Recently I have been trading emails with a new member of our church family.  He is a well-read and informed believer.  He is also troubled by a common malady that afflicts most serious Christians sooner or later.  How do we move from the state of the “wretched man” to the state of “more than victorious”?  I have to admit to sharing his dilemma.

In the seventh chapter of Romans, Paul speaks of his own experience in this way:  “For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it.  For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.  Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but it is the sin that lives in me.   So I discover this principle: when I want to do good, evil is with me.  For in my inner self I joyfully agree with God’s law.  But I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body.   What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:18-24 HCSB)

A question that Bible scholars have wrangled over for centuries is:  “When Paul referred to himself as a ‘wretched man,’ was he speaking of himself before or after his conversion?”  There are four primary options considered by evangelicals.

Some see this autobiographical section as describing Paul before he met Christ.  Others see this as Paul’s experience while he was under conviction of sin and   still controlled by his self-righteousness apart from Christ.  Others see the passage as descriptive of Paul after conversion but before he learned the truths of the victorious Christian life made possible by the indwelling Holy Spirit, which he explores in Romans 8.

But a very large section of the evangelical church sees Romans 7 as the continuing experience of the believer—even the Spirit-filled believer.  The Christian life, they argue, is a continual battlefield.  The flesh—which is fallen human nature—is never obliterated or improved.  We have a new nature by the presence of the Spirit, but the old nature is still very real.  Consequently, we are in for a struggle every day of our lives until we die or until the rapture.

What is the true meaning of Paul’s words in Romans 7?  Is this the pre-conversion Paul, the almost-converted Paul, the newly-converted Paul, or the mature Paul who honestly admitted a continuing conflict?  Let’s examine Paul’s statement.

First, the phrase “nothing good lives in me” is consistent with Paul’s emphasis on the total inability of a person to respond to God apart from grace.  In Ephesians, for instance, he describes the unsaved person as “dead in trespasses and sins” (2:1).  To be dead is to be pretty bad off, you’ll have to admit.

Second, the statement “there is no ability to do [good]” is also consistent with what Paul writes about the unregenerate:   “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to this worldly age, according to the ruler of the atmospheric domain, the spirit now working in the disobedient.   We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and by nature we were children under wrath, as the others were also.”(Eph 2:1-3 HCSB)

Paul speaks of the unregenerate as “disobedient” and as “children of wrath” who “walked according to this worldly age,” i.e., they lived just like the rest of those who don’t know God in Christ.

So, you can make the argument that this autobiographical passage portrays Paul before his new birth experience on the Damascus road.

But there are weighty arguments in favor of this being Paul’s admission of weakness after his conversion and throughout his Christian experience.

• First, Paul writes in the present tense.  In his flesh he admits that “there is no ability to do” God’s will.  He confesses that “I practice the evil that I do not want to do” and that “sin . . . lives in me.”  These are present tense verbs.

• Second, his confession, “What a wretched man I am” is also in the present tense.  He could easily have written, “What a wretched man I used to be; but then I met Christ and now I have perpetual victory.  The battle with the flesh is over.  I am more than a conqueror.”

Theologically, I would have preferred Paul to have written it that way—to have said, “I no longer have to dilly-dally with sin.  The issue was settled long ago.  I’m not perfect, but I’m no longer a captive to sin.  Thanks be to God.”

I say, that would be my preference.  It makes more sense to me theologically.  But that’s not what he said.  The straightforward and simple meaning of his words is that the great Apostle to the Gentiles still struggled with indwelling sin.  He admitted that there was a conflict between the old, fallen nature—the remnant of his pre-conversion life—and his new nature, which was the creation of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Third, the following words could never be said by a lost person:  “22 For in my inner self I joyfully agree with God’s law.”  Only someone who had been regenerated by the Holy Spirit would claim that he delighted in the moral law of God and gave hearty agreement with its demands and penalties.  The tendency of the unregenerate is to chafe under the law and to accuse God of being arbitrary and unreasonable to require people to live by such a strict code of morality.

How, then, do we decide the true interpretation?

