Paul states that when he fails to do the will of God it is because of the sin that dwells in him. Dr. Sproul points out that the unbeliever cannot do the will of God therefore Paul must be discussing his post-conversion experience. Dr. Sproul continues with a discussion about the confusion between the words body and flesh.

This text presents for us a watershed moment. God willing, we will finish the seventh chapter of Romans and, if possible, even begin the first portion of chapter 8. We have been camped for many Sundays on chapter 7, and we have gone through the struggle that the Apostle testifies to in his spiritual walk. We will now get beyond that struggle, I hope, as we look at his conclusions. I will ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God, and I will be reading from Romans 7:19–8:2:

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.

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let him hear it. Please be seated. Let us pray.

O Lord, as we turn our attention once more to this difficult portion of the epistle, we entreat the presence of Thy Holy Spirit, who is indeed the Spirit of truth, who inspired this text in the first place. We ask now that He would illumine it for our understanding and for our edification. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Paul’s Ongoing Struggle

For the past few weeks, we have been looking closely at the Apostle Paul’s expression of his ongoing struggle in his Christian life and the warfare between the spirit and the flesh—between the desire he has in general to be obedient to Christ, and how that desire often gives way to failure as he continues to struggle with the sinful inclinations of his heart. We have looked at this exegetically and expositionally, and last week we looked at it theologically and philosophically, spending time explaining Jonathan Edwards’ treatment of the will’s function in matters such as this. But before we move to chapter 8, there are a few ideas I would like to deal with briefly at the end of this section.

As Paul says, the things that he wants to do are the things that he does not do, and the things that he does not want to do are the very things that he does. There are some very tricky grammatical portions of this text, so getting agreement here is not so simple. In any case, we notice in verse 20 that he says, “Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.”

This may sound at first blush as if the Apostle Paul is refusing to acknowledge his culpability in his evil choices, as if he were essentially saying, “When I do those things that I shouldn’t do or that I really don’t want to do, I’m not the one who’s doing it.” It might appear as if he is trying to absolve himself from responsibility for his sin. Let us not take that as a legitimate option for understanding what Paul is saying in this text.

Paul is essentially saying this: “Even though I, Paul, am the one who struggles in this manner, doing that which I do not want to do and failing to do what I should be doing, when I disobey and fail regarding the things of God, it is because of the sin that dwells within me.”

Broken Bondage

Paul recognizes where sin dwells: It dwells in him. He is saying, “Even though I am still involved in this conflict when sin wins over the inward man, over the new man, the new man is still the one who identifies my personality. Despite the ongoing struggle, despite the failures of sin that mark the Christian life, I still know that I am a new creature. I am a new creation, and behold, all things have become new. What God has done with me can be seen not in this vestigial remnant of my old man, but God can be seen in the triumph He gives me through His Holy Spirit in the new man. I am identifying with the new man.”

We have already seen how Paul said earlier on that we are to consider the old man dead. He has been crucified with Christ, and so Paul is not going to relate to him anymore. The real Paul, the ongoing Paul, the Paul who has been called from sin and redeemed from bondage to that sin is the Paul who is destined for glorification. I think that is what is in the mind of the Apostle when he says, “It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.”

What regeneration accomplishes is release and rescue from the total bondage of sin that marks our condition of original sin, our inherent corruption with which we are born, how we walked according to the prince of the power of the air, and so on. When we are born of the Spirit, that bondage to sin is broken. We are set free. We experience the kind of liberty that we have not had since the fall. But even with that regeneration, that rebirth, that renewal of the person by which we are dramatically changed inside, that change does not instantaneously eradicate all our impulses of sin. As we have seen, that struggle goes on until heaven. Paul says that there is still sin that dwells in him, but that indwelling sin does not have the same captivating power it had before his conversion.

