“I KNOW that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:1818For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. (Romans 7:18)). How individual and personal this is! I believe if we were to learn more of what we are ourselves, we should not be so ready to accuse others of what they are. Let us find fault more with ourselves than with others. Here it is, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) there dwelleth no good thing.” That is a terrible thing. We are all ready to admit that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwell all sorts of bad things. I asked a man once if he were a child of God.
He said he did not like to make any profession, because he saw all sorts of people making profession, and he thought he was every bit as good as they were.
I then asked him if he had found out that he was bad at all.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose I must face that, there is bad in me as well as in others.”
“Now, have you found out that there is no good in you? Will you admit this, that there is absolutely nothing good in you?”
“Well, no,” he said, “I do not think I am as bad as that.”
Now that is just what we must learn or there will be no deliverance.
I remember somebody once at a Bible Reading turning to another and saying, “Are you ever disappointed with yourself?”
And the other said, “Oh, yes, indeed I am very often disappointed with myself.”
“Well,” said the first, “I am not, because I know there is no good in me at all.”
Now it is a great thing to learn that, and to learn it in communion with God. We may say it glibly without much believing it, but it is a great thing to come to that before God, that there is in me absolutely nothing good. It is a terrible thing to have to say, and it goes on, “For to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not.” And now look what it says in the nineteenth verse, “For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do.” What a terrible state I am in! I want to do what is good, and I do not do it; and I hate that which is evil, and I do it. But there is a ray of light comes into the soul in the twentieth verse, “Now if I do that I myself would not, it is no more I myself that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”
There is a stress to be laid on the “I” in this verse which does not appear in the Authorized Version. That is a grand discovery; it is not I myself. What is it then? It is sin that dwells in me. That is a ray of comfort, though perhaps not a great one, to find out that if I hate the evil, then it is not I myself that is doing it, but it is the evil principle within me that is doing it.
But then, thank God, I can reckon it to be something different from I myself. And what does that mean? That I am taking sides with God against it. But so long as I am looking upon it as part of myself, I am looking how I can stand before God with it, and I am mixing it up with my acceptance and justification.
Let us go on further now and look what it says in verse 23. Carrying on the reasoning, “I find then a law,” or principle—for that is what it means there, it is not “the law” but a general principle— “that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” Now that brings out that we are dealing with one who has a new nature, because an unconverted man could never speak like that. “But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” That, you may say, seems to be a climax, and the most terrible climax in this experience, for the ray of comfort that I saw in verse 20 seems to be altogether gone by this, that the sin that dwells in me is stronger than “I myself,” and it brings me into captivity. That is awful to think that I must live and die in captivity. But you need not. There are three stages here, “No good thing in me” (vs. 18); secondly, “It is sin in me, and not I myself” (vs. 20); and “The sin that dwells in me is stronger than I” (vs. 23). Now what is to be done? I have been trying to do better all along, and that is no good, and I find that it is hopeless work, for I am always in captivity. The terrible thing is that this evil which is in me is always stronger than I am, and I cannot get myself out of this miserable state. Do you give it up? Yes, that is just where I have got to, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” That is a great change; “who,” it is no longer “I.” “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” I have come to the end of “I.” I cannot deliver myself, but is there anybody who can? That is the point we have reached now; the vision of my soul is turned away from myself, and looks around to see if there is anybody who can deliver. “Who shall deliver me?” I needed a Saviour at the start for my sins, and now I need a Deliverer from the power of sin. I give it up myself. I have striven and done the best I could, I have done everything I could think of, and I find that I am still a captive, and I cannot extricate myself from this terrible condition. “Who shall deliver me,” miserable man that I am? Plenty of people say that they are miserable sinners, but this is a miserable saint—one who has life, but no liberty. It is not the experience of an unconverted man, neither is it the experience of a man in the full Christian position. Then you say there is something between the two? Well, practically, there is. There is the experience here described of one who has life but who is under the law, and he has no liberty. And you will notice that throughout this chapter there is not a word about Christ as an object, and not a word about the Spirit as power. It is the law and self.
“Who shall deliver me?” And what is the answer to this? The last verse of the chapter. The soul passes from a state of bondage and misery into bursts of praise. “I thank God.” That is a very different thing to misery and the law. At one moment it is crying out from the depth of the heart, “Who shall deliver me?” The next it is, “I thank God.” That is, I find that God is my Deliverer. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The apostle has described this, but you must not think he was passing through this terrible experience when he was describing it. Supposing you had been in a morass or quicksand’s, and you tell a person what your experience was, you say, “There I was in that terrible morass, I was sinking.”
And your friend might say, “Why did you not try to get on to a bit of firm ground?”
And you say, “I could not, for the more I tried the further I sank.”
But you must be out of the morass before you can describe it. It is not, then, that the apostle was at that moment going through this experience. He had been in it, but he had learned the way of deliverance from it, and I believe that comes by applying the truth contained in the sixth chapter. We have died with Christ, and further, we are associated with Christ on the other side of death and judgment, so that there is no condemnation possible for us. There is no condemnation, for we have been taken out of the place that we were once in, as “in the flesh;” we are no longer there before God, but we are in Christ Jesus, and there is no condemnation. “I thank God.”