Wretched Man That I Am (Romans 7)

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Janet had married the respectable Mr. Dempster who in private was an angry and abusive alcoholic. Feeling guilty that she had married him despite some advice telling her not to do so and feeling ashamed that she was being beaten she too turned to alcohol in order to numb the pain. Then one day after beating her, he put her out of the house into the cold and without hope. So she went to a neighbor’s house where she thinks to talk to a minister who loved great sinners. She tells this minister that she is too weak to live and not strong enough to die and wants to know if he can help. And when she then tells her story she might as well have been quoting Romans 7. The woman who wrote that story, published under the pseudonym of George Elliott with the title Janet’s Repentance, is not the only author who has captured something of the struggle you know all too well. William Inge wrote My Son is a Splendid Driver about an ordinary family in depression era Kansas where the mother is dealing with the grief of losing her son because he nicked himself shaving and the cut got infected but they didn’t have the money to get it treated and then when she has almost been able to cope with that her husband has too much to drink and slept with a woman at a bar. She would have been able to cope with that too except that now she has caught an STD from her husband and refuses to go any further than her front porch because of the shame she feels. She says, “I wish that I had a God to pray to now” and we are told that her minister would be too embarrassed to know what to do. I haven’t had the time to read these stories myself, but I’ve seen the movie The Sixth Sense. In it Bruce Willis plays a child psychologist who is trying to help a boy who is able to see and talk to the dead. It takes Bruce Willis the whole movie to realize that he is dead. These stories have in common hitting bottom. They have in common a realization of our own wretchedness. Romans 7 speaks to that mother and to Janet and to dead people who think that they are alive. Indeed, if life were a Game of Clue then Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, Colonel Mustard, and Mrs. White all are dead. Who did it? Paul tells us that it was sin. What was the murder weapon? The law.

Romans 7

1. The Romans thought that those they called barbarians were wretched, but you are a wretched person in need of deliverance from this body of death.

   1. Paul not only knew this about himself but he was able to describe his own struggle in a way that the Christians in Rome might also realize that they too are wretched people in need of deliverance from their own body of death as much as those they might consider awful barbarians. After all, what Christian can read these verses and not identify with that struggle? I remember reading Romans 7 even when I was a child and thinking that it sounded a lot like my own experience. I hated my own sinful actions; I wanted to do what was right but was unable to do so; I delighted in God’s law in my heart but found myself doing the very things that I hated. I wanted to cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And I still do. The Christians in Rome in Paul’s day were no different. And when they found themselves crying out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am!” then they were saying that they need Jesus just as much as those they called barbarians.

   2. In the same way, those today who are awful idolaters from places like Syria are the walking dead just like your old self that still needs to be put to death. Biblical Christianity is not a self-improvement philosophy. It isn’t about being the best you can be and trying to cover over and pretty up the old self. Instead, the law of God kills that old self and the gospel gives you life in Christ Jesus. Religious people can fall into the trap of thinking that unbelievers, especially foreign unbelievers, are pretty awful people but that churchgoing folk are good respectable people. The problem is that we are all falling short of the glory of God. We keep trying to jump over the Niagara Gorge that separates us from God or even trying to do pole-vaulting across it and as we try to do the law to save ourselves we keep hitting the bottom dead. Our old self often acts as if life is a roadrunner cartoon. If life were a movie, we are Bruce Willis thinking that we aren’t dead when we are. So the law shows us. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

2. But at the same time you have died to the law through the body of Christ by faith in Him and now it is not the law but the gospel that says what God thinks of you.

   1. Paul says that you are no longer under the law for you have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you would belong to Christ. It is like marriage, Paul says, for a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives but if he dies then she is free from that law to marry another. You have died. Therefore, the law doesn’t have jurisdiction over you. The law has put you to death and in this life will continue to put to death your old self. But the law doesn’t get to say what God thinks of you, instead by faith in Jesus Christ you now belong to another husband – you belong to Jesus Christ.

   2. So when you sin, believe that it is not the law but the gospel that says what God thinks of you and share that good news with others. Janet asks the minister if he can give her any comfort – any hope. So he told her his own story. In My Son Is a Splendid Driver, William Inge also tells the story of Betsy who had everything going for her until she got mixed up with the wrong man, got pregnant and dropped out of college and then became an alcoholic. And Joey is trying to understand why she could be at peace after all of that and she says, “We never really learn what life is all about until we fail.” The rest of the day Joey thought of Betsy feeling somehow he had witnessed one of Christ’s miracles. Romans 7 is about learning from failing. The law reveals to us that we are not like God, which is what it means for our old self to die. The mother who couldn’t leave her porch needs a church full of ministers who know that it isn’t the law that says what God thinks of those who have faith in Jesus. We are not good respectable people who should get embarrassed by such things and worse. We should be willing to share our struggles with one another and with those who are not believers too. We too are wretched people and we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus. Tell your own story of what God is doing in your life to those you might be tempted to think are not the type you would expect to see in church. Maybe then you will get to witness one of Christ’s miracles. Thanks be to God. Amen.