Delight in the Law

Paul goes on to say this: “I find then a law . . . ” He is not talking about the Mosaic law or even the moral law. He is speaking here in terms of a principle, a truism, as if to say, “I have discovered a fundamental truth that describes my current situation,” when he says, “I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.” It is a little awkward, but he essentially says, “Here’s the principle: I find that evil is still present with me, the one who wills to do good.” Paul identifies himself not with the one who wills to do evil but with the one who wants to do what is right.

He continues, “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.” If there is any question about whether Paul is talking about his pre-conversion state or whether he is describing an ongoing struggle after his regeneration, this one text should put that to rest forever. No unregenerate person—no person still in the grip of original sin—delights in the law of God in the inward person.

Look at the first Psalm in the Old Testament:

Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night. (Ps. 1:1–2)

The Psalm makes sharp distinctions between the godly man, who delights in the law of God, who is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, bringing forth its fruit in its season, and the ungodly, who is weightless or without substance, like the chaff which the wind drives away.

In that portrait of the godly man in Psalm 1, his godliness is defined by his delight, by the deepest delight of his soul. The godly man is the one who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates in it day and night. Here Paul is describing his condition this way: “I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.”

The War Between Mind and Flesh

There is another set of words that jumps off the page in this text. Sometimes Paul talks about the new man, the old man, the inward man, the outer man, the sinful man, the spiritually inclined man, and so on. This is the language describing the difference between pre-conversion and post-conversion humanity. But what I really want to look at in these last few verses of chapter 7 is this ongoing war the Apostle describes between the spirit, or the mind in this case, and the flesh.

Paul says: “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!” Then he concludes chapter 7 with these words: “So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”

Do you see that contrast between the mind and the flesh? In the last verse Paul talks about the flesh, and immediately before that he says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He speaks about body, then in the next verse about flesh.

If we look closely at the text, we see two distinct words in the Greek. One is translated by the English word “body,” the second one by the English word “flesh.” The first is the Greek word sōma, which is translated by the word “body*.*” You hear it in the English language when we hear about people who have psychosomatic illnesses—that is, they have bodily diseases and bodily aches and pains that are prompted not by some organic infection or disease but by mental issues. The second is the Greek word sarx, which is translated by the English word “flesh” in the last verse of chapter 7. If you look at the Latin, you will see that these two words are translated in the first instance by the Latin word from which we get the word corporeal, and in the second instance by the Latin word from which we derive the word carnal. So, you have corporeal, carnal; sōma, sarx; body, flesh.

Before the service started, I was delighted to meet someone I have not seen in many years, a man who was present at our wedding almost forty-six years ago, who was one of my professors from college. In fact, I mentioned him from the pulpit last week, when I talked about my struggle with smoking and how this Christian professor used a straw and said, “Let me tell you about my experiences with the Holy Spirit.” I just reminded him of that. He said that he remembered that.

He told me that my Greek professor is still alive. He is still tutoring people in Greek and Latin, and he is well into his nineties. When you go back, professor, make sure you tell him that I quoted both the Latin and the Greek in my sermon. That poor man—I have been a source of embarrassment ever since I graduated from that institution and from his tutelage.

I mastered the professor’s pedagogy, at least his techniques. We had to recite from the Greek every day the assignments for which we were to have prepared. We would come to class the next day, and he was ruthless in calling on us to recite in front of the rest of the class. But I learned a trick to fool him. He would look around the room and look for people to call upon, and I would be watching his gaze, and when I was not prepared, I would act like Horshack in the old TV series Welcome Back, Kotter. I would act like I was very enthusiastic: “Call on me! I’m ready.”

The professor would never, ever call on me when I gave that posture. But when I was well-prepared and he gazed around the room, I would wait until that split second when his eyes met mine, and I would drop my head. It worked every time. He would say, “Mr. Sproul.” I fooled him. I was ready. Professor, please give him my warmest regards, if you will.

Confusion About Body and Flesh

The distinction that we find in the language between body and flesh has caused no small amount of confusion. Part of the confusion is linguistic, and the other part of the confusion is philosophical or theological.