First, there is the analogy of scripture.  What does the rest of the New Testament teach?  Is there an ongoing conflict within the heart of the child of God; or does the presence of the Holy Spirit end all battles with sin?  In my opinion, there is no teaching in scripture that the sin principle is eradicated at conversion.  In Galatians 5, Paul clearly states that the “works of the flesh” are evident, and he implies that the believer can produce these works when he is not filled with the Spirit.  The character of Christlikeness is the “fruit” of the Spirit’s presence in our lives (see Gal. 5:19-25).  A choice to live in the flesh or live by the Spirit is plainly indicated.

Second, there is the value of personal experience.  Those of us who have received God’s grace in Christ have our own spiritual autobiographies.  We cannot claim that they are Spirit-inspired like Paul’s epistles; however, we can and should claim that our experience with Christ is genuine and is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

So, what about your experience?  Have you ever noticed a battle raging in your own heart?  Have you ever been tempted to do what you knew was wrong, and did you feel that your entire being would burst under the strain?  Have you ever lost one of these battles and become the prisoner of the flesh, at least for a time?

Most of us would honestly confess “Yes” to all three of the above questions.  We know the battle from personal experience.  Our “old man” is still very much with us.  The “flesh” has to be mortified on a daily basis.  If we do not choose regularly to be Spirit-filled, we will walk in the flesh and produce the works of the flesh. As a consequence God will be dishonored while our own lives become spiritual shambles.  It is easy for most of us to see how Paul could be describing himself after his conversion.

Third, there is the weight of Christian scholarship.  To be sure, we can cite scholars who support each of the positions we have mentioned.  Yet all of us have our favorites, and when push comes to shove, we tend to agree with them on issues that we are not clear about.  That is not a bad practice, by the way.  I have learned to trust the judgment of some of my favorite scholars who seem to have an uncanny gift to unravel the mysteries of the Word of God.  I don’t always agree with any one scholar; but certain of them are my “go to guys” when crunch time comes.

With apologies to Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of my favorite commentators on the book of Romans, I must reject his view that Paul was describing his experience when he was under conviction by the Spirit and before he was born again.  I also reject the view that this was descriptive of Paul while he was a self-righteous Pharisee and before the regenerating work of the Spirit.  My view is a combination of the third and fourth options listed above.  Paul is both confessing a present struggle as the “wretched man,” and he is sharing the secret of victory that comes by living in the Spirit.

Paul is describing every Christian.  We are all in a battle.  We must daily choose life in the Spirit.  We are, in one sense, perpetually the “wretched man” who can never please God and who struggles with the tendency to live in the flesh.

The wonderful thing is:  now we can make the choice to live by the Spirit.  Before we were born again, there was no choice to make.  We could never live the Spirit life until the Spirit came into our lives.  The presence of the Spirit in our lives makes possible the choice to honor Christ, deny the flesh, and live in faith and obedience.

The struggle is real; but so is the choice to respond to the Holy Spirit.  We can never honestly say, “I couldn’t help myself,” meaning we were in the clutches of an irresistible force that compelled us to sin.   One battle at a time we can say “Yes” to the Spirit and experience life.  We are the “wretched man” who will never find the exit from the arena of spiritual conflict until Jesus snatches us up or calls us home.  But at the same time we are “more than victorious through Him that loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Paul’s reference to victory is obviously eschatological (related to the end-time); but the Spirit-filled believer has the privilege of experiencing right now the presence of the Kingdom which will not be fully revealed until the King comes again.  Through the Holy Spirit we can know, in the words of G. Eldon Ladd, the “presence of the future.”  Or as the late Princeton theologian Gerhardus Vos put it so graphically, the Kingdom is “already, but not yet.”

We will live in this “already, but not yet” tension all of our lives.  But keep your eyes on the eastern sky.  Dawn is breaking.  The sun is about to peak over the horizon.  The King is coming.  The victory we know now proleptically and hopefully will be fully realized.  Faith will become sight, and hope will dissolve into the glory of the Son of God as we are instantly transformed into His blessed likeness (I John 3:2-3).

Alan Day, Senior Pastor