The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, 5 July 2020 | A Sermon on Romans 7:14-25 | by Samuel D. Zumwalt
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 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. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:14-25 English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sold Out
I began serving my first solo pastorate thirty-eight years ago having spent the first year after ordination as a chaplain resident in a major trauma center and a part-time pastoral assistant in a suburban parish. That congregation, a small Lutheran Church in America mission with a history of short pastorates, had about thirty-five worshipers on Sunday morning when I began service. You knew who was there and who wasn’t, and, if you missed worship, the pastor and one or two other members were going to call you on Sunday after lunch and ask why you weren’t there.
I began to notice one of our members was regularly absent from worship, and so I went to see her at the shop where she worked in the small downtown area. When she saw me, she said: “Well, I know why you’re here. And you need to know that I’ve been staying away because I am mad at God, and, frankly, the roof would cave in if I showed up.” So, I asked, “Does that mean that when you are sick you never go to the doctor?” She gave me this exasperated look like, “You little smart….” And, then, she smiled sheepishly: “Well, you got me there.” So, I smiled back and said: “I’ll see you Sunday. Right?” To her credit, she walked in Sunday morning looked up at the ceiling with mock fear. And I said, “Well, it didn’t cave in.” She said: “Yet!”
All of us our sold to sin. We fear, love, and trust in people and things that cannot be god. When our gods don’t deliver what they cannot, we childishly become angry and blame it on the one true God. It’s like when one spouse gets so aggravated at another, because that spouse can’t read the other’s mind and give her or him what that spouse has never actually asked for. Childish!
Prior to Holy Baptism, it is perfectly understandable that a person doesn’t know she or he is sold out to sin. It’s like not being aware of a malignancy until one goes for medical tests and receives the bad news. The unbaptized may use psychological terminology or even the language of luck to describe a series of bad choices or “unfortunate” events. The unbaptized might even use the language of addiction and assume that some sort of medical intervention or some kind of behavioral modification will provide the answer. Yet, among the baptized, because of the odious nature of the word “slavery” in our present hypersensitive context, one will rarely hear even Christians talking about being slaves to sin. Bondage? Well, that’s familiar from the liturgy and a trifle less offensive. But sold out to sin? Enslaved by sin? Aren’t the baptized free from sin? No!
The Death of Death
Holy Baptism is not the end of sin. Having described in Romans 6 that we are joined to the death and resurrection of God’s Son Jesus in Baptism, Paul, then, makes clear we ought to walk in newness of life. We ought to be done with sin like a drunk wants to be done with the bottle and the serial monogamist vows to be done with a roving eye and tingling loins. But the old Adam or old Eve, the sinner in us, keeps getting pulled out of the baptismal font, slapped on the back to get the water out, and resuscitated. Of course, the most deceptive act of the old Adam or Eve is to have made just enough behavioral changes so as to having made him- or herself “holy.” Do-it-yourself religion, transactional religion, is enslavement to sin at its sophisticated worst.
Holy Baptism is not an outward act of obedience. That would be the old Adam or old Eve in charge all the way. Holy Baptism is not mere entrance into a covenant relationship. That would be the old Adam or old Eve remaining in charge all the way. If we are doing any of the work, that makes us semi-Pelagians, the ecclesiastical version of do-it-yourself projects. There is only One who can save and redeem us from this carnal, death-bound, sin-sick will that is hostile to God. We need a Savior, and as long as we keep thinking it’s our move, it’s up to us, it’s just a bit more stamina we have to suck up from that inner core of strength, then He can’t help us.
The old Adam or the old Eve, the old sinner inside is going to die, because death remains the wages of sin. Holy Baptism is God’s work of exorcizing the devil, his works, and his ways and drowning the old sinner. Holy Baptism is crucifixion with Christ. A congregation, parents, and godparents watched a little boy get crucified when he was seventeen days old. But that wasn’t the end of the war. It was the first shots fired, the certainty of the old Adam’s demise, God’s reclaiming of a lost and condemned person who could not free himself (as cute and as loved as he was by his family on that day). That was the beginning of a lifelong struggle. Joined to the death of Jesus, crucified with Christ, that was the death of death for that baptized child. But it was game on with the devil, the old Adam, and a world filled with old Adams and old Eves.
And, lest we fail to get Paul’s point here in Romans 7. Our problem isn’t just with a body (as the neo-Gnostics in our midst contend). Our problem is the will, the mind, and the heart hostile to God in every old sinner. That’s why Holy Baptism isn’t a past tense event. It is a lifelong war.
Pressing On to the Finish
Paul’s point is not that you can’t win, so just face the fact that you are flawed. The late newsman Walter Cronkite signed off with: “And that’s the way it is.” They called him “the most trusted man in America,” but he wasn’t the most trustworthy. His successor, Dan Rather, tried to come up with a tagline, “Courage!” But it was laughable especially coming from the man who never let the truth get in the way of a broadcast. The last time I believed him was 1963. But I digress.
When you are baptized, it’s battle after battle after battle. You get seasons or moments when you feel relief or a little victory. But, then, rest and relaxation are over. It’s back to incoming missiles from hell, betrayals from those you thought you could count on, the carnage of shattered lives around you, and old wounds that never quite heal (like Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings”).
In his famous chapter on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul writes: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are, of all people, most to be pitied” (15:19). Reading Paul’s list of battles past in 2 Corinthians 4, the baptized can never think that we will be spared by our Baptism into Christ from that ongoing war against sin, death, and Satan both inside and out.
There are days when it’s all too much, and that’s just talking about the battles inside. Like that woman in my first parish, you want to go AWOL (absent without leave). You want to sulk like the little child hiding in his room. You want to go off and rant and rave, or childishly do a slow burn, like a spouse who just can’t believe her or his spouse can’t read her or his mind. Grow up!
There are days when the old Adam or old Eve takes over and becomes susceptible to other salvation stories. These are seductive, because they purport to be righteous and good, but their unholiness gives them away that, no, these are more of the devil’s works and ways dressed up in fancy clothes (like a person for sale). In other words, sold out to sin can be hidden for only so long.
Look in the mirror and say, “I need a Savior always, and only Jesus can save me.” And when you despair of making it to the finish line, you say, “But I am baptized, marked with Christ’s cross, and sealed with the Holy Spirit.” And, yes, resign yourself to the fact that you don’t know when the finish line will be more than way off in the distance, but it may be much closer than it appears. And, you will finally hobble across it, spent, all used up, and, then, you will fall on your knees and say the lines you have been practicing Sunday after Sunday all your life: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” And, of course, He will, because He has promised, and unlike the false prophets of this world and all those sold out to the devil, He will never lie. He cannot. For His mighty name is Jesus. And that means He saves us for Life!
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
©Samuel David Zumwalt
St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
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