A GOOD START

163,000 people beat me to a sermon from John MacArthur on YouTube regarding Romans 7:14-24 - Paul's famous "What I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do ... this I keep on doing" passage. 

MacArthur makes the case that these verses present a picture of Paul's actual struggles as a Christian, not the internal dialogue of someone who is almost a Christian. 

(If you are not familiar with MacArthur, he is a prominent Reformed Baptist preacher with a wide following.)

I appreciate the fact that MacArthur begins his sermon by acknowledging the arguments that favor reading this passage as the inner struggle of a non-Christian:

• There is too much bondage to sin to represent a believer.

• Where is the fruit of the Spirit?

• Many of the preceding verses speak of victory over sin, with any struggle in the past tense:

• 6:2 - "We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"

• 6:6 - "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin."

• 6:7 - "Because anyone who has died has been freed from sin."

• 6:17 - "But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted."

• 6:18 - "You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." 

• 6:22 - "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life."

• Romans 7:5-6 - "For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code."

• Other verses speak of a new way forward, after gaining victory over sin:

• 6:11 - "In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus."

• 6:12 - "Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires."

• 6:13 - "Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness." 

• 6:14 - "For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace."

MacArthur observes: "All of these passages seem to say sin is dethroned."

If he stopped right there, I would say this was a good sermon. To me, that looks like a pretty compelling case in favor of viewing 7:14-24 as the struggle of a person who is not yet a Christian.

But MacArthur fails to stop there. Tomorrow I will share what he considers a strong reason to overturn all of this context.