In week 1 of our Choices series we talked about how our choices reveal our priorities and our priorities should be based on the word of God.
Last week we talked about how we can learn to hear from God so we can make the right choices and how His peace is the key to moving forward, in the direction He want’s us to go.
Today we’re going to wrap up the series and look at why sometimes we don’t do any of those things we talked about in the first 2 weeks, and in the process cause ourselves all kinds of problems.
Just a heads up: We’re gonna spend a lot of time in Romans today, so you may want to go ahead and turn there in your bible or bible app. Get ready to be in the weeds for a little while.
Now, after telling you guys last Sunday all about how we can listen to God’s voice and make right choices, I started Monday morning making a choice…that I now regret.
I was dealing with an insurance company over a rental car…or lack thereof.
I may have had a bad attitude and presented, shall we say, a less than Christlike attitude when I was leaving messages about how they hadn’t set up the rental, and now I was going to have to pay for the car myself.
It was not my finest hour, and I’m sure it didn’t make the insurance adjuster want to call me back and help with the situation.
Was that the way I should have treated the person who got that message…and the 3 emails? No, of course not.
I know better. I don’t have an excuse, I know what the word says.
Have you ever been there and done that? No? No one? Just me? Well, after I did a little research, I found out, it’s not just me. The Apostle Paul also dealt with the problem of making wrong choices.
Let’s look at Romans 7:15 “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Paul says he makes the choice to do the things that he hates and doesn’t understand why.
So why did I react the way I did, and choose to respond the wrong way? Why did Paul…and why do you?
Tonight I’m going to try and answer that question.
Let’s begin by going back and looking at the verses following verse 15.
Romans 7:15-20 “15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
You see, our flesh is the problem. It loves the sin that dwells in us. Notice that Paul mentions that sin dwells in him 2 times in these verses.
When we accept that Jesus is our Lord, He doesn’t remove the sinful desire of our flesh, but He does forgive it.
Well now, doesn’t that sounds like a pretty good plan? Since it’s the sin that dwells in me that’s at fault, it’s not my fault, so I can choose to sin all I want and God will just forgive me.
That sounds great! Sign me up.
Hang on there, Skippy…not so fast. We’re gonna have to dig a little deeper cause that sounds too good to be true. Right?
Before Paul talked about the sin that dwells in him, in chapter 7, he was talking about that same topic back in chapter 6 and laid out the ground rules.
Romans 6:1-2 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we, who died to sin, still live in it?”
Let me take a second and break that down for you.
Let’s say there’s a glass of milk sitting on a table. And a child intentionally knocks it over every time he walks past it, just because it seemed like fun. Then magically when he walked past that spot an hour later the mess was gone and there was another glass of milk. This was definitely fun.
But then one day someone explained to him how it was wrong to behave like that. And that his mother, because she loved him so much, was the one who always cleaned up the mess and poured him another glass. You see, the milk was his to enjoy, along with the cookies he didn’t know anything about…he was just hurting himself but didn’t even realize it.
The child finally understood what he had been doing, and cried because he was sorry for his behavior. He was grateful that his mother’s love and forgiveness had covered his bad behavior when he didn’t even realize it was bad.
But after a couple of months the child walks past another glass of milk and the old desire to knock it over comes back. And so he remembers how fun that used to be, and he thinks: “Well, surely mom loves me enough to forgive me one more time.”
And so, he begins a pattern of behavior that he now knows is wrong, but justifies it by saying that he’s just giving his mother an opportunity to love and forgive him even more.
That sounds crazy doesn’t it?
This is what Paul is saying in the Romans 6:1-2. We are saved by God’s grace toward us, but we are not to justify continuing to sin, by saying God’s grace can be even greater toward us.
He goes on to talk about how we as believers have been baptized into Christ and just as Jesus was raised from the dead, we have been raised into newness of life. And we should choose to behave accordingly.
Romans 6:12-14 “12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”
So, I’m not supposed to choose the sin that my flesh wants, but to present myself to God for His purposes. Sin is living in me, but it does not have dominion over me.
Here’s the million dollar question: How do we defeat the sinful desire in our flesh? In other words: How do we stop knocking over the glass of milk?
The key to being able to walk past the glass of milk and not even noticing that it’s there, is what scripture calls having a renewed mind.
Turn to Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
The battle over our choices, when it comes to sin, is waged in the mind.
Romans 7:21-23 “21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”
Flesh, Soul and Spirit illustration: As we begin to break down this idea of having a renewed mind, there are three characters involved in this little production that we need to take a closer look at. We have to reveal their motivations so we can understand what is happening. They are the Flesh, the mind and the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:1-5 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—“
Imagine your flesh is here, your spirit is over here and in the middle between them is your soul (mind). Before you asked Jesus to forgive your sins and be the Lord of your life, your spirit was dead. The first verse of the scripture we just read says you were dead in your sins. The real you, a spirit, the you that lives in this body.…was dead. We think of our body/flesh as who we are, but that’s not even close to being correct.
Think about it like this: Astronauts have to have a space suit. They need it to live in space, but you would never describe the space suit as the astronaut. If the astronaut is back on earth and the space suit is just laying on a table, you wouldn’t say there’s Bob the astronaut. You’d sound crazy if you did that.
Your body is just an earth suit. You need it to live here on the earth. Your body will no longer be necessary when the real “you” leaves the earth.
You are not your earth suit. You live in your earth suit while you are on earth.
For years, your flesh and mind were running around together doing whatever made your flesh happy. If your flesh wanted it, your mind would justify why you should have it. Doing what your flesh wanted is what got you into trouble, because there was no one to stop the two of them or even give them a reason to pause.
But then one day you heard the message of Jesus and you chose to live for Him. At that point your spirit man came to life. Suddenly there is a third guy involved. A third wheel that has shown up to ruin the fun, or so your flesh would have you believe.
How many times have you seen a character in a show that has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other? As crazy as it sounds, that is basically what is happening when our spirit comes to life in Christ.
You see, up until that point, your flesh has never had any competition for who influences your mind. But now there’s this new guy who is alive with the spirit of God and has a totally different perspective on what choices your mind should be making.
Your flesh and mind have been together doing whatever your flesh wanted for a long time, so your habits have been set through your choices over that period of time.
Remember earlier when I mentioned being able to sin all you want and God would just forgive you? That it sounded too good to be true? As Christians we have to ask ourselves: “Why would being able to sin all we want, sound good?”
Here’s why. Your flesh jumped into the conversation and started talking to your mind…again. Remember the good old days, when it was just the two of us? Wasn’t that fun? Don’t you miss that?
Again, the battle over our choices, when it comes to sin, is waged in the mind.
You will have this battle until your flesh dies.
Romans 7:24-25 “24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”
Your flesh can’t be saved, and it won’t stop trying to convince you to make bad choices. So we defeat it by starving it of its influence over our mind. As we seek God through His word, our spirit is strengthened and our flesh is weakened.
Our mind becomes renewed by the word of God.
Every time we choose to listen to our spirit telling our mind to do what the WORD says we should do, we reinforce the right habits for our life. And the voice of our flesh gets a little quieter.
Are you tired of trying to make all of life’s choices without the help of God’s word? Are you ready to make that first right choice and accept that Jesus is the Lord?
If you are, I’m going to pray in just a minute, and you can say that prayer with me. It will bring the real you to life, and you can begin to live out the purpose God created you for.
If you’ve been thinking that there has to be more to God than just going to church once a week. We want you to know, there is, and we want you to discover all of it.
But the choice is yours. Are you ready to make it?
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