnestly sought after the second blessing than I did, I would like to find out who they were. I had good reason to seek it because I brought so much baggage into my Christian life. I knew the power of the flesh, and I knew that it was a power I had no ability in and of myself to overcome.

On the day of my conversion, I went through a radical change in my behavior. My language changed instantly, and other areas of my life changed dramatically. For the first time in my life, I had a thirst and, indeed, a passionate hunger to learn the truths of the Scripture. For the first time in my life, I enjoyed prayer, and I actually liked to go to church and sing hymns of praise to the Lord God. But I had sins that were besetting and ongoing.

I will never forget sitting in the local college grill within the first few months of my conversion, and my math professor, who was a Christian, was sitting across from me while I was smoking. He took a straw, held it like he was holding a cigarette, and he then put it to his lips, pretending to inhale on the straw and exhale. He said, “Let me tell you about my experiences with the Holy Ghost.” That was his way of rebuking me for my failure to clean up my life as a new Christian with this business of smoking.

It was because of smoking that I was on a lookout for instant sanctification. If ever a new Christian struggled with that, I think I set the world record. I tried everything. One evangelist gave me this clue: “If you want to stop smoking, put a picture of Jesus in your cigarette package. Every time you want to smoke, take that pack of cigarettes out, look at the picture of Jesus, and you say, ‘I love you, Jesus.’ Then you will not be tempted to smoke.” I tried to take that advice. By about three o’clock in the afternoon, nothing was more repugnant to me than the picture of Jesus, and I had to take it out. I cannot tell you how serious that struggle was for my soul. I would come to the text of Scripture that says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” and say to myself: “I can’t say that. I can’t do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

I had people lay hands on me. I had a Holiness minister pray for the second work of grace and for my instant sanctification. It did not work. For the first time in my life, I heard someone pray in tongues over me to deliver me from this problem. Another minister gave me a nail and told me to put it in my pocket. He said: “Every time you’re thinking about smoking, think of the death of Jesus. Pull out that nail and think of what Jesus did for you.” That lasted a few hours, until I threw away the nail.

From the day I became a Christian to the first time I went twenty-four hours without smoking, twenty-five years had passed. It took me twenty-five years to go one day without smoking. Then it took me another ten years after that to go a month, and it was at least another ten years after that to get rid of it all together. All that time, I listened to the accusation of Satan. I struggled with my own spiritual state because I had an addiction to the flesh, and I simply could not get rid of it.

I know I am not alone with that sort of thing. In a sense, though it should not be, it becomes a normal dimension of the Christian life that we all are faced with besetting sins. We come before God and we seek to get rid of them, and sooner or later we have to hear the words, “My grace is sufficient for thee.”

I can feel Paul’s anguish. I do not mean to cheapen that colloquial statement about feeling one’s pain, but I can feel the anguish of the Apostle in this text, as elsewhere in his letters, where he talks about the war that goes on in the soul of the Christian between the spirit and the flesh, between the old man who does not want to die and the new man who is working for inward renewal and maturing in Christ. I cannot tell you why sometimes the Lord allows us to struggle for years and years before liberation comes. But He does. Yet at every moment, the grace is there to overcome, no matter what it is.

A Spirit-Filled Life?

It was John Wesley who first successfully taught the idea that there is a work of grace from the Holy Ghost by which one is able to achieve a perfect love, though one is not rendered totally morally perfect. That perfect love, for Wesley, was the second work of grace that is available in the Christian life.

Out of Wesley’s teaching has come broad attention to the idea of some kind of higher life of sanctification that results in two tiers or two levels of Christians. There is the ordinary Christian who seeks spiritual growth, reads his Bible, goes to church, and is diligent about making use of the means of grace, but who, nevertheless, never reaches that higher plateau that is called the “higher life” or the “deeper life.”

At the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century in England and in the United States, there were several movements spawned called “Deeper Life” movements. They purported to reveal the secret to the broader Christian community regarding how a person could get to that second level, that higher plateau of spiritual victory: the victorious Christian life. You may have been exposed to teaching and literature on that subject.

