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I have two questions that came up as I reviewed the present verses around the end of chapter 7 and the first of chapter 8. I know I have covered this maybe several times but I always feel it is important to still be willing to look more.
If I put myself into the mind of the persons Paul was addressing in Romans 7 (which is not at all hard for me to do), I realize that my normal reaction to the detailed description of a person's condition, as Paul described his own experience to be, would arouse in me feelings of condemnation toward such an individual. That is one of the stock attitudes of people who are working very hard to be obedient to all the rules to please God. They naturally tend to perceive others who reveal their weaknesses and talk about sin dwelling in their flesh with an attitude of condemnation. Somehow they assume that what that person needs is a stronger sense of guilt to cause them to quit sinning and tow the line more carefully. It is believed that condemnation is an important part of the Christian life; it is the “stick” as opposed to the “carrot” approach that they believe God uses to push and pull us toward a righteous life.
Many Christians today have various methods to employ this tool. In some circles it is very common to preach the terrors of hell-fire and damnation to frighten sinners into repentance. It seems to work quite effectively and many are seen to respond, so it is assumed that it is a valid method to intimidate souls into salvation. Others use much more subtle approaches of displeasure or disdain. But there is one common thread through all of these things and that is fear.
So if I am one of the people listening or reading this discourse by Paul describing his own emotions and struggles and then declaring (7:25) that though with his mind he is serving the Law of God but with his flesh the law of sin, I would naturally respond with reactions of some level of condemnation toward Paul. I would assume that the reason he is struggling so hard and obviously not succeeding in his fight against sin is that he is not trying hard enough, not surrendering enough, maybe not intimidated enough, so he must need to feel more condemned to compel him toward a more righteous life of obedience.
I think that one reason Paul used this detailed description and made sure he used himself as the example and not anyone else is because he knew ahead of time that it would evoke just this kind of response in his listeners. It was just that core attitude that he wanted to expose as the faulty thinking that keeps this type of person trapped in their frustrated attempts to achieve righteousness through their relationship with the Law and their strong attempts to be obedient and to get right with God.
The presence of condemnation in the heart, especially when it is considered a legitimate part of God's plan of salvation, is a fatal flaw in the spiritual life that keeps us trapped in the very experience that Paul has just described in chapter 7. Condemnation simply is not the means that God uses to draw us to Himself but we have a very hard time accepting that idea. The problem is that when we believe that condemnation is legitimate, in becoming like the God we imagine we will inevitably end up using it to motivate others to join us in our “service” and “obedience” to the God of our twisted perceptions.
The other question that came to me and is very much integrated with what I am looking at here is the sudden shift in “person” that Paul uses in his writing at this point. He has been talking for some time about “I” and “me” in the first person as he describes this unenviable position of struggle with sin in his flesh, but he suddenly shifts to second person in 8:2 where he exclaims, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”
I believe that Paul does this so that he personally takes all of the heat and becomes the lightening rod for all of the condemnation that he knows will be aroused by this description so that it is not directed at anyone else. At the same time he also knows that those who share the same struggle secretly inside have by this time begun to realize that they are experiencing the same reality that Paul is describing. He has now awakened in their heart a growing desire for escape from this feeling of being trapped. Paul is externalizing by expression the secret, hidden feelings of every person who is trying to please God through a religion of fear so that they will identify with his own frustrations enough to listen to the glorious true realities that God has for us to experience. Right at the point that we are willing to admit, if we are honest, that what he has just described is all too like what we are feeling, he then switches the focus from himself to us by saying “you”. He takes the light that he has up to this point been shining only on his own feelings and frustrations and turns it suddenly into our heart exposing the fact that we too share these feelings of helplessness even though we may have kept them hidden and repressed for many years. But he does this at the critical moment as he begins to reveal the wonderful good news that we should not accept condemnation as a part of God's plan for our lives, but that God wants to set us free from this spirit of sin and death (the essence of condemnation) into a completely different paradigm and perception of reality. The Spirit of life is the real antidote that we need to motivate us in a successful experience of salvation, not the life-sucking emotions of condemnation and its surrounding negative attitudes and fears.
Just before I looked at this passage today I read the presentation in My Utmost and found some striking insights to compliment what I have been learning in Romans 7 and 8. Here is what he said.
Ye call Me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. John 13:13.
To have a master and to be mastered is not the same thing. To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master is this and nothing less—“One is your Master, even Christ.”
Our Lord never enforces obedience; He does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain times I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not.
“Ye call me Master and Lord”—but is He? Master and Lord have little place in our vocabulary, we prefer the words Saviour, Sanctifier Healer. The only word to describe mastership in experience is love, and we know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we us the word obey. In the Bible obedience is based on the relationship of equals, that of a son with his father. Our Lord was not God’s servant, He was His son. “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience . . .” If our idea is that we are being mastered, it is a proof that we have no master; if that is our attitude to Jesus, we are far away from the relationship He wants. He wants us in the relationship in which He is easily Master without our conscious knowledge of it, all we know is that we are His to obey.
Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI : Discovery House Publishers, 1993, c1935, S. September 22
After I read the second paragraph I stopped and pondered what this meant in the light of what I have been learning about how the brain works. I decided that the problem described here was based on the motives of fear. I too, have many times wished God would force me to do the right thing, but He does not desire to do that for me, sometimes to my great frustration. And I share the sentiments of the author when he says there are other times when I wish He would leave me alone and He does not. His conviction is gentle but persistent and He desires for me to move from a relationship of fear to one of genuine love.
Then as I read the next paragraph that was confirmed for me. “The only word to describe mastership in experience is love, and we know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we us the word obey.” Boy does that ring a bell for me! I still struggle against gut-level negative reactions every time I hear Christians use the word “obedience”, especially with that certain intonation that subtly applies the inference of condemnation without explicitly expressing it.
What Chambers is describing here is a wonderful illustration of what I have been seeing in Romans 6 and 7, and I really like the way he describes the right way to perceive the idea of Master. It dis-attaches it from the natural negative implications that we feel when that word is used and places it in a completely new context of the thriving, loving relationship of being part of a family. That is the desire that God has, the experience that He wants to draw us into when we present ourselves to be His slaves (6:16).
The real experience for us in salvation is to be drawn into bonds of love replacing our old fear-bonds that we are so used to. As I thought about this I became actually frightened, for I realize that I am so used to depending on fear-bonds in my relationship toward God to motivate me that love-bonds seem weak and flimsy by comparison. But my heart tells me that I was designed for something much better that a life of fear and the accompanying condemnation that it always produces. I was designed to live and thrive in the atmosphere of love and trust and peace that produces a natural response of the fruit of genuine righteousness. I am still many times confused as to how to get there from here, but I have to trust that the One who is revealing this to me will also be faithful to continue and finish the project that He started with me.
For the law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus did set me free from the law of the sin and of the death. (Romans 8:2 YLT)