Linguistic Confusion

The term sarx is used again and again in the New Testament, particularly by the Apostle Paul, not to refer to our physical nature, but rather to describe our fallen nature. The sarkical nature is that nature controlled by original sin. The sarx describes the old man, the man who has no inclination toward the things of God, the man who is a slave to sin, who is dead in sin and trespasses. That condition of radical corruption is described by Paul with the use of the term sarx. When he uses the term sōma, he is almost always describing the physical aspect of our humanity.

Here is the problem linguistically: Not every time the word sarx is used in the New Testament does it refer to our fallen, corrupt nature. Sometimes it simply refers to our physical, corporeal, earthly existence. For example, when John talks about the incarnation of Jesus in the prologue to his gospel, where he says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and so on, he says at the end of the prologue, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory” (John 1:14), the word used there by John is the word sarx. Certainly, Jesus did not become corrupt. Jesus did not become fallen. He was like us in every point except with respect to this condition of radical corruption.

In his prologue, John is simply using the term sarx to refer to Jesus’ incarnation, His coming in the flesh, in the physical realm of this world. Yet just a couple of chapters later, when John is describing the condition of man’s fallen humanity and Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again to see the kingdom of God, He says: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). In other words, the flesh cannot get you into the kingdom of God. Elsewhere, He says, “The flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63). In these discussions, John uses the term sarx.

It is not just John’s use of the term; Paul himself uses the term sarx from time to time not to refer to our fallen condition but simply to our physical humanity. For example, he says in 2 Corinthians 5:16 that he did not know Jesus after the flesh, kata sarka. What he meant there was: “When Jesus was alive and in His earthly tabernacle during His earthly ministry, I never saw Him. I did not know Him. I did not know Him until after the resurrection, until after the ascension. I never met Him physically before that time.”

Therein lies the problem linguistically. We cannot say that every time the word sarx appears in the Bible, it refers to Paul in sinful corruption, and every time the word sōma appears, it refers to the physical body. There are times when this is simply not the case.

Theological Confusion

What is the theological problem? The theological problem is the influence of ancient Hellenistic philosophy and oriental dualism on early Christian thinking. Plato saw the highest dimension of human experience in the mind and saw the flesh, the body, as the prison house of the soul. According to Plato, the physical aspect of our humanity blocks the mind’s ability to penetrate ultimate truth, and the mind or soul is eternal, free, and in touch with ultimate reality. The obstruction to that vision of truth is the body. The body is something to be redeemed from. This is quite different from the biblical view of the body. We believe in the salvation of the body. The Greeks believed in salvation from the body.

An idea grew in oriental mysticism that anything having to do with the physical aspect of our humanity was base or imperfect. Plato said that anything physical is, at best, an imperfect copy of the ultimate idea. So, the physical was seen as inherently imperfect or evil. That penetrated heavily the early Christian fathers, who began to teach that the way to salvation was the denial of the body, some to the extent that you should to go into the desert, climb up on a flagpole or on a pillar like Simeon Stylites, and deny yourself all physical pleasure—you do not eat, you do not drink, no sex is allowed, and so on. Anything involved with the body is inherently evil. The goal or method of gaining sanctification is by subduing bodily appetites according to this understanding.

Beloved, we know that physical appetites can be the occasion for human sin, but it is not because the physical is inherently evil. It was God who made our bodies, and when He made them, He pronounced His benediction upon them and said, “That is good.” It was God who made marriage and the means of sexual procreation, and they also received His benediction. But there arose in the early church and persisted down through the centuries the idea that the kingdom of God is in eating and drinking and has to do with physical appetites. Now, the misuse of physical appetites indeed is an occasion for sin. But we radically oversimplify things when we think that the struggle that Paul is talking about here in Romans 7 is between the mind and the body. That is not what it is about. It is between the sarx and the p**neuma. It is between the old man and the new man, between a fallen, corrupt nature and the renewed inner person created by the supernatural intervention of God the Holy Spirit.