In more recent eras, the language used to promise this deeper level of Christianity is called the “Spirit-filled life.” According to this teaching, there are two kinds of Christians. There are those who are indwelt of the Holy Ghost, born of the Holy Spirit, regenerated by the power of the Holy Ghost, assisted in their quest for sanctification by the help of the Holy Ghost, but they have not yet been filled with the Spirit to the level that they now reach this second plateau that only some Christians reach.

The advocates of the Spirit-filled life, for the most part, do not claim total perfection, just a much greater level of sanctification than is normally achieved by other Christians. I heard one Christian leader speak about the Spirit-filled life. He did not claim perfection. He said, “From time to time I will pray a prayer of confession for my sins, if I have any.”

I do not think I will ever be able to say that until heaven: “If I have any.” I could keep you here for the rest of the day expounding to you the manifold ways in which I have fallen short of the glory of God since I awakened from my bed this morning. Time would not allow me to confess all the transgressions that I have been guilty of in the last twenty-four hours.

For me to think that I can go a day or a week or a month without sin, I would have the same problem that that seventeen-year-old boy from Texas had. For me to think that I could go without sin for an hour, I would have to pull God down or raise myself up. The Apostle Paul tells us here that the law is spiritual. When I look at myself through the lens of the law, I do not have to look far or long to find out that there is no “if” about the abiding sins that mar my life.

Dangerous Anthropology

Along with the dangerous doctrine of “deeper” sanctification that is persistent in Christian circles, there is also a Christian view of anthropology that tends to go side by side with it. I am sure that if I took a poll of those who are here today, a significant percentage of you who have been exposed to much teaching in the Christian world would take it as a matter of course to affirm a tripartite understanding of anthropology—namely, that you are so constituted as a human being to be made up of a trichotomous nature: body, soul, and spirit.

Many of us are taught as a matter of fact that Christian orthodoxy teaches that we are body, soul, and spirit. Then you run to Paul’s Thessalonican benediction where he says, “May the Lord bless you, body, soul, and spirit.” You say, “Here the Bible says ‘body, soul, and spirit.’” Never mind that elsewhere he talks about the bowels, the mind, the heart, and at least three or four other elements of the constituent makeup of man without setting forth an actual anthropology for us.

The tripartite idea is helpful and practical for somebody who is struggling with the difference between the regular Christian life and the higher Christian life. The way this usually works is something like this: If you are just a Christian, you have the Holy Ghost in your body and in your soul, but He has not yet reached your spirit. You are two-thirds of the way along in Christian growth, touching two out of the three constituent parts of your human nature. But if you want the higher life, if you want to have a Spirit-filled life, then the Spirit of God has to effect you not only in your body and your soul but finally in your spirit.

Do you see how convenient that is for higher-life theology? If you look at the history of the church, every time tripartitism has raised its head, from the early centuries to today, it has always carried in its wake some other heresy.

The Bible makes the clear distinction between a physical aspect of your humanity and a non-physical aspect. Body and soul are how we are constituted in Scripture. It is only the Holy Ghost that can distinguish between mind, soul, spirit, will, and all the rest of these designations that we have. But fundamentally, Scripture sees us as a duality: a physical aspect and a non-physical aspect; body and soul. Nowhere in Scripture do we find the idea that the Holy Spirit will get to two out of three and not to the other one.

All of that is but a brief theological preface for us to look further in an expositional manner at Paul’s letter to the Romans, so that you might know what is at stake here in the teaching of this book.

I want to make one more point before I go to the text. In my estimation, the most acute and comprehensive refutation both theologically and biblically of all types of perfectionism ever written was penned by the late great Princeton theologian, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. B.B. Warfield wrote a single thick volume simply titled Perfectionism. If you want to look more deeply at the Holiness Movement and the Deeper Life movements that I have mentioned by way of outline so far, I would commend to you the serious reading of that book by Warfield Perfectionism.

