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The sermon teaches that fallen humanity is hostile to God and incapable of spiritual renewal apart from divine grace. Conversion implants a new nature through the Holy Spirit, but the old sinful nature remains, producing lifelong conflict in the believer. This conflict is not evidence of spiritual failure; it is characteristic of genuine Christian life, and God gives victory through the Father’s purpose, Christ’s blood, and the Spirit’s help. Unbelievers are warned of judgment, while awakened sinners are invited to trust Christ alone, whose cross guarantees salvation and whose work will culminate in complete freedom from sin.
Theological center: Through the crucified and risen Christ, God gives believers a new spiritual nature, sustains them in conflict with indwelling sin, and will finally glorify them.
Applications: Fight on in spiritual conflict · Look to Christ for salvation · Cast yourself wholly on Christ · Recognize the believer’s inner conflict
Primary texts: Romans 7:24-25 · Romans 8:7 · Micah 7:8
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 7:24-25 IF I chose to occupy your time with controversial matter, I might prove to a demonstration that the apostle Paul is here describing his own experience as a Christian. Some have affirmed that he is merely declaring what he was before conversion, and not what he was when he became the recipient of the grace of God. But such persons are evidently mistaken, and I believe willfully mistaken, for any simplehearted, candid mind, reading through this chapter could not fall into such an error. It is Paul the apostle who was not less than the very greatest of the apostles—it is Paul, the mighty servant of God, a very prince in Israel, one of the King’s mighty men—it is Paul, the saint and the apostle, who here exclaims, “O wretched man that I am!” Now, humble Christians are often the dupes of a very foolish error. They look up to certain advanced saints and able ministers, and they say, “Surely, such men as these do not suffer as I do, they do not contend with the same evil passions as those which vex and trouble me.” Ah! if they knew the hearts of those men, if they could read their inward conflicts, they would soon discover that the nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart, and the more his Master honors him in His service, the more also does the evil of the flesh vex and tease him day by day. Perhaps this error is more natural, as it is certainly more common with regard to apostolic saints. We have been in the habit of saying, Saint Paul and Saint John, as if they were more saints than any other of the children of God. They are all saints whom God has called by His grace and sanctified by His Spirit, but somehow we very foolishly put the apostles and the early saints into another list, and do not venture to look on them as common mortals. We look upon them as some extraordinary beings who could not be men of like passions with ourselves. We are told in Scripture that our Savior was “tempted in all points like as we are,” and yet we fall into the egregious error of imagining that the apostles, who were far inferior to the Lord Jesus, escaped these temptations and were ignorant of these conflicts. The fact is, if you had seen the apostle Paul, you would have thought he was remarkably like the rest of the chosen family, and if you had talked with him, you would have said, “Why, Paul, I find that your experience and mine exactly agree. You are more faithful, more holy, and more deeply t…