A Linguistic Key to the Confusion

One key linguistically that helps us over this hurdle is that almost anytime that you see the Apostle Paul or anyone else in the New Testament contrasting spirit and flesh or mind and flesh, then the term sarx is used not to describe the physical body but the corrupt nature of the whole person, because the corruption of sarx is not just a sinful corruption of physical appetites. Sarx refers to the body; it refers to the soul; it refers to the spirit; it refers to the mind. All of the person who is unregenerate is in a state of flesh. By nature, we have a mind of flesh, a soul of flesh, a spirit of flesh.

Any time you see Paul contrasting flesh with spirit or flesh with mind, he is talking about the distinction between the old man, the flesh, and the new man, the inner man that has been made alive by the Holy Ghost.

O Wretched Man

Let me back up to where Paul cries out: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” We have here an exclamation that declares a condition of misery. Paul cries out in anguish after just relating to us his ongoing struggle, this death struggle with the weighty burden of sin pressing against the inclinations he has toward obedience. In the midst of that struggle, he cries out, “O wretched man that I am!”

Paul is using language in this text that is as politically incorrect as language can be in the contemporary church. In our contemporary church, we have become so narcissistic and so preoccupied with self-esteem and self-worth that we are told that the last thing we should ever do in preaching is to engender feelings of guilt or worthlessness among our people. We are not to discourage you from experiencing everything that God has made you to be. That is the mentality that we have in the church today. Yet we still like to sing Amazing Grace, do we not? “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, who saved such a creature of self-esteem as I am.” No! “Who saved a wretch like me.” The saints of the Old Testament, catching one glimpse of the radiant glory and manifold holiness of God, would cry out in loathing of themselves, saying, “I am a worm and not a man” (Ps. 22:6), or “Woe is me, for I am undone” (Isa. 6:5).

There is a sense in which we can so wallow in our guilt and be so preoccupied with our failure that we almost take delight in some form of masochism or self-flagellation, but that is not the problem we face in the church today. The problem we face in the church today is the self-denial of the radical character of sin. We do not hate sin the way we should hate it. We do not abhor the disobedience that we manifest in our lives.

Paul looked at himself saying: “I am a new man, I delight in the law of God in my inward man. The sin that dwells in me, that is not who I am in the final analysis. O what a wretch I am when I look at my sin.” He is expressing here an Apostolic state of misery. The Latin text sheds some light on it when it speaks of being in a state of infelicity, a state without happiness, a state without blessedness.

“When I look at my sin, I see my wretchedness. I am threatened and overwhelmed by the power of this misery. I see nothing in which to put my delight. Who will deliver me from that?” Paul asks. But he does not leave us hanging waiting for the answer. He knows whom he has believed in, and he knows who his deliverer is.

“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The answer to “Who will deliver me?” is God. And how will He deliver Paul? “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We have a Redeemer. We have a deliverer who promises to deliver us fully and finally from this body of death, this awful, substantive burden that plagues us all our lives.

“So then,” Paul says, “with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh”—the ongoing power of the sarx—“the law of sin.” He concludes this section, after he has poured his heart out to his readers, essentially saying this: “If you think you have problems in walking the Christian life, if you think there are inconsistencies in your pilgrimage, look at me. I have them too.”

You do not hear Paul writing to his people and saying, “From time to time I repent of my sins, if I have any.” There is none of that triumphalism found in the pen of the Apostle. He was keenly in touch with who he was—both who he was in and of himself in his fallen condition and who he was in Christ Jesus, who had rescued him from the burden of sin that resides in the flesh.

No Condemnation

I said that we would start chapter 8, and I will get a brief start on it, because this is one more example of the chapter divisions that were put together, I am sure, by a circuit rider on horseback after the sun had set. Chapter 8 is linked inseparably to what Paul just articulated. We read again that magic word that I asked you to notice every time it occurs in the text, the word “therefore,” which signifies a conclusion from what has come beforehand. Here it comes: “There is therefore now no condemnation.”