Paul’s Confusion

Let us look, then, to verse 14: “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand.” Paul expresses some confusion. He is perplexed, but not by some abstract theological mystery that is bothering his cranium. What is perplexing him here is his own behavior. Paul essentially says: “Sometimes I don’t understand myself. I just don’t know why I do the things that I do.” He goes on to talk about a conflict that is rooted in the will, basically saying, “For on the one hand, the things I want to do, I don’t do, and the very things I don’t want to do, those I do.”

When I read this from the pen of the Apostle Paul, there is something that strikes me instantly from the text. I see immediately that Paul never had the benefit of reading Jonathan Edwards’ classic Freedom of the Will, because I am convinced that if Paul had listened to Edwards, he would never have written in the manner that he writes here. However, one of the big differences between Paul and Edwards is that Paul was penning these words under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, so he does not have to apologize to Jonathan Edwards or Martin Luther or anyone else. But I struggle with this because I am totally convinced of the soundness of Edwards’ argument about how the will functions and operates in human beings, so I am always taken aback when I see Paul speaking in a way that does not sound at all like Edwards. But I understand that when Paul writes this personal testimony, he is not engaging in the whole philosophical discussion of how the will functions. I am convinced that when Paul looked down from glory and read over the shoulder of Jonathan Edwards, he was quite impressed by the astute observation that the Puritan divine made.

Paul is speaking here in a manner of concrete language that I think every one of us can relate to when he says: “I don’t understand why I do the things that I do, because the very things I don’t want to do, I do. That which I want to do, I don’t do.” Edwards would tap him on the shoulder and say, “Just a minute, don’t you realize that you always choose according to your strongest inclination at the given moment of your choice?”

I am going to just throw that out there for you to chew on this week, because next week, God willing, I will spend more time on Edwards’ understanding of the will and how it relates to what Paul is teaching here. In other words, we will go into the analysis of what goes on in the making of moral and spiritual choices in our lives. But that is not Paul’s purpose here. He is speaking plainly and practically the way all of us do, as if all things were equal.

People of Mixed Desires

Let me ask you this: How many of you would like to lead a life of perfect obedience to Christ? Why do you not? If that is what you want, why do you not do it? How many of you would like to be free of sin? Why are you not? Because all things being equal, you would like to be free of sin. All things being equal, you would like to be perfectly obedient to the Lord.

Well, alas and alack, all things are not equal. When you want to be obedient to Christ, you will find conflict in your own heart between your general desire for obedience and the specific act of obedience that confronts you along with the strength of the temptation towards disobedience. So, you cry, “The spirit is willing; the flesh is weak.”

We are people of mixed desires. That is why I said to you earlier that life does not really become complicated until you are born again. Before you were born again, you only had one principle: the flesh. Like Augustine said, only one person is riding this horse, and it is Satan, and this horse does the will of Satan. We walk according to the course of this world, according to the power of the prince of the air, willingly, happily submitting to the temptations of Satan.

But once God the Holy Spirit raises you from spiritual death and puts Christ in the saddle, the rest of your life is the battle between two jockeys regarding who will ride this horse. Satan does not give up easily. The flesh does not die instantly. As a result, life is now complicated because we are people involved in a war that penetrates the very deepest recesses of our souls and lasts until our glorification in heaven. This is the universal experience among Christians that the Apostle Paul is talking about.

Press Toward the Mark

We could stop right there and say: “This is the way it is. The flesh doesn’t die easily. So, who can achieve perfection? Why don’t I sleep in tomorrow morning, eat, drink, and be merry, and not be so earnest about my sanctification, since I can’t reach the goal anyway?” In light of the other things the Apostle Paul said about forgetting those things that are behind and reaching toward those things that are ahead, we press towards the mark. We pummel our bodies to subdue them. We enter and engage in a fight, and we are admonished by the Scriptures not to yield so easily to the sin that besets us, for we have not yet resisted unto blood.

