Conquerors Not Captives (eBook)

Introduction

It Is No Longer I

According to legend, after his conversion Saint Augustine once passed by a former mistress on the street. Seeing him, she became aroused and yelled: “Augustine, it is I, it is I!” Without missing a beat, though, Augustine turned to her and replied: “Aye, madam: but it is no longer I!”1 Similarly, in his letters, the apostle Paul makes it clear that anyone in Christ is a new creation—the old is gone, the new has come. This means, like Augustine, the believer too can finally turn to temptation and say, “Aye, but it is no longer I.” When it comes to the church’s relationship with temptation, the apostle spells it out over and again: sin is no longer the boss. Consequently, evil desires, anger, and lust should not govern, rule, or dominate those who serve the Lord.

In Galatians, for instance, Paul commands believers to live by the power of the Spirit so that they will not indulge their worldly desires. Sure, he admits, the flesh opposes the Spirit and the Spirit opposes the flesh; but this, he concludes, is why believers must no longer choose to do the shameful things they want to do. Since it was for freedom that Christ has set his people free, they should not use this newfound liberty to satisfy their lusts. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control, and those who belong to the Lord have crucified the flesh along with its passions and desires. They, like the apostle, have been crucified with Christ and to the world. Now, they no longer live; not they, but Christ lives within them. As a result, they walk stregthened by faith not shackled to sin.

Along with the Galatians, Paul teaches the Thessalonians how holiness is God’s will for their lives too. He explains that they should not give in to their lusts like those who treat their bodies as an amusement park rather than as a temple. The apostle concludes the letter praying God himself would sanctify the believers wholly and completely, through and through, so that their body, soul, and spirit would be kept blameless unto the day of the Lord. In case anyone thinks this is a saccharine sentiment, unrealistic hope, or rhetorical pipe dream, Paul punctuates the prayer with a confident assertion: “the one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (1 Thess 5:23–24).2

The apostle’s expectations for believers in Galatians and 1 Thessalonians also line up with what he later tells Titus. God’s grace came to teach believers how to say “no” to sin and “yes” to self-control, so that his people would conduct themselves in an upright and godly manner while they wait for the coming of the Lord—“who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own” (Titus 2:14). Of course, as Paul warns elsewhere, believers can certainly still fall and will constantly face temptation, but when they do God will be faithful to “provide the way out” (1 Cor 10:13).

The theme of righteous living also recurs in Romans. There, the apostle tells the believers they should no longer live like sin is their master. Since we died with Christ to sin, how then, Paul asks, can we live in it any longer? The Lord was not crucified just so his people could be forgiven, but he was also raised that they could be free—counting themselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, believers are to be the Lord’s obedient servants: no longer slaves to sin but children of righteousness, reaping the benefit of holiness, resulting in lasting life. This good news rings forth: the church no longer has any obligation to obey the tyranny of sin. Instead, by the Spirit they can now put to death the misdeeds of their bodies so that they will live. For this reason, by God’s grace and in his love, those who have been redeemed are to lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light, clothing themselves with Christ and giving no quarter or provision to the flesh and its paltry desires.

These passages dovetail together to underline a decisive gospel truth. Because of what the Lord has done, his followers must no longer live in bondage to sin. Instead, they should now walk in holiness, righteousness, and self-control. The common thread of these passages reminds us of a quotation from Martin Luther, which goes something like this: “Before I understood the truth of the gospel, whenever sin would knock on my door, I would answer it. But now that I know Christ lives within me, whenever sin knocks, I let him get the door.”3 To play off this illustration, the promise in Paul’s letters is that though sin will continue to stand at the door and knock, believers no longer have to open it. Instead, they can ask the Lord to answer it for them. Then, as Luther goes on to state, at the sight of the nail-pierced hands and punctured side, sin will promptly retreat.

Despite these verses and their promises, one passage is the outlier that dampens the mood and rains on the parade. It is Romans 7:14–25, which at first glance seems to fly in the face of everything the apostle had written and would go on to write.

I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Emma Wasserman points out how this passage has been placed at the center of the Christian understanding of sin more than any other selection of Scripture. This is ironic, she notes, since Romans 7 is the anomaly compared to what the rest of the New Testament says about how the Spirit permits and compels a believer to overcome the flesh.4

What’s more, confusion over the exact identity of the I abounds. Is Paul talking about himself or someone else? Is the I, to borrow from Jan Lambrecht, “radically fictitious” or “thoroughly autobiographical” or “to a certain extent both at the same time?” In other words, is the passage meant to describe the predicament of a Christian, a nonbeliever, or both? More pointedly, is Paul’s portrayal here altogether unrelated to those whom Christ has liberated, or is it to say that as long as Christians live on this earth, they will be wretched?5 All these questions evoke the line by e. e. cummings: “who are you, little i.”

Because of this confusion, as Susan Eastman states, few passages in the apostle’s letters have caused “more consternation and received more attention” than this one.6 Nevertheless, many (if not most) Pauline scholars reject the interpretation that these verses in 7:14–25 depict the apostle’s life as a Christian. A growing chorus also dismisses the notion that Paul intends the wretch’s monologue in this passage to describe a believer’s relationship with sin, which, as will be shown below, was not the view of the first interpreters of Romans either.

Yet against the grain of many early Church theologians and modern scholars, countless pastors and believers today confidently subscribe to the explanation that Paul portrays the normal Christian experience in Romans 7. Because of this, 7:14–25 is a consequential passage for how the church understands Paul’s view of life inside of Christ.7 As James Dunn concludes, our position here “will in large measure determine our understanding of Paul’s theology as a whole.”8 For instance, if one takes the view that Romans 7 describes the typical believer’s life as powerless before sin, then, to borrow from Ernst Käsemann, everything that Paul says about items such as baptism and justification will need to be interpreted differently—as overstated, paradoxical, or extreme.9 In addition to theology, one’s interpretation here also has bearings on anthropology, psychology, and pastoral counseling.

As we will see in chapter 2, even those who first began to promote the position that the I refers to Paul did so to confront the drastic notion that a person can be perfect and without sin. Yet, the “never sin again” ledge is not the precipice most modern Christians are in danger of falling from. Rather, it is down the slippery slope on the other side that many tend to slide, resigning to be slaves to sin and unable do the good they desire. On that side of the ledge, the total impotence in Romans 7, it is assumed, represents the common Christian experience.

Not only does this much-touted view collide with what Scripture says elsewhere, it usually leads believers to think moral failure is inevitable. (If a person wakes up each day convinced sin is going to win, hasn’t it won already?) In other words, this popular interpretation of Romans 7 often reinforces a...