Let me stop there a second. Does the “therefore” only function in light of the last few verses? I do not think so. I think that when Paul says “therefore,” he is referring to everything he has laid out in terms of the doctrine of the grace of justification that preceded his charge to sanctification and the struggle he recounts in chapter 7. I think the “therefore” calls attention to everything he set forth to the Romans about the redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ, so that the conclusion of the matter of justification is that now, there is no condemnation.

“There is no condemnation.” This does not mean that now God has promised never to judge the world. It does not mean that there is no condemnation left in the justice of God for a fallen humanity. But there is the end of condemnation specifically and particularly to a designated group. Let us look at that designated group.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” If you are a Christian, you have moved already beyond the condemnation of God. Not only have you moved beyond the condemnation you deserve from God by the sins you have stored up against the day of wrath and escaped that wrath which is surely to come, but there is no condemnation for what you will do tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the day after that. This is one of the most beautiful texts in all of Scripture for the assurance of salvation. The threat of condemnation is removed forever from you, if it is so that you are in Christ Jesus.

Is it thinkable, beloved, after what God did to His Son on the cross, where it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, when Christ became a curse on the cross for His sheep, receiving the full measure of God’s condemnation for our sin, can you imagine that after Christ paid the perfect price of satisfaction for the righteousness and justice of God, He will visit more wrath upon His Son years later? Do you think that the Father will say to the Son: “Go back to Gethsemane. I have another cup for You to drink”? No.

Christ drank the cup of the condemnation of the Father for His sheep forever. There is no condemnation left anymore for His Son. If you are in the Son, you are in the cleft of the rock. You are in the shelter of the Rock of ages. You are covered. You are hidden. You are safe, now and forever more.

Rescued by Christ

Do you remember the story John tells of the woman caught in adultery, dragged in her shame by the Pharisees to the feet of Jesus? In the midst of her public humiliation, the Pharisees begin to test Jesus on whether He would fully enforce the law of Moses that required the death penalty. Remember what our Lord did? He knelt down in the sand and began to write, the only record we have of Jesus writing anything.

We do not know what Jesus wrote. I can guess. Maybe he wrote in the sand “embezzler” and looked at one man, who then dropped his stone and walked way. Then he wrote another sin and looked at another one of them, and he dropped his stone and walked away. One by one, the accusers dropped their stones and walked away, leaving Jesus alone with the woman. Remember what He said to her? He asked her a question. He looked around and said, “Where are those who condemn you?”

The woman looked. All of those who were part of this kangaroo court had disappeared. She looked at Jesus and said, “No man, Lord.” Remember, He said, “He who is without sin cast the first stone.” Was there anyone in that group who was without sin? Jesus was without sin. He had every right to pick up the stone and execute her. But He did not have a stone in His hand.

Jesus looked at the woman and gave her the most comforting words she had ever heard in her life and would ever hear thereafter: “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more” (John 8:11). How much would it mean to you if you heard Jesus speak those words to you: “From this day forward I will not condemn you; you never have to fear condemnation from Me. The world may condemn you, even the church might condemn you, but if you are in Me, you’re safe, for now there is no condemnation for those who are in Me”?

Only Paul can take you from the wretched misery of ongoing struggle and failure with temptation and sin to the glorious conclusion that, despite the struggle, we have passed beyond the threat of death, beyond the threat of judgment, and there is no condemnation left for us. Even though we still stumble, we are described as those people who walk according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh. We are not enslaved by the flesh anymore. Who will rescue us from this body of death? God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray.

O Father, how we love the gospel. How encouraging it is to us even, and especially, in those times of infelicitous behavior. We thank You that there is an answer to our wretchedness and that You have rescued us from the power of sin and death in Jesus Christ. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.