The very fact that you are in church tonight indicates that you take your Christian life seriously. You are not satisfied to just go worship on Sunday morning or an adult class on Sunday morning. You want more. You want to dig deeper into the Scriptures because you know that through the teaching of the truth of the Word of God, which is a light unto your path, these things will help you in this struggle. You know that these are means of God’s grace by which we are able to progress in our sanctification.

The fact that no one makes it all the way to the finish line in this world does not mean we are supposed to stop running. We are never allowed to be at ease in Zion and say, “This far I’ve progressed and no further.” We are to be diligent in every way to feed the new man and to kill the old man. I am going to talk about this, God willing, next Sunday in terms of the philosophical implications of how the will of a Christian person actually functions. At the same time, as I look at some of those abstract ideas of the operation of the will, it is my hope and plan for the following Sabbath evening to give you some practical suggestions on how to increase your sanctification.

I am not going to give you any secrets for a spiritual life because I do not believe in those. But I do believe that one Christian will progress further than another—not that there are two distinct levels of Spirit-filled and non-Spirit-filled people in the world, but that each one of us is at a different place in our Christian pilgrimage.

Different Walks

No two people start their Christian walks at the same place. Many who become Christians never smoked anything in their lives and never have to struggle over that, but they have something else with which they struggle. Some of the things you might have struggled with were easy for me, because we are different and we come with different baggage. Not only do we come to the Lord at different times, under different circumstances, and with different baggage, but our progress in sanctification is also different one from another.

I like the bumper sticker that says: “Be patient. God’s not finished with me yet.” One of the things we are supposed to manifest as the people of God is a love, a charity that covers a multitude of sin. That does not mean we are supposed to be soft on gross and heinous sin. That is not what I am talking about. The New Testament makes it clear that we are not to give each other license for gross and heinous sin. But the average, run-of-the-mill, everyday struggles that all Christians have are to be covered by that charity. If I see you slipping a little bit, you know what you are going to hear from me? “I’ve got you covered.” That is under charity. We are not going to concern ourselves with the small stuff. We are to be forbearing, patient, and encouraging one with another.

One of the worst sins we can commit is to establish our own achievements as the norm by which all Christians are to be judged. That is the temptation. If I have success or victory in one area of my life, my normal human tendency of the flesh is to elevate that success to the touchstone of true spirituality. If you do not measure up to me in that regard, then there is something really wrong with you.

I struggled with that for many years because, from the day I was born again, I had a hunger and thirst for Scripture. No one had to twist my arm and say, “You have to set aside so much time every day to read the Bible,” or “You need to read the Bible through in a year,” or “You need to do this discipline and that discipline with reading Scripture.” I cannot remember once in my life that I picked up the Bible out of a sense of duty.

I used to wonder about my Christian friends. I thought: “What’s with them? I never see them reading their Scriptures. They never want to, and they don’t even know what’s in there.” They were complaining all the time that it is too hard and too boring, and I thought, “What’s the matter with you?” But my friends were not all called of God to be teachers of the Bible. With my vocation, God planted a desire in my heart that made it easier for me to do that particular thing. Even with that desire, I have wasted more time not studying the Scriptures the way I should than any two people in the world.

But do you see what we do? If I am gifted with evangelism, I want to establish evangelism as the supreme gift. If I am gifted in teaching, I want to see that the most important gift. If I am gifted in generosity, then giving becomes the real touchstone of spirituality. We do that, which is why Paul had to write to the Corinthians and say, “We have different gifts, different offices, and we’re at different places.”

Part of our growth as Christians is understanding that the things that are not a big problem for us may be very difficult for other people. The things that I struggle with, you may never struggle with at all. That is why we are in this together, sharing in the Spirit, sharing in the Word, sharing in encouragement, praying for each other, and covering each other with charity. We will look at these other things, God willing, next Sunday. Let us pray.

Father, every time we seek instant perfection, we are only disappointed and frustrated. But when we fail to reach the ultimate goal, grant, O Lord, that we may not surrender to discouragement but continue to press towards the mark You have set before us in Christ Jesus. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.